Work Text:
this story contains potentially sensitive language and slurs
——
a gift you couldn’t give
——
i. life
“Huh, looks like a zit.”
Haru frowned, scratching at the blemish under her eye. Ginshi snatched her hand away. “Don’t pick at it! You’ll make it worse.”
“But it itches!” She argued. Ginshi sighed softly through his nose.
“Just leave it alone and it’ll go away.”
…
“Let’s tell Dad about it.”
—
Their father was a tired kind of man. Ginshi might even go as far to call him irresponsible (never to his face, of course; he knew when to show respect). He had been, at one time, a very good father. He had raised Ginshi and Haru with great care when he had a wife to lean on. But Ginshi, despite being very young, was perceptive enough to sense that something was a little off. It had always been like that: soft gestures were laced with tension; even light conversations were strained.
And then she’d left, and Ginshi found he hated being right.
Their father deteriorated. He hid inside his room until he dried up, coming out only for water to refuel his mourning. He emptied himself of passion and motivation with every trembling breath over the toilet, tongue dripping poison and alcohol. Ginshi and Haru would hear him through the walls, groaning and pleading to someone who wasn’t around to listen anymore.
But he was getting better, Ginshi thought, and so Ginshi approached him with Haru’s problem.
“I wouldn’t worry about it,” his father said. “It’s probably just a zit.” He sounded less hollow than normal, or at least like he was trying to get ahold of himself. He appeared to be making the effort lately, and Ginshi felt hope. Things were going to get better.
“Okay,” Ginshi replied, and his father went back to bed.
—
It was grotesque. His father hung by his tie, and the room was silent. The body swayed slightly, but the words were gone, and only one set of lungs functioned erratically. The air was rancid with alcohol and phosphorus and Ginshi wanted to throw up.
He sat down in the corner of the room with his side to the wall and leaned against the peeling wallpaper. He curled in on himself and cried alone.
Haru was in the hospital.
—
He visited her as much as he could, but as old as he felt Ginshi was still too young to hold a stable job, and the taxi service alone was more than he could afford. But when he did go, and he saw her face, and the tumor blooming beneath her eye like a marigold, he held her hand and promised he would get her the suppressants she needed.
And she’d smile at him, believe him, because she was young and hopeful and it hurt, yes, but she had him and he was enough.
But suppressants were expensive, and Ginshi had no money.
—
ii. comfort
The Commission of Counter Ghoul provided education and training to children orphaned by ghouls. Most often, those children held a deep hatred, a motive that spurned them against ghouls. They made for great soldiers.
Ginshi had his own motivation. The other children that surrounded him held a grudge and trained to kill. Ginshi did too, in a sense, but he didn’t have any ambitious goals to protect humanity or extinguish ghouls. All he had was a sister in a hospital and little money to help her. So there he was, entering the academy with no real confidence in himself except for his physical potential.
Here, everyone assumed he was orphaned, so there was no pressure to explain himself. He found out very quickly that many of the students were only interested in themselves. However, it was the compassionate ones that stuck with Ginshi the most.
Not too long after he joined, he met another boy about his age. He was kind of girly, and some of the other kids made fun of him for it, but Ginshi had never spoken to him himself and so had yet to form his own opinion.
“Queer,” the vicious children would spit.
“I heard the faggot killed a cat.”
“His parents too.”
“What a weirdo.”
…
Children had dangerous tongues.
—
Ginshi left class to go the bathroom one day. It was mostly an excuse to get out of the suffocatingly boring atmosphere, but he did have to go.
When he walked into the bathroom, he was startled by the slamming of a stall door and the hastily clicking lock, followed immediately by shallow retching.
Startled, Ginshi didn’t move. He held his breath and listened the choking of the person in the stall, unsure of what to do.
Ginshi could hear the boy sobbing. He felt immediately guilty for not going over and checking on him, but his feet remained rooted to their spot. He glanced into the mirror over the sink, silently asking his reflection how to respond.
Eventually, he took a step forward. Then, another, and another still, until he was in front of one of the urinals.
Ginshi finished as the toilet in the stall flushed. As he turned on the faucet to wash his hands, the boy came out, pale-faced and shaking. He didn’t say a word, and Ginshi didn’t try to engage—he just stared shamefully down at his hands as he scrubbed soap over the callouses.
It was the cat-killer boy that everyone called names. Ginshi was ashamed of his silence, but still he scrubbed at his hands.
The boy—Mutsuki or something—washed his face, swished water around his mouth, and cleaned up faster than Ginshi could wash his hands. He left quickly, his pale face flushing red as their time together lengthened.
The door swung shut behind him, and Ginshi turned the faucet off.
—
iii. pride
Ginshi was embarrassed to be called Squad Leader. Every time Saiko or Mutsuki addressed him like that, he felt his face flush and Urie’s eyes on him. He didn’t mean to take the position, but after all the problems Urie caused it wasn’t like he could just give it back.
He was surprised when Urie encouraged him. Urie gave him tips sometimes, when Ginshi had no idea what to do (which was often—if Sassan had chosen him for a reason, it very likely wasn’t his brightness). While Ginshi appreciated the help, he found himself wondering what had brought out this almost selfless side of Urie. He decided to ignore it, because the more he thought about it the more that curiosity morphed into doubt, and having doubt in one’s teammates, he decided, was not allowed of a leader.
But it was hard to ignore, because every time he acted as leader he felt those narrowed eyes on his neck like electricity, and even though it was his job he felt anything but suited for the position. To him, it seemed Urie was building him up like he’d suddenly realized the error of his ways and he wanted to make up for it, for the good of the team. At least, that’s what Ginshi would like to believe. But knowing Urie, he couldn’t suppress the niggling suspicion that he was just building Ginshi up to make the fall that much harder.
He felt it especially when they were in the field, when Ginshi was the one giving orders and not Urie. That insatiable, incorrigible jealousy that Urie couldn’t mask even when he tried put strain on Ginshi’s words, and it was hard not to falter. But he pushed himself to do well, to think better of Urie because in the end Ginshi was just looking for his approval. Not actively, but he did realize that he wanted it subconsciously, and for all the self doubt that filled up his headspace that desire to be enough managed to wedge itself inside.
It rooted itself in his mind and grew like foxglove behind his eyes, until the title of leader nearly strangled him with its poison.
And the whole time this flower grew, he could feel the sharp stare of the one who’d planted the seed, along with the excess guilt of never being quite good enough.
—
iv. family
Ginshi drummed his fingers along the countertop and scratched at his hairline in frustration. He kept reading over the same sentence, trying to force it into his head. It was just a mission report, and he’d done several before, but the meaning of the words strung together was lost on him.
His jaw popped as it stretched into a yawn. He massaged the bone as he turned pages to see how much work he had left to do, and he groaned. “Maybe tomorrow,” he mumbled to himself, and set the report to the side.
He drifted to the bottom of the staircase and leaned on the handrail, staring up at the floor above. Haise wasn’t home yet, and he didn’t know where Urie and Mutsuki were, so it was up to him to make dinner.
“Saiko!” He called. “What d’you want for dinner?”
There was no response. That wasn’t uncommon; she was probably sleeping or playing a video game. He glanced at the kitchen, then turned back to call up the stairs again. “Alright, I’ll just make some ramen!”
Ginshi dug through the cabinet to find the noodles and turned on the stove to boil some water. He was about to open the packet and dump in the noodles when he heard a heavy thud somewhere above.
He paused and looked up. He listened, but the only sound was the quiet huff of the flames under the pot. He shrugged, and tore open the ramen packet.
Right before he dumped the dry noodles into the water, another thud sounded over his head. Ginshi froze again, frowning. He set the ramen packet down next to the stove and made his way over to the stairs.
“Saiko?” He called. There was no answer. Ginshi’s frown deepened with concern. An eerie feeling of apprehension came over him, and despite the reassuring thought that she was most likely just getting really into her games, he started up the stairs.
“Saiko?” He asked again, quieter now that he stood outside her door. He knocked lightly, and when there was no answer, he opened the door slowly.
The room was dark. It took Ginshi’s eyes a minute to adjust, but he didn’t turn on the lights.
She was in bed, tucked away underneath the comforter like usual. Her room was a mess, with laundry on the floor and food wrappers littering her bedside tables. There was nothing out of place that he could see, but a strange heaviness strained the air and drew him into the darkness.
Ginshi clicked the door shut behind him and stepped carefully over to her bed. “Saiko,” he said uncertainly, trying to adopt some of his usual gruffness. “What’re you doing under there? I’ve been calling you for ten minutes.”
The shape beneath the sheets shifted away from his voice, curling in on itself without saying anything. Ginshi’s frown twisted into a scowl as he tried to replace his concern with irritation. He reached out to shake her shoulder. “Saiko, c’mon–”
“Go away, Shiragin.”
His hand stopped before he could reach her. Saiko’s voice sounded choked, like she was suppressing tears, and panic flared up in him as he was confronted with a situation he didn’t know how to deal with.
After a pause, he pulled his hand back. Standing awkwardly next to her bed, he remembered the noises that had drawn him up the stairs in the first place and cast his gaze to the floor.
Next to Saiko’s bed, her phone sat on the floor next to an upside-down picture frame. Ginshi kneeled down to pick them up, turning the frame over as he did.
It was a family photo, he guessed immediately. The woman and the young boy looked too much like Saiko for it to be anything else.
She was much younger, probably only seven or eight, and the boy next to her looked about the same age. The woman was frazzled and out of shape, with a tired face and graying hair. But her eyes were glassy and her smile looked a little crooked, like she wasn’t quite sober as she hugged her frowning children. She was looking up past the camera, like she was laughing with the person behind it instead of for the lens itself.
The corner of the frame was scratched where it had hit the floor. Ginshi looked over at Saiko, curled underneath her blankets and not saying anything. His eyes moved back to the photograph, back to the uncomfortable children and their laughing mother, and a dark feeling filled his lungs and made his mouth go dry.
He’d always known Saiko wasn’t an orphan, but looking at this picture, he figured she might as well have been.
He tilted the frame toward himself until he couldn’t see the picture and looked back at Saiko. The silence was stifling, and though he opened his mouth, he couldn’t seem to force any words past the thickness in his throat.
“Do you want me to get rid of it?” He asked after a moment, uncertain.
She made a strained noise, telling him no. Ginshi’s grip tightened on the frame.
“Do you… want anything for dinner?”
There was a shuffling sound, and despite the sheets covering her head Ginshi could tell she was shaking it.
“Alright,” he said. “I’ll… be downstairs if you change your mind.”
She didn’t respond.
Ginshi set the cell phone back on her bedside table and wandered over to her work desk. Making a space between the empty wrappers and balled-up night shirts, he set the frame face down on her desk and left the room.
The guilt at being unable to say anything comforting didn’t leave him all night.
–
v. beauty
Ginshi stared at the ceiling, unseeing despite the dryness burning his eyes. Guilt writhed in his intestines, combatting his frustration with himself and keeping him up despite the late hour.
What we take away is nothing other than life.
The words came back to him like a taunt, a comfort transformed into a whole new reason to hate himself. He was already desperate to forget the way Nutcracker’s eyes glittered distantly, remembering a past he wasn’t privy to, a lifetime of wanting to be nothing more than beautiful for reasons he couldn’t understand.
No, that’s not right. He could understand. It was analogous, really, to his desire to be good enough. It was the same as any dream anybody had. Everybody wanted things. Everybody had desires. And if a ghoul was no different in that aspect, what made them different at all?
Stop it, he scolded himself. She’s a ghoul for fuck’s sake.
And yet, that word was starting to lose it’s venom.
He wondered vaguely what her name was, what her past was like. What sort of experiences had piled onto each other to build that kind of person? What kind of mirror did she own that told her she was nothing? Because a mirror that reflected those kinds of eyes must be broken if she couldn’t see the humanity reflected within.
He sighed, turned over in bed.
“‘Nothing other than life,’ huh?”
–
vi. apologies
And as the darkness washed over him, Ginshi’s thoughts scrambled desperately for one last coherent sentence, a final memory to carry with him over into the white noise of forever. “I’m scared,” he said, but even as he felt his vocal chords vibrate on the words the thunder of his blood drowned any other sound from his ears.
He was alone, and he felt it, and he hated that he couldn’t see Haru’s face in front of him, that all he saw was the blinding darkness of looming unconsciousness that no fighting would repel. This wasn’t another late night of writing reports or video games with Saiko, or walking in through the front door after the taxi got him home from the hospital. There was no bed to fall back in and no alarm to wake him up, just the empty promise that he would make her life better spiraling into the ashes of I Couldn’t Do It.
He could never apologize for the way Mutsuki’s eyes shifted to the ground, like all he saw when he looked up were the sneers forming biting, bitter insults for his ears. And he could never make Urie proud to have someone like him as a leader, would never uproot that poisonous blossom of desperation sitting just under his skin, because even though he’d killed the ghoul he still wasn’t good enough to lead the team through it. And Saiko would always be lonely in some way, because even after all this time he couldn’t find the words to make her feel like she had a place to belong. And Nutcracker would be forgotten completely, because the only person who ever started to see her as beautiful would be dead in the next thirty seconds.
And Haru would be in that hospital until the day she died, without her brother but at least with the memory of him and his unfulfilled promise and all the empty shells of people who had become addicted to leaving her alone. Haru would suffer and hate him, because he’d promised a better life for both of them, but if they both died anyway what was the point of even trying?
I’m sorry, he wanted to scream, but his existence was bleeding away and he could no longer form the words on his lips. I’m sorry, I’m so, so sorry.
But after a moment, no one was left to be sorry anyway.