AN: *snorts into drink* What even is an updating schedule anyway? Thank you for the positive reception to chapter one of this weird ass fever dream, and I hope your support continues through to this one. Enjoy!
Striped Carnation
Flower Meaning: The Answer Of No
The metal chime of the teaspoon hitting the edge of the cracked ceramic mug filled Kazuko's ears. Staring into the warm void of the black coffee, she continued to stir the cheap coffee beans into the mug. Behind her, further into her house, the panting of someone's final breaths being drawn echoed along the cold wooden hallway and caused the metal spoon to lazily hit the curved edge of the cracked ceramic mug once more.
The heavy box lay on the countertop beside her, in reaching distance if need be, though Kazuko was sure it would not help her much in the long run.
What was a box against a ghoul?
What was anything against a ghoul?
Glancing at the basket of roses that she had abandoned in the alleyway, now sitting innocently on her tiny dining room table, Kazuko sighed heavily and let her shoulders fall under the weight of her soul. She could still taste blood and flesh in her mouth as if it was still there.
The creaking of floorboards behind her is the only thing that alerts her to another presence entering the room. The blond ghoul calmly walks to her table, tracking red footsteps over her rotten floorboards and sitting down. Putting down the metal spoon, Kazuko paused for several seconds before turning around and setting the cracked ceramic mug of cheap black coffee onto the table. Moving the woven basket to the counter, she dragged out the chair opposite the ghoul and sat down, watching him carefully as he sipped the coffee and made an appreciative hum.
"Are you going to kill me?" She asked, her voice flat and emotionless as she watched the blond ghoul place down the mug.
"Now what makes you say that?" He replied, his black and red eyes lifting from the mug to stare through her blue eyes and into her soul, an ice cold fear spreading across Kazuko's bones as he stared at her from across the dining room table.
"It would be a shame to let easy meat go to waste." Kazuko sneered, her hands clasping together under the table as her soul froze with fear.
The ghoul only hummed, taking another sip of his coffee.
"No." He finally stated, after several moments of blood curdling silence dragged by. "I'm not going to kill you."
"Why?" She asked, uncertainty and fear lacing her words as she spoke, her eyes never leaving him as she continued. "Why aren't you going to kill me?"
"Because I find you interesting." The ghoul shrugged, picking up his coffee and bringing it to his lips, his black and blood red eyes never leaving her blue ones. "Do I need another reason?"
There was several moments of silence, Kazuko's hands twitching under the table as she sat straighter. The ghoul across from her took several more gulps of black coffee, the blood on his hands drying into red flakes, dried smears of blood decorating the white mug.
"So, when you're finally bored of me, will kill me then?"
"Maybe." He shrugged, his head tilting like a curious bird. "What is your obsession with your death? Don't you have anything to ask me?"
"I don't find you that interesting." She answered, leaning back in her seat and crossing her legs at the ankle, her blue eyes narrowing.
"You will." The ghoul stated, scoffing into his chipped coffee mug before continuing. "That ghoul was here to kill you, it tracked you by you scent into her and was planning revenge for you tearing his ear off."
"I had inferred." Kazuko stated, her own head tilting to unconsciously mirror the ghoul.
"Your coffee needs more beans in it." The ghoul grumbled, taking another sip and easily diverting the topic of conversation.
"If you want to pay for it, I'll put the whole tin in for you." Kazuko bit back, her fear slowly eroding away into annoyance as fatigue weighed onto her brain.
As soon as her brain caught up with her mouth, Kazuko froze, her body froze. Muscles tensed in preparation to run from an angry ghoul.
However, nothing happened.
"Fair enough." The ghoul only sighed, setting down the mug and watching her, black and red eyes seeeming to pulse under the flickering artificial light. "You might want to do something about that body in the corridor while it's still dark out."
Silently, Kazuko stood and walked away from the table glancing into the corridor and scowling at the mangled body of the dark haired ghoul on the floor, the smell of rot and death beginning to fill the one floor house.
"Are you going to clean that up?" She said, entering the room once more only to see that the blond ghoul had disappeared. An empty white ceramic mug with smears of drying blood and the red footsteps from the body to her table the only indication that the event wasn't a vivid hallucination.
Well… that and the body still laying mangled in her corridor.
"Interesting, huh?" Kazuko muttered to hereself, crinkling her nose in thought. "Didn't his Okaa-san ever teach him not to play with his food?"
Scoffing into the empty air, Kazuko turned back to the dead body of the ghoul, a hand resting on her hip as she thought. Whirling on the heel of her foot, Kazuko grabbed her gardening gloves and coat, before heading back to the dead body. Grabbing the ghouls cold arm, Kazuko scowled in disgust as she slowly dragged the body through the house. Stepping into the cooling air and glancing around the twisted streets, she grabbed the dead ghouls arm once more, throwing it into a dead end alley and brushing of her gloves with a sneer of disgust.
Twisting on the heel of her foot, Kazuko walked back into the house and locked the door behind her, shaking her head and telling herself to forget what had just happened.
...
It was approximately three weeks later when she saw the blond ghoul again.
Softly padding out of her tiny bedroom, Kazuko jumped three feet in the air when she saw the ghoul innocently sitting at her rotting dining room table.
"I-is that a human finger?"
"Maybe, maybe not." The ghoul shoved, casually throwing the rest of the bloody appendage into his mouth and chewing obnoxiously. "I heard the CCG found the body, quick thinking by the way."
"No thanks to you." Kazuko drawled out, standing stock still in the doorway and eyeing the ghoul carefully. "Why are you here?"
"I was bored." He answered flatly, leaning back in the creaking wooden chair she had scavenged from a scrap pile. "And you provide proficient entertainment."
"How fun…" She trailed off, hesisitantly stepping into the makeshift kitchen and skirting around the table to get to the counter, her eyes never leaving the ghouls black and red one as she withdrew an apple from the fruit basket. "What if I don't provide you proficient entertainment? Will you kill me then?"
"You still have a morbid fascination with your own ending?"
"It has only been three weeks."
"How fun." The ghoul hummed, echoing her prior statement.
Throwing him an odd look, Kazuko took a bite out of her apple and turned to fully face him.
"What are you doing here? Really?" She asked, leaning against the counter.
"Is it so hard to presume that I just missed you?"
"You don't know me."
The ghoul only hummed lowly, tilting his head in curiousity and standing up from the chair. Slipping away from the counter, Kazuko softly padded around the ghoul, their eyes never leaving each other as she walked back to the open doorway, her hand resting on the curved edges and her muscles tensing in preparation to run. Taking in a deep breath, Kazuko fixed him with a stone look of her own.
"I won't kill you." The ghoul smirked, his red eye should flickering to her trembling hand. "If that's what you were wondering. I'm here because I needed to check if a wayward ghoul hadn't killed what belongs to me."
"I'm not you property." She spat back, her eyebrows knitting together slightly in confusion.
"Whatever you say, woman." The ghoul shrugged, shoving his pale hands in his pockets, blond hair falling into his face as a smirk spread across blood stained teeth.
From her place in the doorway, Kazuko decided that she was never going to trust anyone that smiled like that. Like they were currently imagining breaking you open and sorting out your insides for it was the only way that can understand what made you tick.
It reminded her of her okaa-san.
Against her better judgement, Kazuko took a large bite out of the apple in her hand, turned on the heel of her foot and left the ghoul standing in her kitchen. When she returned, he was gone.
He showed up the next week, and the week after that, and the week after that one, sometimes watching her silently, and other times striking up conversations about her apparent suicidal fascination or to complain she still needed to buy better coffee beans.
...
"Why are you here?" He asks her one day, the sun casting golden streaks across the darkening sky. He leaned against her door way, watching her with intrigue as she gazed beneath the floorboards, searching for the rat she had caught a glimpse of a few hours earlier.
"Why are any of us here?" Kazuko said flatly leaning more into the floor and blindly searching the cold cement beneath her floorboards. "Why does the planet evolve. What did ghouls evolve from? Any other philosophical questions you want to get off your chest. Any sins?"
"I mean in the slums." The ghoul elaborated, watching her blindly search the floor with a flat look, clearly unimpressed with her efforts. "It's obvious you don't belong here. You're not a druggie, and you're probably not from some dead beat family, you talk to posh for that. So why are you here?"
"Maybe I taught myself." She waved off, scowling as she angled her arms to go deeper underneath the floorboards.
"Maybe you did, maybe you didn't." He shrugged lightly. "The fact that you're avoiding the question means you are running."
Kazuko stiffened from where she lay on the floor, slowly extracting her hand from underneath the floorboards as she watched him carefully. Looking for any moment that might signify he was going to attack her for keeping secrets from him.
"Maybe I am, maybe I'm not." She said, echoing his previous statement. "The fact remains that it doesn't matter, I'm here now. I've got income coming in and a roof, no matter how patched up, over my head. That's all I need."
Silence ghosted around them for several seconds, the ghouls eyes flickering with something Kazuko couldn't name before he spoke once more. His question coating the room with a suffocating tension as he tiltied his head.
"What do you even do for a living?" He asked, a low growl to his voice, though genuine curiousity could be heard.
"So you're not watching me twenty-four seven, huh?" Kazuko laughed lightly, unwashed strands of dark hair falling into her face as she sat up. "I must say, I'm surprised."
"You're not answering the question."
Kazuko stiffened slightly once more, briefly recalling the handprints on her pelvis and wrists, the dark spot covered by her hair. Huffing, she blew the hair out of her face and let the floorboard fall back into place.
"What do you think every woman around here does when they get desperate enough?" She asked instead, her blue eyes burning into his red and black ones.
He doesn't have an answer for that.
He never asks her about her career again.
...
"Darling Kazuko." Her okaa-san would whisper sardonically into her champagne flute. Her subtle makeup enchancing her features and the flowers in her hair hand-chosen, grown, and picked just for this event. "You cannot let the world define you, you let them walk over you too much, and yet you deny to conforming to their ideals. Why did I have to give birth to such an odd one. Personally, I blame your father."
Kazuko only stood silently and watched the older woman down an entire flut of champagne in one go, the rings on her fingers glittering in the late evening light, casting shadows on the opulent walls around them.
Kazuko immediately startled when he when he grabbed her hand, the blond haired ghoul shifting around a sharp corner and dragging her away, not even acknowledging her as he dragged her and her basket of flowers and apples through the sharply twisted streets of the slums.
"What are you doing?" She hissed loudly, ripping her arm away from his grip and shooting him an odd look. The blond ghoul in front of her only shooting her a look of annoyance as she pulled them into a sudden stop.
"Really not the time." The male ghoul hissed back quietly, glancing sharply behind her before moving to grab her wrist once more. "Come on."
"No." Kazuko denied, turning away from him and scowling slightly, unwashed dark strands falling into her face.
"Woman." The ghoul growled, his voice becoming deep and deadly serious as he took a step closer to her. "If you do not follow me then I will snap your neck right here and right now."
"Why?" Kazuko snapped back, raising an eyebrow at the ghouls use of the word 'woman'. "Wait, do you even-"
"The ghoul from two months ago had friends, and your scent was all over his dead and mangled body." The blond cut her off, his red eyes flickering behind her once more. "You're house is swarming with lice infested ghouls and it wouldn't surprise me if the Doves were thirty minutes away at this point. If you go back, they will rip you apart, if you stay here then I will rip you apart." He leaned closer, fear settling deep with Kazuko's stomach as she gazed into the blood red eyes of her natural predator. "Do you understand?"
"Oh, so you're not allowing anyone else to kill me?" Kazuko huffed, standing her ground and staring back. I've told you once, I've told you twice, I've told you a thoundsand times; I am not a possession. Stop treating me like I am."
"Yeah, sure." The ghoul muttered, not paying much attention to her mimi rant. With his hand reaching out with the speed of a coiled viper, successfully dragging her into another part of a smaller alley. "Whatever you say woman."
"You never told me your name." Kazuko whispered harshly, her sky blue eyes seeming to shift like the day turning into night as he dragged her into another alley. "If you're so sure that you own me, can I not know your name? Do you even know mine?"
"Uta." The ghoul started simply, pulling her into the alcove of the alley way and facing her. His dyed blond hair standing out in the darkness, black and red eyes staring at her through obnoxious glasses. "And you?"
"My name is Kazuko." She frowned, craning her neck to stare up at the ghoul, a shadow darting over sky blue eyes. "Pleasure, I'm sure."
There was a quick slant in his lips at that, shadows dancing over his face as ominous black crows flew in the evening gold sky high above them. The alleyway was small, even by the slums standards, and provided little relief from the elements as Uta's eyes flickered behind them, growing dark as they found something entering the alley, a murky reflection visible in his red irises.
"Well, Kazuko." Uta grinned slightly, black and red eyes flickering behind her as a low growl filled the alley several feet away from them. Grabbing her hand, his grin became wider, blood becoming visible on his canines. "How do you feel about running?"
With a startled yell, Kazuko stumbled after Uta, shock spreading across her face as he dragged her through the alleyways, the snarling ghoul how on their heels.
"Oh, Kazuko…" Okaa-san sighed, her gold and diamond encased hands running through Kazuko's long hair. "You would dance with the devil if he asked you nicely…"
