I suggest first reading the canon sidestory A Boss' Present, as this piece draws quite a bit on that. There's a great translation of it on Tumblr by sunset-tower - sunset-tower. tumblr [.com] / post /115933840117/ ishida-sui-a-bosss-present (remove the space and brackets)
This was written for the September 2020 Daily Prompts of the r/fanfiction subreddit: "Which is better? Being a kid or being an adult? Write an excerpt about a character (or more than one) exploring this question in some way."
I found this in my files a while ago and figured that since I liked it after all this time, I might as well post it (even if three years later :p). Feel free to point out errors!
Some say childhood is a time of innocent joy.
Running around with friends, playing endlessly, celebrating birthdays with pomp… these are all memories to be made as a child.
Amon remembers those times, with Kazuki and Yuusuke and Akie and a future of infinite possibilities.
Until at the age of eleven, he stumbles upon a room in the orphanage that stank of blood.
And then he stops being a child.
.
In the Academy, Amon has no time to socialise, not with how he studies and trains. The few friends he makes stick with him despite his introverted nature, not because.
He is twenty-one and young, but the future is no longer the bright paradise he once imagined it to be. It is a place of bloodshed and death, and perhaps, just maybe, with a light of hope flaring at the very end.
Amon wonders how long he'll need to struggle to reach there.
.
Midnight exercise is nothing new to him. Whether seven thousand push-ups or five thousand pulldowns… well, there's a reason why his flat is stuffed with training equipment.
Too many nights, he's exhausted enough from work that he sleeps like a log, but then there are the nights he doesn't.
Usually, his dreams start off well enough. Time spent with his classmates, doing practical work, or as an investigator, fighting an endless sea of ghouls. Somehow, around then, his quinque becomes a tenderiser and the dead ghouls become children with agape mouths and blank eyes.
.
Some say ignorance is bliss.
Amon's happiness, existing only in a faraway childhood, was born from his ignorance.
Turning away from Donato (ghoul, murderer, fath- never father), he clutches the cold metal of his cross and says in an unwavering voice, "This is a reminder."
("For me, I choose to be the unhappy person who has wisdom…")
He refuses to be ignorant anymore.