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One day, the thought crosses her mind. Abruptly — silently — so softly that recognizing it is an accident, like spotting a fleck of dust on a smooth pool of water. Small but henceforth un-unseeable.
If things were different, then —
Touka pauses. The thought is really just the first half of a thought. To have the rest of it, she’ll need to reach out herself, and try to scoop it up.
If things were different, she thinks. Then.
Her hand has a tremble in it. The pool quivers, disfigured.
Then.
For the first time, she isn’t sure of the reflection she’ll see when it quiets.
:::
The first time they meet, she has no idea. She stuffs food into his mouth, with a sort of justice, not thinking that she’ll ever regret it. She laughs when they tell her later, and stops when no one joins her.
“You’re…joking,” she says. “Right?”
Yoshimura is silent. So is Yomo. Nishiki is the one that replies, with a sigh, dragging his hand through his hair.
“No,” Nishiki says, grimacing. “That was him.”
Centipede.
:::
She’d heard that he was one of them once, Anteiku. Before then, he’d worked the other side; and before then, they realized, probably yet another. Now no one has any idea what side he’s on, and it’s that — more than the violent lab raid, more than the mysterious missions, more than the powerful enemies crumpling left and right — that has everyone jumping at shadows and small noises. Centipede could be anywhere. Centipede could be any one.
He has more personas than anyone, and until her first meeting with him, there was no recourse. His disguises are impeccable. The age-old rule of holding cross-agency meetings behind masks was crumbling beneath the terror of having him sneak unwittingly into someone’s ear. Even so, having meetings face-to-face didn’t stop Aogiri from taking a blow so strong it was teetering on splinters.
And until her first meeting with him, it looked like Anteiku might be next.
“There,” Touka says.
“Wait, now?” Nishiki gasps. “Right now? Where? Where?”
“Shut up. Right there.” Touka points, and Nishiki leans, eyes squeezed into slits, trying to see. Beneath Touka’s finger, the shadowing on the video forms a shape that to her is unmistakable and to Nishiki is a simply a blur of pixels.
“Are you sure?” Nishiki asks sharply, and Touka knuckles his shoulder without looking at him.
“I’m sure.”
“What’s with his hair? Weird. Is that really another one of his disguises?”
“Nishiki. I’m sure.”
She hates being assigned to staring at monitors all day, but there’s no doubt. Ever since that first meeting, she’s always been sure.
Nishiki frowns, but she knows that it’s less that he doesn’t believe her and more that he doesn’t want to. Even with her eye, she’s lucky to spot Centipede once a month. This is the sixth Centipede sighting in as many days: unheard of, for someone who can move through the city like a ghost. He’s on the move. But for who?
“Who’s that he’s with?” Touka mutters. They scrub the video back and forth until the security footage yields something clear. And white. And massive.
The blood drains out of their faces.
“Get Yoshimura,” Touka gasps, but Nishiki is already off, his footsteps are already faint. Mortified, Touka remains glued to the monitor.
Is he a Dove now? she thinks in panic. Is he working for the Doves?
She stares hard at the back of his head, as if she could find the answer, right here, right now. And Centipede —
Touka’s heart jerks. It’s impossible. She’s watching through a traffic camera, tapped secretly into the feed. To anyone on the street she’s more invisible than an insect. It’s impossible.
But Centipede turns, and stares straight back at her.
:::
They make it out of the raid.
Mostly.
Thanks to Touka’s just-in-time warning of Centipede and his movements.
Mostly.
In her line of work it’s necessary to have flawless acting skill, and Touka uses it to its fullest as she accepts congratulations and thanks. She smiles, and smiles, and smiles, and doesn’t stop, not even for Nishiki.
“Something happened, during the raid,” Nishiki says. His own acting skill could use work; he can eat all manner of things that he actually can’t stand, he can kiss someone while actually wanting to vomit, and yet, right now, he can barely conceal his triumph.
“I think we won’t have to worry about Centipede anymore.”
“No,” Touka says, and Nishiki so completely doesn’t expect it that he leaves for a drink and then comes back five minutes later, bewildered.
“Wait,” he says. “Did you say ‘no?’”
“He’ll be back,” Touka says. “I know it.”
:::
No one believes it but her. Quickly, she realizes that no one wants to believe it.
So when her eyes find him, again, as a teacher in an academy where the Doves cast off their orphans to oil their ancient, incomprehensible machine —
When she spots him perusing horror novels in the bookstore just blocks beside the new cafe —
When the silhouette of his black coat striding with his own squad of Doves makes her spine cold —
When she catches his eye in the mirror of a women’s bathroom —
She doesn’t say a word.
Just like before, she only looks at him, and he looks back.
In the mirror, he smiles at her, and brushes aside the bangs of a well-kept wig.
“Do you happen to have any lotion?”
His expression is apologetic. His lipstick is impeccable. Touka rummages in her purse and holds out a small peach-scented tube that she squeezes over his open palm.
“Thank you,” he says. “Rabbit.”
Only acting skill keeps her breathing evenly.
“No problem,” she replies, capping the lotion and replacing it in her purse.
The way he called her by her codename seemed more friendly than threatening. That wasn’t what she expected.
I could ask, she realizes. She’s been thinking on it for months now, ever since she watched Anteiku’s HQ burn — she’s been chasing her questions in circles, chasing them down holes, trying in vain to find the answer no one else can.
But now —
I can ask.
Whose side are you on?
And.
Why did you show yourself to me before the raid?
And, maybe.
Was it that you were trying to save us?
She traces a finger along her bangs, aligning them properly, though they are already perfectly in place. She nudges the corner of her own lip.
Whose side are you on?
“No problem,” she repeats. Glancing over, she she says, “People like us have to help each other out, right?”
He blinks, and then smiles, again. He doesn’t look like someone that could have been wheeled into a Ghoul auction and escaped intact. He doesn’t look like someone whose appetites still inspire shock and not a little terror. He doesn’t look like someone who is a prodigy of the Dove’s Reaper. He closes his purse.
“I’ll see you later,” he says.
“See you,” Touka replies, but by then, he’s already gone.
:::
If things…were just…a little different.
She doesn’t see him, for a while, and, uneasily, she begins to wonder if everything was just her imagination. Maybe the memory of his voice quietly saying “Rabbit” is errata formed by too many nights spent sleeplessly trying to unknot the Doves’ motivations and plans and talons. Maybe, she thinks, he’s already forgotten me, but then their eyes meet again, in Cochlea’s deepest sectors, and she spots something crack behind his round glasses, sees something slipping through the grip he makes with his red gloves.
“Hurry,” Ayato gasps, “hurry, hurry, while they’re distracted,” but Touka can’t make sense of it, why Centipede under contract with the Doves would turn on not just on them, but on the one who raised him. In her astonishment, she doesn’t move until Ayato grabs her, and she is dragged, and she sees the White Reaper drawing his quinque, and she has to say it, suddenly, “I’ll see you later.”
She’s never seen his gaze this clearly. No resolution can capture his flinch, the ripple her thrown words make on whoever it is that he is. She looks at him, and he looks back at her with a certain misery, and then she is gone.
:::
If things were different…
If she weren’t someone whom the world spit on for simply existing. If she didn’t have a tightrope to walk while working and also during every moment of her life spent under anyone’s eye. In that other world, maybe it would be almost exactly like this, with a loud person walking into her second cafe, and turning, abruptly, silent, and soft, in front of her. Maybe it would be with her, a simple barista, whose scope of duty includes merely smiling at him, serving whatever coffee he orders, and offering a handkerchief when his expression fractures.
“Please don’t worry about it,” she tells him, but he brings it back anyway, washed, and smelling faintly of peaches.
“I was wondering if you’d be interested in attending something with me,” he murmurs, feet shuffling. “A…a thing at my work.”
“Your work?”
“Ah — yes — we’re having a banquet. Th-that is, I mean, the CCG is. Having a banquet. Just sort of. A promotional thing. Because we all got promotions, I mean.”
She looks at him. A normal barista might accept this invitation — a normal barista might only see a person sheepish with insecurity and hope. A normal barista might take pity. A normal barista certainly wouldn’t think of this as the perfect opportunity to get inside the CCG’s HQ with relatively little notice.
Probably, Touka thinks, it’s a trap.
“It’s really just a party,” he says. “Nothing too serious.”
His squad is shuffling, peering over at her curiously. He doesn’t notice; he is watching the ground. When he finally dares a glance at her, Touka smiles.
“I’d love to.”
:::
If she were a barista. And he, just a well-meaning teacher, or investigator, or anything else. If this were just a building, housing just a party. Then…
Touka arrives, alone, and waits outside. She keeps her gaze distant, telling herself that there’s no way she could be recognized, mustering all her skill to appear cool and detached even as her hands ball up in her coat pockets. When he finally does arrive, she almost, almost doesn’t recognize him. His hair is the usual color he has for this disguise, but combed, and half swept-back. He waves at her, and smiles, and hands her something that she realizes is a eye mask, with sequins, and rabbit ears.
“For…for the dance,” he explains, scratching his head. “I thought it might suit you.”
“And what suits you?” Touka asks back dryly.
A plain white one, it turns out. He fixes it on, and clears his throat apprehensively, holding out his hands — What do you think?
“Good,” she tells him, and he seems sincerely pleased.
They enter, Touka taking his proffered arm, which shakes a little, and then stiffens with intention. He grips his identity, and Touka takes hers as well: barista, a manager, calm, polite, shy. As a barista, she knows no one, and remains at his side, and allows herself patiently to be led around the room. She makes note of the room features, windows and exits; she makes note of the presence or lack thereof of certain executives; she makes note of the medals being pinned to suits; and, mostly, she watches him. Though she’s seen his face an uncountable number of times from a distance, though she has always been able to parse him at any resolution, she is finding that his other faces are starting to fade in her mind. She watches him carefully. Is this him? Really him?
She thinks this as she adjusts her own mask; she thinks it when the lights dim, and the floor clears, and he, with a gulp that is almost audible, takes her arm and leads her out, first, before everyone. Touka makes a sound that is uncomfortably like a yelp as she realizes what’s happening, and her panic makes her stumble, which makes it easier for him to pull her to the very center. His hand rests on her hand, and lifts it. His hand rests on her waist, and squeezes.
He knows what he’s doing, which she tells herself shouldn’t be a surprise. Laughter at her transparent shock dies out as he guides her around the room, or maybe she just isn’t hearing anyone anymore over the sound of her blood roaring in her ears. She’s glad for the ridiculous mask, suddenly, which at least covers up the majority of her red cheeks. He smiles when she picks up the rhythm, and spins her in a light flourish that makes her skirt flare and ends with a series of applause across the room.
The floor fills, with more dancing pairs. She’s glad for it, to be curtained, to know that eyes aren’t on her, to feel some strange comfort in the intimacy of being surrounded like this, by enemies. His hand is warm. When she looks up at him, she finds that he is looking at her, and he laughs a little, nervous. He brushes her hair out of her face, and something turns tight in her chest.
“If things were different —”
She says it without thinking, and her mouth quickly shuts. But he blinks at her.
“Different?”
“I don’t know,” she says, “I don’t know what I was saying,” but he persists.
“How different?” he asks.
“I don’t know,” Touka says, and she doesn’t know if this is the right thing to ask, or even if the person that he is now will acknowledge it, if merely by allowing it to slip she’s crossing some invisible boundary that they’ve been looking across for as she can remember. She has no idea, and then she says, “Maybe just a little. Just…the order, or something. Maybe if…I met you earlier. Or later. Maybe,” she says, helplessly, “if everything was just in a different order completely.”
Her dancing slows. Now’s the time when any teacher, or investigator, or anyone else, might pause and furrow their brows at her in confusion. Instead, he turns away.
“Maybe,” he says, “if it started with the cafe,” and Touka blinks, and then nods.
“Yeah…maybe then.”
“It would be the same as our last meeting,” he continues slowly. “But I’d give your handkerchief back. And…we’d have a proper introduction.”
They draw to a halt. It’s because the music is slowing, probably, but Touka can’t quite hear it. The world is beginning to fuzz a little, abruptly, silently, softly. She reaches again, for the barista, and somehow, can’t find it. The only thing inside her is one realization.
I can ask.
Her mouth opens.
“Who are you?”
Her hand has a tremble in it. She looks at him, and he looks back. Then something in his expression shifts, as subtly as a fleck of dust on a smooth pool of water. As the music starts again, he leans down to her ear, and whispers.
“I am the One-Eyed King.”