New Blood

Junichiro wanted to become a ghoul investigator ever since he read that news article about the big raids and advancements they were making in other parts of the country, like Tokyo. On his first mission, he finds out that all of the training in the world couldn't have prepared him for this. [Two-shot]

Junichiro still felt as if his inner organs were going to crawl up his throat along with the bile dripping out of his mouth. He would never have imagined a person could experience such pain without sporting any injuries worse than a few scrapes and bruises. Never in his life had he thought watching someone die would make him feel as if he had died with them.

Hot tears blurred his vision as he pressed his back firmly against the wall of the hospital's hallway. A nurse nearly ran over his toes with a heavy metal cart earlier. Surgeons with their scrubs still stained by blood - fresh red mingled with nearly black, dried blood - ran through the halls to start stabilizing the next investigator's vitals so that he or she wouldn't die before reaching the operating room.

Junichiro couldn't smell the blood anymore, he realized with a jolt and a shiver. He watched a young nurse practically running just across the hallway. She had a cooler wrapped tight in her arms. He didn't want to know what it was for.

For what seemed like hours he stood in that small area of the hospital and stood with his hands clamped over his ears to block out the sounds of people - his coworkers, some his friends - dying.

Eventually began to regain his sense of smell. The scent of antiseptic was the first one to crawl up his nose, practically burning him. When he opened his eyes, wondering when he closed them in the first place, he saw the grizzled face of his superior, Rank 1 Investigator Watanabe.

The man's creased features crinkled in clearly apparent rage - probably scarier than the red and black eyed ghouls they fought earlier in the night. Junichiro flinched, but there was nowhere to run.

"Run, Jun! Run!"

"Drop your quinque; it's useless now, just GO!"

He wanted...he wanted to scream again. But as an almost completely uninjured person in the midst of moaning, shrieking men and women who had lost limbs and eyes and organs, he had no right to vent his grief.

"Tsumoto Junichiro. Look at me." Watanabe's voice was harder than quinque steel. Junichiro swallowed, tasting vomit, and obeyed.

At once, Watanabe seized him by the shoulders in a grip so hard he was left gasping for air like a dying fish, bright flashes of pain shooting up and down his arms and back. He hardly had a chance to take a single breath before he was slammed against the wall. A sharp crack bounced off the wall opposite them and returned to his ears with a ringing sound.

He realized that it was his head that had smacked against it only after the dull pain began to seep into his head. Blinking dazedly forward, he strained to catch Watanabe's words.

"You brainless idiot! Why did you do it!?"

"I..." Do it? Do what? Junichiro struggled to force words out of his mouth, finding that it was hard to breathe, like he had walked straight into a block of jello and was surrounded on all sides. The screaming he heard earlier between the thin walls was, at least, no more than an echo.

"Why did you hesitate!?"

Junichiro couldn't help it. He coughed once in response and one second later he was dry heaving onto the rank 1 investigator's shoes, shivering like he was still out there in the blizzard. A slap over his head brought his attention back to his superior sluggishly.

"I...I..."

The terrified, teary face of a girl with her hair tied in a ponytail came to mind. Her eyes were a perfectly normal brown and senseless pleas fell from her lips as Junichiro held his quinque before her trembling body.

He had a sister her age. Sayoko was fourteen-years-old and all she cared about when Junichiro came home to visit was what CD or shoddily selected clothes he had bought for her.

Watanabe's hands fell from his shoulders and Junichiro finally fell to the floor on his knees, ignoring how his joints burned.

"It's your fault that they're dead. Kanzaki and Sudo held that ghoul back and let you escape."

Junichiro had been taught not to hesitate when killing ghouls. But this was his first real field mission, his first time killing anything bigger than a rat.

He hesitated and those two took the blow that should have been meant for him. He had felt Sudo's blood splash at his fingertips as he fled. Maybe pieces of her were still stuck in his hair?

"If you feel you aren't up to the job, you can always quit." It wasn't a suggestion. Watanabe sounded less furious, but his voice was still harsh. "This job isn't for everyone. Some just can't stop seeing their human mask."

It took a moment, but Junichiro gasped and finally let out a sharp sob that caught in his throat and made his chest ache. Watanabe was allowing him to resign, allowing him to return to the oblivious and relatively peaceful civilian life.

Junichiro held his body still long enough to coordinate it and shake his head.

"I-I can't. They...then they would have died for nothing!" he screamed high enough for his throat to hurt afterwards. Watanabe kneeled down with a grunt. His right hand shot out and grasped Junichiro by the shoulder again, but he barely felt more than a throb of pain.

"Then you must stop seeing those creatures human."

"I-I don't..."

"You do. Otherwise you wouldn't have hesitated!"

The girl, scrambling away from him, calling for her mother. People screaming, Sudo's blood on his hands. He blinked the images away.

"I know it's hard to ignore. It gets even the best of us sometimes."

Junichiro spared him a half-hearted glare. Watanabe chuckled darkly and moved his hand to ruffle his hair like Junichiro was a little boy - maybe he was one, in the older man's eyes. But then his whole demeanor shifted back to deadly conviction.

"Look at it this way. Think of a termite."

"A termite...?" Junichiro mouthed, barely saying the word. His superior let out a dark chuckle.

"Alone, they're pretty harmless. They're tiny. Just one sneaking into your house isn't going to do anything. You won't even see it. But when they multiply and you finally notice you have them, you don't just leave them alone. Of course they don't harm you directly, but you need to exterminate the colony before your whole house comes down around your head and really does kill you."

Junichiro exhaled a shaky breath. He didn't even know what a termite looked like, up close. Just that they were small and they could ruin your house.

"Watanabe-san..." he murmured.

"Tsumoto-kun, ghouls are even worse than animals. What animal slaughters dozens of other animals without any intention of eating them? You saw what happened tonight. An entire town was wiped off the map by just a few ghouls. You know, down in Tokyo they've done experiments. They have that detention facility called Cochlea. They found out that ghouls don't need to eat everyday like we do. Do you get it yet?"

Junichiro noticed that his hands were shaking as he lifted them before his eyes, staring at the blood that clung to him like dried mud. None of it was his own.

"Ghouls are monsters in human skins. They kill far more than even serial killers - and there are far more ghouls than serial killers. Yet, when there's a hostage situation you don't hesitate to snipe the criminal responsible in order to save those people. You remember that overseas shooting that happened last year? That's how much death we get from a single ghoul that goes on a surplus killing."

Junichiro nodded and winced. A school shooting. It happened in another country and he had only read about it briefly on the internet. He wasn't a parent so maybe he couldn't really understand, but his mother had fallen silent for just a moment - weird for the usual, chatty her. When he left home that weekend, she hugged him and Sayoko tight, embarrassing them both.

But then he thought of that crying girl and balked.

Watanabe narrowed his eyes as if he could read his thoughts. "You know, when an animal loses its young, the mother forgets all about it soon enough. They're not like us."

He nodded. Watanabe had to be right. They looked so human it hurt, but no human had tentacles and tails that could rip even steel in two.

He remembered something hitting him in the back of the head as he was running. As he lifted a hand to touch his own head, Watanabe suddenly grabbed his wrist and forced it down. After he was assured that Junichiro wouldn't try it again, the older man got to his feet with a groan.

"Get your head checked out, just in case of a concussion. If you don't show up to work on Monday I'll take that as an indicator of your resignation."

As his superior walked away, Junichiro curled into a tight ball and cried.

"Sudo-san...Kanzaki-san...I'm sorry...I'm so sorry!" he said in a muffled scream. Burying his face into his coat made it harder to breathe, but he welcomed the sting of oxygen deprivation in his chest. "It should have been me...You shouldn't have saved a useless person like me!"

He looked up, but no one heard him scream.

Now he understood why his partner, the young man who tried to jump off the roof of their office the other week, sometimes wore an empty smile with distant eyes. Why sometimes he looked fondly at Junichiro like he pitied him.

He could return to a normal life again. Except that he couldn't. Was he supposed to leave the CCG behind him, render Kanzaki and Sudo's deaths for naught?

He thought of the people who lived in that town. Had they suffered? Had they screamed? By the time they arrived, the snow had muffled everything, even many of the bodies that had to be strewn across the streets. The snow absorbed sound - anyone who grew up all the way up north knew that.

Someone in the office had once told him, after he had been caught staring at his partner in curiosity one morning, that his partner's hometown had met a similar fate. Only a few hundred from a village of three thousand people had survived the nightmare.

Junichiro cried until he had no tears left, until he was sitting on the floor trembling, his body occasionally jerking when a dry sob seized him.

Eventually his partner appeared before him. Junichiro had to reach out to make sure his thin form wasn't a ghost. Yuzuru merely smiled and took his hand, crouching down and shuffling closer to him to avoid getting trampled.

"Hey," his partner chimed softly. "You okay?"

Junichiro nodded stiffly as Yuzuru moved to sit next to him. It was always a bit hard to believe that Yuzuru was older than him, but that was only because the other young man was short. Now he couldn't help but feel that they were dwelling in two different worlds.

"I couldn't do anything..." Junichiro mumbled forlornly. "I just froze."

Yuzuru hummed low in his throat. The vibrations could barely be called a tune.

"What can any of us do against ghouls, really?" Yuzuru said in a quiet voice. Junichiro turned to see that his partner wasn't smiling. His shoulders were slumped, too. Junichiro had always seen him as one of those people - those impenetrable investigators he heard of in rumors from the south. Well, Sapporo had a few as well, to be fair.

No one had expected this ghoul infestation to be so bad, though, so the real pros hadn't been called in. No, at this time of year those few talented investigators spent most of their time rooting through the mountains, looking for ghouls taking advantage of the bad weather.

Junichiro sighed. Not that he ever thought he could become one of those guys, but today he found out that he couldn't even lift his quinque against a ghoul, not even when his comrades had been torn apart in front of him.

Yuzuru reached out and hesitantly patted him on the head. Though Junichiro scowled, he let the older man do as he pleased.

"I thought you were really brave, but also really stupid, to become an investigator even though you were originally a civvy," Yuzuru said with a weak laugh.

"I'm nothing but a coward," Junichiro spat bitterly, curling his knees tighter to his chest. "I let my own comrades get killed because I couldn't..."

"Oh, but aren't we all cowards?"

"Huh?"

Yuzuru leaned closer to him and spoke in a whisper even though not a single soul would have bothered listening to them even if they were screaming at each other. "I'll tell you a secret. The reason why I became an investigator."

"You...it's because your family was killed by ghouls, right?"

Yuzuru nodded, something dark flickering in his eyes for a moment. He only saw it because of the bright white lighting in here. "That's certainly part of it. But I really did it because I was scared. You know, when you get orphaned and go to the academy, you aren't forced to become an investigator. Some people become doctors or something. I chose it, though, because I was scared..."

Scared...? Scared of...

Multicolored abominations called kagune, the red and black eyes and the flesh and blood that hung from their mouths. Yeah, Junichiro understood.

"I tried the civilian thing for a little while," Yuzuru admitted, making Junichiro turn to him with wide eyes.

When did he have time...?

"It was only for two weeks. You see, the problem with people like us...well, even though I went back to being a normal person, I wasn't. After you see those things, you...you never feel safe again. Anyone you meet could be a ghoul. Anyone standing next to you could be torn apart at any second. So I, I went back. To be an investigator."

Junichiro turned to the far wall and rested his head against the one at his back. It throbbed a bit now, his head, and his muscles were beginning to relax. But the next time he walked amongst a crowd of people, all wearing the same pleasant smiles, would he be able to do it without flinching or feeling like he was about to burst from the anticipation?

"Once, Watanabe-san told me this job is like going to war..." Yuzuru continued. "A lot of people who go to war return to it. For a lot of different reasons, of course. You heard mine. What's yours?"

Junichiro looked down at his hands and felt another wave of heat rush through his chest. When he spoke, his voice was already nasally.

"I can't - I won't let anyone who I call my comrade die again. I won't be useless again."

"That's impossible," Yuzuru said immediately afterwards. Then, his voice softened. It was low on the register and Junichiro sighed as it spoke to him. "But you can make yourself stronger. It might not ever be enough, but it'll give you a fighting chance. You might live another day."

"Might live another day..." Junichiro repeated. "I can't let Suda-san and Kanzaki-san's deaths go to waste..."

Even though there was no guarantee he wouldn't freeze the next time he found a young ghoul he had to kill, still...

"I'll go back to work on Monday," Junichiro said thickly. "I can't leave you alone, after all. Or you'll be the next body we're scraping off the pavement."

"Haha, that's good! That's good! Jokes are great!" Yuzuru laughed. "By the way, the jumping off the roof thing? That was kinda a joke...I don't really want to-"

"What!? You - you don't just joke about things like that!"

Life wouldn't get any easier. In the future he would have to sit on the floor of the hospital crying his eyes out over people he couldn't save again. He would have to kill that thing inside him that saw his sister when he saw a ghoul that looked like her.

But there was no other choice for him now. No going back.

I like exploring the minds of ghoul investigators.

In case it wasn't clear, Kanzaki blocked the blow for Junichiro. Suda was torn apart and sent flying, which is how some blood (and other bits...) got on Jun's head.

Junichiro (Tsumoto) and Yuzuru are from my other TG story, And the Petals Fall. This two-shot occurs when they were younger (and still lived in Hokkaido). When Jun says that Yuzuru is older, the age difference is really only about 1-2 years. Also, I forgot to write their Hokkaido dialect into this story and And the Petals Fall. D: Erm, I might go back and change that eventually.

So yeah there's one more chapter left, but it's going to be short.