where have you gone, hideyoshi nagachika?
(When Hide goes missing after the battle between the CCG and Anteiku, he leaves behind memories and curiosity for everyone who ever met him.)
kaneki/haise
Hide was like the wind. A soft breeze, and you could feel it on the tips of your fingers, gracing against your lips. All around, enveloping, embracing. But when you reached out to find something tangible, to see the smiling face and twinkling, mischievous eyes – there was simply nothing to hold onto.
Haise felt like that. He would try to reach into the crevices of his deep memory, trying to learn about the first twenty years of his life. But each time, he would remember nothing, except for a lurching physical pain in the abdomen, and something tugging at the very ends of his mind.
So, Haise learned to hate the past. He was contempt with his life now, his new family, and the job and reputation that he had built for himself. The past was pain, insatisfaction, a void of emptiness meant to be filled with new memories.
But every once and a while, as Haise would pass by certain shops – like the American-styled restaurant in the twentieth ward – he could faintly recall the taste of a western burger in his mouth. But that was impossible, of course. He couldn't eat a burger, because he was a ghoul. And he never had a burger at that restaurant, certainly.
But he would walk by one of the tables and he could envision glimpses of himself sitting in the red booth, his back pressed up against the plastic, uncomfortable in the simmering summer heat of Tokyo. The air conditioning provided little help as his black hair was matted to his sweaty forehead. And across from him, a vibrant redhead would laugh, the orange headphones wrapped around his neck would pair with his blushing cheeks.
And there was happiness, pure happiness. Unfiltered, unadulterated happiness. Something beyond what his new family could give him, beyond anything that he had felt for as long as he could remember (which, in reality, was not very long at all).
A lurch in the gut, but not like a battle instinct. It was the feeling of being free and kind and not… and not being a breadwinner, not having to worry about the menial tasks at the CCG. It was like butterflies, such a mundane and human thing. He would never be able to be that human.
(But what if – he wondered, reluctantly pulling his mind into the vast universe of hypothetical situations – what if he was a human?)
And he could almost feel the name roll on the tip of his tongue, like a young, elementary boy introducing himself to a stranger.
(K—Kan—Kaneki. My name is Ken Kaneki.)
But then his mind would slip and the feelings in the gut and glimpses of the "what ifs" would dissipate into thin air.
Thin air. He would reach out to touch faces and memories, expecting them to be tangible evidence of his past, but there would be absolutely nothing. There would be a blank void.
(And he had to convince himself that he was happy with his fabricated life and new family – why even bothering to remember the past?)
One day, while heading to the café (such a strange name) run by the familiar looking girl, Haise spotting a missing poster.
It was dirty and had clearly been abused by the recent rough patch of weather over the city. But the faded picture didn't dim the memories. The face was there, smiling. It was the boy who was sitting on the other side of the booth, the by who laughed, and the boy who called him by his name –
(Kaneki Ken.)
Haise wanted to reach out and touch the poster, as if touching it would suddenly bring back twenty years worth of memories. But following his better judgment, Haise forced himself to pull away from the scene and enter the shop.
The familiar sound of the bell as the door closed behind him. (Don't all bells sound like that? – he reasoned – no.)
He was greeted by a new face, who offered him a fresh brew of coffee. Haise delightedly nodded his head.
The coffee tasted good. Unlike the bad coffee that he ha—
(And he could practically taste it – the terrible, bitter coffee. But it was made by his best friend. His best friend. "Hide's my best friend," he slurred.)
Haise looked out the window, trying to wash away the weird memories. The scene outside was beautiful. The sun was finally shining, peaking through the clouds and the leafy trees.
He was certainly missing something – besides the first twenty years of his life.
He was missing the thing that was tugging at his gut, the butterflies, the boy who sat across from him in the booth.
The manager of the café, a slender girl with black haircut into a neat bob, starred at Haise in the distance. What did she know?
(Why is she starring at me? Like she knows something I don't? There's something hiding between those beautiful, beady suspicious eyes. And yet, and yet, I can't help but feel so enraptured in the pure beauty of everything she absolutely symbolizes. I'm sure I've met her before, I'm sure she's from my past. And I want to know more – I want to feel my own secrets exposed beneath my very flesh, my very existence unraveling before my eyes.)
Haise wanted to ask her, ask her if she knew the redheaded kid that was so entangled in his memories.
But the words became weak and feeble in his throat, with no conviction to reach the tip of his tongue.
Did he really want to know more about the past? There was certainly a reason why he forgot it.
("I've always known" Hide gives the briefest smile, despite the dire situation and blood sloshing onto the floor. And he sets a coffee on the table for his best friend, Ken Kaneki.)
There's a lot of symbolism in this, and I'm not sure that all of it is super evident. There's probably a few typos and errors along the way, sorry. I might add more, and reflect on how Touka feels, et cetera. Or I might delete this. I dunno.