author's note;
02/09/14 — Let it be known: keeping Touka recognizable while still taking into account her lack of ghoul-related trauma is unexpectedly hard. I think I've spent more time hashing out what her human life would be like, instead of, you know, actually plotting. Gosh.

(And in case anyone was wondering, this is mostly going to be a series of connected scenes, drabbles, one-sentence fics and one-shots... much like between you and i.)

( rex )

Yoriko has spent exactly fifteen minutes examining her face in the bathroom mirror, running a hand through her short blond hair and touching up her make-up for what seems to be the nth time since their arrival at the karaoke place. Her lips are pink and luscious (the result of lip gloss that, apparently, makes your lips swell up), her skin is perfectly unblemished, and she is dressed to the nines. For all intents and purposes, she doesn't even know who she's about to go on a date with.

Touka would roll her eyes, if she weren't so busy trying to pick black gunk out of the corners of her eyes. Undoubtedly a result of the sticky, liquid eyeliner Yoriko had insisted she wear today.

"You don't know him," Touka unhelpfully points, squinting at her own face in the mirror. There is a zit on the right corner of her forehead that was not there yesterday. "He could be that kind of guy, for all you know. Hell — all of them could be."

Yoriko, in turn, huffs, adjusting her hair-band and purposefully fixing the ruffles of her skirt. "Touka-chan, don't say that," she scolds her, "Senpai invited us! And it's not every day we get to meet boys from Kamii..."

Senpai, of course, was a recently graduated upperclassman Yoriko had hit off with fabulously during their first year. Touka had never bothered to learn her name, no matter how many times Yoriko brought her up in conversation—or how many times Touka had actually spoken to her. She had, somehow, inconspicuously hidden this fact by never uttering a sentence that required her to mention their upperclassman's name.

It was genius.

And also utterly stupid.

Maybe if she had made her inability to learn this person's name clear, she wouldn't have been dragged along to a group blind date.

(Not that she would have been able to leave Yoriko alone in a group mostly made up of first year college students, anyway.)

To her relief, Yoriko adds one final stroke of eye-shadow to her eyelids and finally steps away from the mirror. She examines her full ensemble with a critical eye, tapping one foot on the linoleum floor and then giving a little twirl. Almost expectantly, she glances at Touka. "Ready?"

Well, yes. Obviously. She's been ready for the past fifteen—no, eighteen minutes. She refrains from pointing this out as she nods. "Yeah. Ready."

Surprisingly, Yoriko's conversational partner does not turn out to be that kind of guy.

Unsurprisingly, Touka's conversational partner probably is.

From: Yoriko (Mobile)
To: Touka (Mobile)
Nagachika-san is really funny!
What do you think about Kaneki-san?

From: Touka (Mobile)
To: Yoriko (Mobile)
No.

The less said, the better.