-Well, I have recently found the emotional hell that is Tokyo Ghoul and naturally, I'm writing a fanfic about it. All I can really say is that it's strange, and I have limited knowledge thanks to only watching the first season and a bit of other episodes and clips. But I'm trying my best to get out of a writer's block, so I hope you can bear with me. As for the eventual relationship...that's a strange one too, but just please don't hate me for it and we can experience this weird piece of fanfiction together. Leave a review if you wanna let me know what you think!

PS: the poem in the beginning is titled The Universe's Schemes and was written my me, at 11:00 at night. It is the result of exposure to fanart and feels, so enjoy!-

Smile Instead of Shatter

Won't you come to the place where we met?

Mirror to mirror,

Reality to illusion, seeking, wanting, aching, trying,

But never finding

Won't you look in the glass and smile instead of shatter?

When the days are as black as nights, sometimes the universe tears itself

into smithereens

for you.

Sometimes strange occurrences are not so impossible

Hearts mend

Mirrors repair themselves

Time bends

...

So won't you come to the place where we met?

XxxxxxX

He went to sleep that night a monster. When he awoke, he was still quite a monster, but in a brighter, sunnier, stranger world.

Sometimes, people could experience a sense of wrongness. That twisting feeling in your gut that tells you that the normal illusion around you is not right. That was exactly what Kaneki felt when he woke up that morning. He didn't remember where he'd been the night before. There was no sense of a drunken hangover to blame. He wished there was. A hangover could easily explain the unknown, beige ceiling he was staring at, attached to the unknown room around him and the unknown mess inside of him.

Laying on his back in bed, he pushed the hair out of his face, feeling sweat beading at the roots nervously. He didn't remember anything that he'd done for the last...few days? Weeks? Months? He could remember as far back as...Rize, Anteiku, Tsukiyama, Hinami, Jason, torture, awakening, blood, joining, leaving, then...

Nothing.

He could picture himself walking away from Touka, from all of his friends, but after that, it disappeared into a blur.

Swallowing, he cautiously sat up. The sheets were still made, tucked into the corners of the mattress like the white corners of envelopes. He was laying atop them, in torn pants and an equally-disheveled black shirt. A mask lay forgotten on the floor some feet away, grinning sightlessly up at him. In a gut-wrenching moment, he realized that he was wearing the clothes he'd worn during Jason's tor—

"God." It choked out on a gasp, as he clamped a hand over his mouth to stop a rush of sickness. There was still wrongness. He didn't know how he knew, but he knew that he'd done things after the torture, gone on from Anteiku, but he couldn't remember it. Now he was here and it was like it had happened yesterday, and

He remembered what he'd dreamed about the night before.

Of course, out of all things, he would remember that. Because she had come. She always came.

But it had been different.

Kaneki, she had purred, stroking her fingertips over his hair, almost soothing. You can't stay here, darling. I wish you would, but you're being called back. I think you've made much too big of a mistake this time. What a pity. But you and I are specks compared to the universe and what it has planned for you. She had giggled, light like glass shards tinkling across a hard floor. Though I have to say, I'm surprised by its recent scheme. A bit scandalous, don't you think? She tossed the question up to the stars, as though they could hear her teasings. Then she leaned down to him and held out a tiny, snowy flower. Tell him I said hi, darling.

That did it.

Kaneki stumbled off the bed like a mad person, dashed down a little hall and was relieved when the first door he opened showed a bathroom. Collapsing inside, he emptied his stomach into the toilet, tiled floor cold against his knees. Everything hurt and there was a place in his chest that ached as though his heart had been twisted around. He had never experienced anything like it in his life.

"Where am I?" he rasped into empty air, body shaking with tremors. Nobody answered. Tears burned hot in his eyes. Out of all of the things to bother him now, it was a sudden sense of loneliness. He was confused, sick, and hurting, and utterly utterly alone.

He pushed away from the toilet and backed up to one wall. Resting there, he curled his knees up under his chin. Across from him, the open door mocked. He was shivering, crumbling in on himself. He buried his face in his folded arms and shut his eyes tightly. He tried to focus on breathing slow and deep, absently cracking a few knuckles on his left hand. Gradually, the jittery nerves calmed somewhat and allowed him to think.

Okay. So he wasn't at Anteiku. Judging by the plain dullness of this place, he guessed he was at an apartment. Granted, this one hadn't been filled with much, other than a few basic things, like the bed and the shower curtain to his left. He couldn't remember the last couple of weeks. He was alone. Right.

Inhaling deeply, he held his breath for a second before letting it out in a decisive exhale. The only problem he could hope to solve right now was the "alone" one. That could be done very easily, but it would mean going back to old haunts.

"I can handle it," he muttered to himself, thumb curling to crack his index finger.

So he would find some old haunts and hopefully, answers. There was just one other thing he had to handle before that.

There was no way in hell he was showing up at Anteiku looking like a homeless, mentally troubled person.

Even if he might actually be one.