Disclaimer: I do not own Tokyo Ghoul; It belongs to Ishida Sui.


Touka's mind drifts a lot these days, wandering like a soul wishing for a purpose. She sees smiles in empty coffee pots, feels irrationally cold during her summer nights, hears laughter in the room next door-even if there is no one.

She's not sure if she's gone mad; maybe she has, but she couldn't care less. Her mind has been drawing blanks more and more lately, as bleak as a winter landscape and even Nishiki - Nishiki, the fucking bastard - has had the gall to ask her if she was alright, if she needed help. Touka despised that above all, the sympathy in their eyes. It made her want to claw them out of their sockets.

She sees a different person in the mirror – gaunt, pale, empty – and often wonders why. It will be okay, she tells herself. He will return to us. But no matter how much she tells herself that, no matter how much she tries to smile; her reflection doesn't change, her longing isn't filled; and Touka has already given up and shattered every single piece of crystal glass in that lonely apartment of hers.

Like her mind, she wanders a lot too – Ward 15, Ward 13; hell, every single fucking one of them – without a care for the danger zones, for the fucked up ghouls. Let them come, she would think, baring her teeth in a feral grin and just begging for them to come and hit me, come and offer me your life.

You don't deserve to live, not if someone like him didn't.

And come they would, kakugan gleaming and kagune thirsty to spill her blood; but Touka was strong, surprisingly strong after all that had happened, and especially ruthless as she ripped their kakuhou from their bodies and left them to die, eyes unseeing and mouths stretched wide.

She didn't always go unscathed, though; once, a koukaku ghoul had nearly severed her right arm before she ended him. When she had returned, clothing bloodied and near to death's door, everyone had stitched her up wordlessly. They knew better than to say anything, because they'd already tried saying it all.

Touka's days in college were numbered now; pretty soon the school authorities were going to wonder about their decline in school population, and by then she could no longer stay, preferring to disappear completely and be written off as another missing person's case. She never enjoyed killing, never enjoyed hearing the last gurgle of blood from their lips or hearing their lungs burst from screaming; but she couldn't find it in herself to stop, couldn't find it in herself to numb her rage, to numb her hunger.

Was this how it felt like for him?

Touka is sure she's a mess, a wreck; pieces of broken glass held together by flimsy red string. If this was madness, she was at the beginning of the end, she sometimes thought. Sometimes her fingertips twitch, like they want to reach out, hold onto someone, tell him not to leave, not to leave her-

She stops, hand half-hanging in the air. She's on the balcony of her apartment, her breath misting in the night air, and she's done it once more; done it yet again. Her fingers curl into her palm, and she tries, tries not to cry, but it is so, so hard; and soon the tears are warm and sliding down her cheeks and her heart aches with the hollowness of it as she just wants to scream to the city skies for him to come back, come back to her-

Because sometimes chasing ghosts can be too much, and her empty coffee pots have seen enough.