Once Hide had departed the coffee shop to head back to Kamii University, Eto had the brilliant idea of pulling Ayato from the front lobby, so that he could accompany Haise to the Fashion Fair Mall, that was only four blocks down from where Anteiku was on the 20th Ward's main strip. Although Ayato didn't protest when Tatara came into the lobby to cover for the rest of his shift, Haise could tell from the way the teenager looked back at him that he wasn't exactly fond of the idea.
Not wanting Haise to have to pay for his own uniform, Eto handed the half-ghoul some money from her own wallet to purchase a new waiter outfit. Wanting to show her gratitude, the coffee shop manager made sure to award Ayato some cash to spend on whatever he wanted while he was helping Haise shop for a new outfit to work in.
Due to Haise still being against public transportation, especially taking taxi-cabs, Ayato and him were walking through the somewhat vacant strip; the roads being more occupied than the sidewalks were, all thanks to it being rush hour. Underneath the warm yellow light of the sun that was beginning to set over the skyscrapers and other buildings that were obscuring the blue horizon, Haise and Ayato were side-by-side, and hadn't spoken since they left Anteiku.
Being fine with silence and never having felt the need to speak unless he needed to, Haise would have gone through the entire shopping trip without saying a single word to Ayato. However, contrary to what he had thought of the teenager, Ayato ended up breaking the silence after having gone twenty minutes without speaking to him.
"Oi, I've got a question for you, Sasaki; is it fine if I ask it? It might be sort of personal," Ayato prefaced, as two of them came to a stop at the corner of a busy intersection; with cars bumper-to-bumper with one another.
Shrugging his shoulders as he reached a hand up toward where the pedestrian-crossing button was, Haise activated the calling device before lowering his arm back down. "Of course, Kirishima; what was it that you wanted to ask?" Haise asked with a relaxed look on his face, while keeping an eye on the traffic lights ahead of them.
"Do you… Do you have a family, or something? Brothers, sisters? Parents? … Anyone?" Ayato asked with a mild tone of vulnerability in his voice, signaling to Haise that the subject was one that the teenager himself wasn't very comfortable with. "I know it's a weird question to ask, but some of the others at Anteiku don't have any living family members, so I'd figured I ask instead of just assume that you do."
Pausing for a moment, Haise's lips tightened as a perplexed expression made its way onto his face; his gray eyes still focused on the red LED hand signal on the other side of the road. "… That's considerate of you, Kirishima... But to answer your question: yes, I do have some surviving family members. It's just that I'm… Estranged from them; it's been that way for about a year at least," Haise replied truthfully, before tapping the seemingly distracted teenager on the shoulder after the pedestrian sign finally signaled for them to cross the street.
"Oh, shit— sorry," Ayato mumbled, as he walked alongside Haise, continuing on their way over to their shopping destination on foot. "Anyway, so… You know what it's like then to want to be with your family, but can't bring yourself to do it because of some stupid shit that's out of your control?" Ayato inquired; feeling more open to talk to Haise, knowing that there was something between them that they could relate over.
'… Where the hell did THIS come from?' Haise thought bewilderingly to himself, but remained understanding and approachable on the surface as he and Ayato walked along bar after bar. "Yeah… Yeah, I absolutely know where you're coming from, Kirishima… Why, who's like that in your life?" Haise asked; hoping to deflect the focus of the conversation back onto Ayato; the thought of having to explain the deviant acts committed by his manipulative aunt wasn't something that he felt comfortable openingly discussing to a fourteen year-old.
Needing a moment to bring himself to answer Haise's question, Ayato's blue eyes turned to look through window-after-Adonai, and at all the people who he could see seated inside each dining establishment that they were passing by. "… I have an older sister and uncle who's part of an organization that… That I can't really say the name of it in public, but… Just know that they aren't the kind of people who are on good terms with the law," Ayato explained, which reminded Haise once again that everyone in Anteiku, at some point in their lives, had been involved with a criminal organization in some shape or form.
Nodding his head softly to acknowledge what Ayato had said, Haise waited a few moments in silence before being able to finally bring up his own family members as well. "… I have an aunt and a cousin; neither of them are— or were— ever part of something like that, but… My aunt did have an overall negative effect on my upbringing— some of which I'm trying to mend each day at a time. I'm not trying to compare my unideal family situation to yours, Kirishima, I'm just letting you know that you aren't alone in that aspect," Haise consoled; acknowledging his own troubled past out loud to himself, as well as to Ayato.
Huddled up in a black that one of the police officers had given to him after arresting his uncle, Kaneki was seated beside his cousin as the two of them remained inside the living room, while his aunt was standing outside her townhouse, giving her testimony to the investigator who was interviewing her. Unable to open his left eye from how bad the swelling was, Kaneki's the bandages that his aunt had put on over the cuts in his bruised cheeks only did so much to prevent his salty tears from irritating them.
Attempting to keep his whirlwind of emotions at bay by focusing on the PS VITA in his hands, Yuuichi Asaoka was crying with his teeth bared on the screen of his console. "I h-hate you, Ken…! I f-fuckin' hate you, you f-fuckin' depraived asshole…!" Yuuichi sobbed angrily, while refusing to look over at Kaneki.
Kaneki wanted to defend himself by telling his side of the story: about how he was trying to return his aunt's used panties that he found underneath his pillow, and about how everything was a misunderstanding. However, due to how violently his drunk uncle reacted when he stumbled upon Kaneki holding his wife's underwear, the thirteen year-old boy couldn't even speak with how swollen his throat and jaw were.
However, even with how stressed everyone was in the aftermath of his uncle's chaotic outburst, Kaneki knew that Yuuichi was just trying to put the blame on him instead of his own father; his father who ended up attacking his own wife, after she called the police and attempted to protect her nephew from her drunken husband. Battered almost as badly as he was, Kaneki's aunt, Remi Asaoka, returned into her living room with a thousand-yard stare in her gray eyes.
Upon seeing his own mother, Yuuichi left his portable game console on the couch as he rushed over to her with fear and confusion in his eyes. "W-Where's dad at?! Why isn't he coming back inside, mom?! W-What's going on?!" Yuuichi asked frantically with desperation in his bloodshot eyes.
Unable to react to her son's distressed behavior, Remi's gray eyes focused instead on where Kaneki was huddled up in his blanket; an emotionless expression on her bruised face, as she coldly replied "Gone… Your father's gone, and he isn't coming back, Yuuichi… I'm sorry-"
"-NO, YOU'RE FUCKING NOT!" Yuuichi wailed in anguish, before immediately rushing over the living and back upstairs into his bedroom; his wailing cries muffled by the soundproof walls that Remi had installed when she first adopted Kaneki.
Quietly listening to what she could hear from upstairs, Remi's flat and joyless lips slowly curled into a victorious grin as she limped over to the couch; carefully lowering herself down onto the middle cushion, before wrapping her arm behind Kaneki to pull his battered body against hers. "… He's right… I'm not sorry… And neither should you be… Ken," his aunt said in a calm and collected voice, as she gently squeezed her hand down on his bicep; feeling pleased as she reached up to gently push his head closer to her body, so that his cheek was resting against the top of her breast.
"… Do you remember that saying that your mother used to live by? What was it again…? Ah yes, I remember now: "It's better to be hurt, than to hurt others; nice people can be happy with just that"," Kaneki's aunt recited, before letting out a cynical chuckle as she slowly shook her head. "She adopted that motif from our own mother. You see, Ken… My mom was a lot like yours was: smart, kind, and subservient to my father… And he was absolute trash, who took his frustrations out on our poor sweet mother every night…"
Recalling the many nights she and her younger sister would sob inside their bedroom, listening to their father screaming over the wails of their mother, as he relentlessly beat her to the ground, Kaneki's aunt had a distant expression on her face as the memory played vividly in her head. "… You know where that pacifist way of life got her, Ken? Nowhere… It got her nowhere," Remi uttered hollowly, as she stopped remembering the past after recalling seeing her mother dead on the kitchen floor, after her father fled and never came back.
"… Those who believe that they have power over you will continue to make your life a living hell, until you do something to put an end to it… But they'll retaliate if you leave the job unfinished; never leave a job undone, Ken, otherwise your opening yourself up for failure," Remi advised while closing her eyelids; taking in a deep breath through her sore lungs, before wheezing out an exhaled breath as she waited for the emergency medical team to come inside, and evaluate their wounds.
Reflecting on that pivotal moment in his past while inside the dressing room he had taken, Haise was sitting down on the bench inside the small closed-off area; his head hung low, as he stared blankly at the carpeted floor beneath his new shiny-black dress shoes. '… I never figured out whether or not she planted her underwear to purposefully turn Uncle Asaoka's drunken aggressions out on me, or if they merely ended up there by happenstance. Guess it doesn't matter; not anymore it doesn't,' Haise's mind concluded, while still finding himself feeling overwhelmed by all the repressed thoughts that Ayato's conversation ended up unboxing from his psyche.
There were many different emotions that were unraveling at the seams for Haise, with guilt being the most prominent. While he felt no sympathy for the drunken abuser who had sent him and his aunt to the hospital, after speaking to Ayato about how upset he was over his family's situation being out of his hands, it got Haise thinking about his cousin, Yuuichi. '… I wonder if he… "She" still blames me for ruining her parent's marriage? Or if she's ever felt pity or resentment towards me for her mother giving me all of her attention?'
'… I wonder where she is nowadays. I hope she's okay; she's already been through enough hell as it is,' Haise thought solemnly about his transgendered cousin; as he thought back to day she ran away from home, after having made the gruesome discovery that her mother had been lying to her about her father still being alive in prison.
'I… I wouldn't blame her if she still thought of her mother and I as the reason why her life went downhill… Damnit, why haven't I done something about it yet?!' Haise thought self-critically of himself, as he couldn't help but to begin blaming himself for choosing to ignore the problem for so long. 'Distracting myself hasn't done anything for me in the past, so why the hell do I keep thinking that it'll do something for me now…?! To hell with feeling sorry for myself; I want to do something about it, not just-?!'
Jolting out of his own internal turmoil by the sound of impatience knocking on his dressing room door, Haise whipped his head up with his eyes wide open; letting out a quiet gasp as he looked down underneath the hinged door. Recognizing the pair of black sneakers as the ones that belonged to Ayato, Haise was brought back to reality as he remembered why he had gone to the mall to begin with.
"Oi! It's been like fifteen minutes, Sasaki; hurry your ass up, otherwise you're gonna be late to your first day of training," Ayato scolded with an annoyed tone, before walking back to the wall that he had been leaning against.
Swearing under his breath, Haise stood up from the bench and began undoing the maroon ascot underneath his white button down dress shirt. "Goddamnit…! S-Sorry Kirishima; I'll be outside in a bit," Haise called out, while the teenage ghoul took his phone out of the pocket of his black jacket.
"You better be: the cashier's already got a long-ass line of customers to deal with, and they aren't gonna give you any special treatment for being late," Ayato hurried, while feeling his anxiety rising ever so slowly as he navigated into his text messages. Scrolling down to where his conversation between him and Touka was located, Ayato felt his heart drop as his thumb hovered over the screen.
'Guh… What the hell am I even doing right now? This isn't gonna do anything except make me feel like shit,' Ayato thought to himself, as part of him was absolutely afraid of reading through all the messages that Touka had sent to him that he never bothered to respond to; back when she still tried messaging him. Feeling burdened with heartache that he usually masked with anger and bitterness, Ayato frowned as could feel his eyes beginning to sting.
Before Ayato could further attempt to force himself to push through his own emotional barriers, the turning of the dressing room knob immediately caused the panicked ghoul to quickly stick his phone back into pocket while simultaneously raising his other arm up to wipe his eyes clear from any traces of tears. "A-About time, Sasaki… I was beginning to think that you'd never get out of there," Ayato quipped sassily, while trying to cover up the sadness behind the cocky smirk he had across his lips.
Immediately having seen through Ayato's cobbled together facade, Haise had a feeling that he already knew what was on the teenager's mind, but decided to play along for the sake of preserving the ghoul's confidence. "Apologies for taking up more time than I should have. That conversation we had earlier got me thinking about my aunt and cousin," Haise revealed, while holding the outfit he was going to purchase in his arms.
Disarmed by the topic that hit close to home for him, Ayato's fake cocky smile melted away; leaving behind an empathic and reserved expression in its place. "Oh? Is…? Is that so?" Ayato asked with an understanding tone in his voice, as he joined Haise's side as they made their way to the line of customers that was waiting for them over at the checkout counter. "… What was on your mind that was distracting you for that long?"
"I was… Remembering the time that my uncle caught me with my aunt's underwear, and was too drunk and angry about his miserable life to listen to what I had to say when he caught me trying to put them into her hamper," Haise admitted to Ayato; feeling strangely more at ease after admitting that aloud, despite the wide-eyed look he was receiving from the ghoul.
"What the fuck?! Why the hell did you have your aunt's goddamn panties, Sasaki?! That's kind of fucked up," Ayato— being the developing teen that he was— shouted out with a disgusted expression on his face.
Being too distracted with the feeling of freedom he was feeling from finally opening up about his past instead of hiding it away like a dirty secret, Haise didn't take offense to Ayato for having just aired his dirty laundry out for everyone else in line to hear. "It's not what you're thinking, Kirishima; I found them under my pillow before bed, and didn't want them there so I tried putting away where they belonged," Haise reassured, which didn't do much to ease Ayato's skepticism.
"Pfft… Yeah right, sure… So like for real, were you just getting off to that shit, or like-?"
"-What?! Nooooo, Kirishima! I wasn't getting sexually aroused by that; pay attention, and get your mind out of the gutter," Haise scolded, while wanting to move on from what led to him and his aunt getting hospitalized in the first place. "… Anyway, the point of me bringing that up was to tell you that you made me think about my aunt and my cousin, and about how estranged we've become… And part of that I think is because of me; because I haven't tried mending those relationships, even when the opportunity to do so had been there the entire time."
Although the beginning of Haise's revelation had blindsided him, Ayato was able to relate to the overall message that what the half-ghoul had been trying to say to him. Taking a moment to digest the young man's wisdom and relate it to his own woes, Ayato had a thoughtful look on his face as they finally approached the cashier. "… So what you're saying is that you feel responsible for having a hand in tarnishing your relationship, simply from not ever bothering to try to mend it yourself?" Ayato asked for clarification, while watching as Haise greeted the cashier before beginning to hand him the articles of clothes that he wanted to purchase.
"That's correct, Kirishima… The way I'm starting to look at it is that unless you've given up on someone, and have come to accept that you're better off not receiving closure from them, you should at least try to reach out to them, if it just one time," Haise explained, while frowning slightly as he stared down and away from the cashier. "… It's so easy to get caught up in yourself; to blame the other person instead of taking responsibility for the hand you've had in the fallout…"
"… I… "We" shouldn't put a barrier around our hearts just because we've been hurt for so long. Us doing that isn't protecting ourselves, it's just letting what compassion we still have inside of our hearts rot away; leaving us nothing left but a hollow shell of who we once were," Haise explained, while speaking from the heart as he tied back to how he and his family had all changed for the worse, in an attempt to protect themselves from the rest of the world.
With the man at the register thoroughly left speechless after hearing something so profound coming from the same person who he had overheard talking about his aunt's panties, Ayato was emotionally impacted by the heartfelt words that Haise had shared with him, and began to silently lament over them as they left the shopping mall.
Going back to not talking to each other, just like how their shopping trip started, Haise couldn't help but notice from the corner of his eye that Ayato had been on his phone throughout the majority of their walk back to Anteiku. And although he couldn't read the tiny letters that Ayato would skillfully type into his phone, Haise noticed that the angsty teen would write an entire paragraph before immediately deleting it all after rereading it under his breath.
When he finally saw Ayato mustering up the courage to hit the send button, Haise watched with a curious and gentle smile across his lips as the teenager shove his phone back into his jacket's unzipped pocket. "Who are you texting?" Haise asked bluntly; feeling as though he was allowed to ask that, after Ayato had asked him his fair share of personal questions.
Looking up at him from the corner of his eyes, Ayato was once again attempting to mask his emotions behind a bored expression; except this time Haise could tell that the teenager was excited, instead of sad. "My sister," Ayato replied in the most casual and cool voice he could muster up on the spot.
Visibly impressed by Ayato taking the step to reach out to his older sister, Haise's smile grew more as he became proud of the teenager. "That's cool, that's cool… What did you send her?"
"I sent her "hi"," Ayato replied with a content look coming over his faux bored-expression; as that single two-letter word seemed so meaningful to the ghoul.
Having expected for Ayato to have sent a more wordier message than just "hi", especially after seeing just how long some of the paragraphs he typed previously out were, Haise still couldn't help but to feel happy for the young ghoul for making the effort to begin with; especially when he saw the look of nervous-excitement cross Ayato's face, after his phone vibrated in his pocket.
"I think that's her," Ayato said underneath his breath— more so to himself than to Haise— as he fumbled for his phone before frantically unlocking it with his thumb.
Now fully invested in what was going on between him and his sister, Haise couldn't help but ask "Well, what did she send back to you?"
Silently rereading the message on his screen again-and-again, Ayato let out a genuine chuckle before beginning to type out a response. "She sent me the same thing I sent her; "hi"," Ayato relayed, while typing out the first of many messages that he would exchange with Touka for the remainder of the walk; finishing their much-needed conversation with "g2g", before being let through the front door by none other than the manager: Eto Yoshimura.