Kaneki-kun comes into the shop by himself one day after all the fuss dies down, not to commission a new mask, but to bring me a hot cup of coffee, to ask my advice about Touka, and to catch up on what he's missed in my life during his absence. It is a sweet gesture, even if he doesn't bring food. Clive is in the back, shooting a tattoo for one of the Clowns, but he finishes up quickly enough that when he comes in to put the needles in the autoclave he catches the most pivotal question: "What is love? How do you know if you are in love?"
Clives snorts but makes no other comment.
"And would you like me to cure cancer and give you the solution for world peace while I'm at it, Kaneki-kun? You might as well ask me all the other secrets of the universe while we're at it," I say, laughing at the absurdity.
"It can't be that much of a mystery; everyone says you've been in love for years."
Clive sees that I'm sitting there with a cup in my hand and no snack foods, so he brings out my bento. Before he can leave, I pull him down into a kiss, biting his lip just enough so that I can taste his blood. Clive chuckles and goes into the back room so we can have some privacy.
"Wait?!" Kaneki-kun says, "Is he a human?"
"He is," I answer, opening the bento, "but don't hold it against him, ok? I wouldn't want to have to go toe to toe with you, but I will." There is a handful of finger foods that Clive has prepared for my long day in the shop. Right on top are my favorites. I offer the first choice of the box to Kaneki-kun who, of course, declines. I pop an eyeball in my mouth. If he isn't going to partake that's fine, but I'm not passing up my lunch.
"There's got to be a story behind that. How long have you been together?"
"Ten years, maybe eleven," I say, then turn in my chair and address the backroom. "Clive, how long have we been lovers?"
Clive – I've long since learned to pronounce his name like a native – comes to the door again, wiping his hands on a rag. There are bloody finger prints on it; oh good, he's getting dinner ready.
"Almost twelve years now, isn't it? You know me, Uta. I'm no good with dates." He smiles. We are both a lot older, and I've at least matured in those twelve years. I'm sure he's right; he pleads ignorance to make me feel better about constantly forgetting our anniversary, but he's the most put together artist I've ever met. Clive wanders away, when he sees I don't need anything further, and I turn back to Kaneki-kun.
"That's remarkable. How…?"
"Is he still alive? Because I made it very clear that anyone who puts a hand on him will bring down the wrath of Kami-sama down on their heads. It's not that strange, really, every one of us has at least one human who is important to them… Clive is mine, and I will kill to protect him."
"But, how did you meet? That's got to be a very cool story."
"You've got time to hear it now?"
"Sure."
It was unexpected that the very first walk-in customer to ever enter HySy ArtMask Studio wasn't a Ghoul. It was strange; I'd gone out of my way over the years to have as little human contact as possible. I was, in many ways, agoraphobic, and I thought that little out of the way, rundown shop would attract no traffic, except by word of mouth - word of Ghoul mouth.
It was awkward… that initial moment when I'd looked up – welding goggles still over my eyes - when the faint perfume of human sweat and unwashed body tinged with just a hint of blood caressed my nose. I was hungry, I was always hungry, and he had smelled like dinner… it made my heart beat quicken. I put my fingers to the pulse point in my neck and felt it flutter under the skin, quivering like a weak prey animal scenting a predator.
How ridiculous, I'd thought, watching the young man, his face covered in the shadow of a hoodie, I am the predator, and this short, frail boy covered in layers of clothing to look bigger than he was, was nothing but prey, but he is also a customer. I slipped a quick bite into my mouth to sate the gnawing hunger and cleared my throat.
"If you'd like to try something on –" I said, my voice timid, even though I'd tried to psyche myself into feeling confident. " – go ahead. My name is Uta, if you need anything." The boy stopped, his eyes wide and gleaming white as he felt my gaze upon him. Did I say something wrong? Can he tell I'm a Ghoul just by my voice? Gah, I'd better shut up.
The customer went back to browsing, and I adjusted the headband in my bleached hair – that's how long ago this was – and pulled the strap on the goggles tighter to make sure they wouldn't slip, revealing my eyes to the human. I went back to welding the mask I'd been working on when the kid came in.
I tracked the boy, with scent and sound, as he surveyed each mask, lingering over certain ones, almost reaching out to touch, but then drawing back at the last second.
"I do custom orders," I said, wondering why I'd even offered such a service to a human. The boy started at the sound of my soft voice, so close by, as if he'd lost track of my presence among the sea of faux faces.
"I…" the tiny little voice answered. "Thanks for letting me look." And then he darted out the door.
I didn't expect to see him again, but to make life easier for myself, I'd purchased a new pair of wraparound sunglasses that hid my Kakugan completely and took to wearing them whenever the sign on the door signaled that I was open for business - which, frankly, wasn't often.
A week later, however, I was working on the fine details of a stitched vinyl mask when I heard the shop's bell and inhaled as the familiar scent fill the room.
"Welcome back," I greeted; the boy snapped taut like he'd been yelled at to freeze by the police. I softened my tone and started again. "Did you see something the other day you couldn't live without?"
The customer leaned against the wall to the right of the door, still with his hoodie drawn up over his face. "My… boyfriend said I should… get one for when…"
"That's one reason to get a mask, certainly. So what are you thinking?"
The boy pulled back his hoodie and shook his long brown hair back from his face revealing wounds stitched closed with thick black thread. He was younger than I'd first thought, and there was something foreign about his features. He wasn't pure Japanese, and that made it harder for me to guess his age, but either way he was young. I've never claimed to be an expert in the matter of human physiology, but the smell of blood and infection told me that they were fresh wounds still struggling to heal.
"Wicked cool body mods!" I'd gushed, hoping that would put him at ease. "As you can see I'm into them too." I didn't have much back then – the lip piercing, half dozen earrings, the tattoo around my throat, and the half-finished one on my inner arm. "Yours look new? Less than two weeks old, right? Sucks your boyfriend doesn't appreciate it, though. It's very artistically done."
The kid looked at his shoes the entire time, avoiding eye contact. "I'm just looking for something…"
"So," I slowed down, noticing the chatter wasn't putting the customer at ease, "what would you like, a partial or a full face mask?"
"Half, I think. Nothing too expensive, or -"
"Mine aren't cheap. They're not something a person buys on a whim. Do you really want one?"
"I think I need one. Can we work out a payment plan, or something?"
"Depends on what you want. Come sit down and I'll measure you, and we'll talk about what you can afford."
The boy perched on the chair like he would spring out of it at any moment. I took the basic measurements and chatted about the weather.
"Do you mind if I take a quick picture?" I asked, after the measurements were done.
"A picture?"
"Yeah, I can do with only the measurements, but with a picture it'll help me figure out the design better, since you can't live in my shop until it's done." My stomach growled audibly and the kid laughed a little, the first sign of a personality he'd displayed.
"Ok," he said, and closed his eyes while I snapped a series of close-ups.
"Come back tomorrow, same time," I told him, tapping the boy on the knee. "I'll have a design for you to look at."
"I started fasting around noon the next day and as soon as my Kakugan wore away, I immediately regretted my decision. Hell, without it, my eyesight was worse than a blind man – probably even worse now, but I wanted this customer to see the whites of my eyes, maybe then he'd stop shaking like a cold chihuahua."
"I've never seen you without your Kakugan," Kaneki-kun says. "It's hard to even imagine what you'd look like."
"He's not as pretty without it," Clive says as he comes back into the room. He's got a plate of dark red cherries and a bottle of Pocari Sweat. "Since you're telling our story again, I figured I should join you."
"You make it sound like I tell everyone," I laugh, stealing the plumpest, reddest cherry from his plate.
"Go ahead, if you want to be sick," he taunts. I break the stem off and toss it back to him. I put it in my mouth and after a few seconds, tie the thing into a knot with my talented tongue. I present it to Kaneki-kun. Clive laughs again, and grabs it from between my lips. "Like he wants anything that's been in your mouth."
"Many wonderful and delightful things have passed these lips," I smirk, "But, I digress…"
Right before three, the time the customer had appeared both times, I got right up to the mirror and peered at my milky eyes. Yup, two eyes, still there. He slunk in at 3:15 and I greeted him with a warm smile. "Let me show you what I've come up with." I motioned for him to sit and then gathered up my sketch pad. Just as he was about to sit down, the boy's phone rang, and he jumped away as if his pants were on fire.
I moved to the work counter and began stitching on the new mask I was making for Renji, but I could still hear every word that came out of the cheap mechanical speaker of the cell.
"Where the hell are you? I'm fucking hungry and I'm done waiting on you. you're gonna have to buy your own damn dinner, cause I'm not saving anything for your lazy ass," the angry voice on the other side yelled.
"I'm at that mask shop. Remember I'd told you I had to stop there on the way –"
"Well, you'd better get your ass home by the time I'm done eating!"
"Yes, of course. I have to work out a payment plan and then I'll head out, I promise –"
"So you won't even get one tonight? That's bullshit."
"It'll be fine. You won't have to look –"
"Whatever," the voice said, and then I heard the bleating of a disconnected phone.
The boy continued. "Ok, I'll be home soon. Bye." Keeping his back to me for a few more seconds, he took a deep breath and folded the phone away into his pocket. He turned and seeing me standing on the far side of the shop, walked over.
"I'm thinking something like this," I said, swinging the sketch pad around to show a half mask with the boys own features carefully wrought in pastel colored pencil.
"That's… beautiful, perfect, Uta-sama. How did you even know?"
"I noticed which masks caught your attention the other day," I shrugged. "I'm glad you like it, but you can drop the formality, just call me Uta." I leaned in, and took a deep breath, while not trying to seem too creepy. He smelled divine, like raw meat. I shook my head and backed away.
"Is it like a tattoo, where you make the pattern in the reverse and then flip it?"
"Flip it?" I asked, my head tilted, studying the kid's face.
"Yeah, flip it."
The smile fell off my face as the pieces connected between the words we'd exchanged and those I'd overheard. "Oh!" I put my hand up in front of my mouth, thinking about all the things I'd said, thinking that the scars were a choice. "You didn't do this to yourself. It's not a statement."
"No, I didn't. It's not a statement, but rather a punishment."
"Oh, me and my big, fat, stupid mouth, I'm so sorry. You should have stopped me-"
"It's ok, it's not your fault. It was nice for a change that someone thought they were… I don't know, artistic."
"Did a Ghoul do that?"
"A ghoul?" He laughed. "No, I've never even seen a ghoul. 'Sides, its only human that are this cruel to each other, right?"
"I don't know about that."
"Every time I see the news or read an article about a ghoul attack, it seems very clinical. They kill for food, right? Like a lion or a bear, but humans... humans are the real sick fucks in this world. Maybe an occasional ghoul goes crazy – like a human serial killer – but that seems to be the exception, not the rule. At least if it had been a ghoul, I would be dead now and not have to worry about looking at myself in the mirror every day."
"Oh, well, I…" I stumbled, my tongue tripping over itself.
"Um, anyway...," the kid looked around for any other conversation, and his eyes fell to my left arm. "Did you design your tattoos?"
"Yeah, uh, yes," I say, smiling again, glad for the sudden change in topic, even if I had to bumble my way into it.
"Who shot it?" the kid asked.
"Shot it?"
"Did the work?"
"Oh," I say with a laugh. "I did it myself. I bought a cheap gun, and well, it didn't come out as good as I wanted it to."
"Tattoos rarely do. Even if you get a professional to do it. So, how much is this gonna cost me?" the boy asked, leaning over the design.
"I charge a hundred thousand yen, and I can have it done in two days."
"Shit," the kid said, and took a beat-up looking wallet from his pocket. He searched through it, once, then twice, as if the number of yen inside would suddenly change. "I might be able to get fifty thousand yen by the end of the week and the rest by month's end. Will that work? Obviously, I don't expect the mask until you have all your money, but work's been slow recently and I'm not sure if I can get the money any faster."
"When you give me half, I'll start working." I cleaned up the counter, putting the sketch pad out of reach. "Are you sure you want to wait that long?"
"I'd rather have it in two days," he sighed. "Hey, are you willing to work out a trade for it?"
"What kind of trade?"
"I'm a tattoo artist, I could fix that tat you're not happy with if you show me what you were going for?"
"You're a tattoo artist?" I asked, knowing my expressive little eyebrow rose to their full height.
"Yeah, I work in a shop over in the Twentieth Ward."
"How many tattoos would a hundred thousand yen get me? I'm very willing to work out an even exchange for the mask."
"The shop charges fifteen thousand yen for seven and a half centimeters, so…" he looked up and started counting on his fingers, muttering to himself. "Well, it would really depend on how big you want your tattoos. Six small ones, three big ones, something like that sound ok?"
"Oh, darling, you have a deal. Let me show you what I want and where I want it…"