And the Petals Fall

Shinya, a ghoul, ends up saving a young man from committing suicide, only to find out that he has just saved a ghoul investigator.

Shinya hated walking amongst humans, if only because the smell of so many varieties of fresh meat constantly surrounded him. When he was hungry it took all of his concentration to walk through a crowd without lunging at anyone.

He was hungry that day. He was intent on just getting home and eating after work when he saw a human man walking along the low stone walls of the bridge. The young man swayed back and forth as he maintained his balance, laughing to the sky as if someone had told him a hilarious joke.

Humans were a bit strange at times, so Shinya thought nothing of it. Just as he was about to pass the laughing man, he caught movement out of the corner of his eye. Years of simply being a ghoul made him swing around, ready to take out his kagune even in the middle of the day if need be.

There was no one attacking him, just the young man who had taken a step into thin air, as if he could continue walking all the way up to the sky. Of course, humans couldn't fly. Even ghouls were incapable of flight. And so, that human began to fall.

Shinya did not know why he lunged for that falling body. Food was the last thing on his mind as he caught the young man by the arm. Shinya's eyes were wide and his breath came unexpectedly quick as the human looked up at him with a small pout.

A pout. As if they were children and Shinya had just stolen the other's favorite toy. All at once rage laced through his veins. How dare this human look as though Shinya was the one in the wrong! He had no idea what Shinya would give to have his life, a human life, one not beset by the constant threat of dying at the hands of the Doves, at having his friends and family slaughtered like beasts.

He almost dropped the young man, but he felt the stares at his back and heard the concerned whispers. The streets were a bit sparse at this time of day, sunset, but there were enough witnesses around that Shinya bit back his anger and yanked the young man back onto the bridge.

The both of them ended up sprawled across the concrete, breathing heavily. At first Shinya thought he was imagining it, but as he turned his heard to the man he had saved, he realized the human was laughing softly. It almost sounded like a giggle, but his voice was deep and far from girlish.

There were no words to describe Shinya's blatant confusion at seeing the young man, who was small and pale with messy hair, laughing like an idiot in the middle of the walkway. The features on his face were soft like someone barely out of his teenage years, but his eyes were strangely vacant.

Those on the verge of death had plenty of fear in their eyes. It ate at your core, ripped apart every sensibility you might have had beforehand. Shinya had seen that look in humans and ghouls alike. But this man had nothing in his gaze. Even his ragged breathing, the only sign he was even slightly disturbed by almost dying, had evened out.

"You're crazy," Shinya breathed.

The young man turned to him with a smile. A sad one, Shinya realized with a start. So he did have emotions.

"Thanks for saving me, I guess." That voice was also melancholy, the words spoken with a kind intonation that made no sense given the situation.

"You guess?" Shinya echoed.

The young man pushed himself to his feet and brushed the dirt off his slacks. His shirt was untucked, probably from Shinya grabbing him and yanking him back on the bridge. Other than that, he looked like an ordinary office worker.

"Tsumoto-san always makes me pay for dinner as thanks for saving me, so I'll do the same for you. What do you want to eat?"

"N-nothing," Shinya said quickly as he got up to follow the man. Did this crazy guy try to jump off bridges often? Offering him food was an issue, too... "It's fine, I don't need you to treat me."

He received a hum in response. "Oh, really? That's good then...I kind of did want to die, you know. You've actually done me a bit of disservice by saving me."

What.

"Hey! Well then, I apologize for saving your sorry ass!" Oops. He hadn't meant to say that out loud. The people around them turned curiously to the outburst, but the recipient of his words didn't so much as flinch.

What a strange guy. He never responded, simply walked away like Shinya no longer existed.

With a frustrated grunt, Shinya turned away. He had a dinner to eat and friends to meet tonight.

Yuzuru wanted to die. Not just any death would do of course. He had a few criteria.

It had to be neat. He didn't want to bother anyone with train delays or splattered organs on a sidewalk. Something easy to clean would be best. The last thing he wanted was to traumatize anyone, so he preferred someplace private or a bloodless death.

And it had to be beautiful, above all else. Nothing was worse than a random, messy death in his eyes. Dying to protect a loved one would be nice, except Yuzuru had no one like that in his life anymore. His second option was to drown himself in the ocean.

But Tsumoto-san had dragged him out of the frozen Hokkaido sea and put an end to that plan.

On that day Tsumoto-san had to leave on a business trip to another CCG office in a different ward, leaving Yuzuru alone in their shared apartment with a warning that he had better not find his dead body hanging from the ceiling when he returned.

So Yuzuru had gone out.

Of all the people who had probably died that day throughout the country - no, throughout the whole world - Yuzuru was not one of them, much to his dismay. A random civilian had saved him, ruining his plan of dying in a glistening river filled from bank to bank with fallen cherry blossoms. The sun was setting, bathing the world in a golden, bloody luminescence.

He went home that night and thought of what he could do next.

And he was currently in a dingy bar shoved in between a hair salon and a shoe store, flipping absently through the suicide manual that had been sitting at the bottom of his suitcase. It had been a little difficult to sneak it in amongst his belongings when they packed up to move to Tokyo a few months ago, but he managed somehow.

He could try traveling to that lovely forest southwest of Tokyo, but Tsumoto-san was due to return in a few days. If he heard from the office that Yuzuru hadn't showed up to work, he would personally hunt him down and ruin his plans yet again.

Yuzuru sighed. It wasn't nearly as easy to kill oneself as it seemed. Sure he was a little picky about how he wanted to die, but he did have only one life and he wanted to make it count.

Dying by the hands of a ghoul was out of the question, obviously. Ghouls only offered a horrible, disgusting, painful death. Just thinking about it made Yuzuru twitch, knocking over the glass of water in front of him. Blinking, his hand shot out to right it, but his entire sleeve was already soaked.

At least his book was safe. Carefully moving it out of the way, Yuzuru made a poor attempt to clean it up with the only napkin he had on hand.

That was the second time he met the man who saved him from death that day on the bridge.

Evidently he was a worker at this bar. When he recognized Yuzuru, his face instantly turned sour and he scowled, hesitating before helping him clean the mess.

His eyes flicked to the book in Yuzuru's other hand and then down at the gleaming suitcase at his feet.

Yuzuru tracked his movements and tilted his head until they could look at each other eye-to-eye. Then he smiled.

"You're not the first to wonder."

"Wonder what?" the other mumbled, a bit impolitely. He made no attempt to correct his language, but Yuzuru wasn't particularly uptight about things such as formalities.

"Why an investigator would be suicidal. 'You should take pride in your job!' and 'Don't you value life at all?' they cry," Yuzuru exclaimed softly and with a quiet, pained laugh. His shoulders slumped as the waiter poured him another glass of water.

"Do you?" was the simply reply.

"Do I what?" Yuzuru said as he picked at the worn edges of the laminated menu. What to eat...? He had tried the starvation thing once, but it left him in a particularly bad mood and Tsumoto just force fed him anyways, so he quickly gave up on that one.

"Do you value those things?" Was he being vague on purpose? That was one thing about their language that Yuzuru wasn't particularly fond of.

He hummed as he read the options. It wasn't a nonsensical tune, but a classic sonata on the violin that he favored. It began reflective and ended with a rush of intensity the likes of which he would probably never be able to reproduce even though he knew the notes.

The waiter did not linger; he stood resolutely in front of the table, arms in front of him as if he was about to bow. He fixed Yuzuru with a steady gaze and apparently would not leave until he received an answer.

Yuzuru conceded and flipped the menu over. "Just Italian pasta, please."

The other man paused, a twinge of irritation seizing his face for a moment. "...Just the pasta?"

"Oh, with butter too."

A nod and the sound of paper ripping. The water left only long enough to deliver the order to the kitchen, then returned and stood in front of him again.

Yuzuru sighed, unnecessarily loud. "Of course I take pride in my job. It's to protect people from ghouls, after all. If I can make it so that at least one person in this whole world doesn't have to end up like me, I'd be happy enough to last me the rest of my life."

The waiter stiffened. He was taller than Yuzuru, with broader shoulders and thicker limbs. His face, though, was fairly nondescript

"And...?" the other man prompted.

"It might not seem so but I do value life, otherwise I wouldn't be in this line of work. It's just my own life that I'm not so thrilled about."

There, he'd said it. To a complete stranger, and a civilian at that. Civilians didn't understand and he didn't expect them nor did he want them to ever comprehend his words. Yuzuru's gaze grew distant for a split second before he smiled at the waiter.

"Thanks for saving me earlier. Even if I would have liked it if you didn't," he added.

The man nodded. He looked like he wanted to say something, but at that moment a call from the kitchen took him away from the table, leaving Yuzuru alone again.

He nudged the suitcase at his feet by accident. It was heavy so it didn't topple over, but he heard the scrape of the metal against the floor and looked down at it accusingly, as if it could jump up and bite him.

His quinque was not normally something he carried with him on the streets back home. Not that Sapporo was safer by any stretch of the word, but normal citizens up there gave investigators more sideways glances and silent glares, making it a bit difficult to tell them apart from ghouls good at dressing up as humans.

When he and Tsumoto-san had been transferred to Tokyo, they had been warned about two things: one, the oppressive heat from the southern part of the country and two, that they should carry their quinques with them at all times.

Yuzuru still left it in their apartment when all he was going into work for was to write reports, but he ended up bringing it along today because some of his superiors were beginning to chastise him.

He reached down to touch the cold handle, buffed and scratched from repeated use. He still remembered the ghoul he killed to obtain it.

The pasta he ordered arrived a moment later, snapping him out of memories of blizzards and ice and fighting while he was nearly blind and deaf.

It was the waiter from before. He placed the bowl on the table, but Yuzuru wasn't concentrating on it because he had caught the scent of the rather thick, juicy hamburger another customer had ordered. The waiter was evidently going to deliver that one next, to the couple across the small space of the bar.

The smell of a grilled hamburger, even a slightly greasy one from a small and dingy restaurant, was still delicious to most people who liked Western food. Even a deeply traditional person might still appreciate it. It was beef after all, even if prepared in a different form.

Although it was nothing like the sweet, sickly scent of fresh or rotting meat, Yuzuru was still struck by a sudden, violent nausea that had him practically jumping out of his seat, knocking the class of water over a second time. He clamped one hand over his nose and mouth and ran in the direction of the bathroom.

He heard the waiter call out to him, but didn't bother stopping until he was dry heaving into the toilet.

Heart pounding in his chest to the point where he wondered if it would burst of its own accord, Yuzuru coughed and shuddered as bile dripped from his mouth.

"Are you okay, mister...?" The waiter's voice echoed above his head somewhere, above the hazy whiteout of his memories and the whirling howls of the snow outside.

There was no snow outside though. This was Tokyo, where the snow hardly ever stuck, and it was spring to top it off. Yuzuru lifted his head in a daze to see the slightly concerned waiter hovering above him. Well, maybe he was more shocked than anything.

He nodded, but shivered when the movement sent a small wave of nausea crawling up his throat.

"I'm sorry," he croaked, swallowing around the foul taste of bile. "I knocked the water over again."

"Do you need me to call an ambulance? Or a friend to pick you up?" asked the waiter in a well-practiced, scripted voice of calm.

Yuzuru shook his head and pushed himself to his feet, weaving slightly as he stumbled to the sink to wash his mouth out.

"I'm okay. I just...I'm a vegetarian?" He laughed at himself before the waiter could.

"Do all vegetarians get violently ill just from seeing a slab of meat?" was the wry reply.

Yuzuru fell silent, letting the water slip through his fingers. He washed his mouth out, gagging around the disgusting taste that lingered on his tongue.

It had been years since tasted it, but his body still remembered even if he didn't want it to.

"Everyone smells the same when they die," he said in explanation, wondering if it was okay to tell a civilian such things. Probably not. Though if he succeeded in killing himself soon, he wouldn't be able to get in trouble. "Even human beings. Even ghouls."

"You sound like you've been an investigator for decades." The man's voice was flat as he said that.

Yuzuru laughed quietly and turned back to the door. "It doesn't take decades to find out."

The man followed him. Yuzuru could breathe easier now, but he was reconsidering dinner here. Maybe he would just pay and take the pasta to go.

They emerged from the hallway leading to the bathrooms to find more customers had arrived. Young adults, it looked like, and troublemakers at that. They might have been college students bar hopping.

Yuzuru ignored them and returned to his seat, glad that the offending hamburger was at the other end of the room. He was still vaguely hungry after accidentally forgetting to eat lunch earlier.

The waiter promised to return to help him clean the water up again, but Yuzuru waved him away. The delinquent looking guys were waiting impatiently near the bar.

Yuzuru realized that the suitcase was missing when he failed to stumble over it on his way to his seat. He always placed it on the right side, just in case he had to grab it, and he never failed to trip over it when he brought it to public places. He just wasn't used to having it around in such situations.

He heard the howling laughs before he actually saw the delinquents holding his quinque like it was a toy. He had enough time to utter one curse under his breath before they noticed him glaring at them.

"Ah, mister..." The waiter barely had a chance to say that before Yuzuru started stalking towards the young men and women.

"What kinda investigator pukes just 'cause of a little burger?" one of the young men with dyed blond hair called out, stopping Yuzuru in his tracks. The laughter had died down, but large smirks had replaced it. "We heard from the couple over there."

The man and woman, who looked to be in their thirties or so, looked down at their food and remained silent.

"How can we trust weak guys like you to protect us from all the scary ghouls?" said a woman wearing a leather biker's jacket that was one size too big for her. "Think of all the tax money we waste on you guys!"

"Give that back."

"What is this thing anyways? You always see those long-coat guys walking around with them like they're all-important yakuza thugs," said the blond man. "But this is just a suitcase."

Yuzuru's fists clenched at his sides. This was the reason why no one carried their quinques with them if they weren't on a job back home. He had been an utter fool to believe Tsumoto for even one second when he said that things were different in Tokyo.

Those kids would piss their pants if they saw what was in that suitcase. They would have been reduced to a bumbling mess if they ever saw the ghoul that quinque came from.

Yuzuru scowled and stepped towards them.

I don't actually know if I'm going to finish this story, so I guess I'll reveal a little bit about the characters and what happens next. I might actually write all of it someday, so if you want it to be a surprise, don't read this part.

Yuzuru: A suicide maniac who seeks a clean, beautiful death. He is from Hokkaido, and his parents were two of the many victims in a small town that was attacked by ghouls when Yuzuru was ten. After his parents were killed in front of his eyes, the ghouls tormented him by giving him the choice to either eat the (cooked) remains of his parents' bodies or be killed immediately. Desperate to fulfill his parents' last wish for him to live, Yuzuru chose to eat them - doing so kept him alive long enough for the CCG to arrive and save him. Afterwards he was taken in by the CCG and became a ghoul investigator. His quinque is known to be quite strong, but only works well as an ambush or surprise-attack type of weapon. This quinque is a rinkaku type, but it appears as a single whip-like tail.

Shinya: His parents are dead, killed by investigators a few years ago. He knows that he should be lucky that he got to have them around for so long, as most of his friends were orphaned as kids, but he's still bitter. He's a bit of a hypocrite, as he hates humans because they indiscriminately kill ghouls just for existing, but Shinya himself enjoys the thrill of a good hunt. He is an ukaku.

In the scene that follows this one, Yuzuru's quinque is released and since Yuzuru still thinks Shinya is human, he pushes Shinya out of the way, but gets hit by his own weapon. While Shinya almost loses it right there because of the blood, his manager (a lady called Hitomi) calls an ambulance and makes him calm down before he blows their cover.

At some point, after Yuzuru comes back to the bar a few times, Shinya's identity as a ghoul is revealed. He fights off Yuzuru, who has gone somewhat berserk, and their conversation directly afterwards questions what it means to deserve to live, why Yuzuru fights ghouls even though he's terrified of them, and how the two sides can ever live in harmony.

They come up with no straight answers and agree on one thing: they might have been able to become friends if only they weren't enemies, but both of them hate the other's guts and won't be able to forgive the other simply because of the species they were born as.

Yuzuru asks if Shinya would have been happier to never have met Yuzuru, to which Shinya replies that he would have been happier, but he doesn't regret saving him. To spite Shinya (basically to make him screwed up in the head for the rest of his life), Yuzuru finally kills himself in front of him (because only one could survive the encounter, and Yuzuru acknowledges that Shinya has a stronger will to live than himself).

Well, Yuzuru dying isn't supposed to be as abrupt and random as it sounds here, but this is just a summary. Lots of stuff would have to happen to make the two sort of friends before Shinya is revealed to be a ghoul, which is why this act makes Yuzuru a real jerk (he wants Shinya to feel guilty for surviving the encounter, just as Yuzuru felt about his parents).