Summary: As if he'd needed another sign this forest wasn't natural.

Rating: K+

Genre: Supernatural

Characters: Hide, Kaneki, Hinami

Tags: AU, HideKane if you squint, Kaneki's kinda weird in this, It'll make sense soon

Word Count: 1,075

He'd been here a week.

After he'd eaten his fill from the girl (he should probably figure out something to call her), he'd found himself falling asleep. Deep, dreamless sleep, unhindered by the sensation of someone watching him. When he'd woken up, the clearing was sunlit, fog was starting to roll in to lightly blanket it like it did everywhere else… and the clearing was just gone. That, too.

As if he'd needed another sign this forest wasn't natural.

As before, he'd picked a direction, hoped it wouldn't send him back the way he came from (though he was starting to think it wouldn't matter), and started walking.

The first day was almost agonizing.

The brief reprieve the girl had offered had been amazing. To have all that gone, as if he'd simply dreamed it up...

It was nearly sunset when he got an idea. The forest wasn't natural. That girl had implied that… Kaneki would be watching him or something, right? Or should be, at least.

He cleared his throat and spoke. "Hey… Kaneki, right? You there?"

"I told you it wouldn't be the last time."

He spun around – what was with these people and appearing behind him? – and gaped. "Damn it, Kaneki! Don't you know rabbits die when you give them heart attacks?!"

He tilted his head. "What did you call me for?"

He glared. "You dropped me in the middle of this place, and then don't even have the decency to keep me company?"

"Should I have been?"

"Yes!"

"... Sorry."

Hide took a moment to breathe. "I forgive you, okay? That girl from last night implied you guys aren't human. And with those eyes of yours, I can believe it. Just... don't do it again?"

Kaneki nodded. "Alright."

He stood for a moment, then spoke. "You know, I caught your name from someone who didn't introduce herself, either. So let's start over a bit." He held out his hand. "I'm Nagachika Hideyoshi. You can call me Hide."

Kaneki stared at his hand like it was something utterly alien to him, then slowly took it. "Kaneki Ken."

"Great. It's nice to meet you."

The next few days were much more bearable. Kaneki had a habit of slipping away when he wasn't looking, but he'd always come back when Hide called for him, apologizing for running off. While Hide didn't like that his only companion left him so often, he always seemed so sorry when he came back that he couldn't help but shake his head and smile a bit.

Contrary to first impressions, he was actually pretty nice. More than a little timid, and a bit spacey, for the lack of a better word, but nice.

(He still wasn't sure whether or not he believed him about Rize. But he was good at spotting liars, and he hadn't seen anything from Kaneki that made him think he was lying.

But just because he hadn't lied didn't mean he was telling the truth... right?)

"You're hungry?" He tilted his head in that way he did when he didn't quite understand something.

"Yeah. Humans need to eat, you know."

He nodded. "Right."

"Can you... do whatever it was that girl did? Make food pop up out of nowhere?"

"Sorry. But I know someone who can."

Meeting Yomo was an odd experience. He never spoke. His face was always hidden behind a crow mask, his unreal eyes glinting from within. He brought food whenever Kaneki called for him, though, so Hide couldn't complain too much.

("That girl from before said most of you had names I couldn't pronounce," he'd started after Yomo had left. "Other than you and Yomo, who else is there?"

"I'm... other than me, there's Her, but we're the only ones. Yomo isn't his real name." He touched his tongue. "I can't pronounce their names, either, but I had to call them something. Most of them didn't like it the idea of new names too much at first, but we worked it out."

"So you gave them nicknames?"

Kaneki stared at him for a moment, then nodded. "Yeah. Nicknames."

"So what do you call that girl I met?"

"Touka.")

"Hide?"

"Yeah?"

"I've been wondering... why are we walking?"

"Well, I was kind of hoping to find something that wasn't endless trees and fog eventually." Like a trail or something.

"Hide, this place isn't... it goes on forever. You'll only find something different if one of us makes something."

He stopped, turning to look back at the snowy-haired boy. "One of us...?"

He tapped the skin under his blackened eye.

"Oh." He thought for a moment. "Well, thanks for finally telling me. I don't suppose you could...?"

He shook his head. "The others tell me I could, and I've seen Her do it before, so they're probably right. But I don't know how. I can look outside and bring things in, but I can't make, and I can't take them out." He shifted. "Sorry."

"It's fine. I guess that's why you call Yomo whenever you need to get me food?"

He nodded, still looking guilty. "But, Hide..."

"What?"

"I brought you here. So the others think it's my job to get you out. And I don't know how, and no one else knows how to teach me. Sorry."

Hide blinked, and Kaneki was gone.

It was more than a few hours before he'd said enough to thin air to convince him he could come back again.

"Why did you bring me here, anyway?"

Kaneki shifted to look at him. He'd managed to find them a clearing, though given the waning-but-still-mostly-white moon overhead, he was pretty sure Kaneki had been responsible for it.

("We all have little things that we're tied to, that we need to take care of," he'd said when Hide finally asked him where he kept disappearing to. "The plants, the animals. Touka even has some power over the moon."

"So you're like... nature spirits, or something?"

"I guess.")

The snow-haired boy shrugged. "She was going to kill you. I know her. She always kills the people she brings here."

"Okay," he could figure out whether he actually believed that some other time, "but why me? You keep saying she's killed people in your neck of the woods before. So why did you save me?"

He was silent. For a moment, Hide was beginning to think he wouldn't answer at all. And then, "Because I know you."

He wouldn't say anything more.

Notes: Part two of this weird little thing. Part three will be up tomorrow, and will hopefully be the end of it.

And thus we get some more back story about this forest our main character's found himself in. Kaneki has a lot of the answers, but not all of them, and he either doesn't think about or just doesn't want to give up the ones he does have, either.

There's a little foreshadowing to all three of the potential opponents I can use for the climax. We'll likely be meeting all of them in the next piece, though. Can anyone guess who?