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Hinami does not regret any of her choices. Life is composed of goods things, bad things, things to learn, and things to lose.
Her freedom is lost to her now. Perhaps her freedom was lost the moment she took Takatsuki’s card. Reality has embraced the metaphor in the form of her Cochlea cell.
Yes, life is…Life is a tapestry threaded by light and dark. Her mother told her to live. That includes facing the dark parts, trying her hardest and feeling everything.
Hinami thought she was lonely before. In Cochlea the loneliness eats away at her from the inside out like some kind of cancer. Onii…Sasaki-san keeps it leashed somewhat. When she sees him, she can feel the worth of her not quite intentional sacrifice. He seems okay too. Maybe a little dented, a little misassembled, but okay.
He spends time with her. Nonetheless, he’s still lost to her in many ways. Lost to who he was. In any case, he can’t stay. She doesn’t hold it against him.
Hinami isn’t the girl Kaneki nurtured anymore, either. Not totally. She is better for this, she believes in her bones. She’s sharpened her senses and steeled her resolve. She chose to be warped to match this spinning-nowhere world. She gave herself to the pain and the shadows (and the bandages), and they encased her in a cocoon (especially the bandages).
She endured this metamorphosis that dragged every ugly thing into her consciousness and bled all her weakness into the open. Exposed. Malleable.
(thank you, Takatsuki)
She’s emerged stronger, far stronger, though never strong enough. For everything taken was something gained even so.
(Eto…)
Whatever progress was made, Hinami is still a beast in a windowless cage. One day they will come to harvest her kakuhou. She’ll become a quinque just like her peaceful, undeserving parents.Terror laces her every waking moment. Which are frequent, naturally. She’d never sleep if it weren’t for the suppressants that sap her vigor.
She bears her fears all alone, a void yawning inside of her. The list of those she misses is endless.
The list of those she craves is much shorter. The person who smells like green apples and crisp ink. The person who took her hand and let her to where the sidewalk ended, pushed her off the crumbling cement with a kind face.
“You’ve grown into such a beautiful woman, Hina-chan,” Takatsuki had said with a slight smile strung by spades.
Hinami had only closed her eyes in response, and in turn her lids were dusted over in coral powder.
“You could be a character in one of my books, Hina-chan,” Takatsuki continued as she brought a brush to Hinami’s lips. “You’re a lovely specimen. You wear your sorrows like a shawl and carry on even though this world has broken your spirit. Your gaze has become as dim and cold as a winter sky. The somber current of your voice sweetly drips all your struggles.”
Hinami slowly opened her eyes. “Would I be a main character?”
“Of course. Readers would devour every word of you.”
Takatsuki skimmed the brush over her lips and back again, the bristles soft as she coated them in black. Hinami watched submissively, playing hide and seek with thoughts she wasn’t proud of in the corners of her mind. The space between them was full and intimate in the absence of everyone else.
Hinami clasped it, resigned to the fact that this was the closest she’d ever get to a kiss from the author. At least logically it was better this way. Safer.
“All of your main characters die, Sen,” she sighed.
“Oh my,” Takatsuki giggled airily. She didn’t pause in her task. “They do, don’t they, cheeky Hina-chan?”
The memory replays in Hinami’s mind, every detail vivid. Takatsuki’s motions so methodic, the oily film filling the cracks of her lips. She isn’t particularly sure why she wanted that kiss, nor why she wants it still. Why she still touches her own fingers to her currently unpainted lips and imagines a pair that taste like ice.
Perhaps she feels like some of Takatsuki’s power would transfer to her. No matter how strong she becomes or how many things she gives up to gain an upper hand, she will never possess that level of power.
Maybe because as depressing as it is to admit, she longs for the sense of direction Takatsuki instills in her. When there was nothing, every option a diluted shadow, there was she at least. As long as Takatsuki was there, there was a path to follow. A guidebook to the end. A guidebook nonetheless. The tragedies she wrote write were hardly exclusive to her novels. Hinami couldn’t hate her for it if she tried.
So, really, really…She wants her now more than ever because…
Really, it’s because Hinami has been hurt. By everything. She’s been hurt over and over and over again.
Her parents were snatched away from her. Her sister is unreachable to her now with a home her own choices have left her no place in. Her brother looks at her from behind the glass like she’s some sad stranger. She lost her companions along the way. She has become something she didn’t want to have to be. Pain taints her memories and tows her along her the route her days have taken, razoring her edges.
She knows pain in every shade.
HInami knows pain has painted Takatsuki’s heart as black as Takatsuki painted her lips. No matter how powerful she is, she can smell it reeking off her.
Yet Hinami also knows she’s beyond any comfort she could offer, far too likely beyond wanting it altogether, too high on all that bitter power…but all the same, something inside her wants to ease that pain. Soothe and be soothed. To hold onto her because she too understands, to interlink fingers stained in blood and kiss away the hurt that’s soured one soul and staled the other.
It’s stupid. It’s a pipe dream at best, justification for an attraction she has conflicted feelings about at worst. It’s not as though Takatsuki behaves remotely like anything wounded. It’s not as though trying to ease her Onii-chan’s pain was ever successful either.