Touka didn't often go by Kaneki's apartment. She did it maybe once a week to see if he had come back, but she was of the thought that if he wasn't found by now, he wouldn't be found. She was more than sure that Kaneki was dead. If not the CCG, some other ghoul had torn him apart. And to the rest of the world, she was all about 'good riddance and forget you'. But inside it kind of hurt that he was gone. Because if Kaneki was gone, she wasn't sure how she would still be able to find the humanity in being what she was.
But today, she had decided to go to the apartment of her kind-of-friend, and walking the now familiar halls made her feel better. There was a newer scent among the others, but she figured it was a new tenant in another apartment near Kaneki's. She wouldn't be surprised if it was Hide, considering how much that human was always around asking if Kaneki was there. He was observant. He knew something was wrong.
She made her way to the door of Kaneki's apartment and stood staring at it for a moment. If she couldn't find Kaneki soon, the thing would be let out to a new tenant, and the key wouldn't work anymore. She'd start knocking one day and it would be answered by some family, or a creepy old guy, and she'd probably lose it. But that was his fault, wasn't it?
Touka reached into her pocket and pulled out the key, which had been left at Anteiku with his clothes the day he had been taken, before pressing it into the keyhole. The lock turned, the tumblers clicked, and she grabbed the handle with her other hand to push the door open.
It wouldn't budge.
She blinked, staring at it in confusion before laying on a little ghoul strength. The damn thing still wouldn't open. What the hell? She put her full force into shoving, and it hardly slid. She couldn't even see past the doorframe with how far it had budged, but now that it had given a little ways, it seemed the door had gone stubborn and would go no farther.
She looked around. It was early, but not early enough for anyone to be home. Around breakfast time for the unemployed and late sleepers, but not much of a big deal. This floor was a little quiet anyway. She wouldn't be surprised if there were other ghouls in this area. She stepped back a bit, looked around again, and tried to kick the door in. Besides a loud thump, there wasn't anything. The door was dented where she had kicked it, so it hadn't been her being weak. Something was blocking the fucking door. Snarling, she pulled out her phone before stopping to think. Who could she call with all this? She sure as hell wasn't calling Nishio. She'd never hear the end from Nishitty, and she couldn't stand Tsukiyama already. Yomo was out collecting bodies. Who the fuck did she know?
It hit her suddenly, and she scrolled to the bottom of her contacts, clicking the number and letting it ring. The ghoul on the other end didn't even let it get past the first ring.
"HySy ArtMask Studio, go for Uta." The calm, tattooed ghoul said.
"Uta-san, it's Touka." She answered.
There was a little sigh. "Touka-chan, please tell me you need me to do something. It's been boringly slow over here." Uta asked.
"Actually, yeah. Can you meet me at Kaneki's apartment?" She asked.
There was a slight pause on the other side of the phone before he came back. "Is he back?" Uta asked.
Touka shook her head as if he could see her. "I don't know. Just, hurry please. I don't think there's anyone around, and that is of the essence." She explained.
"I'm on my way."
7777777
When Uta showed up to apartment complex, he had his shades on, and his jacket pulled on and zipped up to his neck, a beanie on his head. Typical outerwear for Uta, but it didn't feel like a very typical day. He didn't visit Kaneki's complex. He wasn't sure he could without dropping the cool facade and breaking down.
He missed that little half-ghoul. More than anyone was allowed to know outside of Kaneki himself. Not even Yomo knew how much he'd meant to Uta.
But when Touka had called, he'd dropped the random sketch of Kaneki's eyes he'd been doing and run right over. She was standing outside the door, aiming her foot at the door before her eyes caught him, and she stood straight again.
"Hey, thanks for showing up. How'd you get here so fast?" She asked.
He shrugged. "I ran. What's up?" He asked. "Why are you abusing Kaneki's door?"
She glared at it. "I've shot it with my kagune too, but the damn thing won't budge. It's stuck. I can't get through, and that's not normal." She explained.
Uta raised a brow, pushing his sunglasses down a little to look at her over the lenses. "Did you try unlocking it?" He asked.
She sneered at him. "Very funny. Yes, I unlocked it. The handle turns, but nothing." She reached out and jiggled the handle to show him, then tried to push it open again. It merely shifted a little and then slid closed again.
Uta pushed his sunglasses up again and nudged her to the side. "Step aside, little one. I will handle your stubborn door." He promised, trying first to push the door open, but she was right. Something was blocking the other side. And it smelled...odd...
"I've kicked the damn thing, Uta-san." She complained.
He dismissed her words with a wave. "I haven't yet. Just hush." He stepped back and aimed at the door on his own, not by the spot at the top where she had kicked, but directly in the center.
When his foot connected with the door, it busted inward, bending like a rocket and sending tiny projectiles toward his and Touka's bodies. He didn't even try to block them, but Touka blocked and jumped back when she saw what they were.
"What the hell?" She asked.
Uta stepped over the now scattered pile of fingers and slid off his sunglasses and beanie. A few crunched under his foot, and he knelt down to inspect the things. They smelled funny, but distantly familiar. It was a scent he hadn't smelled for a long time, or so it seemed. Two months now, maybe three? He looked up, tucking his sunglasses and hat into his back pocket, and stood, moving forward carefully. He was going to have to be careful here, because these all smelled of the same person, and there were maybe a thousand of them in just this pile. There were two more piles in the living room, but they were smaller.
Stepping into the kitchen was like stepping into a warzone between a single ghoul and maybe seven humans. Parts of the kitchen were obviously for a human, some food that had gone bad on the counter, and a coffee pot full of hot coffee. Sunflowers and a cactus were up by the window sill. But that was where the humans ended, and the ghoul began.
A pile of three fingers sat on the counter, and where a set of magnetic knives had hung on the wall, now there were pliers, bolt cutters, a hammer, and a hatchet pressed into that little metal square. Two of the knives were still there, a small paring knife bloody beside the fingers, and there was blood in the sink, dripping from a kakugan eye in a pot beside the cactus like the mockery of a flower. The refrigerator had blood dripping from it, though that blood at least smelled human, and tiny indoor centipedes scuttled over a cabinet left hanging open, and over Uta's boot.
The human that had lived in this apartment had been systematically wiped out. A picture of Kaneki and his best friend Hide on the fridge was coated in blood, his own face specifically covered with blood gone black and crusted. A picture of a child's drawing hung on the wall was now covered with the scratchy word 'MONSTER', and he was drawn like some alien and monster. The clock's numbers were scratched away, and in their place were other random numbers that didn't seem to make any sense. At least, not to Uta.
But Kaneki looked like they made sense to him.
His hair was white, and his nails were black, and he was scarred in ways ghouls didn't scar, but it was Kaneki. His eye looked raw, and his fingers were colored differently from his palms. There were rugged scars around his wrists and ankles, and even his toes were different colors from the rest of his foot. The man before him looked like a patchwork of who Kaneki was and the person he must have become. His raw eye suddenly flared kakugan, and he looked down at his foot sharply, where a centipede had crawled over his foot.
Uta heard Touka behind him, and she stopped right beside Uta, breathing heavily. "Kaneki?" She gasped.
Kaneki screamed, almost an animal howl, and brought the knife down through his foot and the centipede at the same time. The front half of the centipede tried to scurry away, back half wriggling frantically, and Kaneki lifted both halves and threw them at the wall, watching them splatter.
"Don't fucking say that!" He snarled, turning to glare straight at Touka.
Touka stepped back, seeming afraid of Kaneki, but Uta felt his heart cracking.
After all this time, Kaneki was back.
And...he wasn't okay...
Kaneki was not okay.