If there are actually still people following this, then I'm so sorry for not updating in a long time. My life is hectic right now. (Sometimes, I update this on my archive account and then forget that I have this one too DX) Anyway, please forgive me. I'm gonna try to be more prompt in updates from now on. I hope you like it and if you do, leave a review! They always make me happy :)-

6

Shiro had no clue where he was when he woke up. The ceiling above him was strangely familiar but new at the same time. The last thing he remembered was waking up in some strange apartment and...

Oh, right. He was here now. In his old apartment. With his past self.

"Why does time crap have to be so weird?" he mumbled, pushing sleep-tousled bangs out of his face. The blankets were rumpled atop him, as he tended to move in his sleep thanks to nightmares, and sunlight seeped in through the windows. Sitting up, he stretched his arms above his head and felt the muscles bend satisfyingly. On an inhale, he caught the scent of something warm and sweet coming from the kitchen. Is Kaneki making breakfast? he wondered. Then he felt stupid for the twinge of hope inside of him.

He wouldn't be eating any of it, now would he?

Sighing, he swung his legs off the side of the couch and stood up. It felt vaguely wrong to be wearing the same clothes as yesterday, but he supposed he could worry about getting more later. Like, after he managed to find a job. In the meantime, he was sure that Kaneki wouldn't mind sharing.

When he made it to the sunbathed kitchen, the first thing he saw was Kaneki's bedhead. It was ruffled like black feathers, sticking in every direction, and honestly, Shiro had to look away.

He couldn't remember the last time he'd thought anything was cute.

Leaning his shoulder against the doorway, he watched as Kaneki went through the motions of making coffee and grabbing cereal. He didn't even know that Shiro was there until he turned around and then nearly had a heart attack. "Crap—! God," he gasped, setting the box of cereal down with a thump on the little kitchen table. "You scared me."

"Sorry," Shiro chuckled. "Guess I forgot how scary I can look to human now."

"You don't look scary," Kaneki replied pointedly. "I just wasn't expecting you to be there. You're really quiet, you know." Turning to the coffeemaker, he retrieved a mug and poured in some of the steaming liquid. Shiro brightened in interest and Kaneki glanced at him, the corner of his mouth curving up. "You want some?"

Shiro nodded, crossing the room to find his own mug among the others in the cupboard. Kaneki's eyes were on him as he went through the regular ritual of morning coffee. "You drink coffee?" he asked.

"Yeah," Shiro answered. "I'm not entirely sure how it works, but ghouls can get away with drinking coffee without spitting it back up. That's why Rize was hanging out at a coffeeshop."

Kaneki's brow furrowed. "Why would you spit it back up?"

Shiro studied him for a second, cupping his warm mug in his hands. "How much do you know about ghouls?"

"Just what I hear on the news and from Hide, who isn't all that reliable sometimes," Kaneki replied with a shrug. "I haven't been watching TV much the past few days, though, so..."

Sipping his coffee (not as good as Anteiku's, but good enough), Shiro explained, "ghouls can't eat food because it tastes disgusting to them. It also isn't very good for our digestive systems, so it's not a great idea to try and choke it down anyway."

Kaneki stopped in the process of reaching for a bowl from an open cupboard. "So you're forced to eat people, even if you don't want to?"

"Yeah."

"That must've been hard."

Shiro slid his gaze off to the side. Pity wasn't an emotion he was familiar with."It was."

Guessing that he shouldn't pursue the topic any farther, Kaneki stood on tiptoe to get his bowl. His fingers found the edge of it, but as he lowered it down, it caught on the edge of the shelf. His sharp gasp hit Shiro's ears, a spike of adrenaline making his eye turn, and he moved on reflex. His mug was on the counter in half a second, hand shooting up to catch the bowl, and the other on Kaneki's shoulder to steady him. Kaneki's grey eyes were wide, unable to follow how fast Shiro had moved. "Thanks," he managed.

"No prob—"

"Kaneki! What's up, I texted you, like, four times last night!"

The bright voice was all the warning they received before a very lively blonde skipped into the doorway with orange headphones around his neck. Hide's cheerful smile lasted a total of three seconds. That was how long it took for him to spot Shiro. Then his jaw dropped open. "Holy shit, you're a ghoul?!"

"Wha—No!" Kaneki denied, holding his hands out to Hide like he could stop him from seeing this.

Shiro, meanwhile, had proceeded to basically slap himself in the face with the speed it took to cover his turned eye. "It's not what it looks like!" he babbled, and immediately wanted to hit himself again. My best friend sees me as a ghoul and that's what I come up with?

Hide gawked throughout a good-sized speech from Kaneki about how "Shiro wasn't that bad, he used to be human, he saved me, he won't eat you, I swear," and whole lot of assorted, stammered nonsense. But near the end, Hide broke into another one of his thousand-watt grins and Shiro felt his heart pound painfully inside of him. "I can't believe I'm in the same room as a ghoul and I'm not dead," Hide declared, as though this was the best thing that had ever happened to him.

Kaneki opened his mouth to speak, thought better of it, and closed it again. "You're not...freaking out?" he ventured.

"Why would I freak out? I mean, I'd freak out if he was like, chewing on your neck or something, but I already met him before. You said he saved you?" Hide's brown eyes, alive with excitement, flicked to Shiro. "You fought another ghoul, and Kaneki saw it, and I didn't?"

Carefully, Shiro lowered his hand from his now-normal eye. "And you're upset by that?" he asked.

"Well, yeah!" Hide threw his arms up. "The one time something amazingly cool happens to Kaneki and I wasn't there to see it!"

"Hey!" Kaneki protested. "A lot of cool things happen to me!"

"Name one other thing."

"..."

"Exactly." Hide planted his hands on the table and leaned forward eagerly. "So, what was it like?" he asked Shiro. "Did you get hurt? Do ghouls heal super fast? Do you have those tentacle-thingies?"

Shiro's mind reeled. "Um," he answered, "it was tiring, yes I got hurt, I heal fast and some other ghouls do, and yes I have 'those tentacle-thingies.'"

Honestly, all of this stress this early in the morning was starting to form a headache. But behind it was the overwhelming relief that Hide was so quick to accept him, though he was sure that if he'd been hurting Kaneki, the reaction would've been much different. His heart warmed at the thought of his friend accepting him so easily, even in this life.

"Awesome!" Hide beamed at both Kaneki and Shiro. "Kaneki, we now have a ghoul as our personal body guard."

"Do I get paid?" Shiro asked wryly.

Hide spread his arms in a gesture of bravado. "Your payment is our devoted friendship, and also coffee."

Hiding his growing smile behind his mug, Shiro casually drank his coffee. "I'd rather be paid in food, honestly," he joked.

Hide rubbed his chin, narrowing his eyes in Kaneki's direction. "That can be arranged..."

"He wouldn't eat me!" Kaneki spluttered, almost spilling the entire box of cereal into his bowl. His gaze flitted to Shiro, jokingly suspicious. "You wouldn't, right?"

Shiro flashed a dark smirk. "Maybe."

Snickering at Kaneki's horrified expression, Hide pointed proudly at the half-ghoul. "You are officially my best friend."

They were off to a great start.

The great start continued as Hide stayed around through Kaneki's and Shiro's showers, chatting with both about how awesome it was that they were now friends with a ghoul. Kaneki pointed out several times that they were technically breaking the law by not calling the CCG, but Hide didn't seem to care. He brushed the argument off, claiming that the CCG were for ghoul crimes, not for ghouls themselves, and "besides, Shiro is only half a ghoul, so he doesn't count."

Shiro decided it was best not to argue with this. As much as he hated posing a certain amount of danger for them, he really didn't want to go back to his life, alone. Living in a new timeline was going to be hard enough. Living it completely alone would be a whole other problem. Hair still shower-damp, he kept on the black sweatpants he'd bought and stole an old college tee from Kaneki's closet. He would try not to borrow clothes as much as he could, but for now, it was just easier to take Kaneki's.

The three headed out together, into sunlight and crowded streets, heading for Anteiku. The barrage of mingling scents hit Shiro like a bus. Sometimes, he wasn't quite used to how his heightened senses worked. Wrinkling his nose, he did his best to sort it all out: warm smells of food, the stomach-churning smell of humans, and the bloodied and dark scents from ghouls. Figuring that he should be protective of the humans close to him, Shiro decided to map out Kaneki's and Hide's scents now. Hide strolled idly along behind them with his headphones on; he smelled homey and sunlit, a familiar anchor in Shiro's mind. It took him a moment to realize that the lovely soft scent next to him belonged to Kaneki.

I really need to stop smelling him, he scolded himself.

Up ahead, a guy in clothes mainly consisting of leather strode down the sidewalk. His powerful pace and sharp eyes would've told Shiro he was a ghoul if his scent hadn't already. Either way, he was making to pass by them, but doing it entirely too close. Before he knew it, Shiro had hooked his fingers in the back of Kaneki's shirt and tugged him closer to his shoulders brushed and Kaneki blinked up at him questioningly. "What?"

Shiro watched through narrowed eyes as the ghoul passed. "Nothing," he replied, relaxing once more. His knuckles grazed Kaneki's back through his shirt and he thought he felt the human shiver. Catching himself, Shiro let go and put his hands into his pockets.

He hoped Hide didn't notice his ears turning pink from his place behind them.

"Yes!" Hide cheered, as soon as they set foot into the coffeeshop's warm-colored interior. "Coffee! Don't mind if I do!" Pushing his headphones back to his neck, he waved at the only waitress standing behind the counter at the moment. "Excuse me, can I order?"

Of course it was Touka, Shiro thought amusedly, as the girl sent a glare Hide's way. "Yes, you can order," she told him, at the slow pace one spoke to toddlers with. "Just stop shouting before you give everyone a headache." "Everyone" meant the only other customers in there today, a couple chatting together at a side table. Shiro was glad that only the girl seemed human and he wouldn't have to worry nearly as much about being caught.

As soon as he'd seated himself at the counter beside Kaneki, Touka's uncovered eye was on him. "Hey," she said curtly, as she busied herself with the making of Hide's coffee. "You were in here the other day, weren't you?"

"Yeah," Shiro answered. He ached to tell her everything that happened to him, to apologize, to have someone else to confide in about this mess of time and his heart. But she didn't know him. So he tried for a warm smile. "I'm Shiro. This is Kaneki."

She arched a brow, glancing between the human and ghoul. "I'm Touka. And if you're trying to set me up with your friend here, you can forget about it."

Kaneki promptly began to study his shoes, or the countertop, or anything that wasn't her face. "No, I wasn't trying to do anything like that," Shiro assured her at once. Sparing a look over at the human girl in the shop, he took a breath and lowered his voice. "Listen, um. I'm a ghoul, and I know that you know that, and I also know that you help ghouls here. I wanted t—"

"Are you an idiot?" she hissed, planting a hand on the counter with blue eyes blazing. "You have a freaking human sitting right next to you."

"I already knew," Kaneki piped up. Her gaze jerked to him, narrowing in suspicion. He pointed embarrassedly to Hide, who was trying to see if he could make his stool spin the whole way around while drinking his coffee. "Hide knows too. Shiro sort of stopped another ghoul from eating me."

"I heard it was epic," Hide put in.

Touka looked at the three like she was sitting in a very disturbing circus."So...the three of you are friends now," she concluded. She pointed two fingers at Kaneki and Hide. "And you two are fine with the fact that he literally eats people?"

"As long as it's not me, because that would suck," Hide replied with another casual sip of his coffee.

"I—I think I'll be good, but I can't watch him eat or something," Kaneki stammered.

Touka lifted her arms up in a hey, as long as it doesn't affect me, knock yourselves out. "Okay, well," she huffed, returning to swiping a rag across the counter, "it's your funeral."

"I'm not gonna eat them," Shiro told her, voice flat. Realizing the turn this conversation had taken, he rubbed the back of his neck. "Listen, I swear I didn't come here just to bother you with all of this. I came because, um, they're my friends and they're not gonna be safe with me around all the time. I need a job and I need somewhere to stay if things don't work out for me." If Rize ends up surviving, or if Jason catches her scent and comes looking.

An uncomfortable silence descended, broken by the conversation occurring between the couple at the side table. Kaneki's gaze was trained on Shiro, a mix of something like pity and surprise in his features. Touka opened her mouth, then closed it, thinking. A line appeared between her eyebrows, the one that always came when she was trying to decide something. Finally, she sighed. "All right, listen. I can't offer you a job myself. You have to talk to the manager. But we do help ghouls when they come to us, so I can't imagine that he'll turn you away. But if he does," she added importantly, "you have to go, no questions asked. We can't put anyone here in too much danger; otherwise, the CCG would find us and we'd be done. So don't fool around. Understand?"

"I understand." He did. Even though he couldn't remember all of it, he was sure that in his old life, he'd left Anteiku to keep them safe. He'd do it again in a heartbeat, if he had to.

"Good." Folding up her rag, she pushed it aside and took a breath to continue.

Unfortunately, she barely got a sentence out before the back door of the shop was swinging open and shoes skipped across the hardwood floor. "C'mon, Mom! I wanna go see if Touka will come with us today!"

Shiro froze as a soft voice called back from somewhere behind the door. "In a minute, Hinami! I have to get my coat and you should too!"

"I'll be fine!" came the happy answer, and then a little girl rounded the counter. She paused at the sight of newcomers, brown eyes as innocent as a fawn's. She was autumn incarnate in a pale orange dress and with short hair the color of turned leaves. When she smiled, Shiro's world lightened. "Hi! Are you Touka's friends?"

"We just met, actually," Touka told her, with a look shot at Shiro: you upset her, I'll kill you. "Guys, this is Hinami. She's been staying with us for a little while."

Hinami waved and Kaneki returned the gesture with a small smile. "Hi, Hinami. I'm Kaneki and—"

"And I'm Hide!" Hide announced, craning his neck to get a glimpse of her around Kaneki. "The fun one!"

Giggling at his antics, Hinami settled her gaze on Shiro next. "What's your name?"

Blood spattering the pavement, her cries muffled in his palm, slicing and breaking, his tears falling against his will... "Shiro," he answered numbly. Then half a smile played across his mouth. "The unfun one."

Her bright grin hit him somewhere in his heart that he thought had died out long ago. "Cool!" Rocking back on her heels, she touched a finger to her chin and studied him critically. "Touka doesn't like a lot of fun either," she commented, ignoring Touka's indignant mumble. "Are you her boyfriend?"

Shiro and Touka shared a glance, ending with her pointedly turning away. "No," she said. "He's not."

Are you blushing? Shiro hid his grin behind one hand. His shy and clumsy old self would've freaked to find out that the fiery ghoul found him attractive. He'd never let her live this down.

"Oh." Hinami sounded disappointed, a young girl looking for romance in real life instead of written on pages. She peered over at Kaneki. "You're all blushy, Kaneki," she laughed. "Is Shiro YOUR boyfriend?"

"No!" Kaneki yelped so fast that Shiro glanced at him with eyebrows raised. Seeing the faintly offended expression, the human rushed to continue, "I mean... I don't mean that no one would, uh, date you, I just—I wouldn't. Not that it'd be bad to date you!" he added, as Shiro started to say something. "It's not like you're unattractive or anything; you are, I'm, er, crap, I didn't mean to say that. That was weird, um. Yeah. We're not dating," he finished weakly. Hide buried his face into his coffee cup to smother incoherent snickers.

Hinami just laughed again at the fumbling for words, clearing enjoying herself too much. Meanwhile, Shiro had turned away from Kaneki and became very interested in studying the windows across from him. There was no way in hell he would let Kaneki see the dopey smile that had spread across his face during the stammering speech. Dear God, he hated himself right now.

"Wow," Touka remarked, dripping sarcasm. "I kinda wish you did eat him now."