In his young years, Kaneki could not write as well as his classmates.
Kids his age don't possess remarkable penmanship, but he spells his name in kindergarten scrawl.
Kaneki has quivering hands and can never lay them still; he drums his fingers, presses the pads together, folds his hands, unfolds them. When he writes, his fingers smear the lead. He erases it, but by then the rubber has been worn and he settles on scratching out the letters and reprinting them. By the time the teacher guides the class through the worksheet, his paper is riddled with scrawls. The boy settles on watching his neighbors.
The kids make fun of him.
He goes home in tears with bruised knees and knuckles. Mother isn't home, but she never fixes his boo boos nor does she kiss them better. Moomin band-aids decorate his injuries with a dollop of antibiotic cream.
Locking himself away in his father's library, Kaneki falls asleep to the sounds of words and the smell of old books.
By the time his mother is dead and he lived with his aunt, Kaneki's hands are not still.
They do not quiver, but they tremble; Hide promises him his writing is legible regardless of his restlessness. Blue eyes peer at recent notebooks and handed-out worksheets; the papers tremble and he's shaking again. He locks himself in his room to the sound of his aunt screaming and banging on his door.
He cries himself to sleep.
In high school, Kaneki did not care as much.
The trembling is now a whisper of a shake, and his words, delicate and thin. Crisp and neat. He writes in kuzushiji.
His aunt is gone and a one bedroom apartment is what he calls home. Hide helps him pay for it, but it's difficult to convince him not to help. These are the simple things in life and Kaneki enjoys morning cups of tea in the morning sun, and a book in his palm. Takatsuki's novels ends him in his hands more than once.
It is the only book he has ever read more than twice, and the book he keeps underneath his bed.
His hands are still by the time he heads into college.
At least, in the beginning they were.
It has been five-was it six?-years since he's left. Kaneki hasn't seen Hide since V14. He is ready to die. A long overdue debt for his little sister is to be repaid in blood. It is a day before the next raid and he is writing a letter. The quaking of his hands linger in each scrawled kanji. Lines are written longer, curled, where they should not be, and are placed almost haphazardly. Shaking fingers push his glasses up the bridge of his nose.
He stops writing; Haise Sasaki once wrote the same thing. But he is Kaneki Ken. He will be by the end of the day.
The letter is crumpled and left on his desk.
知らぬが仏。