"It's important, I think," Eika says, one hand resting atop the cover of No Longer Human, "That we recognized where we ourselves are antonyms."
She had been a little late today, but Ken didn't worry as much as he used to. It had been several weeks since he'd found her standing at the end of the road by the broken guardrail-seventeen days, to be precise, because he's been keeping track. The first day, she came back with a binder overflowing with papers, two weeks worth of homework that she'd picked up on her first day back at school, and Ken stayed after his shift to help her with it. She didn't bring any books with her at first, nor did she even mention them. Eika worked hard to flood her life with reality, to busy herself with distractions that wouldn't cause her mind to wander back to the gorge and the words of Yozo, a world she knew she needed to stay away from until she was strong enough to face it.
And now, seventeen days later, she thinks she's ready.
"What do you mean?" Ken asks.
"Everyone likes books they can relate to," Eika says, "So we have a tendency to look for things we have in common with the protagonist. We paint ourselves as synonymous to them." Her gaze falls to the table where her fingers are each wrapped in bandages, extra motivation to leave what little nails she has alone. "'I'm Yozo,' I used to think," she says quietly, "'I don't understand other people, and they don't understand me. There's nothing here for me.'" She pauses. "But I'm not Yozo. In some ways, I'm his antonym. There are people I connect with and care about. There are," she hesitates, blushes, and looks to the side, "There are people I love. Yozo lost himself in his inability to relate to others and it lead to him losing his own sense of humanity. But I am human." She smiles to herself. "So I'm the antonym of Yozo."
Ken smiles back and shifts the topic ever so slightly to Dazai and his other works, carefully stepping around the invitation to share his own opinion on the matter. His own favorite work, Takatsuki's The Black Goat's Egg, is at the forefront of his mind, and his own similarities to the child of the titular monster on the tip of his tongue. The difference between him and Eika is that he cannot find too many ways in which he differs, not enough points that he can safely say he is an antonym of the child of the black goat.
He is not human, and the thought is in the back of his head throughout their conversation, as well as his musings as to what sort of horrified look Eika might have on her face if he were to tell the truth.
Eika, a long-time adversary to his attempts to manipulate the conversation, manages to turn it around somehow, subtly, bringing up tragedies, as it's supposedly what her literature class is going over right now. Not coincidentally, it is also the secondary genre of his favorite author-after horror, of course-and he's sure she knows that.
"Tragedies can also be quite relatable," Eika says.
Ken nods. "Shakespearean tragedies in particular have a really smooth structure that eases you right in. I believe it can be broken down into parts, the first being exposition." Everything that came before, the introductory chapter, the prologue, a woman who worked for the happiness of everyone but herself until she was ragged, bled dry, dead. Ken's tragedy begins with a father whose face he doesn't know and a dead mother whose legacy he inherits. It is better to hurt than to be hurt by others-that is his fatal flaw.
"And then the development, right?" Eika asks, "And a change in fortune."
"Followed by the climax, and the resolution."
The full cast is introduced; Hide barges into his life, holds on, and refuses to let go. Touka is a regular backdrop during his innocent days at Anteiku, an omen of things to come, silently pitying him from the corner of the cafe.
And then Rize enters from stage right, gives him a charming smile that makes his stomach flutter, and leads him away as the curtain falls, end scene. His tragedy seems, for the most part, to be over.
"What happened to you?" he asks softly, not that anyone cares to listen in, the other patrons absorbed in their reading material. What was your tragedy?
Eika's face flushes and she gives a shy smile. "It doesn't matter," she says with a passive wave. Ken wants to insists that it does matter, that he wants to know, needs to know, that if they're both living in the same genre it'll make him feel better to know that he's not the only one.
"I always thought," he says, "That any story with me cast as the lead would be a tragedy."
He didn't realize he was leaning in so close, or that she had been, either. Eika's eyes are nervously avoiding his, but she isn't moving away from him, hands in her lap, pulling at the ends of her sleeves. "Then you should change it," she murmurs.
"I don't know if I can."
"You did it for me."
He pauses. "Yeah," he whispers, "I guess I did," and with a surge of bravery, closes what little distance is between them.
It lasted all of two seconds, when Touka suddenly appeared next to the table and demanded he cover for her, and Eika pulled back looking absolutely mortified while Ken tried to apologize. Touka yanked him back to the counter, muttering that talking was one thing and locking lips was entirely another, and he nodded and nervously agreed, but when Eika gave him one more shaky smile as she packed her bag to leave, he found himself thinking that it had been worth it.
"See you tomorrow," she says as she passes, promising something more with those words.
"Yeah. Tomorrow," Ken agrees, ignoring the way Touka rolls her eyes when he waves at her.
Small steps, he's decided. Eika took small steps to get to where she is now, one small goal for every day, and Ken wants to do the same. Tomorrow, he knows from the way she looks at him and blushes and laughs, the way she held on because of him, that Eika is going to confess to him, and he's not going to turn her down. It might be difficult, and it might be painful at times, but he's certain that, with small steps, he can make it work, just like Yoshimura said.
One thing at a time, he reminds himself, feeling so genuinely happy for the first time in weeks, smiling stupidly long after she's gone, oblivious to the rising of the curtain, the arrival of an unfamiliar face, and the beginning of the next scene.
Ken Kaneki thinks his tragedy is over, and he is a fool, because it is only just beginning.
Today is the day.
Eika Ishihara has been preparing herself for this day since she decided that she was going to live. It isn't fair to put the burden of her will to live on another person, but she can't deny that Ken Kaneki played an important role in reminding her that the world was not as dark as she made it out to be. That first trip to Anteiku made her realize that she is not alone in the world, even it was at the time a complete stranger whom she found herself connecting with. So now, seventeen days later-she's been counting-her feelings of affection have solidified into something more, something stronger, something that she doesn't want to keep to herself.
Today, she is going to confess to Ken Kaneki.
She's prepared herself for rejection-he's a little older, after all, and he's studying seriously, so maybe he won't be interested. But she wants to start doing things differently, and that means being open and telling people how she feels. If nothing else, Anteiku is still a place she'll go, and Ken is still a person she'll talk to, even if they're only friends.
The moment her class is dismissed, she throws her books into her bag, makes a beeline for the lockers, and starts heading downtown, walking faster and faster until she's running, unable to contain her excitement. Today is the first day of her new life, one in which she is the antonym of Yozo, and she loves the feeling of the light breeze fluttering her uniform, of the sunlight on her face, even of the ache in her legs from running. It feels wonderful to be alive, to be able to feel at all. It's wonderful to be human.
People are turning to stare at her as she gets closer to the cafe, some with wide eyes, some in confusion or pity, but hardly notices, hardly cares, too elated to be bothered by what other people are thinking, and she feels her heart beating faster in her chest as she rounds the corner, smiling so wide her face is sore, and her eyes open wide and Anteiku is-!
"Closed for repairs," says the waitress Eika remembers seeing from time to time, one eye covered by her dark bangs. "Sorry." Behind her, Eika sees the windows she used to gaze out of are shattered, and the countertop is cracked. It looks like someone rammed their car through the side of the cafe.
"That's alright," Eika says, "Do you have any idea when you'll be open again?"
"Probably in a few days."
"Ah. Okay." She glances back at Anteiku again. "Um. This might seem like a weird question, but have you seen Kaneki today? I guess he wouldn't have come in since you're closed, but I was hoping to talk to him."
The waitress's gaze slowly shifts away from Eika, almost anxiously. She swallows, looks at the ground. "Sorry," she says hoarsely, "I have no idea where he is."
Something about the way she says it makes Eika nervous. "Thanks anyway," she says and starts walking back towards home, much slower than before.
It's alright, she tells herself, she can wait. She's waited this long to be absolutely certain of her feelings and to steel her resolve, she can wait a few more days. And she does. She checks back every day, watching as new furniture comes in and the counters are repaired and the window is replaced. She watches as the "open" sign is placed back in the door and customers return. She watches the quiet waitress stand in the corner, eyes empty, gazing out onto the street like she's looking for someone.
She watches for Ken Kaneki, day after day.
She never sees him again.