Against all odds, they pulled it off. Marude started playing the bad cop but was unexpectedly upstaged by Kori Ui, playing the part to perfection, and a reluctant partnership was forged.
Most of the ghouls were quickly sent out to accompany the various squads tasked with evacuating civilians. When stairwells and elevators were blocked and destroyed, and the streets were choked with debris that kept first responder vehicles out, the advantage of a ghoul's superhuman mobility couldn't be ignored.
Those who stayed behind were the ones most personally invested in figuring out what to do about the Dragon, namely Touka and the rest of Goat's cabinet. Others came and went with regularity to report on their progress, though, as cell networks were spotty and the electrical grid was a crapshoot.
Finally, a lull in the action came. Evacuation efforts were rolling along smoothly, and they were waiting for Kimi to pore through notes and confer with CCG scientists. It felt like it had been days since there was a moment to sit down and breathe, but according to the clock it was more like three hours.
Full of nervous energy, Touka ended up in a cafeteria with Marude and Hide, Hinami at her side. The girl was not quite steady on her feet just yet, and was maybe a bit too anxious to leave Touka's side for very long.
Marude was drinking black coffee from a paper cup as he conferred with various underlings. In the free moments between getting updates on all the moving parts at play, he had Touka recount their side of what exactly had happened underground, in full detail, to try and understand what happened.
She recited the events distantly, deciding it was best to just power through any recounting of fighting CCG personnel. After all, more than a few of the combatants were eyeing her from two tables away. She stared at his coffee cup the whole time.
As she finished off her testimony, she added in, "I'm sorry, is that drip coffee?"
The hard-boiled investigator shrugged and pointed at an outdated industrial coffee machine on the counter next to the sink. There was a small line of suits waiting for their turn at the pot.
"And you all drink that? It doesn't look like it's been cleaned in ages."
"Well, coffee is just hot brown bean water. It's not that big a deal."
"You take that back. It's like you don't love yourself." She stood, ignoring the alarm of all the investigators around her.
Marude gestured for Hide to leave the table and stay by the ghoul, more to put the room at ease than anything else.
She marched over to the cabinets and started opening them to take a quick inventory of what she had to work with. It was a fairly standard half-equipped company kitchen, but she could make something happen with it.
She could feel the eyes of every investigator in the room on her. Many of them looked exhausted and badly in need of some good coffee, though.
The other CCG personnel were keeping their distance, but Hide ambled up behind her and stared at the counter where she was setting out utensils. "What's going on here, Touka?"
"I'm not good at sitting still and waiting around for news. This is what I'm good at."
With a small strainer, some disposable paper filters, and an electric tea kettle, she quickly jerry-rigged a passable pourover coffee setup. Within about five minutes, she had brewed up two cups and was refilling the kettle to begin a third.
As she finished each cup, she handed them to Hide. "Hop to, delivery boy."
He ran them over to Marude and Hinami without complaint. The older man took one sip and exclaimed, "That's pretty good!"
She could hear Hinami's quiet voice reply, "Touka's coffee is the best."
Touka smiled. The steady line of people at the drip machine had been glancing over at her suspiciously and trying to keep their distance, but with Marude's approval the glares turned curious. The coffee she was making certainly smelled better, without that harsh burnt finish that their cafeteria coffee machine always gave off…
One man at the end of the line stared at her for a long moment before he took a big step to the side, setting himself a few feet behind the coffee-making ghoul, and waited for her to notice him.
She looked back at him. "Do you need something?"
He had one of those faces that just looked friendly, with a permanent smile and light-colored hair. "Uh, this might be kind of a big ask, but that coffee you're making smells amazing and I was wondering if I could get in on it? I have my own cup!" He proudly held up a ceramic mug with the Giants' logo on the side.
She pursed her lips. "I'm still using your crappy old coffee. I can't believe you guys have such a massive budget and you still buy cheap pre-ground beans and let them go stale."
He laughed. "Yeah, stuff like that's kind of an afterthought."
"Because you fools don't know how to enjoy life. Yeah, I'll make you a cup."
He nodded at her in thanks. "The name's Kuramoto Ito, by the way."
"Touka Kirashima. Or, uh, I guess it's Kaneki now."
Hide was waiting nearby to ferry the next round of beverages and overheard the last bit of their exchange. "Whoa! Way to bury the lead. Since when are you and Kaneki married?!"
Touka shrugged and focused on setting up the next cup of coffee. "It happened underground. It was recent, kind of rushed. Some honeymoon, huh?"
Marude hollered for Hide to get back to him to go over some recently arrived intel. Touka passed him one last drink, for himself this time. Hide called as he crossed the room, "This isn't over, Touka! You can't drop a bomb like that and not give me details!"
She sighed and handed a steaming fresh cup to Kuramoto. "Order up."
He grabbed the mug with both hands, blew on it to cool it off, and took a sip. "Oh, that hits the spot. So, Kaneki…that's one of Sasaki's aliases, right?"
"That's his real name," Touka shot back, a bit defensively. "Haise Sasaki was an alias."
Kuramoto laughed self-conciously, his perpetual grin easing any spike in tensions. "I guess you're right. I just worked with Haise for a while, so that's how I know him."
"Well…if you want to know a secret, I knew him as Kaneki and I knew him as Haise. And whatever his name is, he's the same person. He reads too much, people can't help but like him, and we all care about him more than he realizes." She looked at the cafeteria, full of investigators mingling cautiously with ghouls. "That's why we all marched in here."
Kuramoto took another healthy draught of his coffee. "On our side, we're confused more than anything. A lot of us did like him a lot, but then we were told so many bad things about him that turned out to be untrue…it's strange times. I do remember how much he liked coffee, so I guess I can see how he ended up with you."
Touka laughed. "That's me—ghoul by birth, barista by trade, using coffee as my secret weapon against investigators."
Kuramoto glanced over her shoulder. "You have no idea."
A throat cleared behind her.
Standing behind her was another investigator. He was on the tall side, hair slicked back, standard CCG suit, with nothing about him that particularly stood out. Judging by the way the other investigators kept a respectful distance and cleared out of his path, though, he must have been high-ranking.
"My wife got me this for my birthday. She wanted me to try replacing cigarettes with coffee, but I have no idea how to use it so I tossed it in the corner of my office." The man set an unopened Chemex box on the counter. "Can you use it at all?"
"Yeah. That actually helps a lot. Though I would kill for some fresh-roasted beans and a burr grinder."
The man froze up for a split second, but it was long enough for Touka to cringe at what she'd said. "It's just an expression, calm down." She grabbed the box and tore it open. "This'll make like five or six cups at once. Start setting out more stupid paper cups, boys."
Soon, she was two pots in and had accumulated a small line in front of her, out-competing the drip coffee machine with ease.
Investigators continued to cycle through the cafeteria for the next half hour to keep Marude updated. Along the way, they grabbed snacks, water, and a surprising number of them worked up the nerve to grab coffee from Touka.
She quickly fell into the habit of making the same sort of idle chitchat she employed as a barista. She was, after all, so well-practiced at those kinds of interactions that it was practically reflex. She was going through the motions she knew best because she didn't know what else to do.
A part of her understood that she was helping, in some small way, to ease the tensions between investigators and ghouls. More than a few doves requested several cups of coffee to bring down to their team out in the streets, including their temporary ghoul members. The investigators who'd mainly stayed at the headquarters grew less stiff when interacting with the few ghouls who remained in the building.
When Touka spotted Urie in line, she was too controlled to react strongly. Someone as sharp as him would be able to read the way she narrowed her eyes at him—just a fraction of an inch that said, I see you there.
She handed him a cup of coffee with a smile. He stared blankly at her before glancing over at Hide, who had just left her side and was now in a heated argument with Marude about which sector to evacuate next. As he walked away, he sent her a returning look that said, I finally figured out how you pulled that one off.
Her supplies ran down quickly, of course. Soon they were almost out of filters and grounds.
She mentioned that she was going to have to close up shop soon, when an office worker timidly raised her hand and said she knew of a seldom-used break area a couple of floors up. The young woman claimed that she had recently seen a stash of coffee supplies there.
Touka was still in coffeeshop manager mode, so she immediately said, "Show me the way, let's check it out."
The young woman paled immediately and began spluttering, obviously terrified at the thought of disappearing down an empty hallway with a ghoul.
Kuramoto, who had ended up back in the vicinity, quickly jumped in and said, "I'll go too, in case you need an extra set of hands to carry everything."
All three understood the subtext: he was going both to babysit the ghoul and to assure the girl that no harm would come to her. Touka was fine with that. She understood that the girl had likely spent her life in terror of people like her, and she'd spent her time at the CCG safe in an office—she'd never met a ghoul in person.
Along the way, Touka and Kuramoto made idle small talk to break the oppressive silence—mostly Touka criticizing the CCG's bland, corporate interior decorating choices and Kuramoto making good-natured rejoinders—while the girl fidgeted with the hem of her sweater as she wordlessly led the way.
It was eerie how the main areas of the building were absolutely bustling with activity, and how quiet and empty it was everywhere else. The unsettling emptiness of every office drove home the gravity of the situation.
At the small break room, they quickly raided the cupboards and walked away carrying a large amount of goods: both any snacks to keep the investigators fed, and anything they could use for making more coffee. In the end, they did need three sets of hands to carry everything back.
When they were nearly back to the main cafeteria, a shriek sounded from down a side hallway. Worried that some investigator had gotten into an altercation with a ghoul, Touka dropped everything in her arms and raced towards the commotion.
There was no altercation happening, of course, just Nishiki and Kimi in a dimly lit office full of computers and notes spread on every surface. The two were standing a careful distance away from each other, both tomato red in the face.
A jumpy young investigator was at the door, pointing and gasping, "He was going to eat her! I saw it!"
Nishiki held up his hands and backed away from Kimi even more. "We were college sweethearts! I wasn't trying to eat her!"
Touka shook her head. "Wow. This brings back memories. Remember when you two would always sneak into the back room at Anteiku to make out?"
Kimi hid behind one of her binders, while Nishiki covered his face with both hands and gave a heartfelt groan.
The small crowd that had gathered, including Kuramoto and the terrified office worker, was torn between looks of horror and slyly elbowing each other.
The investigator who'd given her the Chemex earlier walked up behind the gathering and announced, "Show's over, everyone. Get back to work."
The casual spectators dispersed quickly.
Touka glared at the erstwhile lovebirds. "I'm happy you two got your little reunion, but at least try not to cause any more mayhem. Nishiki, why don't you help me make coffee for everyone? I don't think there's any other trained employees around right now."
He glared right back at her as he trudged out of the room. "I barely made coffee when I was getting paid for it, why should I start now?" Even so, he followed Kuramoto down the hall and grabbed the pile of supplies that Touka had dropped moments before.
The exasperated ghoul looked back at the human doctor she had once spared, and sighed. "Sorry, Kimi. I am happy for you, but…you know, the time and place aren't ideal."
From under the binder came Kimi's reply: "I know, Touka. No hard feelings."
She shut the door behind her as she left and stood in the hall. As she stared up at the lights on the ceiling, fatigue—physical and emotional—began to creep in. She swayed a little, only to be steadied by a hand on her shoulder.
Mr. Chemex looked down at her. "Are you alright?"
"Yeah. I'm just going to pass out from exhaustion if I stand still for too long."
"I think that's where we all are right now. You were chatting with that Nagachika boy, right? I'll tell him to take you out for some fresh air. If Marude lets him out of his sight, of course."
"Sounds nice."
"Those two…" He looked back at the room they'd just left. "They're a human and a ghoul?"
"Yes. They've been annoying us with their PDA for a long time now. It's about time they got interrupted by some humans," she laughed.
"Interesting." He paused for a moment, then turned to her again. "I don't think I introduced myself. I'm Taishi Fura."
"Touka…Kaneki."
"You said back there you used to work at Anteiku with them?"
She nodded. "Just Nishiki. His girlfriend would visit a lot during his shifts, though. Very unprofessional."
He cast a critical gaze over her. "We never found any evidence of predation centered there. I always wondered…why would a bunch of ghouls run a coffee shop if not to lure in unsuspecting humans?"
Touka smiled sadly. "We like coffee and people. Maybe not all ghouls, but those of us from Anteiku liked spending time with humans. We just wanted to be normal."
The man, Fura, looked towards the cafeteria. The sound of chatter was floating down the hallway. "That's funny. You're not the first ghoul to say that to me."
"Maybe we actually mean it."
"Maybe you do."
She started walking back to the cafeteria. Surely Hinami was getting nervous without her. Fura followed, a couple of paces behind.
When she opened the door to the cafeteria, she had to pause for a moment to take in the sight.
Nishiki was brewing coffee and handing it off to investigators with a few curt quips thrown in for good measure. Hinami was off to the side, organizing supplies and helping to pass out full cups of coffee. She was smiling politely and exchanging quiet remarks with people as she moved through the room. Several dove/ghoul groups—passing through on the way to the next place they were needed—stood around sipping coffee and talking about how good it was, while sharing their favorite coffeeshops and joking bleakly about whether the places had been destroyed or not.
"What is it," asked Fura, waiting behind Touka for her to enter the doorway.
"Nothing," she said, as she finally moved to relieve Nishiki of his duties before he said something that started a fight.
It's just…this is what peace looks like to me.
Aaaaaand that would be the perfect place to end, where the comes full circle...except I have like three more chapters because there's a couple more things that need resolving and I care more about that than putting together a well-constructed story :)
