Corie=25

Kaneki=19

Corie passed by a room on the upper floor of Anteiku when she heard the clear sound of her uncle and Kaneki's voices inside.

"I'll get straight to the point," Kaneki said. "Is the leader of Aogiri Tree, the One-Eyed King…no, the One-Eyed Owl, your child?"

Corie furrowed her brow. She hadn't known anything about her uncle having children or even having a significant other. She realized that she hadn't ever asked about his past, but was it possible that he was hiding something that huge from her?

"Is that what you want to know?" Mr. Yoshimura asked.

"That's one of many things. I also want to know more about Aogiri Tree. And how you're connected to them."

There was a very long pause and Corie wasn't sure he was going to answer.

Then finally, she heard him begin his story. As he talked, she sank down beside the door to listen in on who her uncle really was.

"A long time ago, there was a ghoul called Kuzen. He, like many other ghouls, consumed humans and killed and slaughtered his own kind to survive. Though he cursed his fate, he remained strong, endured solitude. Rumors of the ghoul Kuzen spread around. Eventually, certain ghouls learned of his existence. Kuzen made the choice to work for them. Now a part of their organization, Kuzen worked as a cleaner. He killed humans, members of rival organizations, and even ghouls. He literally cleaned. He now had food, clothing, and shelter. Of those, no longer having the problem of feeding was his biggest gain. Although he now had a stable life, Kuzen was alone as always. The organization could not be a home to him. One day, Kuzen met a human at an old café."

Yoshimura paused. He could still remember everything about her. The color of her eyes, the way she cut her hair, even the dress she wore the first time he ever saw her.

"You always sit there. Always coffee with no sugar, right?"

"Ukina," he continued. "An inquisitive woman with a unique sensibility. It was a strange experience for him. He was always alone and never opened up to anybody, but strangely, he did with her. But…being as observant as she was, she soon found out what Kuzen was. Killing her crossed his mind. But…"

He would never forget those words for as long as he lived: "Why'd you keep this from me, Kuzen? It doesn't change how I feel."

"She accepted who he was. He too accepted her."

Corie couldn't believe what she was hearing. It was glaringly obvious that Yoshimura was talking about himself despite the story being in third person. She had always known that he was indeed the One-Eyed Owl, or at least one of them, but she had never known why he adopted that persona or anything else about his life before she went to live with him.

She…had an aunt too?

"The time came when Ukina became pregnant with his child. Kuzen was honest with her. That a ghoul and a human can't have children together. He thought she would give up. But instead…she did the unthinkable to nourish the unborn child."

Corie put her hand to her mouth. It was impossible for a human and a ghoul to have a child because if the mother was a ghoul, her stomach would think that the fetus was food and would consume it. If the mother was human, the fetus would not get the proper nutrients it needed in order to grow.

But her aunt…a human woman…must've done the only thing she could. She had chosen to eat human flesh in order to give birth to her baby. She must've been…such a strong woman. Corie wished she could've met her.

"When the child was born, it was the happiest day of their lives. However, the new family's happiness would be short-lived. A pocketbook caught his eye. It was vital information about the organization Kuzen belonged to. She was a journalist covering the organization. They met not knowing each other's circumstances. Eventually, the organization too realized who she was. And discovered her relationship with him as well."

Even after all this time, the pain he had felt was just as strong as it had been then, and he was sure he would never be able to forgive himself for what he had done.

"The organization was too powerful. Not even Kuzen could resist it on his own."

"Settle it, Kuzen."

"There was no other choice."

"I'm worried about you being alone."

"He could not understand her even at the end. But he loved her deeply. That was Kuzen's last job as a cleaner. The only hope left for him was their only child. A child born between a human and a ghoul. Unable to completely cut ties with the organization, he left the child in the care of the 24th ward, leaving the child with only their notebook."

Handing the baby to another ghoul.

Her tiny little hand grasping his much larger finger.

Tears streaming down his face as every muscle in him ached when he slowly forced himself to pull away from his beautiful baby girl.

"Time passed. Kuzen learned about a ghoul known as the One-Eyed Owl. The ghoul despised the world. He knew right away it was his child. The organization would eventually find out. The child was badly wounded from assaulting the CCG. If the organization were to pursue the child as well…And so, Kuzen took the place of the One-Eyed Owl. That was ten years ago."

There was a long silence in the room. Corie sat outside, wondering how to process everything she'd just heard.

She had had an aunt…and she had a cousin? A cousin who was a half-ghoul? Who was the infamous One-Eyed Owl? Who was the head of Aogiri Tree?

Why…why hadn't he ever told her any of this?

Corie knew the answer to that. She hadn't ever given him the chance.

She hated that. Why hadn't she ever asked? Why hadn't she found out more about him? Why had she been so focused on herself and her own pain that she had never noticed how much of his own he was shouldering?

"You're Kuzen?" Kaneki finally confirmed.

"Kaneki, I once told you that you are the only existence that has a place in both worlds. The thing you are trying to get rid of is something that makes up half of you. You still have a choice. Think as both a person and a ghoul. Think long and hard. I want you to save those who are alone, and eventually, my child too."

Kaneki sighed. At first, he had tried to deny his ghoul side and live as he always had. Lately, he had been trying to beat out his human side and become full ghoul. Both were impossible options. He was both human and ghoul. That was why he was the bridge between the two worlds. Taking out one or the other would just put everything right back where they'd started.

"Kaneki," Yoshimura said gently. "Have you ever wondered why Corie took to you so quickly or why she's so protective of you?"

Kaneki looked up at the old man. He wasn't sure what had caused such a dramatic shift in the conversation, but he was curious as to where he was headed with this.

"Let me show you something."

Yoshimura dug through his possessions and pulled out an old photo that he handed to the boy.

Kaneki looked at the picture in surprise. Two teenagers, a boy and a girl, in café uniforms stood side-by-side, laughing. The girl was obviously a younger version of Corie, but he didn't know who the other person was. He was shocked to see that the young boy looked very similar to him only a few years back.

Outside, Corie's heart began to ache. It was time for Kaneki to learn the truth about her and the nature of their relationship.

"Who is this?" Kaneki asked Yoshimura.

"That is Reo. Corie's brother."

"Corie has a brother?"

"…Had a brother."

"What happened to him?"

"He was killed. In a fight with another ghoul."

She had lost both of her parents and a brother? Kaneki wondered how on earth that girl could still find a way to smile every day.

"Corie was 13 years old when her parents were killed by investigators. Reo was only 10. Their mother, my sister, had previously told me that if anything happened to her and her husband, I would have to look after her children. She knew of my less-than-admirable connections, and when I expressed concern about that, she told me I would just have to figure it out."

Corie smiled. That sounded like her mother.

"When they passed, I had not had any contact with her or her family in many years due to being involved with the organization. I had never even met my niece and nephew prior to then. But then one day…two young children showed up at my door, weary and crying."

"Mama said you were our uncle and we should go to you if anything happened to them. Mom and Dad were killed by investigators. Will you…help us? Please?"

"Despite knowing the dangers of taking them in, I could not stand there and allow two young children with no home and no family to fight for themselves. I definitely could never do that to my sister. While I allowed them to live with me, I told them that they had to stay at Anteiku and that as few people as possible know about my relation to them. I helped them get their lives back on track as they went through school and soon, both of them became servers in the coffee shop.

"The two of them were inseparable. They would continually train together and they always had each other's backs when they had to fight. Unfortunately, when Corie was 18 and Reo was 15, they accidentally stumbled upon another ghoul's feeding ground. I'm sure I don't have to tell you that some ghouls are very possessive about where they feed. This ghoul happened to be one of the worst."

"Hey, you kids!"

Corie turned to the direction of the voice and saw an angry ghoul with his kakugan and kagune exposed.

"Thought ya could come into my territory, did ya?!"

"Sorry, we were just heading home," Corie said quickly. "We'll get out of your way."

"No one comes into my territory without getting punished!"

"We didn't know it was your territory! We're not even here to eat!"

"You think that matters?! If I let ya go now, you might come back and try to take what's mine!"

"We won't be back, I swear!"

The ghoul charged towards her. Corie pushed Reo behind her and released her purple and black tentacles. She attempted to fight with the other ghoul, but he was much stronger and way more powerful than she was. It was clear he was used to getting in fights all the time, so it didn't take long for him to overpower her.

"Corie!" Reo cried.

"Run!" she yelled, blood beginning to pool around her.

"I'm not leaving you!"

Reo released his blue wing-like kagune and fired several projectiles at the other ghoul.

"No, you have to run!" Corie begged. "Get out of here!"

Her brother stood protectively in front of her, shielding her from the other ghoul's attacks.

"Nice try, kid."

The ghoul's long black bikaku kagune destroyed the projectiles and sliced through Reo's abdomen before Reo even had a chance to scream.

"NO!" Corie screamed in horror.

Reo collapsed onto the ground, blood spilling everywhere.

Corie weakly crawled over to him. "Reo! Please don't leave me! Please!"

"I'm so sorry, sis. It looks like I'm gonna see Mom and Dad a little sooner than I had planned."

"No! I…I don't know how to live without you! I…I can't. Don't leave me alone…"

"You'll be okay, I know it. Just promise me that you'll move on and you'll live. For me. Okay?"

Reo's eyes closed and his body stilled.

Corie screamed and her kagune went wild behind her. She cradled her lifeless brother in her arms, crying over him.

The ghoul tried to attack her, but her tentacles flew all over the place too fast for even him to dodge.

While she continued to sob over her brother, her kagune impaled the other ghoul in four different places.

He too fell to the ground dead.

Corie's tear-stained face looked over at the ghoul. She wasn't sure what had happened or how she had done it. She hadn't even been focusing on her kagune at all. It was almost as if it had a mind of its own.

Her grief giving her a surge of adrenaline, Corie picked up her brother's body and rushed back to Anteiku.

"Uncle Yoshimura!" she screamed as she burst inside the closed café. "Please help me!"

Yoshimura came into the room and hurried over to his niece and nephew. "What happened?" he asked as he helped her lay Reo down onto the floor.

Blood quickly tainted the café floor from both Corie's and Reo's wounds.

"Another ghoul," she choked out. "He…he said we invaded his territory and he fought us. When he beat me, Reo tried to defend me, but the ghoul…he killed him! I…I couldn't protect him. I was supposed to protect him. I'm his big sister."

"Where's the other ghoul now?"

"He's…he's dead. My…my kagune killed him. But…but I wasn't even trying. And my…my kagune split into four pieces. I've never done that before."

Yoshimura put his hand to the side of her face and gently wiped away one of her tears. "I'm so sorry, my dear. I'm sorry I wasn't there."

Corie once again cradled her brother, as if holding him in her arms would bring him back to life.

But no matter what she did or how tightly she held him, the blood kept spilling onto the floor and Reo remained dead.

"I always blamed myself for not protecting them," Yoshimura explained. "Corie was depressed for weeks after that. She didn't eat anything and she never left her room above the coffee shop. I didn't know what to do for her. She had been through so much and lost everyone dear to her, and I knew there was nothing at all that could ever ease the pain she was feeling. It had been so long since I had had any family to look after, and I hadn't realized how painful it was to feel so powerless."

Kaneki had no idea Corie had been through something so traumatic. Was the sheer likeness between him and her brother the main reason why she'd cared about him so much?

"Finally, one day, she came down the stairs for the first time in nearly a month."

"Corie, I'm glad to see you up and about," Yoshimura said to her. "Would you like some coffee?"

Corie looked back at him blankly as if her mind wasn't entirely present. "I want to go on a hunt," she told him.

Yoshimura was surprised, but he answered, "Take Yomo with you."

She nodded and went back upstairs to dress into some suitable clothing.

That night, she and Yomo hopped from rooftop to rooftop, searching for easy prey for Corie to feast on. They could've gone to the cliff, but Corie insisted that she wanted a real hunt.

She watched as a man in an alley came up behind a woman and beat her mercilessly before running off with her bag.

"I want him," Corie told Yomo.

"Maybe you should find someone a little less built."

"No, I want him."

"All right, I'll back you up."

"I don't need help."

"Corie—"

"I don't need help."

Before Yomo could protest further, Corie began following the man. The two of them waited until he was completely secluded, then Corie jumped down from the rooftop and landed directly in front of him.

"Geez, kid, you scared me," the man said roughly. "Get out of my way."

"You took something that doesn't belong to you," Corie growled.

"Oh, yeah? And what are going to do about it?"

Corie looked up, allowing the man to see her glowing kakugan eyes. "I'm hungry."

Realizing the position he was in, the man started to back away.

Before he had a chance to run, Corie bounded up to him and pounced on him, knocking him to the ground.

"Get off me!" the man pleaded. "I promise I won't tell anyone! Come on, just let me go!"

"Why is trash like you still alive while my brother is dead?!"

"Look, I'm sorry! I'll return the bag, okay?!"

With a furious roar, Corie clawed at the man's chest, ripping away chunks of his flesh. He screamed in agony as she continued to claw at him. Once he had silenced, she opened her mouth wide and bit a huge chunk of flesh out of his shoulder. Then she ripped off more and more flesh with her teeth with a viciousness Yomo had never seen.

"Corie," he said calmly.

Corie whipped around to face him, blood and gore dripping from her mouth and covering the entire front of her body.

The fire in her eyes slowly began to fade, and she realized just how brutal she had been to her prey. Ghouls at Anteiku generally tried to make their meals' deaths as painless as they possibly could, but Corie had done the complete opposite. What would Reo say?

Tears filled her eyes and she began to sob.

Yomo knelt down beside her and took her into his arms. Aware of the pain of losing a sibling, he said nothing. He just allowed her to cry onto his chest for both herself and the brother she had lost.

Corie walked up to her uncle and handed him a completed form.

"What's this?" he asked.

"I want to attend university in America."

Yoshimura looked at the form. It was an application to head overseas for a degree from a college in the States. He gave her a small smile. "I think that's a great idea."

He was fully aware that Japan was the last place she needed to be right now. Maybe putting a lot of space between her and the painful memories would prove helpful for her and would allow her to somewhat move on.

"I never saw her and I barely spoke with her until she returned to Japan over summer break two years later," Yoshimura told Kaneki. "It was night and day. She was smiling again and she looked so much healthier. She told me she'd managed to find a couple other ghouls at her university and had become good friends with both of them. They regularly got together to train and taught each other different techniques. She never got over losing Reo, but she was able to put it behind her and live again."

Kaneki sighed. He wasn't sure what to think about everything Yoshimura had told him so far. What was he going to say when he saw Corie again?

"I'm sure you've noticed that you bear a striking resemblance to him. On the night she first saw you when was Rize attacking you and later when you were abducted by Aogiri Tree, she felt as if history was repeating itself and it's why she has always tried so desperately to save you whenever you are in trouble."

Kaneki wondered if she would've helped him the night Rize attacked him if he didn't look like Reo. Or if she would've helped him at all after that.

Corie realized that tears had begun to roll down her cheeks at recalling the night her brother died. She quickly moved away from the door before Kaneki caught her eavesdropping or, worse, saw her crying again.

She was nervous. She didn't know what Kaneki thought of her now or how he felt upon hearing everything about her and her uncle. What if he hated her now for keeping all of that from him? What would she do then?

After Kaneki left and the café closed, Corie came down and began helping her uncle sweep and clean the place.

"Why didn't you tell me I had an aunt and a cousin?" she asked softly.

Yoshimura looked up at her from behind the counter, seemingly unsurprised that she had overheard his previous conversation. "I had many reasons to keep it from you, Corie. The biggest one being that I had to protect you and your brother."

"How does keeping something like that from us protect us?"

"For one thing, I knew that if you were aware of her existence, you would try to track her down. But my child has grown to hate the world, something I take full responsibility for. If she knew that I had taken you in and abandoned her, she would not hesitate to kill you. She's the head of Aogiri Tree. I don't have to tell you what that means."

"I could've talked to her. We're family."

"Family has no meaning to her, Corie. You can't just talk to the head of Aogiri Tree and expect things to work themselves out."

"How do you know all this if you've never even met her?!"

"A parent knows these things. You must understand that if you were to find her, it would put you in danger from the organization as well."

Corie sighed. She knew he was right, but it didn't mean she liked it.

"Corie, what you heard was everything about my past. Now that you're older and much stronger, I can only hope that one day, you too will be able to save my daughter from her life of hatred and help her to live."

The next day, Corie traveled back to the headquarters Kaneki had made for himself and his team and decided to slip in through the window to his room.

"You're right, this is faster," she smirked.

Kaneki smiled a little when he saw who'd come in.

She looked at him seriously. "I know my uncle told you about my brother. I never told you about him because…I didn't want you to think that I was trying to turn you into him. But you don't look like him anymore, and…that's part of the reason why I was gone for so long. After what happened that night at Aogiri headquarters, I had to make sure that I cared about you because you're you, not because you look like my brother."

Kaneki took a deep breath. "And what did you decide?"

Corie gave him a small smile. "I came back, didn't I? I know it took me way too long and I should've come back long before now. But…yes, you look like him, or at least you used to, and yeah, helping you has given me a sense of closure, but…you're Ken Kaneki before anything else. You resembling Reo has absolutely nothing to do with me considering you to be like my younger brother. You did that for me all on your own. Besides, even if you did still look like him, your personalities could not be more different."

"Really?"

"Oh, yeah. He absolutely hated reading and wouldn't do it if his life was at stake. He never wanted to train until I forced him. He was incredibly stubborn. And he never hesitated to get into fights if the chance was there." She smiled fondly. "But he always looked out for me. Right to the very end."

"Corie, I need to ask you something."

"Okay."

"Did you know the details of my transplant and who Dr. Kanou was?"

"I had my suspicions, but I wasn't sure. Nothing like this has ever happened, so no one could be sure of what exactly had happened in that operating room."

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"I didn't want to worry you over something I wasn't even sure about. You were still adjusting to the ghoul life, and tossing one more thing onto your plate would just stress you out even more."

He looked up at her seriously. "There's one more thing I want to know. If I didn't look like your brother, would you still have tried to save me from Rize?"

Corie sighed deeply. "…I don't know. I'd like to say yes, but I don't know if that's true. That being said…that night you came to Anteiku looking for help, I can say with full confidence that I would've said and done the exact same thing then whether you looked like him or not."

A part of Kaneki wondered if she was lying, but he didn't think she was. The night he'd come to Anteiku, she had quickly stopped Touka from verbally assaulting him and had gently asked if he was okay all before she ever saw his face. She hadn't even realized he was the same person she'd tried to save from Rize until she had gotten a good look at him. She'd been willing to help him because he had been in trouble. That was the kind of person she was.

Corie awkwardly looked away from him. "I'm…I'm sorry I kept Reo from you. And everything regarding your transplant. If…that changes your opinion of me, I'll understand."

Kaneki paused for a brief moment. "I…I've been on my own ever since I was little. I barely remember my dad and my mom died when I was young. My aunt and her family never cared about me, and as soon as I could, I got a place to myself and lived alone. So this last year…it's felt really nice to have a big sister looking out for me."