Haise rushed down the alley, blinking snow off his eyelashes as it fell unceasingly under his feet. It had been snowing for several hours now and surely his hair was more white than white-black at the moment. He skidded around a corner, even the CCG issued uniform boots struggling on the uncertain footing. The path he was running on had opened into a small clearing like area with a street beyond. Most likely it had been a sidewalk in front of a shop front but the ground was so pure white Haise would never have been able to tell. A man stood in the center of the clearing, panting, obviously having come to the same location through a different alley.
Haise stood and analyzed the man. A purple suit jacket, red undershirt, and black tie. His eyes didn't have a kakugan yet, but Haise knew this was their man. At a more recent meeting the higher-ups had given his team orders to, in their words, "finally take care of the Gourmet." They'd apparently been putting off the reasonably infamous S-rated in favor of bigger fish such as the Aogiri tree and the One-Eyed Owl. With both now in hiding alert had generally faded or as much as it really ever could in a ghoul fighting organization. Arima had been staring at Haise as the the order was made, watching for what, Haise didn't know. It was strange, the white reaper had almost looked sympathetic.
As Haise tensed into battle stance and tightened his grip on his Quinque the man looked up and noticed Haise. His eyes shot from Haise's eyes to his suitcase then to his hair. There was a kind of desperate fear in the ghoul's eyes. He took an involuntary stumble forward. Haise shrunk back.
"Kaneki-kun?" The ghoul asked.
A sharp pain lanced through Haise's skull. He bit back the pain and narrowed his eyes for a single word.
"No."
The assertion straightened Haise's spine. He found more breath.
"I am Sasaki Haise, Special Class CCG Investigator. Gourmet, your rein of terror ends today."
The ghoul's eyes widened. His trembling fingers fluttered helplessly around his own body before clenching at his sides. His lips opened and closed. Squinting through snowfall Haise even thought he could see glistening teardrops in the ghoul's eyes. He pressed down on the handle of his Quinque and pulled it out, leveling it at the ghoul.
When faced with death the ghoul's eyes clouded over with the kakugan, but so slowly the action was almost reluctant. The tears Haise thought he'd seen turned blood red and ran down the ghoul's face in much more obvious trails. They burned the ghoul's cheeks soundlessly and Haise swore that he could remember the exact same heat leaking from his right eye. The ghoul raised a trembling right arm and a long purple growth swirled from his shoulder blade around the length of his arm. The outside of the screw was electric purple but the inside was visibly pulsating red.
Another pain stabbed behind Haise's eyes. He heard soft clinks of piano keys, long slender skilled fingers, and stained glass windows. He almost heard the ghoul's voice yelling in his head.
"He belongs to me!"
This time the pain was so sharp Haise actually flinched and the ghoul locked gazes with him.
"Kaneki?" He repeated, this time dropping the honorific and unconsciously drawing Haise forward. "I know it hurts. God, I know. But please, come back. I know you're in there."
The voice called out to Haise from the depths of his head and he could see the monster squirming on its chair. It seemed to be reaching out to the man, ripping its already raw skin on the chains, heedless of the blood that decorated the checkerboard floor. If the monster knew the Gourmet the situation could only get worse. The fight with Torso's companion had been painful enough and Haise had lost control. He gritted his teeth against the pain and swung out at the Gourmet. He saw a brief look of utter betrayal before the ghoul ducked the attack.
"Come on, Kaneki. Can you hear me?"
Haise swung again, wishing the ghoul would just shut up, every word made the pain worse. Another dodge. The ghoul wasn't even attacking him.
"Are you mocking me?" Haise shouted.
He attacked faster, a series of quick jabs, rendering the ghoul incapable of speech. Their feet danced through the stark snow, slipping and sliding through to the blacktop below the newly fallen layer. In the middle of Haise's barrage the ghoul somehow managed to raise his heavy kokaku and slam the tip of Haise's Quinque into the ground. He got right into Haise's face.
"Please Kaneki!"
The pounding in Haise's head reached a peak. He screamed. Make it stop, make it stop, make it stop! His knees trembled and he almost fell. The monster was ripping roughly at the chains on the chair and they might have well been the insides of Haise's skull. The tearing pain got so intense that after a few moments it rendered him immobile. Flashes of memory flitted through his tattered mind, red, brown, purple, brown, grey, black, yellow, orange, purple, purple, purple! He couldn't move his Quinque so the perceived danger caused his kagune to react instinctually.
Despite the rapidity of the move, the attack seemed to happen in slow motion. The red of his rinkaku erupting from Haise's back and swinging around under his arm, a swirl of snow clouding his eyes, the kagune reaching out, then digging deep into the stomach of the ghoul, pausing briefly against the resistance then bursting through his back a full meter. The light shining snow turned blotchy red and something in Haise's head cried out.
The monster broke free of the chair, fell hard to its knees, and began crawling pathetically towards the front of Haise's mind. Raw ankles and wrists dragged along the checkered floor, smearing the dried chips of blood already speckling its surface. The monster made it maybe three meters before its arms gave out and it had to grind one black-nailed fist into the ground to even raise its head and scream in frustration and horror. The image was as clear in his mind as what Haise saw in front of his own eyes, the ghoul's surprised face and how he stumbled backwards, letting the kagune slide out of his body. The Gourmet of the 20th ward, laid low by such an easy blow. Saiko could have landed it while still on her game console. How did such a man fall so easily?
The answer was clear in the ghoul's eyes as much as it was in the growing scratchiness of throat from the monster in Haise's head. The ghoul hadn't been expecting it. He'd trusted Haise, trusted an investigator to not kill a ghoul. What a ridiculous notion. Now his misplaced trust had left him on the snowy ground, a mortal wound in his abdomen. No ghoul, S-rated or under, would be able to heal a wound that large without sustenance and Haise did not intend to give him any.
Haise looked deep into the ghoul's eyes, seeing the physical pain barely register, pushed aside by an emotional pain that simply floored him. The ghoul didn't look betrayed for his own sake, he was gazing at Haise with an emotion only accurately described as utter pity. What did he have to pity an investigator for? He was dying for goodness sake! Unable to bear the silence and the weight behind such sad purple eyes, Haise said the one thing he'd never said to a ghoul.
"Any last words?"
The blood dripped corners of the ghoul's mouth twitched ever so slightly in the second cousin of a smile before stagnating in a grimace as the ghoul staggered to his feet. He stumbled over to Haise, each step unsteadier than the one before. Were it not for the scarlet spider lilies seeping from between his fingers, Haise would have called the ghoul drunk.
Haise stuck out his kagune to warn the ghoul away but the man didn't even look down before beginning to walk onto the kagune, letting it pierce him as it would. Horrified, Haise withdrew the tentacle. The ease with which the man walked to his death was beyond anything Haise could imagine. He'd never seen someone lose all physical sensation to the point where death didn't even matter in the face of emotion.
As the ghoul just got nearer Haise found himself again unable to move. His training was blaring to call for help, but the monster in his head, even collapsed on the dirty floor, kept Haise still.
When they were practically centimeters apart the ghoul did the one thing Haise hadn't expected.
He hugged him.
Haise's face suddenly was pressed to a warm shoulder, expensive purple fabric wrinkling under his cheek. Well-muscled arms wound around him, one around his back and another cradling his head. The man smelled like faded roses. His hair tangled and clashed strangely with Haise's own unique color combination, black, white, purple.
The blood leaked from the ghoul's stomach wound onto Haise's clothes, but it didn't seem to bother either of them. He heard the ghoul's voice near his ear, warm breath in the cold of the snow that covered them both.
"I've always wanted to do this."
The ghoul shifted his body slightly, so he wasn't leaning down to accommodate Haise's shorter height, but he was still holding him.
"I just want to tell you now."
The man took a shuddering breath, almost sobbing against Haise.
"None of this is your fault." The monster in Haise's mind stopped screaming.
"You are loved by so many people." The monster's head lowered to its chest.
"Never hate yourself." The monster's shoulders were shaking, kakuja mask pieces falling to the ground.
"And. Please, keep living." The monster's hands came up to cover his eyes, but not before Haise got a glimpse of, not kakugan, but two small, soft, brown eyes.
The man pulled back from Haise, placed one hand on lightly on Haise's shoulder, then swept Haise's hair back with the other hand. He leaned down to Haise's slightly shorter stature. Then the emotions in Haise's head exploded as the ghoul planted a small kiss on his forehead.
His lips were warm despite the temperature and the gesture so intimate that Haise knew instantly that they had some sort of connection. Not necessarily one so superficial to be assigned a label like parental, romantic, or even fraternal, but a undefined relationship. They were close. That was the only word to describe it.
The man pulled back, opened energetic purple eyes, then took a couple steps back from Haise, falling to his knees in the snow. The bottoms of his green checkerboard pants turned dark with blood and melted slush. The man actually retracted his kagune before holding both of his arms straight out. He took one last glance at Haise, memorizing every little facet of the investigator then with a sigh the man closed his eyes. The corners of his mouth lifted in an impossible but unbelievably serene smile. He didn't speak another word.
The monster made one last move towards Haise, but he pushed the sobbing body away harshly and raised his Quinque. The words, "I'm sorry," flashed through his mind. Before he could stop himself Haise brought the weapon down and sunk it into the ghoul's chest right through his heart. The body convulsed forward for a second with inertia then fell back onto the snow, its legs unfolding as it hit the ground hard, that impossible smile freezing over dead lips.
The monster screamed, banging its hands on the checkerboard floor, the tears falling easily over its cheeks. Clear, innocent, desperate, human, tears. Haise ignored it and hardened his heart, refusing to hear the cries of Kaneki Ken who had just lost someone important to him, just understanding that Sasaki Haise had another S-class ghoul under his belt. He turned on his heel and walked away, hoping he could get to Arima and report before drowning his headache in painkillers.
/
Haise crashed at the estate the minute he came back and didn't wake up until the next morning. The dawn was killed by a increasingly greying sky and the sunlight failed to wake Haise. When he did wake he glanced over at the clock and his bed-stand then fell out of bed. It was three hours past when he was scheduled to begin work.
He rushed into CCG HQ, pushing past workers standing suspiciously still in the hallways. Everyone seemed to be talking amongst themselves and not doing any work. The sense of panic only grew in Haise's chest. He bust into Akira's office to find her and Arima already inside, talking like the rest of the building.
They looked up as he entered and a sad kind of fear showed in Arima's eyes. Akira's held nothing but sympathy and she moved closer to him in support. Haise immediately lowered his head and stammered out his apology.
"I'm so sorry for being late sir. I slept in too long after that exhausting battle yesterday. But I'm ready to work now whenever you want me to get the next case file."
Arima sighed. "There are no case files."
"What?!"
"Not today."
Haise stumbled to the desk and ran his hand through his white-black hair. "Why?"
Arima turned from the window to face him, the blue, cold, light of morning turning half of his face unearthly light. "The ghouls of Tokyo are mourning."
"Why?"
"Because The Gourmet is dead."
Haise's eyes widened and without thinking he blurted out his thoughts. "They cared about him that much? I thought ghouls didn't understand the concept of loyalty."
Arima nodded silently. He faced Haise full on, his countenance grave.
"The Gourmet was well known throughout every ward of Tokyo for his tastes and strange quirks. Not only does his family command a great reputation, but he himself was known among the ghouls for some perverted version of kindness and for that amusing eccentricity."
Arima paused to sigh in Haise's direction although the source of his frustration didn't seem to stem from Haise himself.
"Several S and SS rated ghouls approached the HQ this morning and when faced with a squad of CCG delivered a message. They said, 'the Gourmet is dead by your hands in an unjust move. By this you have irrevocably harmed two of our number last night. For today and today only the ghouls of Tokyo will not eat as a tribute to those you've killed and those you've harmed. No need to worry about stragglers, we are more than capable of keeping the rabble in line.' Then they escaped into the alleys of the city without harming anyone."
Haise was struck dumb. The ghouls weren't eating? That wasn't possible, there hadn't been a day in over three hundred years that the ghouls of Tokyo hadn't fed. They must just be lying; using the Gourmet's death as an excuse to trick the CCG. Somehow that disgusted Haise past his usual distaste for ghouls.
"You can't actually trust them, sir. A ghoul's word means nothing." A pang struck him lightly in the chest.
Arima soundlessly turned the computer screen on his desk around to display a map of Tokyo. There were several blue dots on the map, signifying investigator patrols but a significant lack of red dots, which were documented deaths. Haise scanned the image a couple extra times, thinking a red dot would suddenly appear amongst the blue. But nothing was forthcoming. He looked up at Akira.
"They really aren't eating. Not one."
Arima turned back to the window. The radio on his desk gave a crackle and everyone jumped then Haise reached over to hand it to his surrogate father. A voice came through, a patrol report.
"Sir, we have located the area where the Gourmet was killed but can't get much closer than a block away. A huge congregation of ghouls have surrounded the spot. One even had the nerve to call over to us. He said, 'go away, investigators.'"
Arima sighed.
"How did you respond?"
"One of our newbies jumped right in and followed with a tactful, 'what even are you ghouls doing?' The ghoul responded, 'we are giving the Gourmet a funeral. His body belongs to us. We will write our relations to him on his clothing then cremate him. You have no part in this, so leave.'"
"What did you do then?"
The patrol leader laughed sheepishly.
"We left. We have no particular need for a single body when the might exhausted to acquisition it would probably lead to all of our deaths."
"Alright, finish your patrol and return to base."
The radio clicked off on the other end. Arima turned to Haise as if they hadn't just witnessed the first evidence of ghoul culture ever seen by humans.
"As you are the Gourmet's killer I would recommend you spend today at the estate. We wouldn't want to lose such a valuable sword."
Haise nodded and left the room. A valuable sword, huh? Where had he heard that before?
On his way back through the hallways Haise saw something quite uncommon indeed. Saiko was actually at HQ, sitting behind a desk as Urie sat behind her, taking time to glare at her in common intervals. She looked up as Haise passed and was unable to be stopped from rushing towards him.
"Maman!" Saiko screamed, weaving her arms around Haise's waist. "Please Maman, I don't want to do paperwork, tell Urie to let me leave!"
Haise laughed and patted Saiko on the head, giving Urie a congratulatory nod. "Sorry Saiko, I have to go home and you appear to have quite enough to keep you entertained here."
Saiko pouted and looked up at Haise, giving him the puppy dog eyes. "Would you please not go?"
Haise's smile dropped. There was another familiar pulse of pain from behind his eyes. He turned away from Saiko.
"I-I have to go."
He rushed out of the room and quickly made the trip back to the mansion. Matsuri was already there, setting up a bouquet on the kitchen table.
"Hello Haise! I was just bringing these in, then I'm off to the office for some paperwork."
"Thank you, they look very nice, where did you get them?"
"From the market of course, the flower man gave them to me."
Haise flinched. He saw the quick glimpse of concern in Matsuri's eyes and rapidly straightened up.
"I think I'll finish that book I was on yesterday up in my room. Have a good day, Matsuri."
He walked up the stairs and collapsed on his bed. The pain lessened after a couple minutes and Haise sat up, then pressed his flushed forehead to the cool window. Something far off on the skyline caught his eye and he detached from the window enough to see a cloud of smoke rise up from the city, piercing the sky. In the time Haise had took to travel home the clouds had cleared over the city but for some reason the smoke only seemed to darken out the sun in Haise's eyes.
The monster stirred in Haise's head but when the image became clear it was not of a young man with white hair but two small children, barely older than six. One had the white hair of before but the other had black. The checkerboard floor had turned to green grass and the two boys sat holding hands under a ceiling of stars. A glint and one shot across the sky, burning out a path reflected in the boys' eyes. The boys' expressions sunk and as one they whispered, "bye, bye Shuu."
Author's note: This story has been revised a little. I didn't like the flow of it originally but the storyline is the same.