-103: Hangover Quartet—

I woke up in a bathtub. Or more accurately, I was woken up while in a bathtub by Kaneki's yelp from stubbing his foot walking into the bathroom. My response was to jolt, smack my little toe into the soap tray and make a nearly identical sound. This in turn prompted a second yelp from Kaneki who yanked back the shower curtain. For a moment, we were both silent before Kaneki sighed in relief.

"A-Allen? I didn't recognize you for a moment."

"I look that bad, huh?" From what I could tell, my arms were mottled almost to a different color, and I wasn't sure how my face looked beyond 'not great'. Everything from the knees up just hurt, and I doubted Kaneki had enough ice on hand to deal with it.

"Uh, not really." Kankeki rubbed at his chin as I—stiffly—got to my feet. "Just...didn't expect to see you there."

"Speak for yourself. You've got a different look too."

I nodded to the mirror, where Kaneki was sporting a mop of tousled silver-gray in place of his previously black bowl cut. Honestly, it kind of was an improvement since the old look had made him look like an old man. Its owner, however, said nothing and only ran his fingers through it with an almost melancholic look. Then my brain wrested together enough processing power together to determine why Kaneki had walked in to begin with and marched me out. While Kaneki did his business, I tried to figure out where the hell we were.

Nishiki was at the kitchen table, head resting on his arms and emitting a barely detectable snore, so this definitely wasn't his place. Touka—recognizable only by the length of her hair since she was facing the back cushions—had taken the whole couch as her bed. So, this had to be Kaneki's apartment. Not that I had any idea as to how the hell we had ended up here. That left the possibility that there would be something to sit on in Kaneki's room, but…

Sleeping in somebody's bathtub was one thing, but sitting down in their bedroom was kind of taking it a bit too far.

The flush of the toilet got Nishiki up long enough to lift his head to glance blearily around the room before flopping back down. He probably had enough practice sleeping at his desks at the university if our chats at Anteiku had been anything to go on. Touka did…nothing. No surprises there; she had looked the second most worn down out of all of us after emerging from that forest. I was ready to pass out in the other chair at the table if not for it looking incredibly uncomfortable to the collection of injuries that was my body.

As for who had given me the worse beating between Kureo and Jason...it was an unpleasantly close tie. Kureo had sliced me up fairly well, but Jason had given me a thorough full body beating. Much as I was loathe to say I preferred being cut up than being used as a punching bag, at least the focused hurt of slices and stabs was easier to endure than a full body hurt. On the other hand, I was feeling better this morning than I had after my fight with Kureo.

Some of it was probably because I wasn't lighter by a couple pints of blood this time. More than that, I felt...better. Maybe I was still running on a bit of adrenaline, maybe I had gotten myself into better shape between the running and near daily sparring. Or I was missing some missing piece of the puzzle.

Nishiki had managed to hoist his head off the table by the time the sound of a toilet flush trickled out from beneath the bathroom door. It was with a slight bit of sleepy amusement that I watched him almost put on his glasses upside down first before realizing the mistake. From then on, I wasn't sure if he was glaring at me or if I was just in the way of him staring off into space. Kaneki too had that same look of someone who would have rather been in bed and under a thick blanket. From her claim on the sofa, Touka shifted slightly when the door opened, but barely.

"Is there..." The words dripped from Nishiki's mouth in a zombie-like drawl, "Coffee...possibly?"

Ooh. Despite not being a fan of coffee, the prospect of something to prod me awake was more appealing than the taste or smell of the drink.

Coffee was apparently Touka's magic word as well, as when Kaneki acknowledged that there was indeed a coffee machine, Touka echoed the word and slowly leveraged herself into a sitting position before adding a small and sleepy 'please'.

One look at his face and I waved off Kaneki to make the coffee. Besides looking as utterly drained as Touka—now asleep sitting upright—he looked as if he had gotten at least ten years older. While he took a seat on the part of the sofa not occupied by Touka, I turned to the coffeemaker. My dislike of coffee certainly wasn't going to keep me from making it, nor was I going to mess it up; I spent enough time with ghouls that knowing how to operate any coffee maker had basically been required. Or perhaps my knowledge was inomplete. Nishiki lurched over to me while I was pouring in the water and added in a few extra scoops to the pile in the filter. When I turned to ask if the extra was truly needed, I got as far as opening my mouth before seeing the look in his eyes.

Right. Extra strong coffee it was then.

And then the two of us just stared at the machine, shoulder to shoulder in a tiny shabby kitchenette, listening to the little coffeemaker gurgle. Personally, the prospect of standing around and waiting for the finished product was fine by me while I waited for my brain to reboot. At least until Nishiki dropped a hand on my shoulder and gave me a look.

We need to talk, outside.

Outside? Even communicated silently, the four letter phrase was still unsettling.

Turning, I saw that Kaneki had joined Touka in 'sleeping while sitting upright club'.

Outside it was, then. At least the chill would numb the bruises a bit. On the small walkway on outside the front door, Nishiki asked me what had happened, and I told him everything from my meeting with Eto, to the fight in the room with the checkerboard floor. Whether or not he was fully listening was hard to tell between his not saying anything and occasional glance up a the darkening clouds above. There wasn't much of a format to build it around, but treating it kind of like an informal debriefing made it easier to share, even if the content wasn't. I ended it with kind of a verbal shrug. I was always bad at endings. And beginnings.

For a few moments, I thought my companion had drifted off since he was silent a fair while before he said anything.

"God, that's so fucked."

I agreed that it was indeed, incredibly fucked up.

"How long do you think he was..."

"How long would it take to fill a few buckets with fingers and toes?"

"No guess from you?"

I didn't want to know. All I could do was shrug again, looking down at my own hands. "I don't even know if I could grow back a finger."

All Nishiki had in reply to that was another curse sighed up at the clouds.

Another gap of silence. The coffeemaker gurgled faintly behind us through the slightly ajar and heavily weathered front door. The chill seeped into my skin, providing a hint of relief.

"At least Jason's dead." Nishiki noted. "Bastard animal always had me me on edge near the thirteenth ward."

"Mh. Part of my old job, dealing with things like him."

"Heard the rumor you hunted ghouls at the shop." An acidic note crept into his tone. "Guess that explains why you went after that quinque."

"...It was my quinque, actually."

"Figures." There was a clear note of resignation in his tone "Then how'd that CCG end up with it? And how'd you figure out it was her on that floor anyway?

I couldn't think of a less uncomfortable answer than that we had been involved.

"Involved? Like she was given the burden of hauling you around the CCG?"

"Like romantically involved."

Nishiki cursed again, but there was no bite to it. "For a guy so damn quiet, nothing is ever simple with you."

Nothing came to mind as a reply to that. "Pretty sure she wants my head mounted in her apartment, too."

"What do you think we do now?" Nishiki asked, abruptly changing the subject. "Well, near future, anyway."

"Regain some semblance of normal, maybe take it easy for a while?" My answer was probably colored by me wanting to sleep.

A head shake. "Take it easy? With the CCG out for blood? Only if you want to end up dead."

Despite wanting to disagree, I couldn't find any reason to disagree with the assessment.

"How...did we end up back here?" This was as much to change the subject as fill in the gap in my memory.

"Trains closed down for the night. Kaneki's house was as far as we could get, and since we were all basically asleep we all kind of just...went with it."

Further conversation was cut off by the coffeemaker inside going silent, and the promise of coffee lured Nishiki back inside.

Kaneki and Touka were still out cold on the small sofa, having tilted inward onto each other in a sleepy pyramid. Nishiki was more focused on the coffee, silently rooting through the cabinets until he found the cups. The one I ended up with was a mug with the phrase ' -uro High School Literary Club' marked on it with very worn bright blue enamel, Nishiki's rainbow polka dot cup occupying the other end of the mug spectrum. I suspected that one had been a gift from Hide.

Even the promise of wakefulness did nothing to improve the taste of the coffee, which was as acrid and unpleasant as any human food would taste. Sipping it did not improve experience. At this point, I'd have to let it cool and then chug the contents. At least the only other conscious person in the apartment was clearly savoring his.

"Hm."

I looked up from what looked and tasted like watery mud to where Nishiki was looking thoughtful.

"They don't look bad there, do they?"

"...Who?"

"Them." Nishiki nodded to the back of the apartment, where Kaneki and Touka were still fast asleep and leaning against one another.

"Guess so." Visions of soft pillows and a pile of ice packs danced in my head. "Looks like they're comfortable there."

"Perhaps they should be involved."

I certainly envied that they were sleeping, though I'd keep that thought to myself. Visions of my own cheap hotel bed danced behind my eyes. There was also the feeling I was missing some greater meaning to what Nishiki had said, between my own distraction with sleep and the 'how are you this oblivious' look I was receiving.

Eh, I had time to figure it out.

Touka shifted, rolling her head where it rested on Kaneki's shoulder before bringing herself back to sitting upright. The movement woke Kaneki, who then did the same thing equally as sleepily. Both looked somewhat embarrassed as Nishiki brought them their mugs of coffee—in a pair of matched mugs, I noticed. There was an almost comfortable silence as we, or at least, the other three enjoyed their coffee. While I only wondered what we should do now, Touka was the one to actually say it.

I didn't know, but my answer to Nishiki seemed to cover it. Short term, we needed to rest and recover, but long term? I had been asking myself that question since being found out by the CCG and I still didn't have a good answer.

So why was everyone looking at me like I did?

After confirming that, yes, I was being regarded as a font of knowledge for what to do next, I said what I thought.

"We're tired, beaten up, and probably not thinking our best." Why oh why did it fall to me to make the decision here? I had only ever been a grunt in the military and BGA, not a leader. "Let's take a day or two to find our footing, and then we can figure something out?"

It probably wasn't the best answer, but the others seemed to agree. At the same time though, the thought rose to my head that I should talk to Kaneki. If there was anyone who really needed the time to recover, it was him.