He saw crows the day before.
They claw up at the gray sky - rain, he smelled - with their outstretched feathers, climbing up and over a mountain of air before leveling out the gait of their wings, moving evenly in flat circles above some field he cannot see.
"Hey, Kaneki, are you comin' or not?" Hide waved a hand in front of his face and he flinches.
Crows. Why were they there?
Again and again, one, two, three, again. The beat of their limbs. Their twitching heads and open beaks full of commotion. Trying to catch a drop of sun, beams of moonlight.
He offered his best friend a smile, nodding his head slightly. "Yeah, sorry. I was just thinking."
"'Bout what?" Hide inquires curiously.
"Nothing you should care about." The rebuttal.
A pause. "Are you sure?"
Kaneki shrugged, naturally, seamlessly with a roll of his head down and to the side. Hide blinked, once, twice, before he nudged him in the shoulder with a closed, but loose, fist and a loud laugh - loud and bright, unlike the solemn, frowning skies and the crows that danced in front of them teasingly, screeching and crying and shrieking and screeching again.
But he caught the look in Hide's eye - calculating, honest, truthful. Omniscient, like the sun that spread the clouds out and apart, like the moon that hangs on a dew-dropped thread behind sheets of water vapor.
"Well, anyways! Where were we going again? You were busy being creepy." Hide smiled at him.
At his tease, Kaneki smiled lightly as he shoved his hands into his pockets, amused as he directs his gaze to the row of shops that line the city in their little, organized lines like factory workers. "The new store you wanted to show me."
Another laugh - still bright, colorful. "Oh, right! As I was saying, they have all these weird sounding bells and it's..."
As they walk away with Hide going on and on about the bells, their feet click against the pavement in unison, joined together in a single, quick motion.
The wind pulled at the sky and at the streets with its tendrils of cold gust and Kaneki pulled his jacket up over his mouth.
Above, the crows called again, again and again, one, one two and three, until their throats are more than raw.