Touka leaned over the counter, resting her head in a bored way one her hand. It was Christmas today, though it hardly felt joyful... None of them, not her, not Koma, not Irimi, not even the manager had heard anything about Kaneki's current situation. Well, no one except Hinami. Apparently, according to her, Kaneki and Eto had early in the morning two days ago, looking for those sugar cubes that the manager made for ghouls like Kaneki... She said that they sent her back to bed, but she had hid at the top of the stairs for a bit longer. She said that their conversation carried onto owls... which was strange... but soon after they left, holding hands apparently, meaning Hinami knew about them now. Touka wasn't sure how many of their little circle knew about the relationship, she only knew for certain about herself and Hinami... It was strange though, the thought of Kaneki and Eto doing anything relationship like... upset Touka... She didn't really have a reason to be upset... It was weird though to see them together, she felt... cold when she did... It was just weird for Touka, she supposed, after all she'd never seen Eto warm up to someone as easily as she did to Kaneki.

Suddenly the door opened, and in walked a curly haired boy with glasses and an older man with a rather strange hair cut, Nishiki and Koma. Nishiki had started working here the day after they got Kaneki back and so far has been less annoying than he was before... but still fairly god damn annoying. In fact the first day he began working there, he'd managed to push her far enough to throw a plate at his head... which she'd missed and ended up hitting the manager... not that it would have hurt either of them, but still.

They were carrying boxes full of coffee beans that Yoshimura ordered, they were running dry in supply on those recently so the manager had sent in an order... as fortune would have it they had arrived on Christmas day... Speaking of the occasion, there was one up side to the day, the tree that had been set up was keeping Touka from having a mental breakdown. In between work, school, and making sure no one caught her scarfing down human limbs, today that tree was the only thing keeping her sane. Touka was never really one for things that were cosmetically appealing, but the Christmas tree was calming in someway... as if, as long as it was up nothing could hurt her... It was a childish notion, but she found comfort in it.

"Hey, shit-head!" Nishiki shouted, slamming his hand on the counter, making the dark haired girl jumped a bit at the sound.

Sighing, Touka returned to her previous position, looking away from Nishiki as if he were nothing more than a minor annoyance to her. "What do you want, shitty Nishiki?"

Nishiki simply smirked and folded his arms over one another, "You're off."

"What?"

"The manager says that you're done for the night," Nishiki then began to turn around and walk away, still talking to her, throwing a hand lazily up into the air, "he say's you need some time off... He keeps saying that you use all your time up for exams and work, he wants you to enjoy yourself."

Touka just looked over her shoulder at him, watching as he went to the back of the counter to get down some coffee trays. She'd be lying if she said that the guy was a total asshole, he was a lot nicer than he used to be... but that made her uncomfortable. He'd been in Aogiri, he once tried to kill Kaneki and his human friend, Hide. It was a bitchy thing to do, really, but she had to ask.

"Hey, Nishiki..." she said, turning around to face him.

"Hmm?" replied the college student, incredibly uninterested.

"Why did you join Anteiku anyway?"

Nishiki stopped with the chink of the china hitting the counter and remained silent for a time, then Touka began to sweat. Had she struck a nerve? She hoped not. They stayed like that for a while, in silence, as the other two co-workers, Kaya and Koma, tided up the shop after closing time. After about 5 minuets it was apparent that Nishiki wasn't going to humor her. Sighing in defeat, Touka turned around once more, leaning over the counter again.

"That's fine," she said, understandingly but at the same time disappointed,"You don't have to talk about it if you don't want to.," she began walking back upstairs, "None of my business."

"Because I owe Kaneki." he said simply, taking the next tray down in a happy tone.

Touka froze looking at his back, one foot on the first step of stair case, and hand and forearm on the support rail. She had a frown, the answer was vague, it wasn't at all satisfying to her, or anyone probably for that matter, if anything it made her worried, angry, but about what she didn't know. Touka then took another step under her foot and opened her mouth, "O-O.K. then..."

Then Hinami appeared at the top of the stairs, holding a black book with colorful splatters all over it against her hip. She wore what she wore most days, a baggy brow sweater with a big orange collar that layed lazily on her shoulders along with a blue skirt that with yellow tights underneath them.

"Hinami, what are you doing coming down stairs?" Touka asked, "Aren't you busy reading?" Touka asked, her mood lifting slightly when the girl came into view.

"Well... I found a word that I didn't know how to read again... so I was going to see if big brother could help out me out with it." She said, blushing a little in embarrassment at her illiteracy.

"Oh... Well, I can help you out, Hinami, I mean it's no trouble." Offered the older girl, eagerly.

"Yeah... but big brother is in college so he knows more right?" Reasoned the girl, unknowingly hitting Touka right in her stomach...

"I wouldn't say tha-" Touka defended her own intelligence as best she could before she was interupted by a voice from down stairs.

"Yes, Hinami that's right!" called Nishiki, "In fact I doubt Touka can even read!"

"Hey!" spat the highschooler in annoyance.

Then, there were three knocks on the door that entered into the shop... This was strange for two reasons, one was that they had turned the sign to closed almost an hour ago, the other was because customers don't necessarily knock before entering a public coffee shop. Still, the group of ghouls thought nothing of it, if they noticed it at all. Despite being closed, the shop was still pretty noisy from all the conversation from Koma.

Eagerly, Hinami rushed down stairs, almost tripping on her way down. "I'll get it!" she called as she passed Touka and ran to the door, "It might be big brother!"

Opening the door hurriedly, Hinami greeted the new comer with a smile, mostly because she'd assume who it was before actually seeing the person. Her smile dropped however when she realized that this man was a stranger to her. He was big, very well built, he wore a white suit that hardly contained his body, one that he should probably replace for a new one or quit drying so often, his hair was blond and slicked and somewhat spiked at the back of his head, His neck was covered in mummy-like wrappings and his nose was covered with a white square bandage, not to mention his left eye was bruised badly enough to have been a make-up job. The ghoul, who looked almost like a giant looked down at her apathetically, but almost curiously, as if she didn't belong here.

"Uh, hello..." Hinami greeted politely, but confused at the man.

Nishiki looked up, expecting to see some tired ghoul hoping for some coffee only to be turned down by the closed shop. However, when he saw the newcomer he froze, almost as if his body had hardened into marble. It was like a nightmare, really, he recognized the man immediately, he should've smelled him the moment he set foot in the building downstairs. How could he forget that Gecko-like face?

"Y-Yamori!?"

His leather shoe's tapped against the concrete sidewalks of the 20th ward as he strolled down the way. He was wearing his work uniform for the first time since he'd been taken away. The shop was already closed, but he figured he could help fix it up for the day, after all it was a unanimous decision, both Eto and Kaneki had agreed that it would be better if he had something to do, rather than sit in that house doing nothing. The vest, the undershirt, his slacks, all of them fit much looser than he remembered , perhaps it was because he had hardly been fed by Yamori, or maybe it was weight loss due to stress, either way though, the torture definitely had something to do with it. He only hoped that he wouldn't cause to much of a ruckus among the staff when he got there though.

Eto was in somewhat of a bored mood today, it wasn't that she had nothing to do, not at all. She could watch television, browse the internet, work on her newest story(she had been neglecting that recently) and much more so that wasn't the cause of her boredom. No, her boredom was caused by one thing... That Kaneki hadn't even acknowledged her for the past two days. The artificial half-ghoul seemingly forgot that she was a person, he woke up earlier now and went to bed just as early, he didn't even seem to feel her presence when she would grab him from behind, save for the occasional 'Let me go.' to which she would reply with a frown.

She even offered to let him read what she'd accomplished on her newest book so far and let him critique it... But he really wouldn't critique it he would just give it the casual compliment and return to whatever work he was doing beforehand, if at all. Today had been the first time that he'd actually started a conversation with her, which lasted around three sentences, but it was a conversation none the less. It was simply him telling her that he was going to work and her agreeing that, despite it being late, it would be good for the others to see him.

So now she was laying on the bed with a sad look on her face, of course she didn't blame him. Why would she? She herself would be fairly upset if the person that she had trusted had lied to her... In fact she had been in a similar situation before...

10 Years Earlier

Eto found herself in the attic of the once abandoned shop her father had recently purchased, the other day they had spent all night moving boxes into the attic. It could have been seen as tedious, but for Eto it was a blessing. Before hand all the two had was one tiny apartment that could hardly house a single person, let alone a father and daughter, Eto and her father were quite literally living on top of one another. Her father was often gone doing work at various sights and what not, getting as much money as he could, just for this. But, that's a different story.

So why was she up here, rummaging through various boxes full of personal belongings, in one of the only pieces of clothing she wore? Last night, as they had just finished putting away boxes when she'd seen a medium sized book with some kanji sprawled on the fron't... Eto was while not quite illiterate, but she did find reading hard, after all what did someone expect from a girl too poor for primary school?

The words on said book said, from what she could read, '...kina's, d...ry...'. The girl frowned as she dug the book out of the bin she found it in. The cpver was a tan or beighe color with a burn't look at the edges of it, as if it were old and forgotten... This wasn't the case, her father kept only the essentials and what he kept most dear, but the girl had never seen this before.

Sighing she then opened up the first page with a small creak as a light spray of dust flew from the inner page. The page was blank, just a cream colored paper that held nothing on it. However, there was something in the lower left corner that read '1975'. that must've been the date it was printed, which was only about 30 years ago, so it wasn't that old, but it was not particularly new.

She then began flipping through the pages quickly scanning them for any words she could read, noticing the same words would appear regularly, 'kina' she wondered what that meant, she'd never heard that word before, was it even one? She also noticed that it had different dates scribbled on the top of each page... She then began to put the pieces together... There was only one way that she knew of that pages began with date numbers... diaries... But if that was the case, then why did her father have the diary belonging to someone with a name that way so feminine sounding... Unless... Eto had never known her mother, her father said that she was killed before she could remember. But from the other words that she could read, she could tell that this was a humans diary, just key things that didn't relate to living in hiding and eating humans... But didn't that rule out this belonging to... her mother?

Eto then began to flip through the pages more rapidly, looking for a specific date. 1988, the year she was born. Finally she reached a certain page... It was funny, this Inanimate object was about to change her life. three things that she could read automatically highlighted in her eye's. 'Baby', 'half-ghoul'... 'Eto'...

"What..." Eto said aloud, almost a squeak. "Half-ghoul... A half-ghoul... what's that?" She then began to reach her hand to her left eye and slowly graze her fingers above it. "Is that why this eye doesn't change?" She asked no one in particular as she slightly furrowed her brow... She felt cold, as if a ghost had just passed right through her chest. She noticed that she began to intake more air than usual.

Then she heard a door close shut and her father call her name.

"Eto! Where are you?"

The half ghoul looked over her shoulder at the attic door and narrowed her eye's. Her father had lied to her her entire life... She wasn't just a ghoul, she was much more than just a ghoul, she was this... this 'Half-ghoul' thing... and her father hid that from her. Right now though... she was just confused, she needed to figure this out. Why he lied, who exactly her mother was, and what this made her...

Present Day

"Hinami!" called the brown haired ghoul, as he catapulted himself over the counter top, breaking a few glasses as he did, "Get away from him!"

Hinami looked over to Nishiki and tilted her head with her mouth slightly agape, as if she were confused at him. "Why, Nishiki?" she asked, turning away from Yamori. Nishiki didn't answer as he rushed over, nearly tripping over himself and grabbed her by the waist, then bounding away with speed.

The suited man then too a step forward calmly, placing himself inside the coffee shop and scanning the view in front of him. He recognized the boy who pulled the child away from him, he was placed under him in Aogiri, apparently he'd decided to leave. He never really did look out for his subordinates, so he didn't care much what they did. Tatara did get mad when he killed them though.

Beforw him was Nishiki, that Hinami girl, two older ghouls, older than him most likely, one male one female. Though, he could have sworn that there was another employee here, in fact he was certain that there was, considering she was that brat Ayato's sister. Then, as if on cue, a slim, but strong leg flew at his face, of which he just barely caught before it slammed into him.

Their eye's locked,hers flaring Kakuja's, his almost bored with her attempt to hit him. Luckily for Touka, the guys arm was strong enough to hold up her entire body, instead of her leg being ripped off from the combined effort of gravity and his grip. However, what struck the girl as strange was that he wasn't trying to cause her pain, he just seemed annoyed at her.

"Where's Kaneki?" He asked, calmly speaking it, as if he was guest. The way he said it aggravated Touka even more however, prompting her to launch her fist over her leg, hoping to smash him in the face, to which he simply reposistioned his head, cocking it two one side, causing her to miss. Then he released her leg, causing her to fall fat on her ass.

However, Touka wasn't quite done yet though, as she kicked off the ground, using every muscle in her legs to propel herself at the big, blond, ghoul. She then balled her small, but strong hands into a white-knuckled fist and tried once more to land a sturdy blow on his face. The much larger of the two found himself with no where to go, but back. So, naturally, he found himself being pushed back down the stairs by the girl, who was wildly beating at him with a hatred fueled ferocity.

Touka was angrily punching at the man, and getting angrier every time she missed. Why shouldn't she be? He was the one who hurt Kaneki to the point where he was now mentally damaged. from what she understands, he doesn't feel pain hardly, he now spends his time cracking his fingers, and he is almost a different person. It all pissed her off because she knew it was her fault, she was too weak to save him.

The man had finally made it to where his back was now facing an open door, letting the chilly December air hit his back, not that it bothered him, but it was still notable that his back was at an exit point should he truly need it. However, that exit came to a sudden close as a pair of red, scaled tentacles ripped through his abdomen, reopening healing wounds in the process... At least he found Kaneki.

Touka opened her mouth slightly as a few streamers of warm blood splashed onto her face, dampening her hair and making it stick to her forehead in some areas. For a moment she almost thought it was Rize, but that was out of the question. Still, she had hoped it was Rize, because there was a part of her, a large part, that refused to believe that the cowardly, child faced student could do this... It was a stupid hope she knew... because she saw that look of hatred in his eye's when he pulled him out of the door frame with those red appendages and sling him onto the street.

Maybe it was fate that no humans were around when Kaneki had ripped into Yamori, maybe it was that or just dumb luck, but he knew that they had to move and quickly, no doubt they'd draw attention... He looked back up at Touka, who now bore a look of interest and horror on her face. Her eye's were wide, almost popping out, but her mouth was slightly parted, showing her top teeth just barely.

"Touka, move." He calmly ordered as he wrapped tentacles around Yamori.

The high school student obeyed, rushing back up the stairs and back into the shop quickly. Then, roughly, Kaneki shot Yamori back in through the door way and up the small flight of stairs, resulting in him smashing face first into a wall, cracking it severely. He was far from finished though, as he began to stalk after him, being careful to close the door to any would be onlookers.

But, if fate had intervened, it seemed it had again. As a strong grip fell on Kaneki's wrist, through the closing door, prompting Kaneki to turn to dace the newcomer. Yoshimura was the face that greeted him, a small, but calming smile on his face.

"I do believe that's enough, Kaneki." He said, almost cheerfully.

Yamori now sat in a dark room, not that it lacked lighting, but more so the lights had been turned off, perhaps they were broke or maybe the old man who had prevented Kaneki from killing him had decided to keep them off. He wasn't alone in the dark however, aforementioned elder was here with him as well, gently pouring coffee into two small, white cups, adorned with tiny golden carved into the side by the rim and at the base.

Yakumo set his jaw, he was beginning to grow a bit worried actually. He was in a building filled with people who saw him as a threat and nothing more.

"Now then..." Spoke the old man, letting out a cheerful grunt as he lowered himself down onto the chair opposite of the much more built, bulky man. The old man seemed to be a weakling at first, but if the rumors are true, That he actually is some SSS-rank ghoul, then Yakumo best not upset him. It was funny, a few day's ago he would not have thought about his own well-being, he would have simply fought... Only really because he never met someone who could cause him so much pain...

"... I know why you're here... Or at least I hope I do..." Continued the owner, smirking to himself a bit, "But I would like to know why exactly..." He then clasped his hands together, placing the intertwined old fingers at his mouth and bending ever so slightly forward. It wasn't such an unthinkable question, after all, like the old man had probably guessed, Yakumo had come... to join Anteiku.

"You see," the owner continued once more, "I know of you 'Jason', that you enjoy causing pain to others and you also were the one who tortured Kaneki while he was held captive by Aogiri, but it seems out of character for you, to want to join a group such as ours... After all we keep the peace, not disrupt it."

Yakumo sighed, then looked him in the eye's, "When I was younger," he began, "I lived in a less than traditional house hold. My mother, despite being much stronger than my father, took his beatings without words and never complained... We lived in a small shack, barley making it at all, living day to day... sometimes without electricity... but we lived... Then the investigators came, apparently we'd been found out when my father had been caught eating in an alleyway and they traced him back to us... My mother died in their attack... I escaped just barely, but it wasn't long before I was captured... and given the worst fate for a ghoul in the CCG's custody..."

"Go on..." The old man encouraged watching intently.

"I was kept alive because I knew many secrets about the 13th ward... but I was tortured daily and even though I told them all I know they still did it...My torturer... I won't go in detail what he did... but I eventually, to escape the pain, convinced myself that I was the torturer and he was the victim... His methods became my inspiration for my own tortuer after I killed him, which gave rise to 'Yamori', or 'Jason' as I'm more commonly known... My real name is Yakumo Oomori. Anyways during sometime that Kaneki was beating me a few days ago he had, for lack of a better phrasing, beat the sanity into me, and while he didn't intend to, he Killed Yamori, letting Yakumo come back... But I realized something about the day I came here for him that I didn't think twice about before... Anteiku looks out for one another... I just thought that I would see what a life of peace could be like, rather than fighting..."

There was a moment of silence as Yakumo was studied by the old man, until he finally spoke, with a smile, "Well then, what size clothing do you wear? Just so I can put in the proper uniform order... I doubt we have your size."