Work Text:
“Huh...”
Occasionally, Tsukiyama would make a sound like that to himself as he used his laptop, but he never said enough. It was always just one little word or a laugh, and it all irritated Kaneki, made him want to roll over and kick him out of bed. It was frustrating to hear him laughing over something like that because all it did was grab his attention and raise his interest.
“I'm trying to sleep,” he reminded him. “Shut the damn thing off already. The light's too bright.”
Stubbornly, he kept his eyes closed, but he heard Tsukiyama give another one of those irritating little chuckles.
“Don't you want to know what happened this time?” he asked.
“I'm more interested in sleeping.” That was the truth, but he was dying of curiosity at that point, so he silently hoped that Tsukiyama was going to tell him about it anyway.
For the past couple weeks, Tsukiyama had been obsessed with this manga. Normally, he only read novels, so it was unusual for him to show an interest in that sort of thing, but Kaneki couldn't blame him when he found out what it was about. All of the characters, all of the settings, the story itself – it all bore a striking resemblance to their own lives. Of course, there were a lot of things that had been fundamentally different. Kaneki couldn't say that his life was nearly as interesting as the life of the Kaneki in the manga.
Considering the things that happened to that Kaneki, though, he wouldn't say that he felt jealous. In comparison, he felt quite happy with his boring, married life.
Convinced that this could be considered, at the least, some form of defamation of character, they took to the internet to find out who the author was. Oddly, although they found Wikipedia articles dedicated to the manga and numerous fanpages, they couldn't find a single mention of this mysterious Ishida Sui outside of the manga itself. The fans on the online boards talked about him like they knew him, but none of them had ever seen him.
If pressed, none of them could confidently say whether he was even a real person at all.
They didn't stop there. 'Ishida Sui' could have been the pen name of some other mangaka, so they decided to go one step higher. They looked for the magazine that the manga was published in, but that search resulted in the same conclusion. There were no results for Weekly Young Jump. Such a magazine didn't appear to exist.
Tsukiyama sent someone out to find a copy of it for him. They spent hours covering every inch of Akihabara and still returned to them empty-handed.
It was like this manga that mirrored their lives, 'Tokyo Ghoul', only existed on the internet.
Its pages were scanned by someone, translated into multiple languages, and was posted on the internet, yet no one could say where those scanned pages came from. It could've been fictitious – all of it, right down to the mangaka and magazine – but there was too much work put into it. This wasn't the work of one person. This mangaka had assistants. They were dedicated to this story.
And they were disturbingly borrowing aspects of their lives for its plot.
It had to be someone who knew them, but they just couldn't figure out who.
“Do you think they're making money off of that thing?” Kaneki asked.
When he rolled over to face him, Tsukiyama put a hand on his head and gently brushed the black hair out of his face for him. “I wanna say they're not. It's on all of these pages where it's free to read, and they aren't being sponsored by anyone as far as I can tell, so I don't think they're making money off of it.”
Kaneki could feel the 'but' coming, so he finished his husband's thought for him. “Nobody would bother spending so much time and effort on something like this unless they were being paid to do it.”
“They could be rich...” Tsukiyama muttered, astounded, like an epiphany.
Gently, Kaneki punched him in the side and sat up a little. “I know what rich, eccentric men are really like. They're lazy.”
“I'm not lazy! I'm an investor! Douloureux... You wound me, mon cher. Do you really think I do nothing? Do you hate spending time with me?”
He hit him again for good measure and Tsukiyama laughed like it tickled.
“Don't be so dramatic. I just want to find out who's making this weird thing about us,” Kaneki said.
“Someone with a Stand, perhaps...”
It was too late for Tsukiyama to start saying things he couldn't understand.
“You know,” Tsukiyama said, rolling a hand in the air as he tried to explain. “Like Kishibe Rohan, that man who can write an entire manga by himself at the speed of light. I heard that he gets his material directly from the people who inspire him. He rips the inspiration from them like pages of a book.”
Kaneki narrowed his eyes. “If you're just going to talk nonsense, then I'm going to sleep.”
“You haven't heard of him? I don't read manga very often, but I thought his work was extremely fascinating. He's a very passionate man. When you read his manga, you can tell how much he loves what he does. His research really shows.”
That was great. He might even take his recommendation, but he still didn't see the point that Tsukiyama was trying to make. “What does he have to do with our mystery mangaka, though?”
He grinned, his smile glowing with the light from his screen. “Apparently he resembles someone else; a mangaka named Hirohiko Araki. Ring any bells?”
“No, of course not. I don't read manga.”
Tsukiyama sighed. “Well, even if you did, you wouldn't recognize his name. He's another mangaka who can't be found. There are people who say that he and Kishibe-sensei are the same person, but Kishibe has claimed that he has no idea who that person is.”
It was a bizarre notion.
But he couldn't help feeling a little grateful to Tsukiyama for sharing that information with him. It made him feel less weird to know that they weren't alone in this unusual experience. There was even a famous mangaka who was going through something similar. He sounded like someone they should meet.
Moving a little closer, he leaned against Tsukiyama's shoulder and looked at his screen, his eyes unfocusing as he looked at the character who was supposed to be him.
“There's something about this manga... It made me feel uncomfortable when I tried to read it. It feels like the creator knows everything about us, but... It's like they want us to be unhappy. I don't like it. Why would they do that? Why do they always make bad things happen to my character?”
Sliding an arm around his waist, Tsukiyama pulled him closer and rested his cheek against the top of his head. “Now, now. We can't be sure that they're supposed to be us-”
“They have our names.”
It wasn't going to be easy for Tsukiyama to get around that one. “Alright, well... No matter how much they resemble us, they aren't us, are they? Nothing bad is going to happen to you here,” he said. A mischievous look crossed his face, and he leaned in to give him a little nibble on the ear. “Unless I decide that I'm hungry for a midnight snack.”
“You don't have to tell me things that I already know,” he said. He wasn't going to admit that the last part sounded kind of exciting. Even if he felt like playing along, he was too tired for it. His eyelids feeling heavier, he sunk back into bed and nudged his head against Tsukiyama's hip. “Why don't you tell me more about what's happening in the manga now? I could use a bedtime story.”
“Oh, that's right.” Tsukiyama clicked through a few pages and stopped at the page that he wanted to show him. “At the end of this chapter, Kanae finally gave me your underwear. It's weird, but I'm sort of excited to see my character's grand return.”
“How many chapters has it been since you last saw your manga doppelganger?”
Tsukiyama tilted his head to the side, thinking for a second. After another few seconds, he gave up. “I don't know. A long time. I'm worried that Ishida-sensei forgot I even exist.”
Kaneki closed his eyes with a sigh. “Don't call him that. We don't even know if he really exists, so he doesn't deserve that kind of respect. And don't refer to your character that way either. You just said yourself that you're not the same.”
Tsukiyama's hand returned to his hair, lightly massaging the back of his neck with the tips of his fingers. “Calm down, Ken. You know I don't take it that seriously.”
As soon as he heard his name, his face felt like it was lit on fire. “Don't call me that either.”
“We're married now. I think I should finally be allowed to call my husband by his name.”
“It feels weird. Just keep telling me more about the manga and don't do that again.”
The soothing hand disappeared from his hair so that Tsukiyama could mouse through a few more pages, eventually stopping on one with a big picture of Touka. Just looking at it, Kaneki got a really strange feeling. The author was drawing her hair a little differently now, but it was definitely her. The character's likeness to the real Touka was uncanny.
“You should show this to the Kirishima girl. She should do her hair like this. It looks nice.”
“Yeah...” he mumbled. “It does, doesn't it...”
For some reason, he could feel Tsukiyama's eyes on him. He didn't have to look up to know that he was staring at him.
Speaking slowly, Tsukiyama carefully chose his words. “You... never had any interest in her, right?”
That was a ridiculous question.
It should've been, at least, but Kaneki had to admit that he felt something strange when he looked at that page. He felt an unsettling sense of déjà vu when he saw Touka smiling so radiantly. He never lost his memories like the Kaneki in the manga, but seeing the way that she looked there made him feel like there was something he was supposed to remember. It made his chest feel tight. As far as he could tell, it wasn't affection or anything like that, but there was definitely something.
“We're married, Shuu.” As soon as it left his mouth, Tsukiyama gave a loud howl and clutched at his chest. He tried to act like he was used to this married life thing, but he clearly wasn't used to hearing him say his first name either. “Don't tell me you're jealous of the fictional Touka.”
When he calmed down, he looked down at him and fixed him with a very serious look. “I can't help it. She met you before the fictional me could meet you, and now all of the fans are saying that you're going to end up with her.”
Now that was crossing a line. This fictional world was wrong.
Kaneki balled his fists under the sheets. “Now this writer is just making fanfiction about our lives, aren't they?”
“Fanfiction would be better than this. Most fans prefer us together!”
“Is that so...” That was oddly encouraging. His poor mother (bless her hardworking soul) was in a constant state of stress over their marriage, and Tsukiyama's own parents still didn't seem to fully approve of their son marrying a man. Kaneki would freely admit that they were an odd couple, but they complemented each other in a lot of ways. For all of their flaws and faults, they just worked, and he was happy with the way that things were.
“I can't stand for this,” Tsukiyama said, hands braced around his laptop's keyboard. “If I put pictures of us on the internet and tell other people that we're the real Tsukiyama Shuu and Kaneki Ken, then maybe the mangaka will stop writing this abomination.”
Bringing a hand out from beneath the sheets, Kaneki reached over and closed the lid of Tsukiyama's laptop on his hands. With a yelp, Tsukiyama drew his hands close to himself and soothed his sore fingers.
“You are absolutely not doing that,” Kaneki said adamantly.
“But you want him to stop, don't you?”
It really was too late for this now. At least he was finally free from the bright light of the laptop screen. Now, all that was left was the mild light from the lamp at Tsukiyama's side of the bed. Pulling the blanket over himself, he rolled over to face the wall as he waited for Tsukiyama to put his laptop away. “I don't care what he does, honestly. As long as it doesn't negatively affect us, he can keep playing pretend with characters that look like us. None of it's real. Right now – this moment here – this is what's real.”
Tsukiyama returned once it was put away, but he stopped and stared at his back.
“I know when you're lying,” he said quietly. “You care a lot.”
He did care, but there was nothing he could do about it; that was the kind of feeling he got.
Opening his tired eyes, he looked at Tsukiyama's shadow on the wall.
“I don't want to be the main character in anyone's story. I'd... rather just be a supporting character in yours.”
He heard Tsukiyama make another wordless sound. It spiked his curiosity and made him anxious to know what he was going to say, but Tsukiyama kept it to himself for a few more moments. He heard the familiar click as the lamp was turned off and the room returned to darkness. The bed shifted slightly as Tsukiyama got in, and Kaneki felt his arms, warm, wrap around his waist.
A light kiss was placed against the back of Kaneki's neck. “You're the main character to me, so I'll do my best to support you.”
That was stupid. That shouldn't have moved him.
“I won't fall for such cheesy things.”
“It's too late,” Tsukiyama said, nuzzling his nose into his hair. “You already married me.”
He was right. Things certainly could've been worse. The things in that manga should've reminded him of all the things he had to be thankful for. This story with Tsukiyama had only just begun and he was happy. Whether he was the one writing that story or if they were being moved by the hand of some other, faceless writer, he believed that this life was sufficient. This one, peaceful, boring life was going to be a good one.