After the raid of Kano's lab, Amon regularly visited Shinohara and checked in on Akira to make sure they were recovering well. Talking to Akira was even more difficult ever since his run-in with the Rabbit. She was inclined to believe the official story, and he knew she would be hostile to the idea of the Rabbit showing him mercy. She would also be hostile to him for not seizing the opportunity to fight the ghoul to the death.
As a way of working through his guilt and confusion at dealing with the Rabbit and Akira, he took to visiting the waterway by Kasahara Elementary School in the evenings after work. He sat on a bench under a tree near where Mado died and looked out at the setting sun reflected on the water. The weather was warm and the area was quiet, in a peaceful way. It was exactly what he needed for some soul-searching.
Work was slow between sorting through the aftermath of such a massive incident and having no new largescale missions on the horizon yet, so for the moment he had time to spend on contemplation.
At work, he continued to toe the line and spoke only of a single Rabbit, but in the privacy of his mind here he parsed out the actions and motivations of two investigator-killing rabbits, one white and one black. Thank God it was Nagachika who openly pointed out the difference between the two's actions. It was so obvious in retrospect and so silly to try and sweep it under the rug. Even if anyone in the administration did care, though, the White Rabbit he had a personal vendetta against would be far down on the CCG's priority list compared to the Black Rabbit.
More troubling than that were the hints of misconduct he kept uncovering regarding the Sphinx Corporation and the CCG's involvement with the laboratory under the Yasuhisa mansion. He had always had such unshakeable confidence in the CCG's mission and methods, but he could feel that being shaken loose. He didn't like it. One part of him wanted to stop prying lest he uncover something awful he truly couldn't ignore, another part knew he was a coward for shying away from the truth. He was in a lose-lose situation on that front.
Most nights he inevitably circled back to thinking about Rabbit saying she didn't want to fight anymore, and Eyepatch saying that he didn't want to eat anymore.
Akira would probably kill him if she ever found out what was going on in his head some days. That was a shame—He knew he was betraying her on a deep level by growing almost sympathetic to her father's killer while being very, very attracted to her.
Not that he would ever act on that, of course. She was a subordinate and the daughter of a valued mentor and there were some lines he refused to cross in the name of professional duty.
One night, after a couple of weeks of this new routine, his instincts suddenly roused. The evening birds stopped singing and the hair on the back of his neck stood up. He slowly reached down to grab the handle of his quinque—always on him these days—and said quietly, "Who's there?"
Within a few seconds, the presence he felt was gone.
Several days later, it happened again.
Some men might have taken that feeling as an ill omen and stopped going alone to the waterway. Amon was not most men. He continued his routine in the hope that his instinct was correct and the Rabbit would attack. It seemed like the most efficient way for him to avenge Mado and right one wrong that was consuming his thoughts.
The third time, he didn't reach for the handle of his quinque (but kept it close enough to grab). Instead, he took a shot in the dark and called out, "Rabbit, is that you?"
There was no response, but he didn't feel the presence leave either. He tried again. "I'm tired of fighting today too. I'd prefer to talk. I saw your friend Eyepatch recently."
Mado said to fight dirty and not feel guilty about it. Rabbit clearly wasn't out to kill him in a sneak attack tonight. Maybe in this instance, instead of a sucker punch, words would be the better weapon.
There was a near-silent rustle. From the tree above his head, he heard a quiet, "Where?"
Looking up, he spotted the black shape of her as far away as she could be in the tree, the white flash of the rabbit mask peeking between branches.
"A fight broke out in the hidden laboratory of a man named Dr. Kano. He used to work as a medical examiner for the CCG. Further investigation into his activities is ongoing."
Rabbit was so quiet he had to look up to be sure she was still there. She was, so he kept talking. "He seemed…unwell. One of my colleagues fought him and said he looked like a half-kakuja."
"That idiot." She spoke with such sadness and finality, he knew that line of conversation was closed for the moment.
He asked the question that had been lingering for a while now. "There's another Rabbit attacking investigators. Do you know who it is?"
She barked out a laugh. "I think I do, actually. Whether he's doing it to mess with me or to protect me from the CCG is another question."
She jumped to the ground without making a sound and leaned against the railing. Still well out of range for him to strike with his quinque, he noticed.
"This other Rabbit appears to be affiliated with Aogiri, and you aren't."
Rabbit stilled. "I'm not."
"Why not?"
Amon saw the sudden shift in her body language, and he knew that his question had unintentionally hit a nerve.
"Aogiri are thugs. They work like any gang. Find some angry young orphans with no future, promise them the family they crave and the power to hurt anyone who's hurt them, and you've got a loyal soldier for life. They run on kids too dumb to see they're cannon fodder. And the way they do things…they don't want coexistence, they want domination."
She hopped up to sit on the railing. "I want the opposite of what Aogiri wants. I don't really care if you believe me, but I'd give anything to be human. I like the human world and it kills me that I can't really be a part of it, and that humans like you want to hunt me to the death for the crime of not being born one of you."
The blank-faced mask turned to face him fully. The same mask that violently attacked him and killed Kusuba not to long ago. But he was starting to get the sense that there was someone behind that mask, which he knew was a dangerous thing to feel. Empathy. "I…don't know what to say to that."
By some unspoken agreement, they both avoided mentioning the elephant in the room: that she was on the outside of the human world because she had to kill and eat humans to survive. Amon had the thought that there was nothing to be gained in this interaction by bringing that up—they both knew it.
"It sucks. I just want to know what cake tastes like to you, you know?"
Amon almost smiled at that. He couldn't imagine a life without his desserts. "Well, it's sweet."
"I know that much, dumbass."
He was taken aback by her casual impatience with him.
She tilted her head sideways, which he realized now meant she was sizing him up and weighing options. She moved to take off the discrete crossbody bag slung across her shoulders.
They were carrying on a conversation, but he hadn't forgotten for a moment that she was a killer. Amon nearly reacted to her movement by reaching for his quinque, the force of years of training hitting him head on. He overrode his reflexes, some deeper instinct telling him that for this moment, attacking was the wrong option.
"I come here sometimes on my way home to…remember. I was kind of pissed when you started showing up, but I guess you're here to remember too. Tonight I just stopped by on the way back from dinner with a friend."
His head snapped up, all senses on red alert. If she was admitting to murdering someone tonight, duty demanded he act.
Noting his violent recoil at his words, she quickly added, "A human friend. Human food from a human kitchen. She's great at cooking and she always insists on feeding me, but I can't taste a damn thing. It makes me feel like a terrible friend—she gives me food to show she cares and she doesn't know it's no good to me."
Amon was shocked. He knew that plenty of ghouls blended in enough to work odd jobs—everyone needed money—but the idea of a ghoul socializing with humans, edging beyond the fringes of society into the human world, was both fascinating and disturbing to him.
She took a small tin container out of her bag and tossed it to him—gently so as not to be threatening. He caught it easily but hesitated on opening it. Who in their right mind would just open a package from a ghoul? It could be human meat, it could be some sort of poison…
"It's cookies. I said I was too full from dinner and she sent me home with them. Obviously, I can't throw out homemade cookies, so…eat one and tell me how it tastes."
Amon blinked twice. This was possibly the most bizarre moment of his life. He was supposed to be in control of the situation, manipulating her and gathering information, and he had just been disarmed with cookies.
Held at an arm's length, he peeled the lid off. Inside were…cookies. Iced sugar cookies. The light breeze sent a waft of fresh-baked cookie aroma his way.
The smart thing to do would be to throw them away. This could be an elaborate ploy to murder him with ricin-laced cookies. But there were far less elaborate ways to kill.
After running through the mental calculations of whether the cookie was safe and whether it was worth accepting this strange olive branch, he decided to risk a single bite. He chewed, swallowed, and thought about how to explain something as simple as a cookie.
"Well, it's sweet but not too sweet, and I like that it's crispy on the outside but soft in the middle. That means it's a perfectly baked cookie. The icing is very nice, too. You can taste when they're made with high-quality ingredients—this has real vanilla extract and almond extract. It's good."
He thought about what else he could say about the flavors to someone who couldn't understand them, and realized that he had no proper way to explain. "It tastes…the way it feels to walk through a nice garden?"
Rabbit was quiet for a long time. Amon got the sense that she was disappointed with his answer. "I mean, you tried your best. You can keep the rest. It's not like I can enjoy them. Eat them, test them for poison, whatever." She and began to walk off into the evening before she thought of one last parting shot. "It was kind of you, to try and explain the taste of those cookies. Thanks. But let's never meet again."
With a leap she disappeared into the shadows.
Late that night, back in his apartment, Amon was having trouble getting to sleep. Even though he felt fine, a part of him was sure he ought to rush those cookies on his kitchen counter to the lab for analysis. Another part still felt like a traitor for having another non-violent encounter with Rabbit. He let her go again, and sooner or later she'd kill to eat. That blood was on his hands now.
He'd gone in thinking he could use the opportunity get some sort of leg up on her, perhaps even build some sort of rapport he could use to bring her down…and he felt like he'd failed at that.
He couldn't stop thinking about what she'd said about Aogiri's recruiting tactics—he couldn't escape the thought that they weren't too far off from the CCG's.
And then, still rattling around in his head, was the thought that he still felt like an idiot for describing cookies like a nice garden. Of all the ways he could have tried to describe the taste, why was that what he went to?
The answer to one question, at least, came to him in an epiphany as he was nearly asleep.
He jumped out of bed, ran to the kitchen, grabbed another cookie out of their container. Not caring about poison anymore if his outrageous hunch was right, he took another large bite. Chewing with eyes closed to really focus on the flavor, he tasted the sweetness of the dough, the flavor of good-quality almond extract, and—
The subtle aroma of rose water. Light and floral, like walking through a garden. A nice touch that elevated the flavor, and a less-than-common ingredient to boot.
This icing was familiar.
The next day at work, he found an excuse to find Kuroiwa and discuss some minor detail on a report.
"By the way, last night I stopped by a bakery but none of the pastries there compared to the ones your wife served when I came over for dinner. What was the story behind them again?"
