Disclaimer: I own nothing. Not a thing.
Author's Note: This is a part of the HideBigBang event on Tumblr (definitely go check it out!). I'm also working with some amazing artists, Robin (hidewari) and Journey (Journey505), so that's more of an incentive to check out this event!
As for the story itself, it will be contained in a few chapters, so this alternate universe won't be as fleshed out as it could be, but hopefully everything will still make sense. If you have any questions, please let me know!
They call them ghouls—angels of death that feast upon the living. The legends around them were mysterious at best and their general appearance was highly contested. They were only visible in the brief moments before and after they fed, but all witnesses seemed to agree on one thing: dark wings and even darker eyes.
Hide encountered his first ghoul when he was four. He turned his head just in time to catch a pair of wings disappear around a corner. He tugged his interlaced fingers from his mother's hand and chased after the specter, ignoring his mother's terrified cries behind him. He stumbled to a stop at the mouth of an alleyway. A beautiful lady reached forward and cupped the cheek of a slouched, grubby old man. She hummed slightly, a soft, soothing tune, and he leaned into her palm before falling still. He seemed so at peace; four-year-old Hide thought he was sleeping.
The lady's wings unfurled further, shimmering and pulsing with a dark red energy. Hide watched with parted lips, hypnotized by the otherworldly loveliness of it. He took a step forward, splashing through a dirty puddle. The lady turned her head, gave Hide a sad smile, and faded from view, her dark eyes still glowing with the same red light. Moments later, his mother rounded the corner and wrapped her arms around him, murmuring gentle reprimands into his hair.
When she noticed the old man slumped against the wall, who hadn't stirred despite his noisy visitors, she gave a warbling squawk and pulled Hide from the alleyway. He tried to wriggle from her grasp to tell her about the pretty angel who had sung the old man to sleep, but his mother wouldn't let go of him until they were safely home. By the time he crossed the threshold to their front door, four-year-old Hide had forgotten most of the details about his encounter.
However, he never forgot the rippling of wings unfolding, the hazy glow that surrounded the woman's palm. He remained vigilant as he aged, waiting for the next beautifully tragic death to catch his eye.
"Takizawa—tell us what we have here."
"Uhm, well, it's a dead body, sir." Takizawa winced before he even finished talking. It wasn't a good sign.
Amon pinched the bridge of his nose and Hide paused for a moment, wondering if it was worth the effort to record such an obvious observation. He shrugged and wrote it down anyway. No harm in being thorough. He was their scribe, after all.
"Perhaps a little more?" Akira knew better than to make sharp remarks at a crime scene, but Hide could tell she was bristling under the summer heat. Sweltering summer days—always the highlight of the homicide season. "Surely you called us here for a reason."
Hide almost felt sorry for the guy, he really did. Takizawa was their Tokyo Police Department contact for suspicious murders, but the competition for contracts was so fierce, sometimes he didn't even have the chance to scout out a scene before calling them.
"The call came in about fifteen minutes ago for a dead body. I got here right when you did," he finally admitted, earning a clipped sigh from Akira and a frown from Amon.
Dutifully, Hide kept scribbling down a brief transcript of their conversation. It kept him from looking at the body until he could hear more details about it. Even after two years, he still couldn't fight the icky churn in his gut when the bodies came from violent ends or spend too much time in the sun.
Some homicide detective.
"I didn't see any immediate signs of trauma, but you know I can't see the ghoul stains either. Thought I'd be safe rather than sorry and call it in before the rest of the department came."
No trauma? Hide lowered his pen and spared a glance at the body. Seidou was right—the man looked like he had fallen asleep against the wall. He looked to be middle-aged, perhaps a decade or two older than Amon.
Oh, wait. Oops. Never mind. Hide spotted a few drops of crimson at the man's fingertips, his dark coat unnaturally shiny against the summer sun. It was the presence of the coat that initially caught Hide's attention. The buttons were misaligned and it was far too hot for a summer day. Perhaps a hasty attempt to hide a fatal wound?
Hide wrinkled his nose. Ghouls didn't try to cover up their actions. This seemed far more manmade. He flipped back the hem of the coat with the tip of his pen, exposing a damp crimson undershirt.
"Ghouls don't usually stab people?"
Seidou's gaze dropped to the crouching Hide. His shoulders slumped. "No, they don't." He turned away with a huffy sigh, already reaching for his radio to call in the code for a non-ghoul homicide.
"Here, let me look." Hide backpedaled away from the body and Akira took his place while pulling on a pair of rubber gloves. She pursed her lips and tilted the dead man's head to the side and exposed his mottled neck, already blistering posthumously in the sun. Seeing nothing, she gently leaned his head back against the wall and tugged on his shirt collar, exposing the base of his throat.
Hide watched her work, momentarily in awe as he was during each of their investigations. Akira served as their spotter, able to find the marks left by ghouls. Although she fervently denied it as a gift, it allowed their small team to operate more successfully than most.
Upon Hide's assignment to their team, they were classified as the highest ranked SSS investigative unit, comprised of a spotter, striker, and scribe. However, this designation, bestowed on them by a mysterious benefactor who signed Hide's bimonthly paychecks, was as bureaucratic as it got. Usually, they were left on their own to investigate, collaborating more with the local police than fellow ghoul investigators.
Amon, arms crossed and watching from a safe distance, was their striker. A metal suitcase rested by his boots, one latch always unbuckled to expedite any necessary response. He specialized in protection-against human criminals and any corporal ghouls they encountered while on a case.
Akira tightened her lips as she pried off the dead man's blood-drenched coat. Even from several feet away, Hide could smell the thick scent of death rising off the man, now that the smothering coat had been removed. Akira never seemed bothered by death, but he supposed that was because she had been surrounded by it all her life.
(After all, tragedy was Hisashi Ogura's popular theory behind why only certain people could see the aftereffects of ghouls.)
Akira cleared her throat and Hide jumped to attention.
Right. His role.
He fished a camera out of his satchel and snapped a few photos of the scene before Akira pulled the man's thin white shirt open. As their team's scribe, he was responsible for recording everything they did during investigations. Even as a triple-ranked ghoul investigative team, they still weren't official members of the Tokyo Police Department and Hide's job was to make sure the integrity of the scene was as well-preserved as possible for the forensic investigators.
It was less risky than Amon's job and he was fairly safe from blood spatter and other goopy body fluids, but his hand would still cramp terribly by the end of each case.
And forget small talk with subway passengers or family gatherings. Before he bought a special camera dedicated to death, he used to snap photos on his personal phone. It backfired horrendously when his nephews had figured out his password last winter.
Amateur. Hide shook his head as he took another photo, zooming in on the dead man's frozen expression. Brow furrowed, lips parted. He looked vaguely inconvenienced, like he was suffering from a bout of indigestion or he left his wallet at home.
But that's not the case here. The bulge from a wallet protruded from his side hip pocket. What kind of hit-and-run thief would leave a wallet?
"See anything?"
Akira shook her head. "I don't see any ghoul stains. This one was an entirely human murder. A ghoul didn't kill him directly and there aren't signs to suggest this was instigated by one either." Hide nodded before copying her words in his notebook.
When he first joined their team, he asked what the marks looked like since he couldn't see them himself. Akira had tried to draw them, but they only looked like messy sunflowers, dark in the center with light tendrils fanning out around. Although each ghoul had their own distinctive mark, they all reminded her of flowers, she admitted.
Some flowers, she explained, looked full. Those were the marks left from a ghoul that sucked the life from the victim. Unfortunately for Hide, those cases were most common and the most difficult. A random victim and an ethereal ghoul, only bound to their reality for the few brief moments they need to feed before disappearing again. How could they charge a ghost for murder?
Other flowers, however, were shriveled and darkened, as if they had wilted days after their prime. These marks were still made by ghouls, but twisted monsters who delighted in watching humans destroy one another. An identical copy of each mark could be found on the human murderer, their minds twisted into madness and violence by a supernatural touch. These ghoul stains were like homing beacons, drawing the two individuals—the unwitting victim and the possessed killer—closer and closer until the former met a violent end.
It was these cases in which their little team specialized. Even if they couldn't stop the ghouls, they could at least stop the murderers.
But cases like this, where there was no evidence of ghoul involvement at all?
Hide sighed and tucked his pen back in his notebook. It was up to Takizawa and his fellow officers then. Not their problem anymore.
Not for the first time, Kaneki wished being a ghoul came with an instruction manual. He pursed his lips and watched the blurry world pass him by, just as it did for as long as he could remember.
That was a lie. He knew how far back he could remember—roughly a year. His current and only memories began when the Reaper assigned Touka-chan to be his partner, only hours after he woke up to a strange, muffled new world.
Kaneki scratched the bridge of his nose, waiting for his partner to emerge from an alleyway across the street. He knew there had to be something from before, but even when he squeezed his eyes so tightly that they burned, he could never dredge up the memories. Instead, he always came away with a blinding headache that could only be remedied by feeding. After a while, he stopped trying.
The Reaper, though always treating Kaneki with a distanced kindness, never offered any answers. He sent them out each week with their assignments, maintaining the same patient smile as Kaneki and Touka left to reap.
Touka-chan was similarly unhelpful. Either she had gotten over her desire to know her past or she simply didn't care anymore. Kaneki perked up when she reappeared. Her dark wing folded back towards her shoulder blade. She nearly clipped a passing dogwalker who was too invested in his tangled leash to notice Death brushing past. She stalked across the street, not even bothering to look for cars. After all, they wouldn't stop for her either.
Kaneki silently marveled at the moment—a series of almosts and near misses—but made sure he kept his lips firmly pressed together. Gaping like an idiot at oblivious humans made him a frequent target for Touka's teasing. Part of him wished that he could be seen all the time, so he could participate in these little moments too, but he feared the humans' reactions.
Very rarely did they come across humans who wanted to be reaped. The condemned could always see their approach. Most ran or begged for mercy or cried, trying to stave off the inevitable. The few who greeted him with a smile, often the elderly or the sickly, remained in his memory, motivating him each time they encountered an unjust case. But grateful humans were few and far between.
Touka had just finished their last assignment for the day and judging by her soured expression, he knew better than to ask.
"Last one?"
She grunted in response.
"That means we're free for the day then?"
She grunted again. It was a flexible arrangement, flexible being a term Kaneki never thought to associate with death. Once they completed their assignments for the day, they could spend the rest of their time however they wished.
It felt cruel at times, other times liberating. Kaneki would savor these moments where he could walk among humans, observing their bittersweet lives without feeling the pressure to take them away.
He and Touka walked towards the tiny coffee shop they used as their meeting point, just as they did every evening when they were through with their assignments. He lifted a hand in a half-hearted wave as she split away from him, walking in the opposite direction. Kaneki had never asked her how she spent her free time. He figured it would be too impolite of a question.
Kaneki waited outside the door of the coffee shop until a human pushed the door open. She smiled and held the door as her child toddled across the threshold. Kaneki trailed closely behind, always deriving a strange pleasure from performing such human acts. He even thanked the mother, earning a dry chuckle from across the room. It rose above the muffled din, sharp and clear against Kaneki's ears.
Kaneki's eyes darted towards the sound, though he knew it would be another ghoul. Ghouls were always easy to spot in crowds, glowing and vibrant compared to the gray-tinged humans. Neither Touka nor the others ever commented on the phenomenon, but Kaneki supposed it had something to do with their position on the periphery.
He moved towards the ghouls, recognizing three of the four seated at the otherwise empty table.
"Onii-chan!" A young ghoul shimmied excitedly at the sight of Kaneki. He smiled back, stopping at the front of their table.
"Hello Hinami-chan." His throat felt crackly from lack of use. Touka had been his only other companion for the day and she hadn't been particularly conversational.
A ghoul seated beside Hinami leaned back in his chair, eyebrow propped upwards. "Don't know why you still talk to the humans like they can hear you. They're nothing more than cattle to be culled."
He frowned. It was always easy to find the more seasoned ghouls. They had long ago ceased treating each human as an individual, instead lumping them all together as mindless mundanities. Even Touka had taken on a dispassionate tone of voice during their last few cases. Kaneki wondered if the same would eventually happen to him.
"Don't mind Nishiki," another ghoul drawled, her lips curling upwards. The corners of her eyes crinkled behind her glasses, twisting her expression into a cattish smirk.
Rize.
He knew very little about her, but she always made him nervous in ways he could never verbalize. Like she knew something he didn't.
(Not that he'd really have anyone to confess this worry to. He rarely saw other ghouls and reapings weren't the best time for Kaneki to bring up gut feelings to his human victims.)
"I think it's cute that you try to talk to the humans…like you're still one of them."
Kaneki wasn't sure how to respond, but the choice was taken from him when a group of humans approached their table. Automatically, the ghouls vacated their chairs, slipping around and away from the humans. Nishiki scowled, but the others carried on their conversation undisturbed. It was routine for them, only able to inhabit the places that humans didn't. They would find another empty table soon enough.
Kaneki stepped back, allowing a laughing young man to pass by him unhindered. He turned his head with the motion, following him out of the corner of his eye. His hair was glowing and hazy, his smile even brighter. Kaneki was tempted to stay longer, curious to see if this young man's smile was infectious enough to crack the stern expressions of his two companions.
However, Hinami was tugging on his arm, rambling about something that she had encountered earlier that day. Kaneki snapped his temporary connection with the blond and focused back on Hinami, more tangible than the desaturated humans with her loud voice and warm fingers.
"Hmm?"
Hinami pouted and repeated herself, the story's details growing more preposterous. Kaneki allowed himself to be towed through the coffee shop, following Hinami as she ducked and weaved around distracted waiters and entering customers. He spared a backwards glance at the recently vacated table, eager to steal one more blurry glimpse of the blond human.
Instead, he met the cool stare of Rize, studying him from across the room with a tilted head. She offered a flinty smile and Kaneki slipped through the front door with a shiver.
"Yes. All right. We'll be there shortly."
"Another call?"
Amon nodded, sliding away his coffee mug with an elbow as he started to tap the directions into his phone with clumsy fingers.
"Takizawa again."
"Again? He called us a few days ago though! If I didn't know any better, I'd say he's lonely." Not that Hide minded the extra company.
Akira rubbed her temples, narrowed eyes trained towards the center of the table. "It's that time of the year," she reminded him flatly.
Hide spared her a sympathetic frown. After working together for two years, he had picked up on several of his team's little tics, such as how Akira's headaches worsened when ghouls were close nearby. It almost made Hide's skin crawl thinking about it: invisible monsters lurking over his shoulder, watching his every move.
Amon lowered his phone with a satisfied grunt. "He called because he said he found another stabbing victim. He wants us to check if it's ghoul related."
Hide perked up, glancing between his two partners. "And if it's not ghoul related?"
"Then he thinks the cases might be linked. He also said another officer had come across a similar case a few weeks ago." Amon glanced back down at his phone, squinting to see the file Takizawa had sent him. "Single stab wound to the abdomen, hastily covered up, valuable possessions still on the body."
"Wait—so you're saying we have a—"
"Don't say it out loud. We're in a damn coffee shop, Nagachika."
"Serial killer!"
He assumed when Hinami said she wanted to go exploring, she would drag him somewhere far away from the tiny café. Instead, their adventure stalled when she caught sight of a florist replacing her window display in an adjacent storefront. She pressed her fingertips and noses against the glass, lips parted with wonder. Kaneki watched a few feet away, smiling softly.
The elderly florist would certainly have a heart attack if she knew she had such a captive audience. He took a step closer to the window, similarly hypnotized by her focused care. He envied the florist, how she surrounded herself with life and growth every day.
She plucked several shriveled leaves from a bouquet of deep crimson roses and gently fluffed the tops of nearby sunflowers, fanning their wilting petals out for one last day on display. She frowned at a bouquet of daffodils before pulling a small, drooping flower from the bunch. She eyed it for a moment before dropping it in the waste bin with the rest of the dead and decaying remnants.
Kaneki pressed his fingertips to the glass, wishing he could slip through the window and pull the dying daffodil from the trash. It had looked fine to him, perhaps a little wilted but nothing that couldn't be hidden away, surrounded by the other blooms.
The florist had tossed it away without hesitation, just as she had pruned all the other flowers of their dead parts. Each day, she sifted through the living and removed the death. Perhaps they weren't as different as he first thought.
He turned to ask Hinami's opinion, but she was gone. Bored, she had embarked upon a new adventure, making faces at a grounded pair of crows, attempting to rile them up into the air. Instead, the café door swinging outward caused the crows to scatter.
Kaneki's eyes were drawn by the motion as the three humans from earlier left the café. The blond young man was laughing again, but his words were muffled from the distance. He wondered what was so funny to have made his companions finally succumb with fond groans and a wry smile.
"Did you see me scare the birds, Onii-chan?"
He hummed in agreement, but his attention was elsewhere. Hinami turned, following his gaze to the young blond human.
"Rize-chan told me to stay away from them."
Rize-chan? He didn't know Hinami and she were that close.
"Why?"
"She says they're monsters. They try to destroy us when we're feeding."
Although the mountainous man and sharp-eyed woman seemed intimidating, he couldn't believe that the blond human could be dangerous. From their brief encounter inside and outside the café, he seemed so kind and… lively.
Hinami watched them disappear down the street before sighing again. "Come on, Onii-chan. Let's go!" She stuck out her hand, waiting for him to grab it just as he always did.
He smiled down at her and nodded. "Mmm, right. Let's go."
Kaneki pulled his hand away from the florist's window, leaving no prints.
Unlike Takizawa's previous case, they were not the first on the scene this time. Uniformed officers milled about while a crowd of onlookers craned their necks to catch a better glimpse of what was under the conspicuously shaped tarp. When Takizawa saw them approaching, he broke free from the small huddle of officers, striding as quickly as he could towards them.
"I'm glad you're here." He shot a sour glare in the direction of one of the investigators, dressed in an oversized lab coat. "If I had to stall them any longer, Chigyou-san would have started the autopsy right there on the street."
Hide turned his head to catch another glimpse of the curious crowd. Several officers were struggling in vain to redirect them, trying to give the investigators some privacy.
"They act like they've never seen a dead body before," he commented offhandedly, digging through his bag for his field notebook. Amon grunted in agreement before moving towards the onlookers, deciding that "crowd control" fell under his job description as a striker.
Akira and Hide followed Takizawa to the concealed body. He tugged up on the corner of the tarp, just enough for Hide to snap a quick photo. Amon had pushed the crowd back by several feet, so Takizawa flipped the tarp back completely.
Hide moved quickly, taking photos of the body and crime scene in a spiraling succession and pattern until he finished with a close-up of the abdominal wound. The victim was an older male, pale faced with a perpetual grimace. His bloody fingers gripped the loose fabric around his waist.
"His shirt's exposed. I thought you told Amon that the killer tried to cover up the wound." Akira's eyes roamed over the exposed skin for any sign of ghoul involvement as she pulled on a pair of gloves. Wrists, upper arms, necks. The most accessible patches.
"According to the preliminary report, he did. He was found by a civilian who thought some amateur CPR could save him. She said she took off the coat to see what was wrong and noticed all the blood."
Akira squatted by the body, tilting her head to get a better glimpse of the wound. She reached to gently move his bloodied fingers away from the hem of his shirt, but paused.
"Did the witness say anything about pulling on the undershirt?"
Takizawa frowned at his notes, flipping through the pages. "No, not in this copy of the statement. She just says that when she saw the blood after removing the shirt, she ran to the nearest police box."
"Nagachika," Akira began, turning her gaze on Hide. "How would you describe this man?"
Hide rubbed the bottom of his chin, considering the question. "His hair is neatly combed and his nails are trimmed and clean—uh, well, apart from the blood, of course." His eyes traveled down the man's torso and to his legs. "Also, he's wearing pretty expensive shoes, but they aren't scuffed or worn, so I say he probably worked somewhere where appearances are a big deal. Maybe an executive or office worker?" Hide paused, wondering if these observations should be written down. After all, the investigators would get his employment status when they identified him.
"I agree. Appearances would have been important for him. Why would someone who's so concerned about appearances keep his shirt untucked?"
Hide nodded, following Akira's line of thought. He wouldn't. It must have been untucked somehow. If the first responders didn't do it, then—
"We need to turn him over."
Takizawa glanced in Hide's direction, but he waved his camera with a shrug. "She's talking to you, man. I'm just here to take pictures and look good."
Takizawa groaned before moving to the other side of the body. With low grunts, he and Akira gently turned him on his side, exposing a completely untucked undershirt, torn and bloodied from the aggressive exit wound. Hovering over her shoulder with his camera at the ready, Hide watched as Akira pried the sticky shirt from his back. The blood had started to congeal and his skin had taken on a mottled deep purple color. Hide wrinkled his nose.
"Here," Akira murmured, gesturing towards the small of the man's back. She used her thumbs and forefingers to make a circle and held it over his skin. This patch of skin looked no different from the rest of the body, but Hide knew Akira had found the ghoul stain. He snapped another photograph, zooming in close enough to crop out the sides of her fingers.
"The ghoul must have reached under his shirt or something. That's why you didn't see it at first. Hide stared down at her fingers, framing the small of his back. He had seen ghoul wings emerge from the same spot before.
"I bet there's an identical match on the other victims."
Akira nodded. "It's a wilted stain. A ghoul didn't kill this man, but they were still involved. Once the ghoul tags their victims, some other human kills them as a proxy. I'm guessing the killer is the first human they tagged."
She suddenly hissed through her teeth, pressing the inside of her arm to her eyes. She stood, features briefly contorted in a scowl of pain before she buried the expression.
"Are you all right, Akira-san?" Takizawa perked up, still crouched on the opposite side of the body. "Can I lower the body back down…please?"
"I'm fine," she snapped, sounded a little less than fine, but Hide knew better than to contradict. "It's just the heat." She stepped back from the body and Hide took her spot.
"Once I get a few more photos, then I should be good too," Hide assured a miserable Takizawa, flashing him an apologetic smile. The combination of heat and swarming flies was not doing his nose any favors, so he pitied Takizawa's more intimate proximity with the body.
Hide bent over, contorting himself to get a shot up the man's shirt without touching the blood. He felt the hem of his shirt flip backwards from the sharp angle, but both of his hands were busy with the camera. It was a little undignified to be flaunting exposed skin at a crime scene, but he would be even more embarrassed to ask Akira to pull his shirt back down, like some exasperated mother.
As he fumbled with the lens for a final shot of the exit wound, he heard Akira brief Amon on the new details of their case. He reflected on her words from earlier, trying to remember them verbatim so he could write them down later. They needed to find the first human to be marked by this malicious ghoul and stop them before they killed anyone else.
Hide had faith that his small team could track down the murderer, but how could they stop the ghoul causing this? In their two years together, Amon had managed to fight off several corporeal ghouls, too gorged with stolen human life to fade out of view. Amon had landed seemingly fatal blows—can ghouls even die? Hide had no clue—and they had disappeared, but Akira wasn't sensitive enough to see if the ghoul was still present post-feeding. Like other spotters, she could only see the evidence of their existence.
According to their omniscient benefactor, only those marked for death could see the ghouls at all times. How this benefactor knew this, Hide wasn't quite sure. All he knew was that thinking thoughts like these gave him the creeps.
He felt a cold pressure against his exposed skin, like something had been crawling across his flesh. His body reacted reflexively and he nearly dropped his camera. He straightened up while his left hand brushed against the spot to wipe away…nothing? He jerked his head around, searching for some explanation, but he saw nothing. Just the body and a scowling Takizawa.
"What was that? You look like you got stung or something."
Hide shook his head to settle the pounding within his brain. He took a shaky breath through his nose and exhaled.
Wow. All this talk about ghoul stains and serial killers is making my head spin. He rubbed the back of his neck, hand sliding unhindered across his sweaty skin. No wonder Akira has a headache. I'm probably coming down with heat exhaustion too.
"Must have, I guess." He paused, considering what to do next. "I think I'm through with the photos and I doubt Akira-san will need to look at the body again. It can probably go with Chigyou-san now."
Takizawa heaved a deep sigh of relief as he lowered the body back to its original position. He didn't need to be told twice.
Hide glanced down at the victim's face before tucking his camera back into his bag.
Yes, he had taken enough pictures for one day. No reason to take anymore.
Hinami had split off from him nearly twenty minutes ago, claiming that she had forgotten something back in the café. Kaneki offered to walk back with her, but she shook her head fervently before darting away. He was a bit bewildered by the explanation, but perhaps she had seen another ghoul and didn't want her "big brother" looming over her shoulder as she chatted.
He wandered aimlessly, watching the gray-tinged humans shuffle by on their way from work. Briefcases, business suits, and subway tickets. It all seemed a bit repetitive to him, but he realized he wasn't one to judge. After all, he and Touka-chan sucked the life from humans every day, never deviating from their routine either.
He tilted his head at the sound of a muffled commotion. Several humans were gathered in a clump by an alleyway, tittering to themselves and pointing. He could only make out a few words, each fragmented phrase indistinct and stifled.
"…dreadful…"
"…said it….murder…."
"….multiple victims…."
"…exciting…."
Kaneki cautiously approached the crowd, trying not to accidentally brush anyone while struggling to see over their bobbing heads. He caught a glimpse of the large man from earlier, the handle to his metal briefcase clutched by white-knuckled fingers. He gazed sightlessly over the crowd, vision skipping over Kaneki entirely.
It's them. The humans that Hinami said were monsters. He glanced towards the blonde woman, chatting with a uniformed officer. Are they…investigators?
He had heard stories from Touka and the others about humans who tried to fight back against the ghouls who reaped too flippantly. He thought the legends had only been warnings from the Reaper, who discouraged any excessive or cruel reapings, but there was now a genuine ghoul hunting team in front of him.
Kaneki decided that he should take Hinami's advice and leave quickly. However, he froze when the blond young man approached the woman and the officer. He was brighter than the others, his features distinct and vibrant. Before he had been a muted blur with a dash of gold upon his head; now Kaneki could see every detail of his face, from his crinkled chestnut eyes to the slight upturn of his nose.
His voice rose above the humans' murmurs, crystal clear as if Kaneki were standing next to him.
"That was the medical examiner. They held the second body for one more look over just in case there was, y'know, a pattern. A spotter on standby found a ghoul stain in the same spot as this one."
He seemed so… real. Which meant he couldn't be, if something like Kaneki could see him so clearly.
The woman responded, but Kaneki couldn't focus on her words. He stared at the young man, wracking his brain for a solution for the sudden change.
Perhaps it's a coincidence and it has something to do with our proximality to death. Maybe that's why he's temporarily crossing over. Or maybe I'm the one who's crossing over.
The blond investigator turned his head slightly, locking gazes with Kaneki. Kaneki stumbled backwards with a sharp intake of air, some vestigial reaction from his time as a human that Touka always pointed out. If he had a heart, he was sure it would have stopped beating.
Kaneki backed into a faceless member of the crowd, apologized reflexively, realized that they couldn't see him anyway, and kept shuffling backwards. The blond followed his frantic retreat with a frown. Kaneki could still feel his concerned gaze on him, even as he disappeared further in the late evening commute rush.
He saw me? That means he's—
He was marked for death and he saw Kaneki. He was going to die.
Thanks for reading! Please let me know what you think. The next chapter will be posted in two days!
