I'm going to be out of town next weekend, and I probably won't have the chance to update. Sorry about that!

In the meantime, thank you to everyone who's left a review! You guys are great.

Eika slips into Anteiku the following Monday afternoon, shuffles to her table of choice, and smiles at Ken like nothing ever happened. He brings her coffee without asking, and she takes it without hesitation. He has himself together a little better today, knows what he wants to say, but he falters when he sees the book on the table, brand new, a receipt being used as a bookmark.

"Souseki Natsume?" he asks, "I thought you weren't fond of his work."

Eika adjusts her glasses. "I didn't really give him a fair chance," she says, "I thought I'd try again."

He glances down again. "Kokoro, huh?"

"Have you read it?"

"No. You'll have to tell me what you think."

She smiles shyly. "No way. You have to read it yourself. I'll lend you my copy when I'm done."

Ken very nearly loses everything he prepared to talk about at the look of pure happiness in her eyes, but he resolves to say something, pulling out the chair across from her. "Ishihara," he says as he sits down, "I realize we don't really know much about each other."

"That's alright, isn't it?"

He hesitates. "No," he decides after a moment, "No, it's not. I want to know you better."

She's momentarily stunned into silence, and then a blush overtakes her features, slowly spreading from her cheeks to her ears. "Oh," she stammers, "Well, if you really want to. But you should go first."

Ken laughs. "I think you probably know a bit about me already," he says but indulges her anyway, "I go to Kamii and study literature. I live on my own. I've read everything Sen Takatsuki has ever written."

Eika isn't quite looking at him, seemingly preoccupied with other thoughts. "Isn't there more to you than just books?" she asks.

Ken is surprised at the question, but recovers quickly. "Well, yeah," he says, a bit uneasily, hesitant to continue. His life is not what it used to be. He has interests aside from reading, but so much of his time anymore is consumed by worrying, mourning what he used to be and learning to embrace the part of him that thinks Eika smells good in a mouth-watering kind of way. He clings to literature because, despite how much he's changed, that alone has remained the same.

She doesn't leave him floundering too long. "It's alright," she says gently, "I'm defined by the books I read, too, because reading is all I really enjoy doing. That's all there is to me, really."

"I'm sure that's not true," Ken starts to say, the words dying halfway out of his mouth when Eika's heavy-lidded gaze sweeps across the table and up to his face. He gets that feeling again that something is very wrong.

"It is," she insists, "And there's nothing wrong with that."

There are a few other customers quietly minding their own business, tucked into their own corners with a steaming coffee cup and a magazine in their hands, and Touka and Nishiki are milling about waiting for something to do, but it seems to Ken to be far too quiet. The silence is oppressive, almost deafening, and every sound Eika makes is only accentuated, every scuff of her shoes against the floor, every tap of her nails on the table. He can hear his heart beating in his ears, and he can smell fear coming off of her in acrid waves.

Something is wrong, and he needs to know what it is.

"Ishihara," he says, and though his words are soft, she still looks startled, "Are you alright?"

"I'm fine," she says easily, too easily, almost automatically.

Ken tries again. "I don't mean just right now. I mean in general. Are you doing okay?"

"I'm fine, Kaneki," she repeats, annoyance seeping through her smile at his constant prodding, "Is this because I came in reading Dazai the other day? I told you he's my favorite. Don't read into it too much."

Ken is certain that she's lying, but she's resolute in her answer. "Sorry," he says, "I guess I have a tendency to do that."

The distracted look returns to Eika's features, as if she's dreaming while awake. "You know, Kaneki," she says suddenly, addressing him without meeting his gaze yet again, "I just got to the part where Yozo and Horiki are playing that word game with antonyms. Have you ever tried that?"

She's going back to Dazai again. Ken shakes his head. "It's been a little while since I've read No Longer Human. What was the game exactly?" His eyes start to wander. Eika continually tugs at the sleeves of her blazer and only her fingers poke out at the ends, the nails bitten down to the quick and mangled in a way that looks painful. There are so many scabs and red spots around the cuticles that he wonders if it hurts for her to hold things.

"An antonym game," she says, "One of us comes up with a word, and then the other person will give the opposite."

"Ah, so if I say black…."

"I say white." Eika's smile is distant and her expression disengaged. "But if I say white, what will you say?"

Ken hesitates. "Red," he says after a moment, thinking back to his sophomore year when he first read Dazai. The sections about antonyms always bothered him, partly because it was so nonsensical and seemingly subjective, and partly because of the futility the game seemed to represent, a categorization game played by the protagonist that only highlighted the differences between the way he thought and the way all of the human beings around him did.

It bothers him even more now than before.

"And the antonym of red is black," Eika concludes, "But colors are easy. How about something more abstract?"

Ken doesn't answer right away, because he doesn't really want to play, but Eika is waiting. "What's the anonym of vestigial?" he asks.

"Loved," Eika says, almost without hesitation. "And the antonym of loved?"

"Hated," Ken says, then shakes his head. "No. Abandoned."

"The antonym of abandoned is coddled."

Ken tries one last time. "Ishihara, are you sure…?"

"Kaneki," she says, pleading, "Keep playing." Desperation shines in her eyes.

He takes a deep breath and tries to ignore the way her fear fills his nostrils, sharp and sweet. "The antonym of coddled," he says quietly, "Is destroyed."

And just like every time they talk, she manages to divert attention away from herself.

At the end of the day, Ken is taking the last of the dishes from the tables to wash when he comes across a cheap-looking, pastel-colored wallet where Eika had been sitting. A student ID card is nestled safely in the plastic pocket on the inside, and her name, face, and school are printed on it. She isn't usually so careless.

Eika didn't stay as long today, and the sun is only just setting. Ken wonders if her school is still open. "I'll be right back," he tells Touka, already halfway out the door in his work clothes, and she doesn't bother trying to stop him.

Her high school is a short walk and one train stop away, and Ken passes by a few lingering students finishing up club activities for the day on his way to the office. "Excuse me," he says to the woman at the desk, and takes the wallet out of his pocket, "I work at a café downtown, and one of our customers left their wallet. It seems she's a student here, so I was hoping you could get it back to her."

"That's so kind of you," the woman beams and takes the wallet from him, but her smile falls when she opens it and looks at the ID. "I'm sorry, you said a customer left this at your café?"

"Yes."

"When?"

"Today," Ken says, confused at the sudden change in mood.

The woman nods. "Thank you," she says gently, "I'll hang onto this for now, though I'm not sure when I'll be able to get it back to its owner."

Ken has a terrible, sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. "Why is that?"

She gives an uncomfortable sigh, turning the wallet over in her hands like she's debating handing it back to him. "This student hasn't come to school in two weeks," she says at last.

It takes a minute to process the words. "Two weeks?" he repeats weakly.

"Yes. These things happen, I suppose. You hear about hikikomori and the like on the news, but you never think it's going to be someone you know."

Hikikomori?

Ken has always just assumed that Eika came to Anteiku right after school because she always showed up around the same time and was always wearing her uniform. He hadn't thought that she might be a shut-in. It's curious, then, that she would come by the café at all. He can't help but wonder what led her there, and what's been bringing her back time and time again, especially if she isn't leaving the house for anything else.

He thinks it would be better if he took the wallet back, but the woman at the desk doesn't seem willing to give it up, so he lets her hold onto it.

He has questions for Eika that he's sure she won't answer.