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July 20th.
Two and a half months since the Tsukiyama Extermination Operation. Two and a half months since Haise died. Two and a half months since Kaneki dedicated himself to his new path. His true path. His only path, ever since he was born into a world that refused to let him know happiness.
He would be selfish. He would die.
And he would be loved.
But first, he had to deal with the thing sitting across from him.
A grotesque creature in the shape of a woman stirred the straw in her iced coffee, humming a nonsensical tune just to irritate him. She was dressed in a burgundy turtleneck sweater, a long cream skirt, black tights, and navy flats. Her fern colored hair, normally untamed in a wild sort of wolf cut, was tied back into a bun at the base of her neck, but as he looked closer, it was more like the beginning of a bun, and the creature had given up halfway and left it unfinished.
He stared at her as she sampled her iced coffee, his gloved hands curled into fists on the table. The worst part about this, even worse than the factors dragging him through the parlor doors and into his seat, was that she was early for the first time.
July 20th, in this parlor, and at this time.
The traitor. The liar. The king.
Reminiscence. Resignation. Regret.
“I didn’t think you’d show up,” Takatsuki— Eto, now that he knew— commented, sarcastically or otherwise, pulling the thin stretch of silence between them and snapping it. Her fingers dangled over the takoyaki she had ordered, but she didn’t take any.
Kaneki merely scoffed. “It was on a whim. I didn’t do it for you, I—”
“You’re looking for me. I’m aware.” She smiled at him, but it was her fake one: an offensive caricature of the real thing, practiced to perfection. “You want something.”
That was true enough. It wasn’t anything she specifically knew that he was interested in— he had had enough of her despicable lies to last a lifetime— but rather what she was. She was the One-Eyed Owl, the founder of Aogiri, and his ticket into Cochlea. If he could get Furuta assigned to his investigation, Kaneki could put his last job in motion and put her in her place. See how she liked being strung along for once.
“I actually have a proposal I think you’ll like.” Eto leaned closer now, close enough that he could plainly see the ridges of her irises.
He glared into them, as if he could pierce them and pry them apart with only his mind. And he knew that she knew; she always did. He hated it.
“Now that we’re both ‘out in the open’, so to speak, let’s promise not to lie to each other any more, hm?”
That creepy sort of grin on her face, the kind that made you feel like you were being picked apart under a microscope, or the kind that was too rigid to be real, was gone. In its place was the smile he liked the least: the one that once made his stomach flip, because it made him believe he meant anything to her.
“And what makes you think I’ll agree?” he asked, and she took a moment to pop one of the takoyaki balls into her mouth with a toothpick.
“You’re as tired of our games as I am.” Her chewing was grating on his ears, not to mention the stench. “So I figured—”
“Swallow.”
She only laughed. “Focusing on the wrong things as always, dear. It’s a little frustrating sometimes.”
“Don’t call me that.”
“Oh, but you are frustrating.” She stabbed another takoyaki ball before she had even finished the first, and waved it in front of him. Nauseating. “For all your smarts, you know surprisingly little.”
He scoffed again. “I know everything I need.”
“No you don’t.” She sipped her drink. “You basically know nothing.”
“And you don’t?” As soon as he said it, he regretted it. Of course Eto knew more.
She glanced up, that scrutinizing smile back on her face. “What do you know about the investigation of the Non-Killing Owl?”
Kaneki’s eyes narrowed. She wanted something, that much was clear. Unfortunately, the only way to learn what that something was was to play her game. But what if it was a trap? He was an Assistant Special Investigator now, and he wasn’t ignorant to the whispers about the Black Reaper.
She might want something in return, like his knowledge of CCG affairs, then use it for Aogiri’s benefit. Not that he particularly cared, but any moves she made without his knowing could be problematic.
“I’m here to help you,” she claimed, reading his mind as if nothing had changed. As if saying it aloud would make it true. “Because I like you.”
“You don’t know the meaning of the word,” he spat.
She giggled and set her drink aside, lacing her fingers together. That was how he knew she was listening. “Isn’t it nice to tell the truth? To cut out the fat and get what you want? You’re in such a rush these days.”
He squinted at her, but she had a point. The sooner, the better. He had no way of knowing when Hinami was going to be disposed of; once the Tree was gone, she would be too.
Fine.
“An investigation determined that the Non-Killing Owl was hiding at Anteiku,” he answered her previous question.
Eto didn’t miss a beat. “After he appeared once, in the 11th ward, nine months prior?”
He paused to consider. Kuzen hadn’t made a single move in ten years, when he received his wound from Arima. And then, he suddenly infiltrated the 11th ward, where Aogiri was.
Where Kaneki was.
Then, the Owl Suppression Operation was—
“Kaneki.”
Eto’s voice, soft enough to kill, jolted him out of his thoughts. And the way she was looking at him— Concern? Disgust?— the image of the king in his head wasn’t supposed to look like that.
“Anteiku liked to keep its head down. Let the dice fall where they were.”
“They valued peace,” he countered, meeting her challenge.
“They valued complacency,” she fired back, the bite he was familiar with back in her tone. “Survival, if I’m being generous. There’s a difference.”
“It’s better than what Aogiri does.” Troublemakers, other ghouls had called them. Pot stirrers who achieved little more than inconveniencing the masses. Meaningless.
Eto arched her brow, and he saw disappointment flash across her face. Good. “Answer me this, then: is gagging on poison every day ‘peace’? Is experiencing unending nausea, just for the sake of not being seen, ‘peace’?” She pushed her plate of takoyaki aside. “If you ask me, it just seems unfair. Cowardly, even. Take your barista friend, for example— the Kirishima girl. She ate human food, right?”
How did she—
“Ayato let it slip once.” For once, she revealed her source. “And how did that work for her? She became weak; you and I both know she wouldn’t have survived the Operation.”
Kaneki glared, but said nothing. Eto couldn’t possibly understand Touka, not when she could freely partake in human food as a natural hybrid. She couldn’t possibly know the drive required to gag down human food for the sake of experiencing a microcosm of a normal life as a ghoul.
“You know better than anyone that to protect someone, you need strength. Who was she protecting by forcing trash through her system? By making such dramatic concessions at the cost of her wellbeing?” She ate the last takoyaki ball and swallowed. “Who really wins in the end?”
She waited for a response, but only got silence in return. Because Kaneki knew she was right. It wasn’t fair for Touka— or any ghoul, really— to have to hide their true selves from everyone else. It wasn’t fair to have to be hurt in order to live and die, to simulate living a cushy, privileged life like a human.
Eto tilted her head, studying him for one reason or another. “Hey, are you free tonight?”
Lost in his own thoughts, Kaneki slipped and made a mistake. “What do you want?”
“There’s something I want to show you.” It was that terrible smile again.
It was fine; accompanying her was a part of being able to predict what she would do next. “What is it?”
That was all.
“Wouldn’t want to ruin the surprise, would I?” She chuckled and stood up. “If you’re coming, then I’ll see you at the Children’s Forest. It’s rather empty at night.”
She was talking about the one in the 20th ward. The Nerima Children’s Forest. It was an intentional callback to that night. She had helped him, in hindsight; there weren’t a lot of Doves standing in his way as he fought his way toward Anteiku.
And the look she had given him that night. Restraint. Desire. A thousand words unsaid. It was like looking in a mirror, thinking back on it.
“Bring your mask,” Eto said, turning toward the door. “And a change of clothes.”
Kaneki furrowed his brow, but he filed the information away anyway. He watched her leave, and when she passed the window by their booth, she glanced at him through the glass and smirked.
It was only then that he realized she hadn’t paid for her food.
Kaneki found her beneath a tree, on a swing made of her kagune, with her legs dangling just above the ground in her bandaged attire. She’d acquired a new burgundy cloak to use, after she’d left him her old one atop the Lunatic Eclipse.
“You actually showed up,” was the first thing she said, and he couldn’t read her expression behind her mask. “Interesting choice of attire.”
He didn’t have much in the way of clothing— it seemed so meaningless, given his plans— but he did manage to throw together dark gray shorts, a pair of old sneakers Haise got for his birthday, and a black sweater with the cuffs cut off. And, of course, Uta’s mask.
“Here.” Eto tossed a cloak at him. “To blend in.”
Kaneki caught it and examined the fabric. “This is Aogiri’s,” he said.
She nodded. “Follow me.”
His eyes narrowed, but he did so. She was taking him to one of the bases, he figured that much. But for what reason? What did she have to gain from showing him, an investigator, something like that? Was this an ambush? Was she going to try to kill him here?
… No. No, she wouldn’t. If she did, she’d have done so at the top of that building. She let him win. There was no situation in which he took down the One-Eyed Owl by himself, especially when on Haise’s favorite RC suppressants.
What was her goal?
She led him out of the forest and into the abandoned part of the city, then scaled a building with practiced ease. He followed, using his kagune to follow.
“You’re so messy,” she commented when he reached the top, glancing at the broken cement left in his wake.
“You’re one to talk,” he muttered back, remembering how she wrote directly on her books for annotations and folded their pages for bookmarks. ‘Personalization’, she called it.
Eto giggled, and continued onward, with Kaneki not far behind.
As they leapt from building to building, he noticed something. They kept passing Aogiri bases the CCG had already cleaned out. The CCG was really efficient when it wanted to be, he thought, as he watched Eto slow down.
She stopped in front of a rusted iron door situated atop the cracked foundation of its building.
“We’re here,” she announced. “Play nice, okay?”
She took his silence as agreement, and led him inside. There, he saw— ghouls. Aogiri ghouls, with their masks off. But not the foot soldiers he was used to seeing. These were families. Parents and children. Civilians.
Eto led him through the hallways of this old place, the only source of light being flickering troffers in need of a bulb change. Few of them looked up, but the ones that did occasionally recognized him.
“Eyepatch…”
“Is that…?”
“The Eyepatch ghoul?”
Kaneki tried to keep to himself and ignore the whispers, following Eto without a word. But every turn they made, there were more whispers, more civilians, more ghouls with gaunt faces that couldn’t stand up to a single Rank 3 investigator. In other words, weak. In other words, helpless.
Eto stopped in front of a certain ghoul, one in front of a small stack of coolers, presumably filled with food. “Hey,” she said.
They turned and saw her. “M-Ms. Eto? What’re you doing here?”
“I heard there were some liars hiding here.”
They hung their head. “Y-Yes… Some of the guards got fed up with the situation and have started killing civilians here. We’ve managed to track their location, but the Doves might already be aware of them…”
Kaneki grimaced against the leather of his mask. Ghouls who killed indiscriminately were the scum of the earth. But ‘started’? Did Aogiri have a policy against hunting human civilians?
Eto tapped her chin, thinking for a moment. “Tatara’s already made preparations for refugees on the main base. Make sure everyone’s packed in case the Doves do come. Leave behind anyone who fights them.”
“And the traitors?” the ghoul asked.
“Me and him will take care of them.” She turned her head toward Kaneki, and he knew she was smiling. “They can’t be allowed to roam free.”
He met her gaze for a brief moment before nodding at the ghoul.
They warily nodded back. “Alright, I’ll let the others know. But… just you two?”
“He’s actually quite strong.” As if to make her point, she rapped her knuckles on his arm. Kaneki was grateful his mask was covering his face. “Nice and solid.”
The ghoul swallowed, but gave the location of the traitors, then went to spread the news. Eto sighed once they were out of earshot.
“Shall we?”
—
The traitors were small fry compared to the likes of them. Eto and Kaneki made short work of them, hardly a scratch to regenerate by the end of it. The pair of them now sat atop the building, a fresh pile of corpses between them to sample.
“It’s too bad there were no Doves,” Eto said, ripping an arm off a corpse in one clean motion. “Could’ve been useful to feed the others.”
“I thought you said we shouldn’t lie to each other,” Kaneki replied, tearing open one of the backs and exposing its withering kakuhou. “You don’t actually care about them, do you?”
She chuckled. “It’s true I don’t particularly care for idiots, but they’re a part of my organization. It’s my responsibility to look out for them, especially when they can’t do it themselves. Whether or not I like it is irrelevant.”
She reached up with her other hand to pull off the bandages wrapped around her face. As she did, her hair fell over her shoulders in large clumps to frame her face.
He stared a bit longer than he should before chowing down. Though he was now used to the rotten taste of the meat, it still took some amount of willpower not to gag on reflex.
“Does Aogiri only sustain itself on investigators?” he asked, wiping blood from his mouth.
“We do our best,” she answered, rolling a finger between her teeth. “You already know most of our recruits are outed ghouls. It’s a good method of policing their eating habits. There are, of course, hiccups in the system, but it typically keeps the members focused on our actual targets.”
He hummed, then asked the question weighing on his mind for years now. “Was Yamori a ‘hiccup’, then?”
She paused and swallowed. “Oh, right. I forgot about him.”
He waited for her to continue, watching how she raised her thumb to her lips and sucked on the blood there. She was attractive like that, in a twisted sort of way, and he hated himself for thinking it.
“He was disobedient, and a coward,” she stated. “He got too comfortable within the confines of his own little world, and he died for it. He was a weakling who thought breaking his toys made him strong.”
It was the answer Kaneki was afraid of most.
“… I see,” was all he said.
The rest of the meal was spent in silence, besides the sounds of chewing, swallowing, and the screams of his own thoughts. When they were done, Eto took him back to the Aogiri hideout and reported a successful eradication to the one watching over it.
Then, like how lightning flashes for only a moment, she was gone, and Kaneki was left alone.
There was a full moon tonight, isolated due to the light pollution of the city. Kaneki stared up at it from an opening in the building. Offhandedly, he wondered how the moon would look with stars accompanying it, and if it would be beautiful. But to wonder about what could not be was meaningless.
He remembered certain words, heard so long ago now, from someone who was likely dead.
(“This world is wrong, and it’s you monsters that are distorting it!”)
That wasn’t right. He knew that much. Ghoul, human— both descriptors were useless when addressing the term ‘monster’. Monsters were not born: they were created. And environments created more than any womb.
(“If the world is wrong, then it’s because it’s being distorted by everything inside it.”)
That wasn’t right either. These kids, these families… Were they distorting the world? If they were, it was because they wanted to keep on living. Then, was the desire to live the same as the desire to sin? Life was a series of taking and being taken from, in unpredictable amounts— he was intimately familiar with the concept— but was that inherently wrong?
He glanced about the hideout, knowing that Eto was somewhere watching him, even if he couldn’t see her.
She was Sen Takatsuki. She wrote with vagueness, hidden strength, and unbridled rage for the only world she would ever exist in. Whenever her work was discussed, there were always multiple conflicting interpretations, like branches of a tree infinitely extending and splitting and extending again. She encouraged the spread of knowledge and thought, no matter how strange it was, so long as it was free.
Kaneki observed one of the families— two children and their father— sharing meat. It wasn’t even a full human body; at best, it was about as much as an arm or a leg. He watched the father, a gaunt and skinny man, split the meat in half and give it to both the children. And yet he was smiling.
A world for ghouls… A world where they didn’t have to suffer unending nausea just to blend in, just to turn eyes away from them. A world where the thin tightrope so many of them walked was instead a comfortable floor to roam about. A world where there was peace. Where there was freedom.
That was Aogiri’s goal.
That was Eto’s goal.
(…)
He shook his head. It was pointless to think about it now, to regret the choices he had made to finally reach this conclusion. He had already made his decision; he couldn’t afford to get distracted by petty things beyond his control.
Yet, after he left the hideout, when he felt her eyes on his back, he paused. How was she looking at him, he wondered.
He tried to imagine her. Her small form that barely came up to his shoulders. Her pale face, which, once, was ghosted by a shade of pink the one time he dared to pick something off her cheek. Her verdant eyes, sparkling mysteriously whenever they pointed in his direction. And her hair, so shockingly soft and voluminous, much like the pages she filled with words.
And the more he imagined her, the more difficult it became to think that such a person— the one person as scorned by the world as him, the one person who really looked at him— could ever not value life. Not value purpose. Not value peace, no matter how bloody the road to it became.
Because deep down, Kaneki wished for peace as well.
And it made him shudder.