Arima is an angel clad in hues of gray, floundering in a dull life muddled with the rest of an indifferent world—even to the grim reaper himself.
But an angel is little different from a grim reaper—a death bringer. Remorse is forever a speculation, but as is often the case, death remains the single most revealing thing, a murderer of ambiguity. And to the point of absurdity, it is devastating how human an angel of death can be.
To see that he is finally free after years of toil, countless deaths weighing down on his seemingly invincible hands and an apathetic face to match suddenly gone. How tiring was it to keep up such a facade? Likely only half of what it might have been, had his acting not blended into those swirling grays of reality.
Even at this point, it is unbelievable to think he might have cared for another living being. It is inconceivable that there was a logical rationale behind his inhuman strength and brutally efficient kills. It is much easier writing him off as the enigma who was meant to play god, inexplicable and omnipresent—frustrating to accept, but still easier. An explanation was a coveted thing, the fruit that humans were never supposed to get their hands on.
Once you place a reason or more to his actions, Arima loses his hold on the world.
Death is freedom. Fading into nonexistence, no longer thinking, breathing, living—perhaps it is only right that someone regarded as inhuman himself would favor death and even bring it upon himself. His suicide is cleverly masked as sacrifice for those he cared for. Or is it the other way around? Was freedom just a side benefit to saving one life after slaughtering so many?
Sacrifice seems to be a close friend of his. And life is only a trivial thing he has had to relinquish.
He does not embody life like a flower nourished with water and sunlight would. Nor does he wilt like one deprived of essentials. How unfair it is that he can withstand such fragility and poise with such a devastating presence. No, although he breathes and his heart beats to a singing time bomb, he is anything but alive. It is with each day that the world grows duller to his faltering sight and greying view. It is not just through his eyes that he witnesses this, but also through the growing amnesiac effect he feels when he moves throughout these clouds of grey. Lethargic, slow, and timeless.
A time bomb may be ticking, but what use is it when he cannot hear? The anticipation and anxiety are circumvented and there is only waiting for an end.
Once upon a time, when Arima's hair was not white and he was not known as the grim reaper, he was a grim reaper nonetheless. He had never lived a normal life, or more accurately, a normal life had never been possible for someone like him, born part monster and horribly alone. The fact that he was in school was perhaps the only thing beyond eating and sleeping that grounded him as a living entity that required nourishment to survive and knowledge to be imparted on.
But he sought normalcy for that brief period in his life, while still naive and angst driven. At day he would fight against his life's grain and at night he would speculate about being a man who had no need to kill and no lives dependent on his kills. It was a fantastical musing that often left him with bitter amusement instead of depressed longing. His body had long been emptied to resemble a methodical machine and yearning was an irrelevant and counterproductive thing.
On the other hand bitter amusement is a type of longing, a thought that reminded him that his sentience remained a flaw unable to be muted internally.
There was only one time when he wore his humanity blatantly on his sleeve.
He was in the hospital waiting to get his leg treated from a particularly nasty wound inflicted in one of his fights. He had let it heal to a certain extent before venturing to the hospital to avoid probing, but it was still a conspicuous thing, layered with many bandages. Most of the time, public institutions were avoidable, but lacking his own personal facilities and working independently from the CCG left his with few options. And it was horribly easy to deflect questions, especially when doctors were only willing to know what they expected.
The hospital smelled of sterilized equipment, sweat, human, and…flowers?
Arima saw a young woman walk in holding a bundle of flowers. She smiled to the receptionist and let out a small laugh before, to his mild surprise, sitting down a seat away from him and placing the flowers on the seat between them. He curiously watched a small butterfly flap its wings slowly as it stood at the center of a flower. It was an unfamiliar sight—a butterfly in a hospital, the only burst of color in an otherwise flat plain of whites and grey.
"They're carnations," she smiled at him.
"They're beautiful," he said eying the pink petals and the seemingly oblivious butterfly.
"Pink carnations are symbolic for gratitude," she explained to the implied question. She paused and let out a small laugh. "Hope that's not too obvious."
It wasn't obvious. Arima doubted anyone would know, nevertheless bother to know the meaning of a flower. It was simply the act of receiving the flowers that left an image of depth and complexity for the giver and evidence of worth of attention for the receiver. A meaningless gift, if you asked him. Flowers do nothing but wilt and die.
"Not obvious at all. I assume you're here to see someone?" he asked out of courtesy. Humans liked to talk about themselves.
"Yup. And I assume you're here to treat your leg?" she asked almost mockingly. Arima let out a small smile.
"How did you know." The sarcasm laced in his response came out completely unconsciously and Arima surprised himself that such a normal conversation would flow in such an uncontrived manner.
There was a pause, letting their small banter die.
"You're one of those cool and silent types aren't you?" she asked, eyeing him with a detached interest. "The mysterious guy with a tragic past and dangerous vibe on a self sacrificing mission to save the world. Because all the cool ones have to die for some noble cause. I read all about them in manga."
She grinned and Arima wondered if people normally vocalized their judgments of a person so soon. Before he could think of a response, she grinned in a self deprecating way.
"Sorry if I offended you, you don't need to try to explain yourself. I'm sure you have your secrets like every normal human being. I live in all the stories I read and can't help projecting them onto reality. I live with my head up in the clouds."
"It's not a bad thing to live in the stories you read," he said. "You can live several lives throughout stories but only one in reality. Escapism for some, a wealth of experiences for others." Although one was enough for him, he thought.
"Isn't that true," she said almost wistfully. A doctor walked by. She stood up.
"Well, I've got to go. The flowers won't last forever," she winked at him. "It was nice meeting you."
He nodded, "You as well."
He supposed he met his social quota for the week.
The second time he saw her, he managed to get a name from her. Nanashi.
It was not a coincidental meeting like the first. He had seen her in a small coffee shop and "bumped" into her. He had just finished slaughtering a rather inexperienced ghoul—a quick kill that left him with unprecedented free time and an uncomfortable taste in his mouth that he wished to wash away with the bitterness of an espresso.
She seemed distracted, staring into the white foam of her cappuccino, only noticing Arima when he took a seat at her table. Her expression brightened.
"It's nice to you see you again!" she exclaimed, only for her expression to shift abruptly to a frown like a cut scene from an anime. "I'm afraid I still don't know your name."
"Kishou Arima," he said pleasantly. "I'm afraid I don't know yours either."
"Nanashi," she said. He didn't probe for anything more, which seemed to satisfy her, as though he had passed her first test.
"How are you doing?" he asked.
"Ah, not so well," she responded, eyes darting back to her coffee. "I lost someone close to me recently."
She certainly seemed to be an open person if she were divulging that information to him so soon. Then again, he supposed speaking to a stranger was often easier, without the weight of expectation and judgment. Arima let her continue as her eyes seemed to cloud over and she seemed unaware of what she was speaking and only that she was speaking.
"It was ruled a suicide. My brother was already going to die. He had a machine breathing for him. They found him detached from the machine and all I could wonder was if him cutting his life short a few weeks was worth cutting those few weeks from the time I had left to be with him."
Arima listened to her story patiently and said, "That's a rather selfish desire. At the end, maybe he just wanted to do something for himself, inconsiderate of others. If a terminal illness isn't an excuse to act for oneself, what is?"
She looked up and to his surprise, smiled. "I know. That's what I thought later. But it doesn't hurt any less."
They sat silently and he could hear her steady and deep breaths.
"Do you have any family?" she asked him suddenly.
"None that I recognize."
"Ah, the dark horse maintains his enigma facade. You know, that will only make people even more curious."
Arima wondered. No one had really asked about him since he started kill ghouls. Ghouls certainly did not care and the few people he interacted with seemed to have enough problems on their own to occupy themselves. No, he imagined his past would fade into oblivion.
"I certainly am," she continued. "But it's ok if you don't want to say anything. I'm an open book, but if you have your own secrets, I respect that."
"Thank you," he said. "Maybe one day I'll tell you."
They met up more frequently after that, often in the coffee shop, but also once in a small butterfly garden where she showed him carnations and various other flowers he failed to remember. He asked her if the butterflies ever escaped and she laughed. What was there to escape? They had all of the flowers and nectar here whereas the rest of the world was full of predators and unpredictability.
"Butterflies aren't complicated. They are where the flowers are and that's that," she had said.
Arima often wondered if it could have been anyone. After all, he had only sought something to tether himself to humanity and its common emotions without his past and his memories intervening. It was a question with no answer, and he found himself not caring about the answer.
Attachment? Love? Obsession? He didn't know the difference.
They spoke about everything, from her past to famous philosophies to the most recent manga of her new series obsession which Arima felt obligated to follow. They never broached into his own past, but it was not without effort on her part. She had probed him for the entirety of a meet up in the coffee shopstore to no avail. After that, she stopped and he was grateful.
They both seemed to understand their time together was when Arima could forget his past and live in the shell of something resembling normalcy, no matter how ephemeral it might be.
It was at the end of the summer that she told him she was leaving.
"I'm going to America," she told him. "It's a selfish move. I just want to get away from the memories here and start new. As much as I'd love for you to come as well, we both know you have to be here—saving the world and everything." She spoke in a joking and melancholic manner and Arima wondered if she truly knew who he was all along.
"Thank you," she said and held his hand tightly before placing a bouquet of pink carnations he hadn't noticed in his hand.
He wondered if the sting in his heart was what humans felt on a normal basis. He wondered if the yearning to disappear from all obligations and go off with her was normal. He wondered if love was normal or if it was only something felt by the select few whom dared to fall hard enough.
But he had always known this was how it would be. Part of the human experience he had desired: farewells and heartbreak. He could not help but wish that for just a moment, he was not the "cool and silent" type.
"Thank you," he echoed back to her before they departed for the last time.
It is at the brink of death that Arima envisions the butterfly caged within his heart flying free to where the flowers are. As Kaneki holds him with tears dripping down his face, Arima wonders how another could come to care so much for someone who had only caused pain. Arima wonders what would have happened if he had a child with Nanashi—would it be like Kaneki? He is certain that she would like Kaneki, the incarnation of a walking tragic hero, straight from a book, waiting to be saved by someone he loves and who loves him.
He is the grim reaper, but there is life in his death. Speculation had always been a useless act, but at this very moment, he dreams about the future he could never have as he falls to an eternal sleep where flowers bloom.