Title: changeling
Summary: The story goes like this. (He has no idea, so Haise just makes it up as he goes along.)
Haise often looks at his own face in the mirror, and wonders who he was.
He makes it up as he goes along, the water running in the sink, soap sitting in his hands while he looks at the reflection in his eyes.
The story goes like this: there is a man, a wonderful man, kind and honest. There is a man, but he is alone.
The story goes like this: there is a woman, a wonderful woman, beautiful and sweet. There is a woman, but she is alone.
Neither of them have faces, because they have no need for one. They are figures present at the back of Haise's mind, and when he needs to, he thinks them akin to Arima-san, and Akira-san. The parental figures he knows he must have had, but has forgotten for the time being.
He looks in the mirror, and behind him, there is a man, and there is a woman, and they're alone, together.
He reaches up a hand, fingers still covered in soap, nails clean, and he brushes a lock of hair behind his ear. People frequently ask about Haise's hair; he sees the question in their diverting eyes, the tightening of fingers as they look away. Haise might have answered, if he could have, but even he doesn't know why his hair is the way it is, why it's growing out in black the way it might have been once.
Saiko once muses out loud what he would look like if the reverse were true, hair sloshing from black to white in uneven strands.
"The only thing it would mean is that I would be old," he quietly tells her. He doesn't tell her he thinks he'll never make it to that age.
The story goes like this: there is a man, who looks like Haise, his hair black and lanky, his smile surrounded by laugh lines.
The story goes like this: there is a woman, who looks like Haise, her hair long, the colour of night, and her hands are warm and comforting.
The emptiness of his mind is a vacuum, a reminder of his inability to remember where he came from, who he used to be, what anyone used to call him.
He's certain no one called him Haise – not before he did, anyway.
He sees a man and a woman who used to be with him, when he looks in the mirror, and he wonders if they know who he is. If they knew who he was. If they would recognise him as he is now.
Haise has carefully tucked himself into the life given him; he investigates, he cares, he nourishes the team where he should, but it's never quite enough to fill the void of not knowing. It's like he sprang to life in a fully-grown body, a body with reflexes, a body with hunger pangs when he doesn't eat for several weeks. He doesn't feel like its owner; he feels like a temporary tenant, biding his time until he'll be thrown out for not paying his rent on time.
The story goes like this: there is no man, and there is no woman. There is just Haise, blooming out of the darkness, like a star being birthed in the night sky.
The story goes like this: there is no story. There is only the truth, and the truth is that Haise does not know what's true and what's not.
This is what he knows: Sasaki Haise, Rank 1 investigator, 22 years old, half-ghoul, mentor of the Quinx Squad.
This is what is true:
(his life is not his own)