Yo, welcome to the first part of the TG:R two-year anniversary rewrite! So, as you probably already know, in celebration of two years of writing for this fic, I've decided to rewrite every chapter that hasn't been touched by my beta-reader, FineChyna, or re-written by me.
So, of course, they're all mainly going to be
-Mandatory Disclaimer-
Have the redundancy of these things hit you yet? Well, they hit me a long time ago.
-Chapter 3: Keepsake Habits-
I wonder how much longer it's going to take for them before they ask about what just happened? Kaneki mused to himself as he and the other six who were present for his initiation made their way back to Beacon, a blanket of complete silence covering them almost the entire trip back.
Normally, the snowy-haired half ghoul wouldn't have saw the silence as much of a problem, but he knew exactly what this silence meant and it, of course, made him uncomfortable. This silence meant that, like a stray dog found in an alley, the people surrounding him were wary of what he was going to do next.
One could tell by just looking at the way some of them, mainly Blake and Ruby, were trying to keep their distance from him without making it look like they were.
At least they're trying to be subtle about it, Kaneki thought to himself as he glanced over towards Weiss and Ms. Goodwitch, who were both actively trying to keep themselves away from him in a way that lacked any sort of subtlety.
Kaneki couldn't say that he blamed them for being so wary of him. Truthfully, he would have been more concerned if they were completely fine with what they just saw. That's why he was so worried about Yang in particular, who was currently walking step by step with him as if nothing happened in the first place.
Ozpin was walking next to him as well, but the silver-haired headmaster didn't have a reason to be wary of him since he was already made aware about his ghoul abilities before everything went down.
Yang, on the other hand, didn't. So, why didn't she seem the least bit concerned with what he could do next? She couldn't have overheard the conversation between he and Ozpin last night and there was no way she could have seen something like this beforehand, so her presence by his side confused the half ghoul greatly.
Maybe she's just pretending to not be afraid of me? The half ghoul mused curiously as he glanced over at the blonde.
No, she would have to be a really good actor to walk next to someone she's afraid of without showing any signs of fear or discomfort, he shook his head as he shot down that possibility, but then again, we really don't know each other that well, so there's always the chance that's the case—
"There something wrong, short-stuff?" the sound of Yang's voice broke him from his musings, which he took as a definite sign of her noticing him glancing her way.
"No, nothing's wrong," the worldly-foreigner replied as he returned his eyes back to the path before him. "I was just wondering why none of you have said anything yet."
The already tense atmosphere that hovered over them seemed to become heavier after he said those words, forming a blanket of silence that completely drowned out the sound of rain falling all around them.
Kaneki would be lying if he said that he didn't expect something like that to happen when he forced those words from his mouth, but he knew that those words needed to be said if he wanted this situation to not come back to haunt him later. He wasn't about to let himself make the same mistake as he did last time something like this happened.
Back during his time in his world, as he and his group of ghouls were limping back home after their raid of Kanou's lab, the half ghoul could feel a question lingering in the air the entire time. He was fairly sure that his comrades had felt it too, but no one pointed it out and so, nothing was resolved and a seed of doubt had been sown within his head.
What resulted afterwards was a span of time where he did nothing but mope around the house they all shared and question his own actions. As he wallowed about in disdain for himself and what he had turned into, a part of him even began to believe that what he did to Banjou had made them all afraid of him, even though most of them harbored no such feelings towards him.
In the end, he found out that they were actually very worried about him and his well-being, but they never said anything because they thought that it would be best for him to work through his problems on his own. They weren't wrong to assume that would be the best way to handle the situation, as that's how he solved up until that point, but he wouldn't deny that to have their reassurances would have helped him immensely.
During that time, his group only managed to power through and remain close because of how close they were to one another. Over time, they learned to trust him and that helped them to believe that he would never do anything to get them hurt unnecessarily-a luxury he quite obviously didn't have right now.
Nearly everyone around him had absolutely no idea what he was or what he was going to do next, and people tended to fear what they knew, but didn't quite understand. So, it became clear to Kaneki what he needed to do next.
Ken needed to cut the head off this snake now, before it turned into something much bigger than it actually was. He couldn't wait another second for Ozpin to make his move as they had planned back in his office, and so, that's exactly what the half ghoul was going to do.
"Wh-what do you mean?" Ruby asked, using a tone that didn't quite convince him of her ignorance at all.
They're still trying to act like they don't know anything, huh? he noted as he glanced at the red-clad teen, who stood a few meters behind where Yang stood. That means I was right to assume that they still don't know about what Ozpin told me the other night, I guess I'm going to have to enlighten them then.
Recognizing that this wasn't the type of conversation they could have while simply walking through the forest, the half ghoul stopped dead in his tracks and turned his head to face the six trailing behind him–his back still to them.
"You don't have to pretend that you don't know anything," he told them all, his voice emotionless as usual, prompting everyone else in the group to stop dead in their tracks as well. "I already know that you saw me fight that grimm earlier, and what I did to it after I won, so if you have something to say…" A loud cracking noise ran through the air as he tacked on, "...I'd greatly appreciate it if you said what you need to now before this turns into something bigger than it actually is."
A whole minute passed before one of them gathered up enough resolve to say something back to him, and that someone just happened to be one Weiss Schnee.
"'Make it bigger than it actually is'?" the heir of the Schnee fortune repeated his words, her tone both incredulous and outraged. "How else are we supposed to react when we see you shoot tentacles out from your back and then proceed to literally tear into a deathstalker?"
Kaneki probably should have expected an outburst like that when he asked the question. It probably would have made him feel less guilty about the whole situation, though he really didn't know why he felt that way in the first place.
Nothing about what he did was inherently wrong. All he did was withhold information they never asked for in the first place with and stick to the plan their headmaster had come up with. By all rights, he had plenty of reason to not feel at all guilty, but there was just something about the way Weiss spoke that made those feelings well up inside of him.
"Did you seriously expect everything to be fine and dandy after what you did?" the enraged heiress demanded as she rushed up to him, grabbed him roughly by the shoulder, turned him around so that he was facing her face-to-face, and jabbed her bony finger into his chest accusingly. "Of course we were going to have questions that we'd want to ask you!" she exclaimed while continuously jabbing aforementioned finger into him. "Who wouldn't after witnessing something that shouldn't have been humanly possible?!"
As the girl went about her verbal onslaught, his pride screamed at him to say something back to defend himself, but despite it, he made no move to defend himself from the tongue-lashing he was receiving. He just did as he always did, stand there and take it.
"Ask them then," the half ghoul stated as he reached up, gently wrapped his hand around hers, and pulled down so that her finger was no longer digging its way into his chest. "I already told you to speak up if you had something to say, so just go ahead and ask already."
The heiress kept her face straight as she stared up at him, but for a split second, he could see a hint of uncertainty lying inside those pale blue pools, before they narrowed and filled back up with a new-found resolution. "Fine then, what exactly are you?"
"From what I saw, you're clearly not human and I've never seen a faunus capable of doing something…well, something like what you did to that deathstalker," Weiss explained to him before then repeating an altered form of her original question. "So, my question is if you're not either of those things, what exactly are you?"
Huh, that's actually a pretty good question, Kaneki thought to himself as he tilted his head up towards the greyed, cloud-filled sky above him. What exactly am I?
It was a question that he asked himself countless of times up until this point and truth be told, he still hasn't found an answer that he was actually happy with. He was well aware of the fact that, technically, he was a half ghoul–a being that was both human and ghoul, but that fact simply never fully resonated with him for some reason.
Kaneki would always gravitate more towards one side of the spectrum than the other. There was a brief time before his kidnapping where he started to accept his half-ghoul nature, but that, of course, didn't last very long before he was pushed headlong into the ghoul side.
Admittedly, the snowy-haired young man probably wouldn't have known the reason behind this line of thinking before his fight with Arima and he still didn't quite know after it, but he, at the very least, was starting to acknowledge the fact that his lack of acceptance was a problem. The first step to changing any problem was acknowledging it as one, after all.
"A half-ghoul," Ken stated in a voice that came out sounding as soft as a whisper to him, despite knowing that he used a voice that was loud enough for everyone present to hear. "The proper term for what I am would be half-ghoul, or at least, that's what people from where I come from would call someone like me."
Less than a day ago, Kaneki found himself staring down the strongest opponent he would ever have to face in his life, having to do so while surrounded by the mutilated corpses of his slain allies. That sight was indisputably the most terrifying thing he's ever had the pleasure of seeing and that was saying something, since he's seen his fingers and toes get cut off just to watch them grow back a few minutes later before.
Using that logic, something as mundane as this shouldn't have scared him as much at all.
So, why was he so afraid of the confused stares the five people standing in front of him were giving him? It wasn't the overwhelming fear he felt during either of those traumatic moments, it probably wasn't even an inkling in comparison, but it was still definitely there.
"Excuse me, Mr. Kaneki," Kaneki heard Ozpin say right before he placed a gloved hand onto his shoulder, prompting him to look over at the man. "If I may, I'd like to be the one to explain this to them, so, for now, I'd like you to go back and wait for us in my office."
It took a few moments for the words to register in the half ghoul's head, but when they did, he gave the headmaster a nod and turned to start walking back to the academy.
Kaneki did so mainly because he could see the logic behind the words. The five others would've never spoke as freely about the situation if he was standing there listening the entire time, but they would if they were talking to someone they could trust like Ozpin, and the headmaster could use that trust to make sure that they knew he posed no real threat to them or anyone at the academy.
Kaneki did, however, have to admit that even though there was sound logic behind Ozpin's decision to send him back, the fact that he had to rely on someone he barely even knew to determine his fate did irritate him slightly, but that was probably to be expected out of someone like him.
There was the chance that Ozpin was only using this as an opportunity to plan against him, but the bespectacled man didn't seem like the type of person who would try and pull something like that off. Then again, the black-clad young man didn't look like he could punch through solid concrete beams either, but he could do, so maybe he was right to be paranoid.
Either way, the half ghoul walked on the path back to Beacon without uttering a word, having to force himself to not stop and look back the entire way.
Kaneki let out a sigh as he stared out the large window in front of him, his face harboring the same blank expression that he always had plastered on his face. He could see the entirety of Beacon Academy from where he stood, which was truly a sight to behold from up this high, but even the picturesque view before him wasn't enough to stop his mind from wandering back to the six individuals currently discussing what happened during his initiation.
As he stared out through the glass in front of him, Ken's dull eyes took note of the barely visible sight of his reflection staring back at him on its surface, and what he saw, he could only describe with one word: ragged.
The clothes he wore were torn and battered, which made them look like they were going to fall apart and off of him at any moment. Something that confused him greatly since his clothes would usually regenerate with whatever injuries they came with thanks to his RC cells. And as if to add insult to injury, his reflection reminded him of the fact that his shirt had a giant hole in it from when he had let that giant scorpion grimm, or deathstalker, as Weiss had called it, impale him through the stomach, effectively leaving the entirety of his abdomen open for the world to see, making the black piece of fabric completely useless as a piece of clothing.
Overall though, the snowy-haired half ghoul's personal appearance still looked pretty acceptable, despite having been thrown on the ground like he was a rock being skipped across the surface of a pond, but then again, he probably could've been thrown into a woodchipper and still look fine thanks to his extraordinary healing abilities. If he had to come up with one idiosyncrasy in the reflection that was staring back at him, however, he would have to say that his hair looked slightly messier than it usually did, but that was probably to be expected after everything that's happened.
"When did I become so self-conscious about my appearance?" Kaneki muttered that question to himself in a low, self-deprecatory manner, all the while knowing that he was just using the topic as a distraction from what really plagued his head and according to the giant clock hands that were right outside the window he was standing in front of, it distracted him for a total span of about two minutes, which, incidentally enough, was right around the amount of time he expected it to.
The half ghoul let out yet another sigh as he reached up and ran a hand through his messy white hair. To say that he hated everything about his current situation would've been an understatement, but if he had to single out a single aspect that he hated the most, it was all the waiting he had to do.
Every second that passed made him feel even more helpless, and he absolutely hated feeling that way. It was a feeling that he had become way too acquainted with over the nineteen years he's been alive, so he would have more than enough experience to know when a situation was making him feel such a way and as of this moment, he was feeling it in spades.
Once again, the nineteen year old was forced to stand on the sidelines and watch the situation unfold around him, completely unable to change anything as someone came to his rescue.
Why do I even feel like this in the first place? the young man asked himself as he pressed his forehead onto the cool glass of the window before him. It's not like my future here completely depends on team RWBY and Goodwitch accepting me.
Ozpin wanted him in Beacon Academy, that was one of the only things he knew to be absolutely one-hundred percent fact in his current situation, and despite only knowing the man for about twenty-four hours, Kaneki doubted that the headmaster was just going to let an opportunity like himself get away that easily.
I guess Touka was right... Kaneki mused offhandedly, a self-deprecating chuckle escaping from him at the sudden realization, ...even after everything I've been through…even after all of the strength I've acquired... I still can't even manage to protect myself.
The half ghoul shook his head in an attempt to clear his head of such thoughts. There were much more pressing issues for him to worry about, or to be more specific, he had to deal with a certain habit of his.
When faced with times of great uncertainty, people tended to do things that they were familiar with to create the illusion of stability, and more often than not, those things tended to be the habits they picked up along the way to the point of change. It didn't have to be big or small, prevalent or unnoticeable, physical or mental, every sentient being in existence had at least one habit to their name and, honestly, he found it just a little funny that those tiny, insignificant things that no one ever thought twice about could eventually become the one thing that kept people grounded in uncertain, unshaky times.
For the sake of his own pride alone, Kaneki would've liked to say that he was different from such people and that he could keep himself grounded without employing such trivial methods, but truth be told, he was no different than any of those people. Actually, he was probably the best example of one of those people. The fact that he just cracked his finger without him even noticing was testament of that fact.
It was funny. He never meant for the finger bre—cracking to become a habit of his, he really only started doing it because he thought it would be a good way to mock Yamori after he got out of that damned chair, but now, he could barely even go a few seconds without doing it at least once. Mainly because there were times where it felt like his fingers were gone–just no longer there on his hand and the pain doing it caused, no matter how little it affected him after everything he's had to go through, helped to remind him that they were still there.
In retrospect, Ken probably should've been a bit more worried about the fact that he's gotten so used to a habit he picked up from someone who tortured him and entailed him snapping his own fingers into two, but compared to some of his other habits? Something that simple was last thing he was worried about. No, the habit he was referring to earlier was one he didn't learn about only until recently.
By definition, a habit was defined as something the subconscious mind would do frequently without any manual input, so, technically, a habit didn't have to be a physical action like his finger-breaking. It could be the way someone spoke, or something as abstract as a certain way of looking at things. If the person did it frequently without any manual input on their part, it could be considered to be a habit by definition.
That, of course meant that his current mentality–the one that made Kaneki so willingly sacrifice himself for others–was by definition a habit-one that he would need to rectify in the days to come. He and Ozpin hadn't talked much about his future at Beacon Academy after he was finished with the initiation, but the man did make mention of him having to join a team of other hunters-in-training as to not draw attention from the other students and a mentality like that one wouldn't serve his future team well by any means.
If a group of people were to be successful as a team, it needed things like cooperation, an uncompromising confidence in one another, and a willingness to trust someone with any task that comes along. Those were three things that were foreign to people who often self-sacrificed themselves. Clearly, he needed to get rid of it before it came back and bit him in the ass.
Now, the half ghoul wasn't delusional. He knew that he wasn't going to be able to change a mentality that's developed in him over the entirety of his lifespan, but it was a widely accepted fact by society that the best way to start to break free from a habit–especially one that was more detrimental to the owner's well-being like his own–was acknowledging that it was actually a problem.
Ironically enough, in this situation, his decision to make such a change could be considered a self-sacrifice in on itself. He would have to give up one of the things about himself that stayed consistent throughout his the years, just for some people he hadn't even been introduced to yet.
Another self-deprecating chuckle left his mouth as he removed his forehead from the glass and tilted his head back, giving him a good look at the giant gears that turned up in the ceiling above him. He stared at them–doing so as if the solution to all of his problems was up there as well, but it, of course, wasn't there at all.
The young man remained in that position, staring up at the ceiling for several minutes, only stopping when he heard the familiar sound of the elevator behind him opening up. In response to it, he breathed in deeply and breathed out the same amount, before then turning his body to face it, watching in silent anticipation as its metal doors opened up to reveal a group of familiar faces, all of which staring right at him.
For a moment, the half ghoul contemplated forcing a smile up onto his lips, but decided against it when he realized that such an action could probably be seen as anything but reassuring to them. It occurred to him that it would be much more reassuring for them to see that he was taking the situation just as seriously as they did, so that's exactly what he did.
Ozpin was the first person to step out of the elevator and into the office, but given the situation they currently found themselves in, that was probably to be expected. He made his way over to about halfway between the elevator and the desk, all the while wearing that same stoic expression he always seemed to wear. The headmaster looked calm on the outside, but months of having to read the facial expressions of other ghouls told Ken that there was something else brewing under his ever-blank face–whatever it was.
The next person to come out out was Ms. Goodwitch, also not surprising considering his status, wearing the same stern expression he assumed she always wore as she strode out of the elevator and to her usual spot next to Ozpin. Kaneki didn't fail to take note of the air of dissatisfaction that hovered around her and, given the circumstances, it was pretty easy to figure out as to why that was.
Next, came the four members of team RWBY and, despite the fact that their expressions were much easier to read when compared to those of the prior two, he still found the act to be rather difficult. Ruby being by far the easiest of the four to read–something he found to be quite funny, as she looked like she was actively trying to conceal her emotions. Weiss, on the other hand, was probably the hardest of the four to figure out, which only made sense to him, since she was the daughter of one of the the richest men in all of Remnant and was most likely trained to do so from a young age. Blake and Yang were both somewhere in between those two extremes, the prior being much harder to read than the latter in his opinion, but latter looked like she was barely even trying so he debated even counting her in the discussion.
Yet, despite the differing degrees of difficulty separating them all, Kaneki was able to pinpoint the one thing that connected the six of them all pretty easily: they were all clearly hiding something from him.
"So…" he began when he saw that everyone found somewhere they wanted to stand, his voice remaining completely void of emotion as he spoke, "...what happens now?"
The faint sound of someone taking in a deep breath reached the half ghoul's ears, which was the telltale sign that person was about to say something, so he turned his head to see who the perpetrator was. Upon turning his head towards it, he found that the person who was preparing to speak was, unsurprisingly, the headmaster himself.
"As of right now, we go along with the plan that the two of us came up with last night," Ozpin stated in his usual business-like manner.
"So, does that mean that it's safe for me to assume that everyone in this room is okay with idea of me staying here at Beacon?" the question wasn't directed towards just Ozpin, but everyone else currently standing in the room.
"Well, I wouldn't say everybody…" Ruby interjected suddenly and awkwardly while pushing the tips of her index fingers together, which immediately drew the half-ghoul's attention onto her.
So, it's as I thought, Kaneki thought to himself as he let out a quiet sigh of exasperation, breaking the middle bone of his index finger before he continued to speak to himself mentally, their opinions on the situation are indeed varied.
It would've been naive of him to believe that they would all share the same opinion on the situation given the fact that, at least from what he's seen up until now, the people currently standing before him were all very different from one another personality wise, which obviously meant that their opinions were going to differ most of the time.
For example, Kaneki could see both Ruby and Yang trying to give him the benefit of the doubt, but on the other hand, he couldn't see either Weiss or Goodwitch even entertaining the possibility without Ozpin giving them his word that he wasn't a threat to anyone ast Beacon beforehand.
"Well, if that's the case, then can all the people opposed to the idea of me attending Beacon please step forward and tell me what's on their mind?" Kaneki asked them four as he unconsciously lowered his eyes down so that the only thing he was able to see was the ground. "As I told you all earlier, I'd rather not—"
"Oh, could you please stop being so dramatic?" Weiss cut him off suddenly, her words dripping with irritation as they escaped her mouth. The half ghoul's blank slate eyes immediately snapped onto the heiress of the Schnee fortune, who continued speaking when she saw that she had his attention, "So, what if some of us aren't very comfortable with the idea of you staying at Beacon?" She then crossed her arms over her chest and averted her eyes from his. "Heck, I was practically the only one trying to convince Ozpin that letting you stay was a bad idea, but…" she trailed off as she took a deep breath in through her nostrils, "...but even I know that there are just some things that we can't change–no matter how hard we try, or how uncomfortable it makes us."
"Yeah, Weiss is right," Blake commented suddenly, picking up her teammate's momentum with an almost practiced ease. "At this point, what we think about this situation and what you are really doesn't matter."
"Exactly, so what if you're an inhuman creature who survives off the flesh of Grimm and other people?" Yang asked him as she made her way over to him, slapping him on the shoulder playfully, before then shaking him with said hand lightly. "I mean, you clearly don't want to hurt us since you could've taken us all out when none of us were aware of what you could do, so that has to mean you're on our side, right?"
The sudden change in the conversation's tone had left Ken utterly speechless, but that was probably to be expected given the fact that he carried around a heavy atmosphere nearly everywhere he went. Situations like this became so few and far between for him that it actually made it difficult for him to adjust when the tone changed so suddenly.
How can she say something like that so lightly? the half ghoul asked himself as he stared at the girl standing before him with wide eyes and mouth slightly agape, and just for a moment, he could've sworn that he had seen Hide in her visage.
Everything…everything that was happening reminded Kaneki of the last time he saw his blonde-haired best friend: down in those sewers, after his encounter with the CCG investigator, Amon Koutarou. He could vividly remember not being able to think straight due to the previous activation of his kakuja, and how shocked he was to see Hide standing there with the same goofy smile gracing his face as if nothing was wrong. At first, he thought that it was nothing more than a hallucination brought upon by his broken mind and didn't know if the person standing before him back then was actually real or not, but whatever it turned out being, there was no doubt that after it appeared, it said something that rocked him to the core.
"I already knew, man! Who cares about that, let's just go home already."
Those words... They were words that were uttered far too casually for his liking, but they still shook Ken so hard that it was able clear his head for long enough for him to tell Hide to run away, before something happened to him.
Whatever happened afterwards was completely lost to the half ghoul, but deep down, he knew that he did something to Hide during that duration of time where his memory had failed him—a conclusion that he easily came to when he found that he could taste blood in his mouth after he eventually returned to a right state of mind, and since it tasted sweet, he could only assume that it had belonged to a human and not a ghoul. He didn't know if it had belonged to Hide, but he was sure that whatever injury he inflicted on his friend wasn't serious enough to kill him because there wasn't a corpse anywhere near him, there wasn't even a pool of blood. Then again, that easily could've been wishful thinking on his part.
"Yo, short-stuff, you alright?" Kaneki heard Yang call out to him as a hand suddenly waved itself in front of his face, probably in an attempt to gain his attention, effectively ripping him away from his thoughts and back to reality in less than an instant.
"Yeah, I'm fine," the half ghoul replied almost reflexively, his voice remaining smooth throughout, despite having been pulled out from very distressing thoughts less than two seconds ago. "I just spaced out a little there."
"You seemed to do that quite often, don't you?" Blake commented offhandedly, very clearly not buying it. "Space out, I mean."
The disheveled young man let out an amused scoff and replied in a much lighter tone, a sheepish smile parting his lips into two as he did so, "Trust me, you don't even know the half of it."
The change in his tone didn't go unnoticed by the other occupants of the room as they all started to display to him rather obvious signs of relief.
"Well, now that all of that's settled," Ozpin interjected suddenly, drawing the attention of everyone in the room onto him immediately. "I'd like to explain to Mr. Kaneki here, what exactly we were agreed upon out in that forest."
"Wait, wouldn't he already know since it was the plan the two of you came up with in the first place?" team RWBY's resident bookworm asked the headmaster curiously, clearly confused.
"Yes and no," Ozpin began to explain, "what the two of us came up with last night was more or less just the framework of the actual plan, because of time constraints and some other obstacles that I needed to clear before we could proceed, we couldn't discuss things in any further detail."
"So, I'm assuming that means our approval was the last hurdle for you to clear, right?" the girl assumed, which was as close to spot on as she could get given the lack of context on the situation she actually had.
"Once again, the answer to that question is yes and no," answered Ozpin, "while there was no doubt that team RWBY was the best option for Mr. Kaneki in terms of teams for him to be assigned to, I did have other options in mind just in case the four of you rejected the idea, which I doubted given the personalities of you four. Also, I still needed to explain some other more minor things to him like his class schedule and such."
"Oh," Blake stated, seemingly satisfied with that answer, nodding her head in affirmation soon afterwards.
Hm, I wonder why he's being so open to them about his intentions? Kaneki noted as he watched the exchange between the two unfold in front of him with slightly narrowed eyes. Did they make him agree to being completely transparent with them or something?
"Now, Mr. Kaneki, shall we?" the headmaster asked him suddenly.
"Yeah," the newest student of Beacon in question stated simply, before giving his own nod in response.
"Very well, then let's begin with where you'll be staying…"
Kaneki's eyebrow twitched in annoyance as he felt the curious eyes of his new classmates scan him up and down, making him feel like he was some sort of unknown creature from outer space, and the school uniform that Ozpin provided him didn't help out in that regard. He felt like a wolf in sheep's clothing, but unlike the old Greek–though most experts would say that it first originated from the Bible nowadays–story, the sheep knew him to be a threat and were sizing him up to gauge how much of one he was.
The teacher of the class, a green-haired man that went by the name of Bartholomew Oobleck, was busy explaining the situation to aforementioned students, and new classmates, while moving around like a man who had downed several cups of espresso in a one minute sitting–something that the half ghoul wouldn't put past the man given how he wreaked of nothing but coffee, though again, that wasn't something Kaneki necessarily minded. Coffee was one of the few things both humans and ghouls could consume.
Now that I think about it, it's been far too long since I've had some coffee, the ghoul in student's clothing thought to himself as he silently shifted where he stood. Note to self, remember to make a stop by Ozpin's office and ask for some supplies once classes are over.
"Now, do any of you have any questions that you would like to ask Mr. Kaneki before we continue?" Oobleck asked once he reached the end of his rather…energetic explanation, prompting a few seconds of silence from the rest of the students. "No?" Unlike the history professor, the young man in question fully expected the silence, as Oobleck summarized the backstory Ozpin had made up for him quite thoroughly. "Then, Mr. Kaneki, if you would please take that seat near Ms. Scarlatina over there," the caffeine-filled professor instructed, pointing an index finger towards the direction of whoever he was referring to, "we'll begin class once you do."
The young man's eye widened marginally when the familiar surname hit his ears, though if he was at all noticeable, he really didn't know. Velvet's here? he asked himself mentally as he began to scan the room before him for the chocolate-haired faunus and eventually found her sitting down in the front row, giving him a look of what looked to be concern. How in the world did I not notice her until now... and why does she look so worried?
"Ms. Scarlatina, if you would, could you please raise your—" the history professor began to say, stopping himself when he saw the young man walk towards to where the rabbit-eared faunus was currently sitting. "Oh, it seems that you two already know of each other," he nodded, not paying any more mind to that fact after acknowledging it, "never mind then."
Kaneki didn't utter a word as he strode over to the open seat next to Velvet and sat down in it, waiting for everyone's attention to shift from off of him and back onto Mr. Oobleck, before asking the girl next to him something, making sure to do so in a low enough whisper that she'd be able to hear, "Is everything alright, Velvet?"
"Huh, w-what makes you ask that?" the rabbit-eared faunus whispered back in a voice that really didn't convince him otherwise. In response, he shot her a skeptical look, which made her let out a sigh and say, "D-don't worry, it can wait until after class." The half ghoul opened his mouth to protest, but she cut him off before he could start whispering, "Dr. Oobleck may not seem like it, but he takes things like class participation really seriously."
The half ghoul stared at the girl for a few seconds, but eventually nodded and started to unpack all the school supplies that Ozpin provided him the night prior, which was just basically the same notepad and wooden number-two pencil he saw almost everyone else in the room have.
It wasn't known by anyone in this world, but before he was turned into a half-ghoul by Dr. Kanou, Kaneki spent a good majority of his time being a student at Kamii University—a rather renowned mega-university with a rather low acceptance rate for incoming students—which of course, made it extremely easy for him to tune into Oobleck's lecture and start picking out key pieces of information to write down almost immediately, as he had done so a million times before with his various university professors.
From what he could tell, Oobleck was going over the war that took place between the human race and the faunus that happened some time ago–a topic that Kaneki immediately found himself interested in.
"Now! Have any among you been subjugated or discriminated against because of your faunus heritage?" Oobleck asked everyone suddenly, which then prompted the half ghoul to subtly glance over at the faunus sitting next to him to see if she would answer.
Kaneki could only watch on idly as Velvet began to glance around the classroom nervously, which made it clear that she was waiting for someone else to answer before she would give her own. Knowing that she would never do so without some form of encouragement, he shot her a reassuring smile when she looked his way–a smile that he perfected over the time he spent teaching Hinami how to read some of the much more difficult kanji.
Instead of raising her hand like he expected her to, Velvet just stared at him like he was some sort of hallucination that was going to disappear from sight at any second. He was half-tempted to try doing something that would snap her out of her now several second-long reverie, but the sound of Oobleck starting his lecture back up again seemed to do it for him.
"Dreadful, simply dreadful!" the professional lecturer exclaimed, clearly disgusted by the thought of such discrimination. "Remember, students, it's precisely this kind of ignorance that breeds this kind of violence. I mean, look at what happened with the White Fang!"
Hm, I wonder if he would be thinking like that if he lived in my world instead? Kaneki commented to himself offhandedly.
"Now, which one of you scallions can tell me what many theorize to be the turning point in the third year of the war?" the caffeine-blooded professor continued before stopping, probably to give everyone time to come up with an answer. Almost a second later, Oobleck looked up at someone sitting in the upper levels and asked, "Yes?"
"The battle at Fort Castle!" the person, who suspiciously sounded a lot like Weiss, answered with a bit too much excitement in her voice for something like answering a question in class.
"Precisely!" Oobleck then built off the momentum of his earlier question and proceeded to ask, "And, who can tell me the advantage the faunus had over General Lagune's forces?"
"Hey!" a familiar voice suddenly exclaimed from the other side of the room, prompting the half ghoul and pretty much everyone else in the room to shift their attention towards where it came from.
Isn't that the blonde from yesterday? Ah, what was his name? Damn, I don't think I ever got his name when we talked. Actually, I think I only got the name of that one girl with the orange hair. Nora… It was Nora, right?
"Mr. Arc! Finally contributing to class! Excellent! This is excellent!" Oobleck dashed over to where the scraggly blonde in question sat, doing it so fast that he looked like a blur as he did so, and asked, "Now, what is the answer?"
To say that the blonde looked unprepared to answer the question posed to him would've been a major understatement, he even started to look around the room as if he could find the answer somewhere inside it.
"Uh… The answer… The advantage…of the faunus…" he mumbled loudly in a rather blatant attempt to stall for time before his eyes suddenly focused on something behind Oobleck's and upon following his gaze to where it lay, Kaneki found himself watching the red-haired girl from yesterday trying to slip the blonde the answer with what looked like hand gestures, "...had over that guy's stuff…" The half ghoul watched as the redhead cupped her hands over her eyes, which prompted the blonde to give the answer of, "Uh, binoculars!"
It didn't take long for the snowy-haired young man to figure out that the answer blonde gave was wrong. The fact that everyone in the room started to laugh sort of gave that much away.
"Very funny, Mr. Arc!" Oobleck told the embarrassed blonde sarcastically from behind his desk and then shifted his gaze onto a boy with orange hair, who was sitting with his feet up on the desk just a row above the embarrassed blonde. "Cardin! Perhaps you would care to share your thoughts on the subject?"
"Well, for one, I know that it's easier to train an animal than a soldier," the boy that Oobleck called, Cardin, stated in such a matter-of-fact tone that it made Kaneki's finger twitch in a want for action.
Apparently, Ken wasn't the only one who thought that way because the redhead, the same one who had tried to help Arc earlier, immediately retorted with, "You're not the most open-minded of individuals, are you, Cardin?"
"What?" the blatantly racist teen asked, his tone defensive as he outstretched his arms in a gesture that just screamed that he was looking for a fight-a fight that Kaneki was tempted to offer if he kept letting garbage slip out from his mouth. "You got a problem?"
"No, I have the answer!" the redhead replied as she turned back towards Oobleck. "It's night vision. Many faunus are known to have perfect sight in the dark."
"General Lagune was also inexperienced and made the mistake of trying to ambush the faunus in their sleep. His massive army was outmatched and the general was captured," he heard Blake add into the conversation suddenly. "Perhaps if he'd paid attention in class, he wouldn't have been remembered as such a failure."
This elicited an amused snort from Kaneki–one that he genuinely hoped Cardin heard. Reasons for Gen. Lagune's defeat at Fort Castle: despite having a massive army to back him, inexperience led him to believe that faunus would be vulnerable in their sleep, but in all actuality, it turns out that some faunus have perfect vision in the dark, which soon led to his defeat, the young ghoul paraphrased mentally while he simultaneously scribbled it down on his notepad, deciding that it was probably best to ignore whatever else was happening in the classroom around him and focus on what Oobleck was saying, which just happened to be the words:
"Now! Moving on!"
"Hey, Velvet!" Kaneki called out as he hurried after the faunus in question, who had managed to exit the classroom so quickly that he barely noticed her rushing out the door as he got up from his seat.
Aforementioned faunus immediately stopped dead in her tracks and turned to face him. She looked at him as if she was confused as to why he followed her, but after a second, her eyes widened as she donned an apologetic expression.
"I thought that you said that we would talk about what was bothering you earlier?" he asked upon finally reaching where she stood, trying his best to keep the amount of irritation in his voice to a minimum as he spoke. "What happened?"
"S-sorry," Velvet squeaked out, rubbing her elbow bashfully. "It was a force of habit, my bad."
A wave of guilt surged through him when he realized what she meant by that. Promptly, he shifted his gaze off to the side and ask in an attempt to change the subject, "So, earlier, you said something about wanting to talk to me about something?"
The sudden change in topic must have surprised the girl because she didn't answer him at first, instead, she just blinked and looked at him quizzically for a few seconds.
"Oh! Uh, I just wanted to know–if you don't mind telling me, of course–if you would tell me what happened to your eye," she explained to him in a tone that could only be described as a combination of awkwardness mixed with worry, a combination that managed to reach her face, forming a display. "I know that we haven't known each other for that long, but I definitely don't remember you wearing an eyepatch yesterday."
Oh yeah, I forgot about the eyepatch, Ken reminded himself as he subconsciously reached up and used his black-tipped fingers to graze the white, medical eyepatch that was currently covering up his kakugan.
Kaneki's lips parted into an embarrassed smile. "Oh, I injured it during my initiation yesterday," he began, scratching at his chin with his left index finger before he let out a self-deprecating scoff. "I was heading back with the artifact and I got blindsided by a boarbatusk, ended up slamming my head against a nearby tree and some of the debris wound up in my eye somehow. The nurse said something along the lines of a corneal abrasion."
That, of course, wasn't the actual reason as to why he was wearing the eyepatch. If something like that were to actually happen, the wound would've healed itself within the span of seconds. No, he wore the piece of fabric over his eye because he still didn't have much control over his kakugan other than simply activating it and, despite there being no history of ghouls in Remnant, it definitely wouldn't bode well for him to have someone catch a glimpse of it by mistake due to it suddenly flaring up.
So, to prevent that from happening, the half ghoul did the same thing he did in his old world and wore an eyepatch to cover it up.
"Oh, I'm sorry," she said once again, apologizing in a way that made it seem like she had somehow been directly responsible for an injury that wasn't even real to begin with. "So…how long do you have to wear it? The eyepatch, I mean."
Kaneki had been a half-ghoul for about year a now and he still hadn't learned how to fully control the activation of his kakugan, meaning that giving Velvet an indefinite amount of timetable for his so-called recovery the best option for him, since it would give him a good amount of time to try and learn how to control it. If the amount of time allotted wasn't enough for him to do so, then he could just claim that he had gotten so used to wearing it that he just wanted to keep it on, despite his eye being fully healed.
"The nurse said that, at the very least, it would take a couple of weeks for it to heal," the half ghoul answered, shrugging his shoulders nonchalantly. "Then again, the nurse did also say that the recovery times for these kinds of injuries varies, so I can't really say."
"Ah, well, I'm sorry to hear that," Velvet offered as if her words could provide some sort of consolation for the supposed injury, though if he was actually injured, Kaneki was sure that he would appreciate the sentiment anyways.
"Don't be," he waved off her apology–smile still prominent on his lips, but definitely waned in strength. "Trust me, I've had worse things happen to me."
Velvet opened her mouth to say something, but no words came out of it and it continued to remain silent for several seconds before she finally managed hurdle whatever obstacle kept her from speaking, "Well, uh, I should get going to my next class before the bell rings."
"Oh, yeah. I guess I should get going too, huh?" he rhetorically asked to no one in particular. "Well, see you tomorrow then?"
Velvet gave him a slight nod in response and shakily repeated his own words back to him–a smile of her own adorning her lips, "S-see you tomorrow."
Taking that as the conclusion to their conversation, Kaneki nodded his head in goodbye, turned, and started walking away from Velvet, towards where his next class should be located. As he walked, however, he couldn't help but notice the familiar feeling of someone watching him coming from the direction he once faced, which prompted him to stop dead in his tracks and look back over his shoulder to see who exactly was staring at him.
What he found was a familiar pair of chocolate-colored eyes looking back over her own shoulder at him-a pair of eyes that quickly turned themselves away the moment they noticed his one eye staring right back at her.
I wonder what that was about? the half ghoul asked himself, watching the rabbit faunus walk off into the distance before he turning his attention back onto the area of space that was directly in front of him, which was now suddenly occupied by a certain bow-wearing teammate of his.
"I didn't know you knew Velvet," Blake said to him upon seeing that she had his attention, a tiny shred of curiosity hidden somewhere under the dryness that she usually spoke with.
"Oh, you can say that I happened to bump into her yesterday," he replied, his tone sheepish as he reached a hand up to scratch the back of his head. "I mean that quite literally too," he added, once he saw the confused look his newly-minted teammate was giving him. "She's kind of the one who forced me to have to go to the laundry room yesterday."
Blake blinked at him owlishly with her amber eyes after that. "Oh, so that's how you managed to find the laundry room," she nodded her head as she said that, speaking in a way that made it sound like she had just gotten an answer to a question she had been pondering for a long time, which, admittedly, amused him quite a bit.
"So, what do you think?" The question came from Blake so suddenly that it actually managed to catch him off-guard a bit, but before he could properly answer it, another question was fired at him. "About Velvet, I mean?"
Kaneki blinked at his teammate and ended up blurting out the first answer that came to mind, "She seems nice enough, though, honestly, I don't think I know enough about her to have fully developed an opinion on her quite yet."
For some reason, the half ghoul's explanation caused the girl to smile a bit. "Huh, I guess I should've expected you to say something like that, shouldn't have I?" she asked, seemingly pleased with the answer he gave her for some unknown reason. "Especially from someone like you."
Ken blinked and raised an eyebrow at the person standing before him. "What's that supposed to mean?"
"Nothing really," Blake answered him dryly, shrugging her shoulders lightly as she did so. A part of him was actually tempted on taking her words at face value, but the still present smile on her lips stopped him from doing so. He was going to further question on what she meant by what she said earlier, but before he could speak, she turned her back to him before he could do so.
Now walking away from him, she suddenly stopped in her tracks, looked over her shoulder at him and told him, "Come on, we need to get going. Our next class starts in a couple and the others are all waiting for us."
Knowing that he probably couldn't refute her on what she just said, Kaneki nodded his head at Blake, which prompted her to start walking away from him once again, leaving the young man to follow her silently.
-Chapter End-