Chapter Text
Her job requires a certain special balance. A certain steady focus. A certain knowledge of how to measure and place her steps, knowledge of how to push and pull.
She mixes drinks of all colors, all sizes, all contents. The aim of the drinkers, rarely stated aloud, is always the same: I don’t want to be in this city. I don’t want to be in my body. I want to rest. I want to sleep.
What ends up happening is always the opposite. They sip, or else swig, or else swallow hungrily. And then, as if she served them coffee, as if it were the morning, as if it were the start of a brand new day they were sure they wanted to control rather than be dominated by, they wake up.
:::
“Have you…have you heard of the Nameless One-Eyed King?”
“No,” Touka lies, blandly. “The what?”
It’s her custom, to respond this way: no, no, no. To everyone she is as empty as the glasses that she polishes with patient aimlessness as her patrons steep. The tips are fair, most nights, but this is where the real value is: effervescent whispers, sweet half-slurs, embittered mutters with a whisk of salt.
Her game is small, and she prefers it that way. She selects clients carefully. She triangulates all data, digs up her own personal research. When the time comes, she transmits it through Ayato, who runs it wherever it needs to go, making sure that she herself remains hidden safely away.
She doesn’t mind the many cuts that happen before the cash flows back, dropped surreptitiously into her tip jar; the knowledge itself is what’s valuable. She’s small, a single person and a few friends and family living in a city where someone would eat you alive given the chance. Information that comes well-vetted and without the cost of tiny Dove spying devices is precious. She dodges enemies, and stockpiles exits and weaponry, and prepares her script if anyone comes to flush her out to the Doves.
“Don’t kill me,” she can say, one day. “If my brothers don’t hear from me by the end of today, they’ll release everything. Every dirty secret.”
“All those missing investigators.”
“The experiments.”
“The so-called accident that killed Centipede’s ‘mother’ and instead of destroying him, made him so much more.”
That’s one exit. Here’s the other.
“Don’t kill me. Don’t kill me, let me live, and I’ll tell you who the One-Eyed King is.”
It’s hard to walk this fine line, this tightrope between and above everyone, to be connected only by sight and distance. Factions every day claw and clutch for subsistence in the wards and she is just another one of them, threading the boundaries of larger players. Others have left her side, or else been plucked from it, or else fallen.
But as far as she’s concerned, her life has never been anything else, and never will be.
:::
Of course, life isn’t a perfect story, with all its perfect words: the storm that rains on the protagonist’s darkest moment, the hiss of insects that follows an ominous decision. It’s not the Doves that find her first.
The phone is ringing incessantly, but Nishiki, the ass, is out again, and it’s too busy to escape to the back. But after the calls continue, Touka grits her teeth, and pulls herself away. She retrieves the phone from her apron, checks the caller’s name, and practically snarls into the receiver.
“Ayato. I told you not to call me when —”
“Aneki,” Ayato gasps. That’s what it is: a gasp. “You’re at work?”
Touka frowns. “Of course. Where else would I —”
“Get out,” Ayato says. “Get out, right now.”
Ayato never sounds like this. Touka’s blood runs cold. But before he can explain, she knows.
The customer chatter quiets. It’s so silent that she can hear the bell on the door ring as the door shuts, and the sound of it echoes through :re.
She hangs up, with stiff hands, without further word. She looks up to see her own reflection in the mirror. Her eyes are wide, and she forces them to soften. At the same time, her trembling hand fumbles on a nearby shelf, and closes on a corkscrew.
Do it, she tells herself, get back out there, and she does just in time, with her hand behind her back. She emerges just as the door to :re shuts behind a figure there, who she can’t quite clearly see. But the air in the bar is still. And when the figure speaks, their words take up all the space.
“Get out.”
The hairs on her neck raise. The figure steps aside, to allow everyone to pass. The door opens and shuts, over and over, the bell turning shrill. When Touka starts toward the door as well, but the figure raises their hand. A red glove indicates Not you, and Touka freezes, into place.
Soon, they are the only two in :re.
:::
“The One-Eyed King devours his enemies. Slurps up every finger. There’s a sound sometimes, when he’s near — the sound of a knuckle cracking, between his teeth.”
“He lost his arms to the greatest of the Doves, but it meant nothing. He just grew them right back.”
“No, he stole them, he took them from someone else. Just stole them and made them his.”
“They took his eye too.”
“His eye? He cover it with that patch because when he died, the first time, and came alive again, it left a mark on him — an eye as red as blood.”
“That eye was the last thing you saw against Centipede. He had no affiliation then. He wanted to know about the experiments, but…”
“Killed everyone…”
“Everyone dead…”
“Their bodies in shreds! Completely unrecognizable. Everything piled up in pieces, the feet didn’t even have their toes…”
“Blades erupting right out of his body…”
“No weapon works on him, none. He tried to kill himself once, before everything, but the knife bent. Even then hell didn’t want him.”
“No heart. It was tortured out of him.”
“They crushed him, they turned him into a Dove, you know. But he woke up. And now he just wants to murder all of them. Everyone that did him wrong.”
“Not murder. Worse. He’ll take anything he wants from you. Arm, rib, eye — maybe even pull your heart right out from between your ribs —”
“It all sounds crazy, but I think there’s a little truth to all of it. If you see him, don’t fight, Aneki. Don’t fucking punch him or whatever, don’t bother. Just run.”
Touka can’t move. Can’t breathe.
He smiles, warmly.
“Are you Rabbit?”
:::
“Rabbit” is the name she shares with Ayato, sort of. It’s the verbal signature on her information. But, “Rabbit” is not what she sees when she looks in the mirror.
So, “No” is the answer that she wants to say. “No” and “Sorry” and “Don’t kill me. I’ll tell you anything.”
“Yes,” she answers, barely.
:::
He walks forward. He exudes a certain presence, an air that is cold, and heavy. He sits on one of her barstools, carefully maneuvering the robe he wears.
He looks exactly like what’s she heard. Pale hair. Eyepatch. Older than her, but not by much. The robe and suit hides if he has any weapons, either on his body or within it. The one thing she wasn’t expecting was the smile, but even now it’s fading into thoughtful, observant stoicism.
He scans :re — the tables, the bottles, the shelves of books. Then he looks at her.
“Rabbit,” he says. “What are you holding behind your back?”
His one eye is sharp as a knife. Touka feels stabbed. She hesitates, and is relieved to find that she is capable of walking forward calmly. She shows him, casually, the corkscrew, at the same time that she reaches for a bottle of wine.
“This is a really good year,” she murmurs. “It’s the best thing I have in here.”
“Oh,” he says. “No, thank you. Do you serve coffee?”
“…Coffee?”
“Black,” he clarifies. “Unless it’s too much trouble?”
Touka stares at him. He’s serious.
“It’s the only thing I drink,” he says. “But if you don’t have any…”
He trails off.
What, Touka almost laughs. Will you drink my blood instead?
The corkscrew rattles when she sets it down. She bends to the fridge beneath the counter, misses the handle the first time and scrapes it too hard the second. Sure enough, shitty Nishiki’s cans are still under there, crowding against the chilled glasses, and for the first time she doesn’t want to strangle him for it.
She opens a can and pours it into one of the glasses. He takes it with a quiet thanks, and drinks, silently.
:::
That’s all he does, for a while. Drink.
Somehow, impossibly, she’s starting to calm, a little. In the absence of a knife against her throat, her mind begins to slow its racing. She breathes. She weighs.
Close to her hand are at least half a dozen cups she can smash and use to stab him. Even if they don’t penetrate his skin, they should distract him. She can race out the back before the two figures she can see waiting outside her bar’s door can figure out what’s happening. She can find the first Dove she sees and demand sanctuary.
He continues drinking.
“It’s nice in here,” he says, when there’s nothing left. “Home-y.”
Touka pops another can and refills his glass.
“What do you want?” she asks. Out of apprehension, her voice comes out with a tiny bite. If he notices, or is offended, he doesn’t give indication of it.
“I wanted to meet the person who’s been telling so many stories about me,” he replies.
“I don’t tell stories about you,” Touka tells him. “They tell themselves.”
“You’re always at the root of the true ones,” he says. “So I wondered if maybe you were someone that I knew.”
He glances up at her.
“Well,” Touka says, “clearly, I’m not.”
He looks down again. He swirls the contents of his glass.
“How did you find me?” Touka asks. But he only looks at her stonily, so she continues on.
“What do you want?” Touka demands again. “If you have the information you came for, then get out. You’re ruining business. This is my busiest night.”
It’s a lie, but he stands. His hand goes beneath his robe, and Touka grips a glass beneath a counter. But all he retrieves from his robe is a small book, and a thick envelope.
The book he returns to his pocket. The envelope he sets on her counter. From the shape of it, she can tell it’s filled with money.
A lot of money.
“I want your information,” he says.
“I — I don’t have any information,” Touka gasps. “I don’t know anything you probably don’t already know.”
“In the future, I mean. Things are changing,” he says. “I’m not able to stay underground as much as I’d like. I need another person to rely on for information.”
“There are others,” Touka says, still shocked. “I’m just — I mean — there are others that know much more than me.”
He shakes his head. “No one says what you can. It’s your ear that I want.”
No, she thinks. No way. Affiliation with the One-Eyed King is a death sentence. But he must trace the direction of her thoughts, because he shakes his head.
“I’ll protect you,” he says. “That’s part of the deal.”
The Nameless One-Eyed King. Protecting her.
He goes on. He’ll only visit her occasionally. She can still sell whatever information she wishes, but when he comes, he’ll hear anything he likes, in exchange for his fee.
“All for information,” he concludes. “That’s it.”
No, she thinks. That’s never just it.
All those single, innocent secrets never stay the way they are. Air and light and company always let them grow into something more. If she controls them herself, she can remain properly and safely on her tightrope. If she lets him pry them from her mouth, they’ll twist and turn and knot and ravel her up.
But.
The door of :re opens. “King,” calls one of the figures waiting outside, a person who looks barely older than a child. “The storm.”
It’s a sudden one; rain is falling, a downpour, a seasonal gush. From somewhere Touka thinks she hears a skitter, as if from many chitinous legs. And she knows, then, when the Nameless One-Eyed King looks back at her: no matter what she says, he will return.
She reaches, and slips the money into her apron, like she needs it, like she’s some peasant desperate for it. Accepting so little in exchange for so much is like swallowing a thorn. Her voice is low as he steps to the door.
“I’ll see you later, Sasaki Haise,” she calls.
He pauses.
“Or,” she says, “should I call you Kaneki Ken?”
He turns.
“You can call me Kaneki,” he says. “Kirishima Touka.”
She reddens. He has a smile again, soft and polite. He opens the door.
”I’ll see you later.”