Thanks for reading! There's slightly less Ui this chapter, apologies.
"You want to go to karaoke?" Hirako asks.
Ui shakes his head. He always goes alone anyways, but clearly Hirako's pitying him. Ui glares at the computer screen. The smell of stale coffee makes him nauseated. Hairu. Hairu. My baby.
Can you mourn someone you never knew existed? Why wasn't I trustworthy enough? He covers his mouth and hopes the pale glow burns his eyes.
"Okay." Hirako grabs his briefcase. Silver moonlight pours through the window, cutting across his desk.
Hirako, Take, she was pregnant, he wants to call.
It's mine.
I've lost everything and I didn't even know that I had it.
Hirako leaves, and Ui can't make himself say anything.
A rustle behind him. Ui leaps up. It's Arima, locking up his office. He looks at Ui, inscrutable as ever. "You should get some rest, Special Class Ui."
"I was just hoping we might find another clue," Ui says, heart thumping.
"We have a big operation coming up. We need your focus elsewhere," Arima states, adjusting his briefcase. It thumps on the desk.
He might as well have kicked Ui. He swallows. "Yes, sir."
"Good." Arima clears his throat.
"The blood wasn't hers, though," Ui tries. "Hirako said it was from a ghoul. She could be alive." Don't you care? Why don't you care?
Why am I alone in caring so much?
My child.
Hairu.
He'll find her, or what happened to her, no matter what. He can't give her up. Or his child. Ui grips the desk so tightly his knuckles crack.
"We can focus on Ihei after the Rose operation," Arima says. He studies Ui, a strange look on his face. Disapproval? For what? For caring about Hairu? Am I that transparent?
The longer we wait, the worse the odds!
"You knew her from the Garden, right?" Ui asks. He's desperate. What was she like as a child?
"I did." Arima lifts his briefcase. "We were taught good survival skills, Ui. If anyone can make it, she would. That being said, in all likelihood, she's already dead."
No! His words show Ui underwater, and he can't swim for the surface. His lungs won't work. She's not, don't say that!
We were going to have a baby!
Maybe. She didn't tell him. Maybe she didn't get the chance.
Even if you don't want the baby, let me know. I just want to hear it from your lips. I just want you here.
God, please. Give her more time.
Arima leaves, and Ui wants to throw something at the man. How can you be so cold? You were the last person to talk to her before she was attacked!
He trudges outside and lights a cigarette. Embers glow and flicker as they fall to the ground.
"Working late?"
Ui jumps. Furuta Nimura glances at him, locking the door behind him. "So are you, apparently."
Furuta shrugs. "Anything on Ihei?"
Ui sucks in the spicy smoke. He shakes his head.
"Shame." Furuta sighs. "Soon we'll be missing a lot more investigators. Most likely. With this operation commencing."
Ui blows the smoke out. "She might not be dead."
"Right," Furuta says quickly, and Ui hates that. Still, he offers a cigarette to Furuta. "No thanks. I don't smoke. Don't want to die any younger than I already will."
"That's not a great attitude to have," Ui reprimands the man. "If you fight smart, you won't die at all. And you're from the Garden. You've received special training." Clouds cover the moon.
"No one ever thought I was as gifted as the likes of Ihei or Arima," says Furuta.
"If you work hard," says Ui. "Your story isn't over yet."
A smile curves Furuta's lips. "No, it's not." He straightens. "You should get some rest, Special Class Ui. If you're tired, you'll make mistakes. We can't lose someone else."
She's not confirmed dead!
Look at the facts.
Shut up! Shut up! Shut up! Ui drops the cigarette to the ground and grinds it out with his heel, stomping on it. "What was she like? In the Garden?"
Furuta cocks his head to the side. "Cute. And a fierce fighter. She was always the top of her class, but she was several years behind me, so I don't recall exactly, apologies." He taps his chin. "Oh, she was a huge Arima fangirl. Like everyone there really, only for her it was even more intense. It was obvious that she had an adorable schoolgirl crush on him." He tips his chin down. "Have a good night, Ui."
Ui watches him go.
He feels hollow.
A now familiar surge of nausea pulls her from her sleep. Hairu rolls over and vomits into a basin Eto left by her bed. How long is this going to continue? she wonders. Her first trimester, which is… not close enough to being over. Kanou said she's seven weeks.
Hairu leans back against the cot Eto set up for her in this tiny closet-like room, sucking in her breath. A salty smell meets her nose. She wrinkles it.
"Sick again?" calls Eto from outside the room. "Got you breakfast."
"I don't want it."
"You're going to have to eat for your baby," croons Eto, swinging the door open and thrusting a bowl of eggs at Hairu. "Don't look at me with such surprise. I'm half human by nature; I can cook and eat human food. I just prefer to live as a ghoul."
"You're in an awfully good mood," Hairu mumbles, taking the bowl. Outside, dawn glows a candle yellow. "Killed a cat?"
Eto whistles. "More like plucked a rose."
Hairu frowns.
"Your hero didn't write back to you, did he?" Eto clucks her tongue. "Poor baby. I wonder how you can raise a kid, Bubblegum, when you're still—"
"I'm not the one throwing stupid insults!"
Eto arches an eyebrow. "You were the other day." Her lips press into a thin line as she advances. She might be tiny, but with each step, the floor seems to shudder. "Doesn't the fact that Arima Kishou associates with me prove that he isn't who you want him to be?"
"I know who he is!" Hairu shoots back. "We were raised the same—"
"Yes, and he's clearly smarter than you and has figured out how fucked up this world is." Eto leans closer. "I have a secret for you, Ihei Hairu." Her voice drops to a whisper. "I'm the Owl you tried to suppress, back when all those investigators died. And Arima's known that for years, and we're working together to bring the world everyone who raised you in down."
Owl—Hairu remembers Shinohara Yukinori, covered in blood, and Suzuya Juuzou screaming. She remembers Sasaki. She remembers Akira, so composed even after the death of her father, breaking down and confessing how she loved Amon Koutarou and Takizawa Seidou, and it was too late for them—too late for all of them.
Hairu slams her bowl down. "You're a lying bitch."
"You're under no obligation to love someone who doesn't love you back," Eto hisses, kakugan glowing.
"Not like you would know," Hairu snaps. "You have no idea what love even is."
"Like you do?" Eto snorts. "You better figure it out, Bubblegum." She eyes Hairu's hair.
"Call me that again and I'll—"
"Do what? You're helpless here. I'm the one with a built-in weapon, and nothing to protect."
Hairu's heart pounds. "You promised Arima—"
"I don't keep my promises for Arima. I keep them because I need him to do something," Eto taunts.
Hairu narrows her eyes.
"Just what does he represent to you?" Eto asks. "Your own hopes and dreams? Of strength? Or murdering the big bad ghouls? How does it feel to know he has a ghoul friend—"
Hairu's mind swims. Her lungs won't work. It feels as if she's drowning. Your humanity won out in your mother's womb. You'll have to prove it.
Her body, lacking a kakugan and kagune, wasn't enough. She wasn't enough."You're human too—"
"I'm a ghoul because I want to be!" Eto shouts.
"He has an explanation; I'm sure of it!" Hairu insists.
"Face reality, Bubblegum. He doesn't care about you. He doesn't care about anyone and if he did he wouldn't know how to show it." Eto's eyes glitter. "He cares about his mission—that's all he's allowed to care about. That's all you're allowed to care about too, right? Right?" Her fingers reach out to press Hairu's flat stomach. "Except you failed. A failed failed half-ghoul. A failed half-human. A failed weapon—"
Hairu wrenches backwards.
"You know what happens to people who become obsessed with someone else who doesn't love them?" Eto asks. "They lose themselves."
"And you?" Hairu manages, prying the words from her throat. They come hot, scalding her tongue. "What did you fail at?"
Eto's lips curl. She pales. "Fuck you."
Hairu crosses her arms. She can breathe again, having pushed Eto down a notch.
"Eto?" calls a gruff voice. A ghoul with a red mask—Tatara—appears. His eyes narrow when he sees her. "An—"
"Don't you start on me, Tatara," snaps Eto. "She's under my protection, okay? She's going to have a baby."
"A baby who will kill more ghouls like Yan?" Tatara shouts.
"How many humans did your Yan kill?" Hairu shouts. We just want to live—and to live, you have to kill, and to live, we have to kill you—
"You don't know when to quit, do you, Pinky?" Eto rolls her eyes. "Enjoy your food. I didn't spike it with blood." She flounces out of the room. Tatara glowers at her, and Hairu glowers back.
He leaves, and she's alone again.
You really lied to Ui, didn't you, Arima? she thinks. He thinks I'm dead.
Is he mourning?
She hugs a pillow to her chest. She molds the pillow around her stomach and imagines herself in a few months, with a baby bump. Kanou said the child's growing normally. It's viable.
She picks up the eggs Eto made her. They're cold now, and too salty. Ui would like them. He likes salty food. But they stay in her stomach.
She imagines him crying, and she cringes. She doesn't want him to cry.
Her phone lights up. A text from Arima.
Hairu scrambles to answer it.
How are you feeling?
That's it. No admission. No denial. Hairu's thumbs hover over the button. Fine.
She throws the phone against the wall instead of replying.
Hairu gets to her feet and opens the door. You're going to tell me what Arima's doing with you, you green bitch.
Hairu makes her way down a narrow flight of stairs. A light bulb blinks above her head. The wood creaks under her feet.
A laugh comes through the air.
"I will be your god."
Eto.
Hairu frowns. She steps forward, testing her weight before putting her foot down. Peeking into the room, she spots Eto, wrapped in what look like mummy wrappings and otherwise nude, laughing at a creature crouched on the floor, shoulders slumped. Blood dribbles down the lavender-haired man's face. Eto holds up a needle to the light. The creature looks up, and Hairu jumps. The man's eyes are stitched shut, and the lips halfway stitched shut.
"Almost there," Eto purrs, approaching the man from behind. She inserts the needle into the man's upper lip.
Dear God! Hairu wrenches herself back. Bile burns her throat. She claps her hand over her mouth. Is this really the type of person you call a friend, Arima?
Then again, it's probably a ghoul.
"Not that it's any different," coos Eto. "Your master wouldn't even notice if you can't speak, since you never say what you really mean to him. He won't notice what you can't see because he can't see you either—though he could. He just chooses not to, right?"
Hairu peers around the corner again. Something leaks down the ghoul's cheeks, blood and water mingling together.
"He doesn't love you, Kanae."
Hairu balls up her fists.
The ghoul's screaming now, a muffled groan, and Hairu can't watch anymore. She turns and stumbles back to her room. Fuck you, Arima!
No. She can't blame him. Not him. Fuck Eto. She grabs the phone, chest heaving.
Where will the justice be?
Even if it's a ghoul. It's wrong. Ui would think so. This is why we're better than they are.
She stares at her phone and wishes she could text him instead of Arima.
A wave of nausea washes over Hairu and she curls up on the bed. If she had a quinque it might be better to just kill it, stop it from being hurt, stop it from hurting others, but she doesn't have one.
You will carry out justice. You are humanity's best tools for justice, because you've been battling these monsters since your conception.
You owe it to your humanity. You owe it to any god.
Hairu gets to her feet and peers at the uneven mirror. She tucks pink strands behind her ears and smiles.
I'm an investigator.
She waits until Eto's delivered a sandwich to her room, which Hairu forces down, and then she makes a phone call and slips out of her room and towards the tortured ghoul. She doesn't have a quinque, but she has her brain and her body. She can fight if necessary.
Hairu enters the room to find the ghoul wilting, tied to the wall, eyes and lips sewed with so much thread they looked as if a spider spun a web over them. The ghoul flinches as it hears her approaching.
You can't eat me with that mouth sewn shut.
"You should get out of here," Hairu says. She called in an anonymous tip into the CCG, telling them there's a ghoul with purple hair loose in this general area so they can kill it after it leaves. She can't risk them finding her until Arima assures her it's all right for her to come back. Because he has to be planning that. He can't intend for her to stay here all these months. And at least the ghoul won't be tortured. Where would the justice be in that?
"Mmph?" asks the ghoul.
Hairu fumbles with the knots on the ropes, struggling to free the ghoul. She had to be anonymous, because Arima would be mad if she wasn't. He's going to talk to Tsuneyoshi.
He told Koori I'm dead.
What if he has no intention of doing so? What if he's just leaving me here? Hairu shakes her head. He wouldn't. Not Arima.
The moment the ghoul's free, its kagune surges towards her. Hairu screams. The ghoul claws at its eyes, pulling the threads out. They drip with blood, and the ghoul glowers at her. Its face dissolves into confusion, as if it had been expecting to see anyone besides a human.
"You should run," Hairu says. Hopefully straight into investigators who will take care of this ghoul for her.
The ghoul stiffens. Pink eyes dart around.
"Bye," says Hairu, turning to leave.
"Just where do you think you're going, Ihei?" cackles a voice that sends shudders down Hairu's spine.
Kanae doesn't understand why this pink-haired human is freeing her. She should be food. Why else would Eto keep her around?
But now Takizawa Seidou grins at the woman—Ihei, he called her—his kagune forming behind him like a blood-red cloud. "I don't think Eto and the others at Aogiri will be thrilled to hear that their guest is freeing their fun."
Kanae bristles.
"I remember you," Takizawa continues. "Come around to the ghoul side, have you, Ihei?"
Remember—so this woman used to be a dove? Kanae hunches her shoulders.
"You never seemed like you were afraid of anything," seethes Takizawa. "We'll see how you feel when I send Arima back your head." His kagune lashes out.
Ihei dodges, spinning on her heel and rolling away. She springs back to her feet. The girl might not have a quinque, but she's not helpless. Her darts and jumps are precise, measured. She knows what she's doing. A dangerous dove.
"I'm under Eto's protection!" shouts Ihei.
"And I'm hungry!" shouts Takizawa, laughing like a maniac as he springs to a corner, shaking with anticipation as he licks blood off his lips, eyes gleaming as he takes in Ihei. "Don't think Eto will respond well to you releasing her entertainment."
Kanae's lips throb. She gulps. I have to get back to Master Shuu—I've been away too long, and Sasaki—
"I heard you're pregnant. Wonder if your baby will add flavor to—"
Ihei snatches one of Eto's needles. Like that'll help. She twists, her position shielding her stomach.
Takizawa lunges again, and this time Kanae's kagune shoots out, clashing with the other ghoul's.
Takizawa lets out a bellow, whirling to face Kanae. She crouches. The dove gapes at her. Kanae gestures. Get back to your room. Lock the door.
Takizawa flies at Kanae. She leaps to the side, slashing at him. I have to get out of here—get back to Master Shuu—Master Shuu—
His face, gaunt, fills her mind.
You're under no obligation to love someone who doesn't love you back. Eto's taunts cut at Kanae.
The way the light poured back into his face, poured out of him, when she told him Kaneki was alive, surges and erases the first image. I have to love him.
You are to me what Kaneki is to you.
Without you, I'll wither and die.
Kanae tries to scream, some of the threads around her lips ripping apart. She thrusts her rinkaku, driving Takizawa back into the wall. Her arm shoots out to grab Ihei and drag her away from Takizawa.
Ihei lashes out, twisting free only to come face to face with an enraged, drooling Takizawa.
"Fuck, never mind!" Ihei leaps back. Kanae blocks a blow from the other ghoul and slams the door shut, locking it from the outside. His kagune shatters through the wood, sending splinters slicing through the air.
Kanae charges up a flight of stairs. Ihei swears and races after her. Thudding echoes behind them. Kanae spots a window, dusky magenta sky, the color of a rotting rose, calling to her.
She throws herself against the window. Her arms swing out to grasp Ihei, pulling her with her. Ihei screams as they plummet three stories.
"The fuck are you doing?" Ihei yells at her.
She points. Takizawa flies after them.
They wheel around a corner, charging through the streets. Kanae's lungs ache. She can barely breathe because of the stitches still clinging to her mouth. She rips more of them away.
Voices ring out. Kanae freezes. Even in the distance, she recognizes the shape of the objects in their hands. Quinques.
Doves.
Kanae skids and rushes to her left. Ihei curses and hesitates, and the sight of Takizawa is too much. Ihei keeps up with her.
So you're running from doves too? Why?
Kanae ducks behind a dumpster, reeking of trash and waste and rotten coffee grinds. Ihei crouches next to her.
"Why is a dove hiding with a ghoul?" rasps Kanae. Her voice comes out muffled. Does it have to do with being pregnant?
Ihei glares at her. "None of your business."
"I need to get back to Master Shuu."
"Shut it!" Ihei peers around the edge of the dumpster. Her breaths come short. She recoils, and Kanae tenses. Who's coming?
No one. Ihei doubles over and gags.
Kanae frowns. She reaches out and holds Ihei's hair back, remembering holding Master Shuu's hair as he vomited, then screamed about how it didn't satisfy, how nothing would satisfy except for Kaneki. Fucking Kaneki.
"I have to get back," Ihei wheezes. "Arima—he said—she—he needs me to hide while he—"
"It's his fault," Kanae says. "Kaneki's."
Ihei gapes at her. "Who the fuck—"
"Sasaki." Dampness seeps into the knees of Kanae's pants. "I have to get back to Master Shuu."
"The doves will—"
"Do you care?"
Ihei frowns.
"Takizawa'll come for you," Kanae says. "He doesn't give up."
Ihei's eyes narrow. "Doves will—"
"He's a friend to no one now," Kanae says, shifting. The putrid smell churns her own stomach. Gross.
She and Ihei look at each other, shadows cloaking both of their faces, but that doesn't matter, because they've seen each others' faces. She's a dove and she let Kanae go from Eto, she didn't turn Kanae in to the doves for whatever ulterior reason she has. And Kanae saved a freaking dove from a ghoul.
This isn't how it should be. It's unnatural, them tied together like this, crouching behind a dumpster from pursuers, ghouls and doves.
She could laugh at the ludicrousness if Eto's stitches weren't still keeping half of her lips shut. "What's your name?"
"Ihei Hairu. 0 Squad," she adds, pride in her voice.
"Kanae von Rosewald."
Ihei's eyes bulge. "You—Rose!"
Kanae's kagune bursts out. She recognizes that spark. That hate. The investigators who killed her family had that look in their eyes.
"Run, Karren! Arunolt shouted. "Nathanael and I will meet you there—promise! I promise you! Run!"
She ran, as fast as her legs could carry her, and no one was there to meet her. The ghouls she ran to put her on a plane straight to Shuu. My name—my name, I've tried to hide it for so long—it's all pointless, it's my name, it's who I am.
It means forest of roses. Shuu smiled at her, all those afternoons ago, sunlight drenching his face and the red, red rose in his hand.
Ihei leaps to her feet, mouth opening.
"Whoa!" Someone clatters onto the dumpster. Kaanae whirls, ready to strike.
Nishio Nishiki gapes at them.
"Serpent!" shouts Ihei.
"Dove! Von Rosewald!" Nishiki's bikaku surges out. Ihei tenses for battle.
"Don't kill her!" Kanae snaps.
"Huh?"
"What are you doing here?" Kanae demands.
"Looking for that piece of shit Torso—why the hell are you here anyways? And where have you been? I heard you've been missing—Shuu's worried—"
He's worried? Kanae can't even speak. I didn't mean to worry you, Master!
"And Jesus, what the fuck happened to you? You forget where to put your sewing needle?"
"Eto," Kanae spits. "Aogori. And this woman too." She gestures to Ihei. "Takizawa was after us."
Nishiki shakes his head. "That dude's lost his mind." He clears his throat and looks at the two of them. "You want some coffee?"