"Oi, shitty Nishiki! How do you know you like like someone?"
Nishiki almost dropped the tray loaded with dirty cups at Touka's unexpected question.
"What?" he squeaked, voice embarrassingly high. "Where's that come from all of a sudden?"
Why was she coming to him for love advice all of a sudden?
Touka blushed.
"I-it's just ... a friend in school. She's not sure if she likes a guy like that because they were friends for some time. So I promised to ask someone who would know. You like that human girl, don't you?" she asked, voice hard but the pink colour adorning her face softened the bite.
Nishiki tried hard to reign in the chuckle threatening to spill out of his throat and he almost succeeded. Touka was too preoccupied with being embarrassed that she didn't hear him anyway.
"Well, I do like Kimi," he admitted and internally, he couldn't help but think about his girlfriend, his heart beating faster in absolute love as he thought of her gentle personality and breath-taking smile. "So I could help you." He saw Touka's eyes lighting up with relief. "If I wanted to. But I don't so you're out of luck."
Touka's face fell as fast as the blush had set it aflame just moments before and this time Nishiki couldn't stop the amused laugh ripping from his chest.
"You're an asshole. Why do I even bother," she grumbled and made to get back out to the customers. Judging from how her shoulders sagged in disappointment she had actually hoped to get advice from him. Suddenly, he felt almost guilty for brushing her off so cruelly.
Nishiki silently contemplated his options and decided that offering Touka a few choice words wouldn't kill him after all.
"Fine, I'll help you out but you'll do my share of the dishes today," he said, hands propped on his hips and eyebrows rising in a challenging manner. He expected her to sneer at him and shrug it off at his condition. He didn't expect her to take his offer.
"Fine," Touka said with a sigh. "I'll do it. Now tell me how you know you're in love with someone."
Nishiki's lips twitched up into a smirk at her plea and the utter defeat in her voice. She was obviously desperate if she would ask him and do the dished for an answer. If he hadn't been sure before, he would have been by now. There was no friend in school she was asking for.
"Aww, who is little Touka crushing on?" He pulled her into a playful headlock and ruffled her hair with his free hand, earning a scandalized shriek from her. "They grow up so fast, one moment they act all 'don't touch me!' and the next they want to get in someone's pants."
"I don't want to get in anyone's pants!" Touka shouted at him and even though they were shielded from their customers' eyes back here, they could hear the room go completely silent. They must have heard her screaming.
"Alright," Nishiki relented and let her go before her rising voice would alert anyone to come to the back and check up on them. "We can talk later, since you're going to close the shop tonight and I'm unexpectedly free then."
Touka growled.
"You shitty –"
"Now now, kids," they heard Koma's voice drift over to them. "You should get back to work before the Devil Ape has to come out and make you."
Nishiki and Touka just glared at their co-worker but in the end, they did as he ordered them and went back to work. They didn't talk about their deal for the rest of the day.
##
"So," Touka started as she scrubbed at the last pile of dishes. The skin on her hands was already starting to wrinkle up and her nails started to turn see-through and weak. Why they still didn't have a dishwasher was beyond her, they would get good use out of one with these amounts of dirty dishes.
"So what?" Nishiki asked, mouth pulled into an obnoxious grin as he sipped his coffee and watched her do his work. "You have to get a little specific, dearest Touka."
He could almost hear her teeth grinding.
"So, Nishiki." He could almost hear the shitty attached to it. "How do you know you're in love with someone?"
"Aah," he sighed overdramatically and took another sip, slow and exaggerated. Her gaze was following him from the corner of her visible eye and Nishiki dragged his sip out, swallowing noisily and with a loud hum.
"Young love," he started and smirked internally. "Isn't it great?"
"You know what, I changed my mind." Touka shook the dishwater off her fingers and reached for a cloth to dry off. "I don't want your help. You can finish your work yourself."
She was about to storm off towards the changing room when Nishiki huffed a heavy breath.
"I'm just messing with you," he said almost apologetically. It was too hard not to mess with her when she got so spectacularly fed up with every little jab of his. "Talking about these kind of things isn't so easy."
"No shit," Touka grunted and crossed her arms over her chest, staring at him expectantly.
"I'm still surprised you dared to indirectly tell me about your crush," Nishiki remarked with a little wiggle of his eyebrows.
Touka blushed again but this time it seemed to be caused by equal amounts of anger as well as embarrassment.
"It's not my fucking crush, shitty Nishiki!" she shouted at him but the way her eyes couldn't fix him and the shaking of her hands revealed her obvious lie.
"Yeah, I know, it's a friend at school, I gotcha." Nishiki took of his glassed and rubbed his eyes, sighing heavily.
"It's hard to say how you realise when you really like someone. For me, I just knew it one day and there was no doubt about it."
He put his glasses back on and looked at Touka who seemed to listen attentively to his every word. He felt bad for not being able to provide better advice, seeing her all hopeful like this. "I guess I'm not the best person to talk to. Maybe someone else –"
"How does it feel?" Touka interrupted him with furious determination in her eyes. "What does being in love feel like for you?"
He had to actually think hard about that one. It hadn't been an off-handed comment when he'd told her it wasn't an easy topic to talk about. It was incredibly difficult, all the more because he couldn't quite translate what he felt for Kimi into actual words that would make sense to someone else.
But Touka really went out of her way with this conversation. She was being almost vulnerable here, open to his words and showing a part of herself she'd never shown to him, so the least he could do was try and make sense.
"With Kimi ... I just feel at ease with her. I can just be with her and be myself." Nishiki's heart soared at the thought of Kimi's acceptance of everything that he was and everything he couldn't be. She didn't judge, she only ever supported him.
"There's no need to pretend when I'm with her. I can just let go."
Touka was hanging off his lips, soaking up his words.
"So you just want to ... be with her? All the time?"
Nishiki thought about that question for a moment. Wasn't it obvious to her that wanting to be with someone indicated some kind of positive feelings? Then again, Touka was still young, she didn't have any experience with this sort of thing as far as he knew.
"Yeah, I want to be with her as much as I can," he answered patiently. He could have teased her again for her inexperience but he remembered being like her once, clumsy and lost with all things romantic. So he continued.
"It's not always peace, though. Other times I get really nervous when she's around. My hearts starts beating really fast and my fingers go numb when she smiles."
Nishiki couldn't hide the fond smile taking over his lips at the thought of Kimi's soft features melting into an adoring smile just for him and his heart skipped a beat.
"I know it sounds really stupid but –"
"Thank you!" Touka said in a breathless tone and darted out of the room before Nishiki could even react to her words.
"Ah," he mused, his grin growing wider. "I guess it's for the best I didn't get to the saucy parts."
##
"What an idiot," Touka mumbled into her pillow that night, as she replayed her conversation with Nishiki. "That's not being in love, that's just caring about someone, right?"
Her pillow, of course, didn't respond to her question and Touka groaned in frustration. Nishiki hadn't helped sorting out her thoughts at all. If it had done anything, it was make her feel even more confused.
Wasn't it only natural that she wanted Kaneki to be by her side again? They had spent so much time in the few months prior to his disappearance, of course she had gotten used to him being around. Of course she missed him now.
That wasn't love; that was routine.
My heart beats really fast...
Of course her heart raced when Kaneki was around, he was infuriating and frustrating. High blood pressure and her heartbeat thumping high in her throat was a daily occurrence, just like rolling her eyes whenever he emitted that nervous chuckle of his or flicking his forehead with her finger when he got an order wrong again.
I can just let go...
The fact that Touka had always been herself when with Kaneki didn't mean anything. It was easier, to not pretend to be something she wasn't, like she had to at school and even at work. She had shown him her true nature early on in their acquaintanceship and so had he – there was no need for pretences.
People give gifts to people they really like...
Hinami's words were ringing in her ears again. Touka had thought she was talking about the signed copy of some book by that weird author they liked Hinami had intended to give to Kaneki, but the girl's smile had been uncharacteristically cheeky, almost mischievous, as she had said it and Touka's stomach had done a weird flip.
"None of that means anything," she grumbled as she finally slipped into sleep, clutching the rabbit key chain in her hand to her chest.
##
It did mean something.
She became painfully aware of it as one night while wandering around aimlessly, she crossed paths with a figure clad in a dark leather outfit and a familiar toothy grin on its masked face.
Touka felt all the blood drain from her face, her hands going numb with building anxiety. She hadn't seen him since that afternoon at the bridge, where she'd messed up the only chance of him coming back home.
And she just froze.
She wanted to move, she wanted to approach him and ask what he was doing here, why he was still staying away from Anteiku, she wanted to scream at him some more so the strained feeling in her chest would finally burst and go away but – she couldn't even blink.
Kaneki was the first to react, taking of his mask before he spoke.
"Touka?" he asked, his voice barely above a whisper but Touka was still so attuned to him that she heard him perfectly well anyway. "What are you doing here?"
The question hung heavy in the air, suspended in tension and expectations, until Touka couldn't take the bristling air of it any longer.
"Just ... walking." She decided to go with the truth, in the end. She was still reeling from bumping into him so randomly, without any warnings whatsoever, she couldn't have come up with a convincing lie anyway. "Walking and clearing my mind."
Kaneki hummed quietly in apparent understanding and nodded. His mismatched eyes, one grey and the other a fiery red, wouldn't meet hers but Touka was sure he was watching her.
"Your exams are coming up soon, right?"
"Yeah." Touka sighed, ignoring the way her stomach clenched at his words. "That, too."
It had slipped out before she could have nipped it in the bud, filling the silence with endless implications of meanings Touka was too embarrassed to think about but Kaneki didn't seem fazed.
He just broke out into that tiny kind smile she hadn't seen in almost seven months and suddenly the dam broke, the taut ball of uncharted feelings in her chest bursting like a bubble and her mind went blank.
It meant something and it wanted to get out.
"I think I'm in love with you!" Touka blurted out, all of her inhibitions about saying it out loud pushed to the back of her mind by the fuzzy feeling taking over her torso, then her limbs, flooding her with prickling warmth.
Who knew when they would meet again after tonight. Who could possibly know if there was even going to be another again. She needed to get it out there, she needed him to hear it before she could change her mind and once again convince herself that she was being stupid, that there was nothing there in the way her heart would flutter when she thought of his gentle eyes or the way her lips twitched up at the corners when thinking of his smile.
"You ... what?" Kaneki said lamely, his mask dangling forgotten from his limp fingers and smile slipping from his lips as if it had never been there in the first place.
Anxiety hit her full force once again, her throat closing up and her sight narrowing down, going dark around the edges.
She took a deep breath to calm herself down.
She failed.
"I said I think I'm in love with you," Touka continued anyway, her voice brittle and shaky. She had made it this far already, backtracking wasn't an option anymore. Kaneki would never believe it, if Touka had tried to play it off it as a simple joke.
There was another pause, pregnant with insecurity and uncertainness.
"You think?"
He still wouldn't look at her, instead his eyes were fixed on the ground.
"Yes, I think because I'm not sure and I'm terrified!"
Finally she couldn't keep her hands from shaking anymore and before she realised, she was shivering from head to toe in nervous anticipation. Her stomach felt weird again, like she had eaten another one of Yoriko's creations that looked delicious but tasted rotten.
Fitting, she thought. Her feelings for Kaneki were a lot like that. From books and movies and even Nishiki, she knew that love was something to strive for, something to hold dear and treasure, like a precious gift. A gift that could turn one's life upside down in the best way possible, enrich and lighten it up like nothing else ever could.
And yet, in their world, a world of war between two species, love meant weakness. Love meant pain.
Love meant another soft spot that could and would be exploited.
Already, just a few days after fully realising her feelings, it left a foul taste in her mouth. Her feelings were bound to be left unrequited, with Touka being herself and Kaneki being Kaneki. They would drift by each other, like two ships passing at night as the saying goes, Touka too inexperienced with anything that wasn't handling pain and Kaneki too caught up in his quest for answers.
Even worse, however, was the prospect of her feelings being used against her.
Kaneki's voice was what ripped her from images of his broken body lying to her feet, a faceless Dove wiping blood from his quinque as he laughed at her pain.
"Why are you terrified?"
Touka gaped at him.
She had just declared her love for him and that was the detail he got hung up on? Scoffing, she shrugged her shoulders.
"Stupid Kaneki," she mumbled and the insult tingled on her lips, like a sweet memory from times long past, yet her stomach twisted into agitated knots.
Don't leave me. – I won't.
Touka wanted to tell him, explain why she was scared as all hell when she just thought about her feelings, but she couldn't. She couldn't tell Kaneki how much his empty and easily broken promise had hurt her, the last straw that broke her already abused back. She couldn't tell him how much she dreaded him being hurt like every other person in her life she had ever cared about.
Nishiki had been right, she hated to admit – talking about these kind of things was hard.
Still, Kaneki seemed to somehow understand what she didn't say and that same small smile was back on his lips, almost fond looking but overshadowed by sadness.
"I see," he said, a quiet whisper full of regrets and Touka's stomach clenched some more. He raised his mask to his face and she knew what was going to come, it had happened before and it would happen again and again.
Everyone ended up leaving her, after all.
This time, though, she would understand if he left her. She had ambushed him with her confession, anyone would run from that.
But for the second time that night, he surprised her with eyes softly crinkling at the corners, indicating his trademark smile now hidden beneath gruesome fake teeth.
"When I'm back at Anteiku, we can talk about all of this," Kaneki said as he fastened the straps of his mask so it sat snugly on his face, his features masked by heavy leather only to expose his activated kakugan. "Maybe you won't be terrified then, anymore."
Touka stared at him incredulously, her brain trying to process his words but they didn't quite compute.
"What?" she asked stiffly, an awkward croak that sounded embarrassing to her own ears. But Kaneki didn't react, he didn't laugh or scoff or roll his eyes. He simply held her gaze and inclined his head.
"You're coming back to Anteiku?" she finally dared to ask after a minute of piercing silence.
His answer was simple, just two words, so similar to those words that had shattered her trust in him just seven months earlier, before he jumped onto the roof of the adjoining building, leaving Touka on her own again.
This time she didn't feel alone.
This time, his words rang in her ears like a sweet benediction.
I will.
##
And he did.
He just didn't come back to her like she had imagined it in quiet moments, the sweet but awkward boy she remembered and hoped to see again someday, an embarrassed smile pulling at his lips and left eye hidden by an eyepatch.
Instead, she watched his every move, more confident and at ease than she had ever seen him, joking with his friends like all the hardships of his life had never happened. He seemed healthy and happy.
Kaneki, now Sasaki, didn't recognise her as it seemed but his presence still filled that gaping raw hole his disappearance had left in Touka.
For the first time in three years, Touka could feel her reeling mind slow down.
For the first time in three years, Touka felt somewhat at peace.
