Is there such thing as 'happily ever after'?

Does the concept of happiness at the rainbow exist in real life, or was that only in the story books that the black-haired child introduced to the green-haired girl?

This is an important question for the green-haired girl and the black-haired boy. So many people are scared of the future and what it will hold for them. Will they be happy, or sad? Will they have everything they need, or nothing at all? People rarely know the answer to the important life questions that they ask themselves, and that scares them more than mysterious one-eyed ghouls and the horrors that hide in the kitchen cupboards. It was much more unpredictable than what the questions on the tests are and what is for dinner that night.

There is no correct answer for it.

Children hardly think about these questions anyway. They have no need to think about their future other than what is going to happen the next day and the birthday party happening next week. They have no need to fill with worry about money or deadlines or providing for others.

And so, the two children, one with black hair and the other with green, visited each other each Saturday, eager to play and learn about each other, curiosity filling their entire being that lasts longer than the visit. They smile when the boy points a character out to the girl and explains what it is, and they laugh when the girl pushes the boy over in the sand pit while playing tag.

They're not happy, though, not really.

The smiles that paint their faces make their fear of what will happen when they separate and the fear they hold for the future. It hides their concerns for important people and helps them pretend nothing is wrong with the world. Their clothes hid their scars and their bruises, stopping people from seeing how the world has wronged them. They're scared, fearing what will happen next, but by coming to the park with the other made them fill with joy and childish.

However, there is only so far they could pretend that happily ever after existed, and for them, there was no such thing.

The black haired human soon came to enjoy Saturdays.

Before he had met his new friend, he would spend his Saturdays alone in the house for his mother had work and his best friend from school visited his family almost every week. But now he had something to do other than idly sit there for hours on end because his mother would never come home but he would hate it when she was home. So it was good for the 8 year old to be out of the house.

He would spend almost all of the daylight hours at the abandoned park with the one eyed ghoul. He would bring books and paper and pens and she would bring herself and they would spend most of the time learning to read and write. There wasn't any stopping for snack breaks, mainly because the green haired female didn't need to eat, due to her being a ghoul and the small male child didn't tell her that he need to eat, and he thought it would be selfish of him to waste time with him eating when he could be helping the girl learn how to tell the difference between the kanji so she could be on par with him and then they could read the same books and discuss their favourite parts. They also talked about many things, like what school was like for the human and what the 24th Ward, which was completely dominated by ghouls, was like for the ghoul. He never felt out of place when he went to the park with his new friend, and never did he want to miss a minute with the green-haired half ghoul.

It had only been a month since he had meet the girl, but far too quickly she was becoming the one of the most important things in his life.

It was Friday night, and Kaneki was preparing for the next day. His backpack held the book that he was using as a guide to help his friend learn, a notebook and pen so he could teach her to write and a Frisbee, because his new friend had never heard of the thing and really wanted to know what one was and how to play.

"Ken, what are you doing?" The boy turned around to see the speaker, his mother. She had short brown hair that only just covered her ears, a pale white face that looked as if it hadn't seen the sun in weeks, wore round glasses, indicating that she had just been working and a blank expression that showed no emotion. It wasn't often that the boy's mother checked up on him, for she was too busy to spend time with him.

"Are you… are you leaving?" she asked, looking at his bag. The boy's eyes widened in shock, he had never thought to leave his mother!

"N-n-no." he stuttered out, stepping away from his mother. She didn't seem to believe him, taking long strides towards him, looking down on her son.

"You're going to leave me aren't you? Just like your father did, like father, like son." The mother whispered accusingly, snatching his bag off him and throwing the objects out onto his floor, ignoring the way that the book skidded and ripped and the look of horror on her only child's face. The blacked haired child grabbed her arm and tried to tear it away from the bag, only for her to drop the said item and turn her attention onto him.

Smack.

The child fell to the floor from the impact of his mother's hand slapping him around the face, and angry red mark indicating on the left side of the face showed where the hand had impacted. He had no time to register the pain, for his mother had her iron grip on the black-haired child and shake him and shouting questions at him, however, he could not hear nor answer in his state. After what seemed to be forever, she stopped and dropped him to the floor, his body crumbling into a pile on the carpet.

"You'll never leave me will you, Ken?" she asked quietly, looking ahead and showed no signs of the anger she previously had.

"No, mother." The boy muttered from his spot on the ground, not moving in fear and pain. His mother accepted his answer and moved out of his room and into the kitchen and started to cook, beef burgers, her child's favourite dish. The boy slowly moved out of his foetus position and slowly moved into the bathroom. His face had begun to swell slightly, and there was a nasty colouring on his arm that made him happy that school was out for a few days. He went back into his room, and realised that some of the pages in his book were ripped. No matter, there was tape in his mother's study that he could borrow later, when she was asleep. It wouldn't be selfish, for his green haired friend was reading the book, and it would be selfish of him not to fix it because he could be holding the ending in her face, but not giving it to her, and that would be an awful thing for him to do to his new friend. So he slowly began to repack his bag as quietly as he could, careful to not to make a noise that would alert his mother of his packing. He then spend five minutes laying on his arm trying to get the pen from underneath the chest of draws, a rickety old set that his mother got from a car boot sale that threatened to collapse at any moments.

He had just got the pen out when there was a call from his mother for his supper, and he quickly went into the kitchen to avoid another episode.

The green haired girl was very excited to see her friend today, due to the bad week she just had, for the violence of her home ward was spilling out into places like the 4th, 11th and the 13th ward. The number of ghoul investigators had increased in each ward, but not in the 20th, due to the new coffee shop that had just opened. She had no chance to think on the subject any longer, for her black haired friend had just arrived, but he didn't seem as happy to see her.

"Hello Kaneki!" she said with a smile on her face. He didn't smile back, but now that he was closer, the half ghoul noticed the bruising on the side of his face and on the upper arm, or at least the part that his t-shirt didn't cover. Now she wasn't happy either, in fact, she felt murderous. Who dared to lay a hand on her human? Who thought that they had the right to treat them like this and get away from it? Well, they wouldn't, for she was going to eat them even if they were a ghoul and-

"Eto? Are you okay?" the girl, who was hearing a small and dirty red dress blinked at the boy, then sighed. The boy in front of the half ghoul, human or not, was weak and stupid. He would never survive in the ghoul world, and wouldn't even last two minutes in her home ward, not counting the fact that he was a human and would be eaten anyway.

"Am I okay?" she said slowly, watching the black haired human in front of her. "I think we should be asking if you're okay, and before you say that you are, you have a huge bruise on your face." The boy in front of her looked down ashamed. She sighed again.

"Do you want to tell me who did this to you?" He looked up and stared at her.

"No, because you'll kill them and that isn't really accepted in the human world and it's-" the boy began to ramble, beginning to talk at a faster pace and panicked, so the older girl cut him off.

"Fine, I won't hurt them." She muttered loud enough for her human friend to hear but quiet enough to show her annoyance over the decision. "But you have to tell me who did it." The black haired boy looked undeceive over what she had said but quickly agreed with what she said, scratching his chin while telling her about bullies at his school, while telling her what a bully is. The female half ghoul sat there, thoughtful of the situation. She couldn't hurt the bullies, because her human friend would be sad, so what could she do instead? But she quickly came up with a solution to the problem:

"I'll teach you how to fight them." She said proudly. The boy had his eyes open wide with the idea.

"Fight?! But that would be hurting people and you shouldn't hurt people-"

"Why?"

"Because, you shouldn't be the person hurting others, but be the person getting hurt." The half ghoul looked at her friend with a blank expression.

"I'm still teaching you how to fight."