under the snow fall
All she remember was the whites of snowdrops around her and the crimson flurry of reds. The soft sound of footsteps sinking into the snow. Yomo's morose voice in the wintry air. His retreating back.
And flashes of black.
The ghastly whisper of his name on the tip of her tongue left unsaid.
"I lost you long enough—
to realise that we simply couldn't go on."
Sometimes, Touka wonders if they were meant to be together or it is just some sick, twisted belief she made up in order to find her happy ending. Perhaps it might have been selfish on her part but, she has been unhappy for so long, is it wrong to hope?
She doesn't know anymore.
After all, there is a fine line between ghouls and human.
She walks across the street to her new cafe, taking a deep breathe as she does so. RE, it's her cafe's name and it has been open for one month already and she could say, business is booming. A lot of things happened since that day, the day Kaneki left for good. Like her cafe's opening or the fact that someone tried to get close to her.
It's been two years after all.
Touka closed the door behind her softly even though she is itching to do otherwise. Yoriko greeted her with a kind smile, in which Touka replied with a surly grunt and placed the bag of stuff — coffee beans, cups, and a lot more — on the kitchen table.
"Rough day?"
Touka merely nodded and massaged her temple after sitting on a stool. She couldn't describe how tired she was after all day long at the college she enrolled two years ago. She wasn't even that interested in fact but, he'd enrolled there which she did too before everything went downhill.
He is gone.
She finds it pointless to even continue her study but Yoriko made her believe otherwise. Isn't that his favorite subject though? She'd say with a cocked head.
And that is what keep her going until now.
"He is gone."
"I know."
"So, why won't you just move on?"
A pause.
Her violet eyes flashes with fury and she feels her dark side awakening, eyes twisting into sick, ghoul-like colour of eyes but second later, any trace of it is gone. Almost like it never happened at all, and she intends to keep it that way.
"it's not something I could do easily." Touka gazes upwards to the dark clouds sifting in and out of the dark sky.
"You, holding onto this kind of love is sick, bad, whatever, et cetera. He is gone." Nishiki takes a long drag of his cigarettes and exhales all his troubles away before throwing it on the ground and stomping it over and over.
Touka wonders how his ghoul lungs could even handle that.
"Almost everything is bad in the world." The moon looks so round against all the odds, "Like you smoking or good stuff like instant noodles or bras to help human simplify their lives that would eventually cause cancers in the long run but either way, human still uses it anyway. You, of all people should know that, falling in love with human is bad ya'know? I know that holding onto this kind of love is bad but, I still do it anyway."
More stomps.
"Because that's what it takes to keep going."
Besides, she has a feeling Kaneki is not entirely gone nomatter how hard she tries to shake it.
The scent, it's like no other else.
She runs across the night, her kagune burning in the air, flapping ever so slightly, each flap causing flickers of fire in the night air. Her violet eyes zooming in on everything that moves. Her nose twitching to get a whiff of bones and skin and meat, all the organs and splatter of blood and, and — soulless eyes staring, dead.
Hunger eats you alive.
She craves and craves. It's been months. Fucking months.
Her hands closing in on the pretty little neck.
Tightening. Veins bulging out.
Eyes wide.
Scream dying in the throat of helpless victim—
She snaps out of her reverie.
"..Kaneki."
It's the same face that smiles at her, many years ago.
And then she notices the CCG logo out of the corner of her eyes.
Her throat turns dry and she pales, scampering off him like she'd seen a ghost. Doubts filling every gaps of her heart at she'd just seen. Perhaps, it's an illusion, delusion, anything, she is delusional. But still, it feels so goddamn real.
It can't be.
But it could be.
For once, her hunger is forgotten.
It happens so suddenly, there'd been no warning, no anything, to prepare her for this. It happens in one cold winter afternoon, whites all around her, fluttering and melting on the ashpalt when he comes in with a tinkle of a belldoor that signify a customer.
It was just like that day.
She could have said something—anything to stop him, and he might have been alive. And just like that, he was slipping past her fingers, as if he morphed into water in the cupped palm of her hands and all she could do was stare, dumbfounded.
"Welcome—" Her words are stuck in her throat upon seeing her customer.
He blinks at her.
She stares.
Yoriko pushes her to greet their customer but realising Touka is in no condition to do some waitress-service, she greets the customer herself, all the while giving Touka something between worried and sceptical look.
Her brain tries to make sense of the current situation but the more she thinks of it, the more she finds herself at lost. All she could of is, Kaneki is here. He indded looks like Kaneki, after all. But then she notices the CCG logo on his shirt and it might not be him.
He is a ghoul, right?
But that night, it tells her otherwise. Honestly, she can't stop thinking of that faithful night where she'd thought she met him. She barely slept a blink that night, trying to conjure up a theory that seemed right. Maybe it had been a delusion after all, she thought.
Now, she wasn't so sure.
Touka purses her lips, takes a deep breath and strides toward his table with wobbly legs. She needs to make sure . She needs to — desperately so.
Yoriko turns to her when she arrives at her place, giving her a confused look. Touka smiles forcefully at the customer who looks eerily like Kaneki before turning to Yoriko and gives her a determined look that says, Let me handle this.
Yoriko narrows her eyes at Touka but shrugs her shoulders and returns to her place behind the counter.
"Good afternoon, What would you like, sir?" She manages to say it without screwing up. Inwardly, she exhales a relieved breathe.
He smiles before closing the book and return the menu to her. His voice is normal but his eyes seem to betray something.
"I would like a cup of black coffee."
"Anything else?" Touka writes down his order on a small note, praying he wouldn't order anything else to proof her that he is Kaneki for real.
"No, thanks."
Touka widens her eyes at this. It might be him.
She seems to be confused at what to do next, stammering and spluterring, earning a smile from him before mumbling a small if you excuse me. And scurries away from him.
The rest happened so fast she couldn't even keep a track of what was happening — she barely paid any attention to do the other customers, all her attention is on him — watching every movement he made like a hawk.
He sips his coffee in a dignified manner like Kaneki does and his smile curls up in the right directions like Kaneki does, but maybe—maybe, he is not Kaneki because if he was, he would recognize Touka in a heartbeat.
And then, it's time for him to go. He pays his bill and nods at her on the way out. His eyes seem to linger on her but then he averts his eyes and everything feels like surreal dream. The bell tinkles as he makes his way out and the door closes shut.
Touka grips the tray harder and sinks to the floor, eyes watering. She ignores the confused looks from her customers and keeps her gaze on the door where he has been a second ago.
It feels so surreal.
And he is slipping through her fingers again.
She grips it harder, knuckles turning white in the process. She could do something. There must've been something she could do.
Before she changes her mind, she runs out of the door, heels click-clacking against the pavement. She couldn't really make out the shapes of objects around her with her tears blurring her vision yet she doesn't stop to wipe her tears away.
She races up the stairs of the crossing bridge, almost stumbling on the way there. And there he is. His retreating back against her. She pants for a while, desperately catching the breath like it is her life line.
"Kaneki!"
She sees him flinch a little but he turns around nonetheless.
"My name is Haise Sasaki."
Touka walks up to him even though she'd heard him clearly. She grabs the collar of his shirt, forcing him against her. She feels rage building up within her for some unknown reason, perhaps because he'd left without telling anybody or the fact that he hid without telling her — has he ever thought of how she would cope without him? Of course not, because he is just some selfish bastard.
"You—you bastard, jerk, bloody fucking piece of shit. You think I wouldn't recognize you?!" She tightens her grasp at his collar without breaking eye-contact.
Kaneki keeps his stance. Just like old times.
"Why—why did you join CCG? Why didn't you come back?" she feels herself losing it all of sudden, her voice cracking at the end of her sentence. Tears prickled at the corner of her eyes.
"..Have you ever thought of.."she trails off, not finding the will to continue her sentence and slumps against him, sobbing as she did so. "Goddamnit, goddamnit, goddamn—"
She feels his arms snaking up against her, pulling her close and strokes his hand through her violet locks. He wriggles around to make her and himself comfrotable. "I did come back right?"
Touka nods stiffly.
Kaneki sighs.
"As long as you're not alone, I'm okay."
"There you go again, pretending to be a hero."
"I am your hero."
notes the rushed part in part 3 is intended — ghouls momevement are fast, you see, and so Touka barely notices anything and that's why it might sound rushed, but i tell you this that the part 3 is purely intended, and i would leave it like that—it's just my own interpretation, it's fine if you have your own and might disagree with my opinion.
However, the part 4 is indeed rushed — mind you, I was sleepy and I have to wake up 4 so it was like a constant reminder as I wrote the part 4. And yep, i'm not sure if i can fix it but yeah. And about the thing kaneki said in part 4—it's the words he'd said in season 2 eps 7 in the same situation so yeah. It means that he will protect her, even if he have to join CCG or something?
Also, the only thing I'm really proud of is the beginning because. But then i just dontknowanymorebye, cheers.