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December 20th had grown to be a gloomy day for Tsukiyama. It was full of remembrances that he didn’t want to face again. A stressful evening of lurking in filthy hallways, the stench of ghoul blood and guts permeating the complex. Doves perched, ready to strike. Anxiety and slow-burning rage nipping at his heels with each stride. The heaviness of his kagune unbalancing his hips and the exertion of maintaining it. The day Kaneki’s hair had gone white, and with it, the young man Tsukiyama had once known. The birth of the ghoul known as Centipede. The birth of the human Kaneki Ken.
This was the third birthday that Kaneki would miss.
Tsukiyama had barely had the presence of mind for the first one. There had been a coffee cup pressed to his lips, the dark liquid dripping down onto the hem of his shirt. He hadn’t even been capable of registering its temperature. He could smell blood—right under his nose, smeared across his chapped lips—but the chunk in his mouth had been a tasteless lump. A second smell—salt and skin—trailed beside him, but Tsukiyama couldn’t detect the source.
The second one hadn’t been much better. Tsukiyama had had it together enough to refuse the food Kanae had offered that time, but his day had still been spent in bed, wanting to cry—to feel something, at least, different from the constant, dull aching in his chest. Wishing for solitude but not being able to ask for it—not with the way Kanae looked at him with such a forlorn expression. Tsukiyama would have felt like he’d killed the kid’s pet and tried serving it to him as dinner had he tried to send him away.
Not that the kid would’ve left, anyway. He was practically attached to Tsukiyama’s hip these days, determined to become a constant companion. It grated at his already threadbare nerves, but Tsukiyama just didn’t have enough energy in him to care anymore.
Now it was the twentieth of December yet again. Another year without Kaneki. Another year of feeling helpless, of being reminded of those days.
He didn’t even know what had really happened to Kaneki. The other had simply vanished during the Anteiku raid. The CCG had descended on the 20th ward, disrupting its quiet calm and leaving a bloodbath in its wake.
It was likely Kaneki was dead. He wasn’t the type to run away and abandon everyone who had worked so hard alongside him, and he’d proven that even being held captive wouldn’t stop him from working towards his goals. There was no reason why Kaneki wouldn’t have returned to them after all this time.
Unless he truly was gone from this world.
But there hadn’t been a body. Kaneki had left no traces of his existence, save for the missing posters that had adorned his university’s bulletin boards. Even those had been taken down soon after. Before Tsukiyama could have done anything about it, the CCG had thoroughly completed its raid, scouring any and all locales of suspected ghoul activity. Their old hideout had been ransacked. The lease on Kaneki’s old apartment had long run out. That, too, had been entirely swept, doves carting away small boxes and bags marked with “evidence” stickers.
Kaneki might be gone, but Tsukiyama remembered. And without the physical shell to lay in the ground, Tsukiyama held onto hope.
He believed.
That’s what made waiting so hard. Each passing year brought a series of holidays and anniversaries uncelebrated. New books unread and undiscussed. Millions of wasted minutes without Kaneki by his side.
What was he supposed to do? How could he live when Kaneki was gone? How could life ever go back to normal after experiencing the existence of one Kaneki Ken?
Tsukiyama hadn’t even been able to taste his flesh. The scent of a soiled handkerchief, a small lick of blood, the taste of dry lips—those had been all Kaneki had allowed.
But Tsukiyama wanted more. More than just a meal. He wanted everything Kaneki would give him and more. With the dawning of each new day, the desire grew more and more, until it occupied all of Tsukiyama’s waking thoughts and sleepless nights. What he would give to lay himself before Kaneki’s feet, to breathe in Kaneki’s unique scent, to hear the symphony of Kaneki’s commands upon his ears.
He knew he shouldn’t wallow. Knew Kaneki would probably only be disgusted by his sorry state, chide him for being so useless. Tsukiyama should be out there, looking for him. Wasn’t he supposed to be Kaneki’s sword—what good was he now, dulled from disuse? He needed to stop lying around, waiting for life to happen to him.
His life wasn’t over yet. Far from it. Despite Tsukiyama’s neglect, his body fought for survival, held onto the scrap of vitality that kept his heart beating. If Kaneki really were gone…
Life would be very long, indeed.
Tsukiyama couldn’t think about that now. He didn’t want to think. It was late December, his room was cold, and it was snowing outside his window. Small dots of white floated through the darkness, collecting in a soft slope on the windowsill. White against black.
It churned his stomach.
Determined to sleep the rest of this wretched day away (perhaps his dreams would be kinder), Tsukiyama turned over in bed and pulled the covers up over his head. If he fell asleep soon, then he wouldn’t have to deal with Kanae’s next check-in. Tsukiyama sighed deeply through his nose and shut his eyes.
A soft knock brought his senses back in sharp alarm. Tsukiyama squeezed his eyes tightly and scrunched up his face. Kanae was early.
He could hear the door open and close quietly, his visitor not even bothering to wait for a response. Soft, nearly noiseless padding of feet upon carpet. His bed lurched violently at the foot, two heavy weights causing a wave of motion that made Tsukiyama almost jump out of his skin.
Throwing the covers back, Tsukiyama sat up, a deep scowl attached firmly in place. He wasn’t about to entertain Kanae’s antics on this, of all days—what the hell was Kanae thinking–
“Hori!?”
“Yo,” the young woman chirped. She was sitting cross-legged at the edge of his bed, boots still laced and growing large puddles on his comforter, her overstuffed messenger bag planted before them. Tsukiyama could barely see her face from under her thick scarf, curled high around her neck. Bits of snow still dusted the top of her head and her shoulders. The tips of her fingers, peeking out from too-long sleeves, were bright pink.
“You bundled up that thoroughly and yet you didn’t bother with gloves?” Tsukiyama remarked with disdain.
Chie brought her hands up to her mouth (stretching her chin up to get it over her scarf barricade) and blew. “It’s harder to work my camera with anything covering them. I need to feel the shutter as it clicks.”
Tsukiyama rolled his eyes. “It’s the dead of winter. What possibly could be so interesting that would make you roam out and about in this kind of weather?” He didn’t particularly care, but Tsukiyama would at least humor her. Chie had been his longest friend.
Perhaps his only one.
His little mouse was grinning as though she were a cat with an especially delightful treat. “I was going to wait until Christmas for this, but I decided to give you your present early, especially considering the day,” Chie said, digging into her bag. She pulled out a large stack of photographs and cascaded them in the space between her and Tsukiyama with a flick of her wrist.
It was hard to focus on just one image. Every photo had the same person in them: a young man, not much younger than Tsukiyama himself from the looks of it, with strange black-white hair. He was thin with soft features, austerely dressed, and something about him… Tsukiyama dragged the nearest photos closer to him and bent over them, unbelieving.
Those features...they were too familiar.
“Hori...who is…?”
“Don’t ever say I never got you anything,” Chie beamed, picking up one of the photographs and examining it. “It’s as you think, but I’ll warn you, Shuu, he’s not your Kaneki. Well,” she frowned before biting her lip, “he is but he isn’t. I’m not sure exactly what happened to him. But he’s in the CCG’s possession now.”
Tsukiyama had been so fixated on the man’s face that he hadn’t noticed the white overcoat the man was wearing in about half of the images. Or the silver briefcase he carried. Tsukiyama shivered.
“But he’s alive,” Tsukiyama exhaled. He hadn’t realized he’d been holding his breath.
“Don’t go doing anything rash,” Chie warned. “I didn’t give these to you for you to go out and get your head chopped off. I just thought you should know.”
His chest burned, and he felt like he was about to throw up—when had living become so painful—but Tsukiyama also felt a small kindling of warmth inside him, so foreign after such a long absence, radiating throughout his veins.
This is what he had been waiting for. Even if this person wasn’t the Kaneki he remembered, Tsukiyama didn’t dare to be ungrateful. It would just be an opportunity to know him again. To start over, to start better.
A bright flash brought him back to the present.
“So tell me, little one, how I can repay such an extravagant gift?”
“It’s a gift, dummy,” Chie teased as she fiddled with her camera, “You don’t repay them.” She smiled as she stared at its tiny screen. “Ah, that’s the look I’ve been missing. And,” she started, a hint of mischief behind her eyes, a sly grin working at the edge of her mouth, “I sure have missed my dessert dates.”
It may have been Kaneki’s birthday, but Tsukiyama had never felt more alive.