Chapter Text
Takizawa watched Hide sleep for three days. The two of them were confined to a makeshift hospital room cordoned off from a large warehouse by standing screens. Hide slept, and Takizawa watched the growth seeping out of the wound on his face. He also watched Kanou’s nurse, who arrived several times a day to check on the drip of fluid connected to Hide’s wrist and clean the cut on his face and change his bandages. Hide was dressed all in bandages. His right arm had been amputated and what remained of his flesh there was wrapped tightly in bandages, as was the stump of his right leg. Takizawa had seen the nurse pull back the sheets to reveal Hide’s waist, wrapped up in bandages as the wound on his right side healed.
He could also see, when the nurse lifted the sheets, the cuffs that chained Hide to the bed. They matched those that Takizawa wore: thick, quinque-steel handcuffs.It was clear, to Takizawa, that there was no escaping. Even if he were to escape the chains, he would have to run through the middle of the cathedral-like room that housed Kanou’s laboratory. He would have to run through a room with no adequate cover towards an escape he couldn’t locate. Even if he made it out of the warehouse-like laboratory, he didn’t know what steps towards escape were necessary afterwards, nor who might be guarding him. He was trapped in the hideout of the most dangerous ghoul organization in the city, possibly in the world, and there was no way he could fight his way out empty-handed and weakened as he was.
Soon Takizawa began to wonder whether Hide would ever wake up. He wasn’t sure how many days it had been since he had been abducted by Aogiri, but since he had woken up Hide had been asleep for about three days. He just watched the growth overtaking the side of Hide’s face like the ocean rising at high tide and suffocating the shore. The growth was blood red like a kagune but ruddy in texture. It climbed Hide’s face from the wound in the middle of his cheek. It reached the corner of his eye now, and Takizawa wondered what would happen once it began to grow over the soft, vulnerable tissues of Hide’s eye.
……
On the fourth day, the One-Eyed Owl came. She was a small woman with bushy hair dressed in a purple-red cloak. Takizawa believed her when she said who she was, because as she spoke to him she let a huge, gnarled kagune unfurl from her shoulders. It was unlike any kagune Takizawa had ever seen: from its tendrils grew hands and mouths that whispered. Their words were indiscernible, but Takizawa could hear a current of pain in their strangled voices. He believed her because it was clear who had the upper hand.
She took him away and she taught him a lesson: the kagune emerges under stress. First she cut his skin and the kagune burst from his back. Then she cut his skin to watch him heal. She cut his throat and watched as the skin knitted itself back together. Before it did, however, he flailed on the floor choking on his own blood. But the skin did grow back together: Takizawa was strong.
The One-Eyed Owl taught him a lesson that day: he could toe the line of death and pull himself back just by the tenacity of his own body. This was what she called his “training.”
“I gave you this gift,” she told him.
…...
Her name was Eto and she liked to feed him. Eto chained him to the floor in a small square room and brought him meat in a bloodstained bucket. His wrists were chained behind his back, so she fed him from her fingers. First, he was hungry, and the meat was rich and satisfying between his teeth. Then his stomach began to ache as she fed him more. She fed him so much that he couldn’t sit up straight, and he curled in on himself in pain. Blood stuck to his chin and dribbled down his torso, staining his hospital gown.
“This is ghoul meat,” Eto told him as she emptied the first bucket. Nausea gripped his stomach and he fought the urge to vomit. He knew that if he did the feeding would only go on longer, and in all likelihood she would leave him there for hours in his own vomit. “I’m going to make you a kakuja,” she explained simply. “First, the brilliant Dr. Kanou makes you a one-eyed ghoul like me, and then it’s my turn to train you. That’s why I hurt you. It’s all part of the training to make you stronger. Kanou says he did wonderful work on you, and I’ve taken it upon myself to make you the best.”
After that she left him for some time. Takizawa had no way to gauge how long she left him chained there, but the pain in his stomach had subsided by the time she returned with another bucket full of meat. He had curled his body into the fetal position on the cold concrete of the floor, but as she entered he scrambled to sit up as quickly as he could with his hands chained as they were. His stomach was still distended from the previous feeding, but he knew he had to brace himself for more coming.
Eto began to feed him the meat. As she worked, she talked. “Kanou says that Kaneki Ken is his masterpiece. Do you agree, Seidou?” she asked him. His mouth was stuffed with meat, but in any case she hadn’t expected a response. “I don’t agree with him. I think you’re the best he’s ever made, and I can make you so, so much better than Kaneki Ken. We can do that together, by training like this.” Takizawa swallowed, and she stroked his cheek with her small, cold fingers. Blood from her hand trailed onto his face.
“Together,” she whispered gently.