Lmao I just keep writing this in my free time bc I craaave more closure than I got from Tokyo Ghoul. Someone stop me haha.
Do I have to actually state that I don't own Tokyo Ghoul? Like, are there actually lawyers trawling fanfics waiting to hit you with the old cease-and-desists if you forget? Or does everyone just do it bc they see everyone else doing it?
Anyway, lemme just yeet this into the abyss for anyone who wants to read it *muah*
In the predawn glow, the street was nearly silent. It almost hurt Amon's ears when a white van rumbled around the corner and beeped its horn once as it rolled to a stop in front of the café.
The writing on the side looked like it was from some wholesale coffee bean supplier. Nothing strange there. The driver hopped out and quickly ran around to the back, throwing open the doors and unloading several large boxes.
From his vantage point across the street, sheltered under a small colonnade, Amon's view of the shop was blocked by the van. He could hear a bell as the door was opened, though.
Every time he did this, there was a certain little spark of hope in his heart that broke him a little more when it went unfulfilled. He tried to keep it contained because sooner or later the disappointment would crush him, but at the same time he didn't exactly have much else going for him. So he kept torturing himself by picking out one or two coffeshops a week to lurk near, before moving on when he accepted that there were no familiar faces there.
That hope leaped in him as the vehicle pulled away to reveal the back of a young woman standing on the sidewalk, surrounded by several boxes. Then it was crushed again as he registered that her hair was the wrong color.
Amon sighed, thinking that this wasn't healthy and he needed to figure out something else to do with his free time.
The café worker propped open the front door, turning around to grab the nearest box and carry it inside. In doing so, Amon finally caught a clear glimpse of her face.
And…it was her. She'd only changed her hair. He blinked a few times, worried he was seeing things. No, it was her carrying those boxes in. His hope that there was some little corner of his old life he could go back to, even for a moment, was not dead. The irony of the situation hadn't escaped him—that the last little remnant of his life as an investigator that he could return to was a ghoul.
Now all he had to do was step out of the shadows and reveal himself. And the thought of letting someone else see him…well, it was deeply unnerving.
After bringing in the boxes, she brought an A-frame sidewalk board out and propped it open to display the daily specials.
Dawn was just breaking as she stood up to glance down the street. She tilted her head, almost as if she sensed something strange in the wind.
Amon sighed and lowered his hood. He walked out from behind the columns he was hiding behind and raised his human hand.
The motion caught her eye—her head twisted in his direction with a snap, and she froze while she decided whether she faced a friend or enemy. Like a rabbit who'd spotted a predator, he thought.
It took her a long moment to place his face. But, at last, she raised one hand to shield her eyes from the rising sun and waved him towards her with the other.
She held the door open and ushered him inside, then quickly locked the door behind them. "I checked the official list of dead and missing investigators. You were on it."
"That's true."
She sighed and grabbed her apron, which had been tossed over the back of a chair. "And yet here you are. I bet there's a story there."
"There is."
"You can hang out in the back. Enjoy a cup of coffee in privacy." Touka quickly hustled him into the small break room.
"I can tell you're trying to hide me. I'm not offended."
Touka laughed as she threw the apron over her head and tied it around her waist in a practiced motion. "It's not just that you look suspicious in that cloak you've got on. Some of my regulars are doves. We've got to get you out of sight before any of them come by for their morning coffee."
Amon was shocked to notice the blush that lit up her cheeks. Interesting.
"You serve investigators here? And none of them have realized who's pouring their drinks? I'm almost ashamed on their behalf."
Touka grabbed a tray of clean dishes, wearing a serene smile the whole time. "They're young. And so long as they're not here to cause trouble, they're welcome. I've decided that it's our policy here to welcome anyone who comes in peace."
She bustled back out the door to replenish the supplies in front of house. Within a few minutes she reentered with two steaming cups of coffee.
Amon was finally able to put a finger on what he wanted to say about her. "To serve investigators without that anger you used to have…You've grown up since the last time I saw you."
"I was sick of all the hatred. Loss and time have a way of showing you how futile it is. Sometimes you just have to…grieve and let go." She sat down and handed him his coffee. "I like to think I've learned a couple of things about life that my father was never able to grasp."
"We always think we can do better than our parents. It's a rare thing to accomplish. You should be proud of yourself." Amon wrapped his hands around his cup. The warmth of the drink, and Touka's kindness in preparing it, was the first human comfort he'd been shown in far too long.
Human comfort? Ghoul comfort? Whichever. Her hospitality relieved a bit of the black weight pressing down on his chest.
"So…how are you still alive?"
Amon looked down at his deformed hand and tried to hide it better with his sleeve.
Touka still saw it and raised an eyebrow. Instead of pointing it out, she just sipped her coffee and waited for him to find the words.
"That night, during the battle…I was given the order to hold the front line. Against Eyepatch. I fought him. I was wounded and…you were right about Aogiri. They did show up to act as vultures. They came through and collected the injured, and handed them—us—off to Dr. Kano."
"Ah," said Touka. "I think I see. Then, how did you end up here?"
"I…escaped. Or I was busted out. By a mutual friend of ours."
It took her a moment of thought before she guessed, "Hide?"
Amon nodded.
"Really? How?"
"He used RC suppressants to knock out the guards at the site I was held at. We got out of there, and parted ways quickly. There wasn't much catching up."
"Hide's been missing since that night, too. It's good to know that he's out there somewhere."
Amon didn't mention his suspicion that behind the mask, Nagachika was gravely wounded. His speech was severely distorted, and he'd communicated mostly through writing. But the boy was alive and he was pulling off covert rescue missions with ease. That was all Amon truly knew about Nagachika these days.
Touka stared at him, deep in thought. "So, you're alive and you're free. Will you head back to the CCG?" She asked without animosity, as she stood and carried her own finished cup of coffee over to the sink.
"I…don't want them to see me. I've thought about it. Almost constantly. And the only thing that would make my life any worse than it already is would be my old friends treating me like an enemy. Or even just seeing the pity and horror in their eyes when they realize what happened to me. Besides…they've probably moved on by now. It would only hurt all of us if I came back from the dead."
She frowned. "I wouldn't be too sure of that, but it's your decision." She leaned against the wall and crossed her arms. "You know, I've spent a lot of time resenting the fact I was born a ghoul. But…In the last few years I've tried to think more about the good parts. We help each other out, a lot. And we're so damn defiant. We live in a world that's trying to wipe us out, and we keep falling in love and getting married and having babies. We keep living. The CCG hasn't broken our spirit yet. I'm proud of us for that."
She looked over at the clock, ticking down the seconds until opening. "Being a ghoul, or a half-ghoul…it's not the worst life. The superhuman agility's pretty cool, too. It almost feels like you can fly, sometimes."
Amon pushed away his empty cup of coffee. "That part's…not so bad."
"I'm guessing this is a touchy subject but…are you eating okay?"
Amon looked away, obviously horrified to have this topic come up.
"I can't eat humans. I won't."
"Which only leaves ghouls. You're making the same mistake Kaneki made."
Touka went about the rest of her tasks with practiced ease—refilling sugar canisters, getting dishware ready, setting out canisters of fresh-roasted coffee beans.
"There's a reason most of us don't go that route—there's a heavy price. It tends to drive everyone crazy sooner or later, and most ghouls will ostracize you for it. We view going kakuja as almost the nuclear option. It's unparalleled power, but with horrifying consequences."
She looked at Amon. "We still provide…ethically sourced meat to ghouls who can't or won't get it for themselves. You want some?"
"Thank you for offering, but that's a line I won't cross."
She sighed. "I was afraid of that. You're in a terrible position, you know? You only have two options for food, and they're kind of both cannibalism."
That thought hung heavy in the air for a long moment—until the back door of the kitchen banged open.
Both Touka and Amon jumped about a foot in the air. While Amon was ready to fight within an instant, Touka whirled around to face the interloper with her hands on her hips.
"Nishiki, you ass!"
A tall young man had waltzed in, apron thrown over one shoulder, chewing on the last few bites of something wrapped in brown butcher paper. And, of course, he had the glowing red eyes of a ghoul.
The sight still made Amon tense up, ready to defend himself.
"You're late! And I didn't give you the key to the freezer."
"Shove it, Touka! I'm here before we open, aren't I?" The new arrival—Nishiki—tossed Touka a key on a lanyard. He threw away the butcher paper and washed his hands in the sink. He spun around, now looking completely human, frantically trying to tie on his own apron.
"Yeah, two minutes before we open! I've been getting ready for an hour!"
"Really? 'Cause it looks like you're having a leisurely chat over coffee!"
Nishiki finally stopped moving around long enough to look at the impressively large guest sitting in the break room. "Man, another one? You're a magnet for them, I swear."
Amon must have looked confused enough that Touka felt compelled to explain. She pointed at one of her eyes. "He means your eye. He's right, we do seem to attract one-eyed ghouls."
Amon looked down at the table, feeling like he ought to hide it until he calmed down.
Nishiki shrugged and adjusted his glasses. "So, do you want me to unlock the front door or…"
"Yes, you bum! You are so lucky I tolerate you. You're barely employable."
Nishiki shoved open the door and disappeared into the front of house.
Touka closed her eyes and held a hand to her forehead, as if warding off a headache. "That…was the jerk that beat up Hide. Do you remember that story?"
Amon nodded. "You had to rescue his girlfriend from the Gourmet, correct?"
Touka groaned again. "Ugh, don't even get me started on Tsukiyama today. With my luck, he'll pop in again 'cause he sensed someone talking about him."
"He's still alive?" Then the rest of what she said registered. "You said Tsukiyama as in…"
"Yup. That Tsukiyama family. Insufferable little rich boy. Though I'll tell you, I think he's grown up a bit in the last couple of years, too. So don't kill him on sight if you run into him."
Amon looked down at his hands and thought on that for a moment. "So even with the bad blood between you and the Gourmet, you'd still give him a chance."
"There's this thing among ghouls, where we tend to not interfere with each other's hunting of humans, even if we disagree, and we don't really hold grudges on that front. We can't afford to be at each other's throats constantly and have the CCG hunting us down. If you stop other ghouls from feeding themselves, you're going to make a lot of enemies fast."
Amon nodded, but the look of disgust on his face was evident.
Touka held her hands up in defense. "You don't have to agree with it, but you should at least know basic etiquette."
For a moment, the horror of what his life had become threatened to swamp him. He reined in his emotions quickly, though, and backtracked to the subject he wanted more info on.
"Is the whole Tsukiyama family…"
"Ghouls? Yup, as far as I know. So are a lot of their employees. That's one reason why we all put up with the Gourmet's nonsense—because his family makes it possible for so many of us to have almost normal lives."
Amon frowned, unable to hide his disapproval of the way ghoul society worked—the sins that were ignored for the sake of something as simple as an 'almost normal life'. But he was a different man than he had once been. Before, he would have said that a way of life for ghouls could never be worth the lives that the Gourmet had destroyed. Now that his own life had been destroyed, he could understand placing such a high value on a normal life. He still didn't agree…but he could understand.
"I'm a bit shocked that you're just telling me all of this sensitive information."
Touka shrugged. "You said you weren't heading back to the CCG. And I trust you to do the right thing. Like it or not you're…what's the saying?
"Through the looking glass? Down the rabbit hole?"
"Yeah, sure, one of those. You're on the other side, now. You can see our faces, know our names…welcome to the ghoul world."
They both looked around at the very mundane back room they were in. The slightly unsteady table wobbled when Amon set his cup down. Somewhere on the street outside, a couple of cars honked at each other. It all seemed so ordinary, even behind closed doors.
Amon sighed. "Everything an investigator dreams of. It's too bad I'm an ex-investigator."
She smiled. "You know…he's been here. He survived that night too."
"Eyepatch? I…I'm glad. It was a hell of a brawl. I would have preferred to just talk, but if I didn't try and stop his advance, it would have been the people at my back going up against him, and he would have easily killed them all." At the time it had seemed so important to be there with his comrades-in-arms. To serve with his colleagues even if he was conflicted about serving the CCG. Of course, many of those men and women died that night anyways, so it was a waste of bravery in the end.
"You don't have to explain. I understand." The young woman hugged herself and looked away, lost in memories for the moment. "It was a terrible night, wasn't it? At least some of us got second chances."
He thought about Takizawa, still trapped with Aogiri, and wondered if some second chances weren't a worse deal than death. No, he thought. Suffering comes for all of us, one way or another, and it's up to us to succumb to it or make something of it.
Out of curiosity for an old adversary, he asked, "What has Eyepatch been doing since that night?"
Amon had heard so much about Eyepatch from Nagachika and Rabbit, he had to keep reminding himself that they'd never actually had a civil conversation. It was a strange thing to know so much about someone he'd only ever fought with.
"That's the interesting part. He doesn't seem to recall anything from when I knew him. My guess is that the CCG got ahold of him after whatever happened in the 20th, because now he seems to be an investigator."
Amon leaned back in his chair and watched her pour cream into a whipped cream dispenser and assemble the apparatus with a lot more attention than the task required. She screwed on a nitrous oxide charger and tested it out over the sink. She seemed very focused on making sure the whipped cream was dispensing just right.
"I see now. He's one of those doves you keep referring to, one of your regular customers." He was reminded of a conversation with her, years ago now, where the roles were reversed and she was mocking him for how he'd botched things with Akira.
He pushed away the pang of misery that pierced him at the thought of Akira.
She set the whipped cream dispenser down on the counter with a clank and spun around. "Yeah. He is one of my regulars. He just stepped in one day and ordered a coffee. And then he kept coming back. He doesn't remember any of his time as Eyepatch or working at Aneiku. It could be for the best, though. He comes in with friends from work sometimes, and they laugh a lot. He's with the CCG, but he looks…healthier. Less tired. Less haunted."
He was struck with the sudden memory of when he was closer to Rabbit's age—fond recollections of working with Touko Harima, and the strange, sad could-have-beens he was left with after her death. Thank God he was able to mourn her loss and lay those impossible futures to rest, or they might have consumed him.
Another reason the dead should stay dead, he thought to himself. Now he occupied that spot in Akira's memories, just as Eyepatch did for Rabbit. It was a truth he felt in his gut that no good could come of either he or Eyepatch coming back from the dead. Surviving death, coming back from the brink like that…it changed a person so completely. They were gone forever, either way. There was no undoing the grief they'd left behind, and any attempt would just tear everyone up even worse.
Amon tried to explain gently. He remembered being that age well enough to know that just telling her how wrong her approach was wouldn't go over well. "Eyepatch just reappearing…it might not be that simple. I can't imagine what a person would have to go through to lose their memories like that. We gave each other some serious wounds, but I don't think he sustained any injuries that could explain the memory loss. Something awful must have happened to him after our fight ended for the CCG to gain custody of him."
"It's still him," she asserted with total confidence. "Maybe a version of him that hasn't been through so much pointless suffering. I'm not going to be the one to drag him back into the darkness. If he's happier as a dove, then so be it. I can leave him be. But he's always welcome here."
Based on the way she avoided eye contact and organized a shelf that already appeared organized, Amon got the sense that her resolve to leave him mostly alone might not be as firm as she made it sound. He had a strange hunch that those two would find a way to bother each other sooner or later.
"If you say so, Rabbit."
She clapped her hands together and changed the subject. "Anyways. We're not as big of an operation as Anteiku was, yet, but we can take in a couple of strays here and there. Let's see…you'll need some papers, someplace to crash, maybe a job somewhere else since you obviously can't be seen here…"
"I'm not staying. I…don't feel ready to be a part of the human world again. Maybe I'll never be ready. I'm just here because I needed to find you and…thank you."
"What do you mean?"
"I saw ghouls as monsters, but talking to you made them seem less monstrous. A little more human. If it wasn't for meeting you and Eyepatch, I think what Dr. Kano did could have broken me. I could have woken up in that cell believing I was a monster beyond all redemption." Like Takizawa, he thought grimly. "But instead I knew that I wasn't completely lost. And that was enough for me to hold on to."
"What was it you told me? As long as there's life, there's hope? I'm glad you took your own advice."
Amon realized he needed to leave before the seductive normality of this day had a hold on him. Otherwise, he might never leave, and the thought of living truly scared him after just surviving for so long. "I need to go, but before I do, my rescuer left me with this."
He reached into a pocket and pulled out a crumpled piece of paper, ripped out of a notepad. Scribbled on it was a phone number and a note: Give me a call if you're ever in a jam…I have friends in high places ;P
"He's not lying—if he has access to weapons-grade RC suppressants, he has friends in the CCG. I don't know what he's up to or why he's in hiding, but if someone's that deep undercover, it's best not to ask too many questions or look too hard for them. Do you understand?"
Touka frowned. "I get it. I know how to keep a secret."
"He said he had to stay out of sight, and that I should too, for now. I think he'd want you to have that number, though. Especially if you're rubbing elbows with investigators."
She nodded, pulled out her phone, and quickly entered the number under the contact "Blondie". She was practical enough in these matters to avoid using Hide's real name.
Amon stood up. "I should go."
"You know where to find me, but what should we do if we need to get in touch? If you're on the outs with the CCG and ghouls, you don't have many people you can rely on. At least let us warn you if trouble is on the horizon."
She was right.
He thought for a moment. "Do you have a pen and paper? Can you give me an email address?"
Touka grabbed some scrap paper and a pen from her apron to scribble down Café :re's business email. She handed it to Amon.
Amon took the paper, quickly memorized the email, and put it in his pocket. He'd destroy it later. "I'll get ahold of a burner phone as fast as I can and email you the number. Does that work for you?"
"It's better than nothing. Do you know where you're going to wander off to?"
Amon walked over to the back door and opened it. "No. I suppose I'll keep doing what I've been doing—sticking to the shadows, taking down vicious ghouls when I find them." He glanced over at Touka and gave her a sad, faint smile. "Only real monsters, though. I promise."
She sighed, knowing that he would have been so much better off if he stopped running away. Just like everyone else she'd watched walk away, though, she knew she couldn't stop him. Not for very long.
It killed her every time, and a voice in her head called her an idiot for just letting people leave. This is why you keep losing everything, because you don't fight hard enough for it. But a wiser voice—one that was growing louder all the time—told her that Amon was waging a war of his own, against the treacherous voices in his own head, and she couldn't fix that for him. She had to let him find his own way.
After all, she'd tried so hard to hold on to Ayato and it just pushed him away faster. Kaneki, on the other hand, she'd let him walk away. Now he was back, almost like a miracle. She could have faith that her patience would be rewarded again and one day, after Amon had gone on his own journey, he would be in a better place—better able to accept hospitality and friendship.
Long after everyone else had given up, Touka would still be holding on to hope with white knuckles.
If there was one thing she had in abundance, it was hope so fierce that it verged on recklessness. That, and the bone-deep conviction that people like her, and Amon, and Hinami, and Kaneki, deserved to live. If only they could see it, too. If only she could make them see it.
Amon stepped into the back alley and walked deeper into the tangle of shadowy corridors that would let him travel half the ward, almost completely hidden from view.
Touka watched him disappear from her spot in the doorway and took a moment to admire the brilliant blue morning sky that peeked between the edges of roofs. That was the color that'd inspired her current dye job. It still made her smile every time she noticed it.
With a deep breath, she stepped back inside and shut the door quickly, steeling herself for another long day of putting up with Nishiki.
Maybe, if she was lucky, Haise would stop in later. She had that to look forward to.
