Author's Note: The ~...~ symbol at the end notates a shift in point of view. I did not see the point of separating the short excerpt into a whole new chapter. I do hope you enjoy reading this chapter. Thank you for reading! I appreciate the reviews and follows!

The whiskey burned all the way down her throat, spreading like a fire through her chest. Miyu hated whiskey, however, the liquid fire was making her comfortably numb.

Coming here tonight to see Haise was the second worst mistake of her life. The first, hands down, had been her decision to play God, creating another person where one already existed.

Arima had overestimated the strength of Haise Sasaki. On the other hand, she had never underestimated Kaneki's will to survive. The boy had endured so much already there was no way he would fall prey to nothing more than a severe mind trip induced by drugs and more abuse. She contemplated the possibility of his succeeding in his desire for revenge, to kill her like she had attempted to kill him. One bad turn deserves another.

A high pitched ding shattered the uncomfortable, suffocating silence. Miyu started, dropping the heavy glass in her hand. Thankfully the short, chunky old fashioned glass hit the floor with a dull thud, splitting unevenly into three big pieces.

"Shit," she muttered.

"I'll take care of that," Arima said, moving toward her.

The ding sounded again from the call button at the gate being pushed. The driver was incredibly impatient.

"You see to Haise. Make sure he gets to the taxi safely. I'll clean this up," she said, dropping to a squatting position keeping her knees together to avoid being indecent.

Her fingers shook as she picked up the huge pieces of glass. Dumping them in the trash can beside the desk, she went to the bathroom to retrieve a towel. She had finished the liquor in the glass so only a few drops wet the lovely darkly stained wooden planks of the floor.

Arima rejoined her in the study moments later after seeing Haise off. He took the towel from her, carelessly tossing it onto the desk. That wasn't like him. He was always so particular, so compulsive about cleanliness.

"Are you really okay?" he asked, taking both of her hands into one of his.

"Yeah, I'm fine," she insisted, shying away from his fingers when he tried to push her hair behind her ear. She pulled her hands out of his large palm. "Don't. Don't do that."

"You should stay here tonight," he suggested, shoving his hands in his pockets. "You're upset. You've been drinking."

"You don't have to list the reasons. It's still not going to make me stay. Besides," she said, her mouth tilting into a mischievous grin. "You and I both know me staying here while emotionally vulnerable and physically compromised is a recipe for disaster. Well, for me at least. After all these years, you'd finally succeed in getting what you want."

"No, I wouldn't," he scoffed acidly. "I don't just want to have sex with you. I want you to love me."

"But you do you want to have sex with me," she accused playfully, her words hopelessly slurred.

"I hate you when you're drunk," he mumbled, taking a step back from her.

"Oh, Kishou," Miyu murmured, a pitying tone in her voice. "If only you could hate me all the time. We'd both be the better for it."

"I'll call you a taxi," he announced, stepping out of the room.

Miyu issued a noisy sigh of relief when he left. Sometimes she hated herself so much. Tonight she hated herself for a thousand reasons. At the moment, she despised the fact she could emotionally manipulate Kishou Arima so easily. Through the years of knowing him, without using her ability, she learned the right buttons to push to get whatever reaction she wanted from him. Although she should not feel too guilty because he also knew how steer her emotions in the direction he wanted them to go. That was how she had come to be here tonight after all.

"You're cab will be here soon. I'll walk you out," he proclaimed, offering his arm to her.

Miyu slid her arm through his without protesting. She was a little unsteady on her feet. A nasty spill down the stairs was not how she wanted to end this already terrible evening.

"I've got some thinking to do, Kishou," she said as he assisted her with traversing the stairs.

"Take your time. I believe I need to rethink my strategy as well. You warned me once when something was a horrible idea, and I pushed ahead anyway. We both see how awful that turned out," he admitted without actually saying he was wrong.

"Yeah," she agreed simply. She did not have the energy or presence of mind to argue.

"Do you really want to die?" he questioned her, opening the front door.

"Sometimes. But other times I'm glad to be alive." After they stepped over the threshold, she pulled her arm from his, turning to look up at him. "I'm not trying to be cruel by saying this, Kishou, but before you came back into my life, I was happy, content. I loved my life. I had finally found a way for me to live my life without hurting anyone. I had found a way to deal with my guilt, to get beyond it. But now..."

"I'm sorry," he apologized. "You always told me I was a narcissist. Machiavellian. Self-centered, overly ambitious, devoid of empathy - "

"Stop!" she exclaimed loudly. She patted his chest over his heart, speaking more softly as she repeated, "Stop. Don't do that. Okay? I said all those things. And I meant them. You're trying to use them against me to exploit my emotions so don't."

"Mmmm," he hummed, staring up at the starry night sky. "You always were too smart for my own good. I could only push you so far before you would bring my bullshit to a screeching halt."

"I'm afraid I might have to do that again. But for the sake of those kids, especially Haise, I'll give your offer a little more consideration. However, my list of reasons to say no is getting longer," she warned him.

A car horn honked from the other side of the gate.

"Honest to god, Kishou, this taxi service has some of the rudest drivers," she muttered irritably.

"Your ride is here," he informed her unnecessarily. His face had hardened into a grim expression somewhere between anger and disappointment. "You should go."

Miyu nodded without saying another word. There was nothing left to say tonight.

~\..'../~

Miyu took a hot shower after returning home as if to boil away the bad feelings, the trauma of the entire evening at Arima's. She knew exactly what Haise had remembered, therefore she had not pushed him to discuss specifics. She had seen everything as if looking through a foggy window, seeing a vision from afar. She had watched every awful recollection that had ran through his mind like a horror movie on a theater screen.

Although weary, her active, questioning mind would not allow her to sleep. Questions buzzed like mosquitoes around her brain; loud, insistent, not leaving her alone and poking at her, annoying her.

The alcohol had worn off, but instead of drinking more, she tried lavender and chamomile tea. When that did not work, she attempted reading. After rereading the same sentence for the third time and still not comprehending it, she gave up. Dressing in jeans and an oversized royal blue t-shirt, she walked to the park. Perhaps wearing herself physically would shut down her busy mind.

After speed walking the entirety of the park trail twice, Miyu sighed in exasperation, dropping down heavily onto a bench. Her leg muscles burned, and she needed another shower, but her mind still raced with the endurance of a long distance runner.

The interaction earlier that night proved to her she was pure poison to Haise's mind, hurting him more than helping him - not the desired result for a person in the profession of mental healing. Haise would be better off without her. He could a find a way, a better way, to help himself.

Reconciling with Kaneki and his past should be totally up to Haise without her interference. Besides, Kaneki's hate ran deep, and he wanted revenge. Being near Haise brought all of that to the surface, hindering him in ways that would only hurt him more.

Kishou Arima: another complication she did not need or want in her life. Although he said he wanted her to love him, it wasn't true. He only wanted what he could not have like a spoiled child told no when he asked for a particular toy. Suddenly owning that object became of great importance to him. She was nothing more than a prize to win, a possession to be owned. He would quickly lose interest after obtaining his selfish desire.

Kuki Urie, the man she wanted to get to know. She could not do that as his therapist. A direct conflict of interest, a violation of ethics, a relationship simply could not happen. There might not be anything there, no chance of a romance, a lasting relationship, maybe not even a a one night stand. She did not know if a future together existed for the two of them. But she wanted to find out.

Staring up into the night sky, her eyes scanned the innumerable twinkling white dots. Stars, romanticized by poets and writers for centuries were nothing more than fusion reactors in the sky, their light being the by product of chemical reactions.

The moon was already waning from its complete fullness. Little by little, the moon would gradually disappear. It was always there in its entirety, despite sometimes not being seen by the naked eye.

Would Haise disappear after being overtaken by the powerful personality of Ken Kaneki? Yes. Yes, he would. Kaneki had never gone away despite no longer being seen. Like the reappearance of the new moon, the dark side of the moon, there are some things in life that are just inevitable. With or without her help, Haise would be eaten alive, cannibalized by the more prevalent, the original, personality that is Ken Kaneki. He would be doing nothing more than reclaiming the body that already belonged to him.

"Miyu." The voice was familiar. One she would have wanted hear any other time but now.

"What are you doing here?" she asked, her eyes focusing on Kuki Urie standing in front of her.

"I was coming to see you," he answered quickly. "What are you doing here?"

"I was taking a walk," she replied curtly. "I needed a walk to relax."

"Of course," he murmured. "You did say you take walks all the time, day or night."

"Why were you coming to see me?"

"I wanted to make sure you were all right."

"Why wouldn't I be?" she questioned him in a snippy tone.

"Look at your phone," he said.

"I don't see what - " She saw that she had dozens of missed calls and unanswered texts from him. "Oh."

"You told me you would be busy tonight. Oddly, Sasaki said he had a meeting tonight. I couldn't help but think that meeting would be with you. Was it?" he inquired.

"Jealous much? Why do you care?" she snapped, standing to her feet.

"What was your relationship with Sasaki?" He stood in front of her when she turned to leave.

"Not what you're thinking, I assure you," she snorted, agitated.

Miyu attempted to step around him, but he sidestepped to block her again.

"You know, you've already done this to me once with Arima. You seem to have taken a disturbing and unusual interest in my love life, past and present. Why?"

"Because I would like to know how the woman I'm interested in is connected to the men I work with so closely," he explained, staring down at her.

"Trying to determine if I'm worthy of you? Hmm? Is that it?" She glared at him, her annoyance boiling over into unbridled anger.

"I just wanted to know - "

Tears of frustration trickled down her cheeks. The tears flowed faster, stemming from her controlled rage that wanted to explode.

"You know what," she ground out through her teeth, poking him in the chest with her forefinger as she spoke each word. "Fuck you, Kuki Urie. I don't need you."

Miyu walked around him to go home. Her gait was brisk, breaking into a speed walk then a full run when she heard his footsteps behind her.

"I wanted to see you. I was worried about you," he said, catching up to her at her back door.

She whirled around to face him.

"Then why didn't you just say that?!" she yelled, resisting the urge to slap him. "God, why are you so emotionally constipated?"

Urie stood silent and unmoving as a stone wall, blinking at her as if he did not understand the words coming out of her mouth. His perplexed expression only served to incense her. He really had no idea how willful ignorance of emotional complexities infuriated her.

"What has happened to you that is so much worse than what has happened to anyone else?" she demanded in a shockingly unemotional voice. "Why do you reserve the right to be bitter, hateful, unreachable, looking down on the rest of us from your throne of selfish indifference?"

"Wow," he sighed, his eyes darting from side to side to avoid connecting with hers. "You really are cruel. You have a barbed tongue laced with pure venom."

"You're cruel too in way that you don't even understand. Acting so damn heartless. You hide your insecurities, your own fear of rejection, behind this facade of superiority. You're so afraid of feeling something, anything, that you shut people out and hate them before they even have a chance. You're harshly judgmental, downright mean, in your assessments of others. I can't..." Her voice broke as the tears turned from a trickle to a tidal wave, dripping from her chin. "I can't do this."

Miyu turned to unlock the door. She tried to slip in and slam it behind her before he could enter. Unable to get through the door completely, his body was wedged halfway through. She could chop him half if she wanted by using the door. However, she did not want to do such a horrid thing.

"Get out of the way!" she screamed, grasping the doorknob with both hands.

"No! Not until you tell me what's wrong!" he bellowed back, pulling on the door with all of his strength.

Due to her earlier ordeal, Miyu was weak. Her feet slid across the floor as he jerked the door open far enough to slide inside before she slammed it shut. She fell backwards, her behind smacking the bottom wooden step with painful force. A sharp jolt of pain raced up her back and outward across her hips.

"Ow!" she cried out. The physical pain seemed to shock her out of her emotional state of emergency. Her tears dried up instantly, and her rising anger dissipated like steam released from a pressure cooker.

"Here," he said, offering his hand to her. "Let me help you."

Miyu slapped it away.

"I don't need your damn help," she grumbled, successfully sounding like a pouting child.

Humiliation colored her face and amplified the pain in her ass - the literal one not the figurative one named Kuki Urie. She cringed as she rolled over onto her hands and knees before slowly rising to a standing position. Each step brought with it a surge of pain down her legs.

"Should I take you to the hospital?" he asked, putting his arm around her waist to help her up the stairs.

"No. It will work itself out. I just need a hot shower and some sleep. And for you to go away," she added acerbically.

"Well, getting two out of three isn't bad," he rejoined tonelessly, taking her keys from her hand to unlock the entrance door to her apartment.

"Dammit," she grumbled through gritted teeth as she hobbled to the bathroom with his assistance. She waited for him to close the door, but he did not move. "Are you going to undress me?"

"Do you want me to undress you?" he inquired, completely unfazed. He did not even raise an eyebrow at the suggestion.

"No. Get out," she commanded him.

"You're not a nice person, are you?" He closed the door after uttering his strictly rhetorical question.

"Takes one to know one!" she yelled at the white door.

"That's mature!" he retorted.

"So was that," she mumbled under her breath.

"I heard that!" he exclaimed.

He sounded far away, probably in the kitchen. Miyu heard the rattling of dishes, water running. Maybe he was making coffee.

"I prefer tea!" she hollered while disrobing.

She turned on the water before she could hear his response. Without waiting for the water to heat, she stepped under the frigid spray, gnashing her teeth together to keep from screaming. The stabs of pain that came with every little movement gradually lessened into tiny twinges of discomfort until they ceased completely.

Miyu scrubbed and lathered over and over as if to wash away the emotional crud along with the layers of salty sweat crusted to her skin. Once her skin was red like a boiled lobster, she stopped washing and stood under the shower head, allowing the water to beat against her skull and shoulders. The water cooled but she stayed. Only when the water started to sting her raw skin like tiny shards of ice hitting her did she turn it off. For several more long minutes, she stood in the tub, dripping and shivering.

Urie knocked on the door. She was too exhausted to jump in surprise. The sound did, however, prompt her to move. Wrapping her body in a large purple towel, she used a second white towel to dab at her drenched hair.

"Are you all right in there?" he inquired, knocking again.

"I'm okay. I'm going to have to come out in a towel," she warned him. "I forgot to get clothes."

"Okay. Come on out," he said.

Miyu opened the door. She poked her head out to see him standing in the living area, his back turned to the bathroom. Scuttling around the corner, she opened a drawer to snatch out a pair of panties which she hurriedly slipped on under the towel.

"Are you dressed?" he asked.

"Almost," she replied in a rush.

She opened another drawer to retrieve a nightgown that looked like a long t-shirt in a baby blue color. Allowing the towel to drop, she pulled the gown over her head. Then she put on her robe, tying it securely around her waist.

"Okay. You can turn around," she said, scampering back to the bathroom with the towel.

Gathering the clothes from the floor, she threw them and the used towels in the clothes hamper as not to offend his delicate sensibilities should have to use the restroom. But then again, she doubted he would be here that long.

"There's a cup of tea for you in the kitchen," he told her when she emerged again.

"Th-thanks," she stammered, caught off guard.

Not only had he heard her request, he granted it. She had not expected such kindness from him.

"What happened?" he asked as she walked into the kitchen.

"I can't talk about it," she said, keeping her back to him.

Miyu lifted the cup to take a sip. Suddenly she sensed him behind her. He was close; so close she could feel his body heat warming her back but not close enough to be contacting her.

"Can you tell me anything about what occurred?"

Goosebumps rose across the back of her neck where his breath had warmed her skin. A shudder ran through her body. She wanted to tell him everything. She wanted to recount the events from the entire evening from her first thought upon seeing Haise again to her anger at Arima when she left. She wanted to unload the regret and the sorrow of reliving the past where it still simmered on a sub conscious back burner like it had for years.

"All I can tell you is it hurts. I've made some serious errors in judgment," she said, drinking some of her luekwarm tea. She inhaled the scent of lavender hoping it would steady her jangled nerves.

"We've all made mistakes," he returned making it sound like a tired old adage in his emotionless tone.

Miyu held her breath as his hand hovered above her shoulder. Apparently he reconsidered the idea of touching her. When he backed away, she rotated around, leaning against the counter behind her. Although the cup was almost empty, she dunked the spent tea bag up and down.

"My mistakes have destroyed lives. Including my own," she added, gazing into her cup to avoid making eye contact with Urie. "I can't afford to make any more mistakes. I don't need anymore ghosts of my past to come back to haunt me."

"Do you think that's what I'll be?" He stepped closer to her, taking the cup from her hands.

Miyu kept her eyes lowered, staring at the tips of shiny black shoes.

"Will I be just another mistake?" He paused, waiting for her to react. "Look at me."

She reluctantly raised her eyes to look into his stormy gray irises. Her entire body vibrated with energy from his closeness. A stinging electricity crackled across her nerves. Suddenly her mouth and throat felt dry and gritty as if she had swallowed sand.

"You shouldn't stand so close to me," she croaked. Her eyes tracked back and forth from one of his storm cloud colored eyes to the other.

"Will I be just another mistake?" he repeated, placing his finger under her chin to keep her head tilted upward.

"I don't know," she replied noncommittally.

"Shall we find out?"

"How?"

His face lowered toward hers.

~...~

Urie pressed his lips to hers. He had never felt the urge to kiss her so strongly. His lips tingled when hers moved under them. His arms encircled her waist, pulling her body into his. Unexpectedly, her body suddenly slumped against him, her lips falling away from his. Looking down at the listless woman in his arms, he realized she had fallen asleep.

"Well, damn, that is not a self-esteem builder," he muttered.

Urie moved one of his arms to ensconce her shoulders before bending down to slip his other arm behind her knees to lift her into a bridal carry. He took her to the bed, laying her down on top of the worn and faded patchwork quilt that looked like a family heirloom made by a loving great great grandmother. Instead of attempting to get her body under the covers, he pulled the comforter over her to wrap her up like a burrito.

For a moment, he gazed down at her. She looked like an innocent child with her round blushed cheeks and pursed lips red as a rose. She was neither innocent nor a child so he would not have to feel guilty about stealing a kiss from the sleeping woman's soft lips.

Urie did not like the idea of leaving her alone. She had been really upset earlier, acting in a way he had never seen before; enraged, fearful like a caged animal. When he first saw her on the bench in the park, she appeared worried out of her mind. She had been so buried in her own thoughts he had stood right in front of her for several long minutes, staring at her while waiting for her to notice him. But she did not acknowledge him until he spoke to her, calling her name more than once.

Instead of leaving, he pulled the heavy leather chair close to the bed. Kicking off his shoes, he propped his feet on the foot of the bed. She needed someone to watch over her, yet he knew she would never admit it or ask him to do so. He was glad she was asleep. He was in no mood to argue with her.

"Good night, Sleeping Beauty," he murmured, covering himself up with the fuzzy blanket from the back of the chair.

She responded with a loud snort like a pig. A long rattling inhale and another extended snort followed.

"Oh, dear god. She snores," he muttered to himself in mortified disbelief.

It was going to be a long, sleepless night for him. Regardless, he would stay.