Shuu stood in the kitchen of his flat, sleeves rolled up and an apron on over his casual clothes, sharpening his knives. He turned to the counter, knife in hand, and sighed dramatically.

"Chie, would you please get off of the counter? I need to get there."

Chie swung her feet and fiddled with her camera before making a flash go off in Shuu's face. She laid down and sprawled out on the counter. Her response came quickly: a nasally, noncommittal, "Nahhhhhhh."

"Don't take pictures of my face. Move, I'm trying to cook."

Chie didn't give him the time of day and just looked at her camera.

"I should carve you up instead, if you're refusing to move," Shuu rolled his eyes and sighed, resigning to use the other, much smaller, counter in his kitchen. He moved the brown paper bag that could only be described as "sketchy" to his new workspace.

Chie rolled over on the counter that she had claimed for herself and watched him at work. "What are you even cooking?"

"Hors d'oeuvres."

"Ahh, an appetizer? You're after someone. How neat."

Shuu was taken aback again by another flash in his face.

Chie rolled onto her back and checked her camera, "Can I have some?"

"Chie."

She snorted, "I was kidding, that's gross. Buy me a parfait instead."

"Later. I would like to hear about how it would taste to a human, though," Shuu turned his back to her and pulled a sopping organ from the paper bag. "I wonder if it's any different of a flavor." He turned it over in his hands, blood smearing onto his fingers. A lovely appetizer the heart would make. It would surely make his desire for his prey stronger, and its taste sweeter once he had caught it. His phone even sat on his-rather, Chie's- counter, waiting for a buzz. He expected the boy to call sometime or another, the way he had looked at Shuu told him as much.

"What happened out there, I wonder, I wonder," Chie sat up on her counter and snapped a picture of the food Shuu was preparing. "You're starting to act the same."

Shuu's hand stopped mid-slice. He turned around and looked to Chie. She had picked up on it. He wasn't acting any differently, of course not. He was the same as he'd always been. He looked at her and furrowed his brows before returning to the heart on the counter. He tried to think of something to say. He couldn't.

"When were you leaving again, Chie?" he let out instead, snippy.

"Huh? I live here," came her reply, as she rolled over on the counter and picked up his phone to mess with.

Shuu looked up at her and cocked an eyebrow, slightly annoyed.

"Since when do you- You can't just decide that, Chie-" he sighed, exasperated. He rubbed his temples. This was a battle he would lose, even though this was his flat. "You know where the guest room is."

Shuu supposed he could use the company. Even though he had kicked out Kanae as soon as was possible.

"You mean my room?" Chie snickered, devilish. "It's not responsible to leave my pet ghoul on his own anyway.

He went to make the joke back, that she was his pet human. He was cut off by the ringing of his phone, a classical music piece. Perfect. His trap had caught. Chie had his phone in hand, and she looked at it strangely before giving the screen a closer inspection.

"Kanae-kun wouldn't be calling right now, who could it beeeee. It's not like you have other friends."

That stung.

Shuu sputtered but decided not to address the insult, true though it was. "Give me-"

Chie held it to her ear and answered.

"Hellooooo?"

Shuu set down the knife, wiped his hands off, and stomped the few feet over to her. He motioned for her to "give it here", but Chie stood on the counter and held it over his head. The counter didn't even give her that much of a height advantage, her tiny stature up against Shuu's.

"A-ah, sorry,? Some guy who looked like a model just suddenly gave me his number- I got a bit excited about that, haha...it must have been a joke."

Shuu grabbed Chie's legs and dragged her off of the counter. Chie flopped over and slung herself over Shuu's shoulder. Shuu grappled for his phone but Chie kicked her legs and Shuu lost his balance. They both swore and shouted loudly at the altercation, Shuu's expletives in European languages and Chie's in some sort of gibberish. The two hit the floor with a loud thud and Chie's head connected with Shuu's stomach. That knocked the wind out of him and he let out a loud gasp to retrieve the air he'd lost. Chie, largely unaffected by the fall, climbed out of the two's pile of bodies and sat on top of Shuu's chest, shoving her feet into his face.

The squabble must have been heard over the phone.

"Hello? Is everything okay?"

Chie brought the phone back to her ear. "Model guy. Gotcha. He's right here."

She handed the phone to Shuu. Finally.

"Mon cheri e," he squeaked, trying to catch his breath thanks to the Chie who looked very proud of herself, "please pardon the wait."

The voice on the other end of the phone cheered up, completely dropping its concern over what had been heard before. "Oh, hi! Sorry, was it too soon to call? Were you busy?"

"Non, not at all," Shuu shot Chie a glare and pushed her off from atop his chest before pulling himself into a sitting position. "Every moment I waited was one too many."

Chie snorted and rolled her eyes.

A stutter from the other end. Shuu reasoned his lines were a tad too cheesy, but they had worked so far.

"Ah, well," the voice died down to humming. Unsure of what to say, awkward. How sweet. Just like how he imagined the boy was going to taste. Shuu smirked.

"You would like to go for coffee?" Shuu offered. He stood up from the floor and walked to his counter to lean against it casually.

Chie followed him and tried to press her ear up to the receiver to hear what was coming from the other end. She was so much shorter than Shuu that she tried to jump to hear, but it didn't work. Shuu glared down at her, bopped her on the head, and mouthed a "non".

"You're no fun," Chie groaned aloud.

Shuu held a finger to his lips and ignored her.

"Yeah, definitely! Would tomorrow be good, or? No, that's too soon, huh..."

"Non, non, tomorrow is fine," Shuu smiled to himself and turned away from Chie's odd looks. "I couldn't bear to wait any longer." He felt his stomach grumble. He certainly couldn't.

A question came from the other end, "Should we go to that place where we met, then?" Ah, finally. He was speaking up.

But the coffee shop had been in a busy area. Shuu decided he would need somewhere more secluded if he were going to eat him. He intended not to just take a few parts from him, as he usually did.

Used to do, a nagging voice at the back of his mind told him, he hadn't since meeting Kaneki. He didn't even hunt anymore, really, he got his food from his family's...ventures. Originally, his habits had changed as a way of gaining Kaneki's trust. It was quite the effort he put in for one meal, one that he never even had the chance to eat. Then his habits never changed. A meal, he told himself, that's all Kaneki Ken had been.

And now he intended to savor every last part of the little imposter's flesh. He couldn't go killing the boy in broad daylight, now could he? He'd choose somewhere more secluded.

"I know of a better place," he replied, "I'll send you the address."

He didn't have any particular shop in mind, but he'd look at a map to find one in a...desirable location. Secluded and close to a tunnel entrance would be ideal.

"The evening would be best, is that fine?"

It would be dark by the time they had finished, then. Perfect.

"Isn't that a bit late for coffee- No, that's fine. Any time is good for coffee," a small laugh from the other end.

Shuu turned back to the heart on the counter and traced a finger down it.

He licked the blood off the digit and smirked.

"Ciao."

He hung up.

Perfetto.

Chie's hand immediately shot out and yanked his phone from his hand. She looked at the unfamiliar number. "Who was that? The guy you're gonna eat, or the guy you're gonna-"

"Chie."

She rolled her eyes. "You don't even know what I was gonna say."

"I have an idea," he tutted, "Little mice shouldn't be concerned with such a thing."

"I'm literally older than you," Chie blew a raspberry and put his phone in her pocket. She snapped a picture of the layout on the counter, and sauntered over to the table where she sat down like a normal person instead of being a counter thief.

Shuu picked up his work and moved it to his preferred counter to continue the preparation of his meal.

Chie was watching him. He could feel the little leer she was shooting him. He looked to her and she waggled her eyebrows a little.

Shuu raised his eyebrows in response and let out a small hum of acknowledgement.

"You're acting like normal. Hunting? You haven't done that in, like, forever. I guess, as a human, I shouldn't be encouraging- but you're my pet ghoul, so."

"I always act like normal," he said, ignoring the pet comment. A running joke, it was funny sometimes he supposed. He turned his back to her and back to the food- it was almost ready to cook and he wouldn't be able to use it as an excuse to ignore Chie anymore. He'd have to find something else, or just kick her out.

"Pffft, no you don't. You haven't since-"

"Don't continue that sentence," he struggled out, the level starting stern but dropping to a whisper.

Chie opened her mouth.

"Since you stopped hanging around that guy."

Shuu stabbed his knife into the counter, the loud sound echoing in the small kitchen.

She stopped.

A heavy silence settled in his flat.

He hadn't changed at all, he told himself. But he knew, he knew that he had. How couldn't he have, when Kaneki was...when Kaneki was…

He remembered, vaguely, about a month after- everything from then felt surreal, looking back was hard not just emotionally but also because grasping that it had actually happened was a great feat- going through his daily motions in a haze, buying the newspaper from that morning, and finding a tiny corner, the tiniest corner. Search given up, missing student Kaneki Ken pronounced dead.

He remembered his surroundings blurring around him. Feeling as though the newspaper would dissipate in his hands, that his next step would bring his foot through the ground and he would sink into a grave to join Kaneki Ken.

Kaneki hadn't even been missing for a year yet, not long enough to pronounce him dead by far- but it was some sort of gross consolation fed into the paper by the CCG. A confirmation that he truly had died at Anteiku.

In the tiny little corner of the page. A black-and-white photo of Kaneki, in one of his atrocious sweatervests he had been fond of. Black haired. Smiling. It felt so strange, nostalgic almost even though he hadn't known Kaneki when he had been so sweet. Shuu himself had contributed to his misfortunes. It left him with a bittersweet sickness sloshing in his middle and a great weighing on his chest. And that corner was all they had given him, not even in the obituaries.

Kaneki Ken, student from Kamii University, pronounced dead. Remembered by his loving aunt and cousin.

He knew it was an invasion of Kaneki's privacy, and Shuu knew he should respect the dead.

But he clipped the photo, kept it for himself, and decided to visit his family- to give consolation.

He brought flowers and kind words, and his aunt opened the door seemingly disgusted until she took a look at his clothes. Then she invited him in happily.

"It's been so hard without Kaneki," she whined, she wept, "he was such a great help to us, so bright, such a future for him." She sang him praises and shed crocodile tears and Shuu felt sickened by her. Shuu was a faker himself, of course he could tell she wasn't genuine. Her son sat with them as well, disinterested- neither of them truly cared about Kaneki.

They weren't deserving, and Shuu had to stomach his boiling rage. But he smiled and offered her what she was getting at with all her feigned emotions- some help with money. Kaneki had been a dear friend, after all, and his family was just as much a friend to him, of course.

Disgusting, that she would use Kaneki's death as a means to profit. And to someone she had just met? What a vile, pathetic woman.

She gave Shuu the location of Kaneki's grave- nothing was there, of course. The CCG took any ghoul corpses for their own purposes. Whatever was left of Kaneki's remains were probably locked inside a suitcase. The thought made him feel sick.

Apparently the CCG had paid for the spot for them, a sick gesture of goodwill. His aunt was seemingly perplexed as to why the CCG would do such a thing- good for her. She shouldn't have known, anyway. She didn't deserve to know. Shuu's stomach rolled when he realized she probably wouldn't have spared the money for a plot to Kaneki's remembrance.

He left, smiling, but truly sickened. Sent them money. He assumed Kaneki would have wanted that much.

He visited the grave only once.

After that his family sent Kanae to "look after him". As if he couldn't do that himself. ...Which, at that point, he really couldn't. He'd been as inconsolable as he had been on the rooftop.

…

Shuu's reminiscence made his blood churn. He and Chie sat, unspeaking. Shuu found his hands shaking. He attempted to swallow the lump in his throat but the tenseness in his muscles wouldn't leave him.

He busied himself with putting his meal in the oven to cook.

It wasn't going to taste as good now.

He closed the door and stood there a while, staring into the oven window. He didn't discuss Kaneki.

Kaneki's name even was sacred to him now- he rarely thought it, Kaneki only existing now as an abstract concept in his mind that consumed his every thought and weighed on his chest and- The boy wearing Kaneki's face had the gall to besmirch all of that with his very existence. He made a mockery of Kaneki Ken.

He wanted to crumple and curl up on the tile, but Chie was watching. She couldn't know.

...But he knew that she already did.

So he sank to the ground and sat there.

Anger at the imposter boy stewed in with the sadness Chie had stirred.

He vaguely registered the sound of a wooden chair scraping against the tile as Chie got up from her spot. She walked over and sat beside him.

"Watching this cook is going to be really boring, huh."

Shuu slumped and leaned his head atop hers, dwarfing her entirely.

Chie reached up and gave his head a pat that was supposed to be reassuring. It was, really. They were close in a way that ghouls and humans really shouldn't be. Familial, almost.

They sat that way a while.

He sighed.

It was going to be a long day. His thoughts were full of Kaneki now, and they weren't going to leave him.