Um… Do I even need to say anything? All I really did was change the pacing of the training montage.
-Mandatory Disclaimer-
I don't own either Tokyo Ghoul or RWBY.
-Chapter 4: Imitation Coffee-
"Are you ready?"
The person who asked him that question raised her sword and pointed its tip directly at him as she spoke, which prompted him to raise his own weapon and do the same, mimicking the stance had been shown to him earlier.
Nodding his head, Kaneki stated back in reply, "Yeah." He then proceeded to nod his head to further emphasize his readiness. "You?"
"Please, I've been ready," she said back, her tone literally dripping with confidence as she used her free hand to pull a white handkerchief out from her pocket. "We'll start when this hits the ground."
After saying that, the girl threw the piece of fabric into the air, which prompted the half ghoul to fixate his eyes onto it as it reached its peak and began to sway slowly, back-and-forth down towards the ground. His entire body instinctively tensing up in preparation for the clash to come.
Taking in a deep breath, Kaneki prepared himself for the upcoming clash, already knowing that it was probably going to be one of his more difficult encounters he's had since he first woke up in Remnant, which, honestly, wasn't saying much since the only things he's had to actually fight until this point we're creatures of Grimm, and while the grimm weren't pushovers in any sense of the word, they were rather easy creatures to figure out in terms of how to combat them.
Despite occasionally showing clear signs of being more intelligent than their animal counterparts, the Grimm were, from what he's seen, still just that in battle—animals. They allowed their baser instincts to govern what they did, and that basically meant that the only thing they really cared about in a fight was dispatching their target, or surviving the encounter itself. There was no in between with them.
When fighting against the Grimm, Ken didn't have to think about them having some sort of plan hidden underneath their actions. All he had to focus on was killing them, and since he was both physically stronger and faster than most Grimm, he could kill them without much effort.
The same, however, couldn't be said about an actual living person, who could think and adapt to things much faster than any Grimm could, which automatically made them twenty times more dangerous than any glorified animal in his eyes, despite the clear physical superiority a half ghoul like himself had over them.
Being someone who used a fighting style that highly centered around thinking and adapting himself, Kaneki knew the dangers of underestimating someone in a fight, just because they had inferior physical capabilities. He killed a many a foe because they did the very same to him.
Now, there was no doubt in his mind that the person standing before him was close to the same level as him when it came to her acumen in combat. She was also undoubtedly more experienced with the weapon in her hands than he was with his, which, by the way, was a weapon that he had only gotten less than a couple of days prior to today. Also, if that didn't seem like enough cards being stacked against him, he was fairly sure she had taken his physical superiority into account and came up with a plan to counter it already so…there was also that.
All of those things were working against Kaneki in his coming fight, so he knew that extreme caution was going to have be shown when that handkerchief finally landed onto the ground.
Overall, she's probably more intelligent than I am and equally as adaptable, the half ghoul thought to himself as his eyes watched aforementioned handkerchief fall slowly to its destined location. She knows that she can't compare to me physically, so she'll most likely lean on her familiarity with her weapon and my inexperience to make things more even between us.
Kaneki sent a slight nod of acknowledgement towards her after he thought that, planting the bottom of his lead foot further into the ground as he did so. That's a good plan for a situation like this, he admitted as he watched the handkerchief finally crumple into a little, white pile on the ground, signalling the start of combat, but not a perfect one by any means.
Plans, in a way, were a lot like pieces of metal. No matter how strong it was thought to be, it could always be snapped when the right amount of pressure was applied, so that's exactly what he planned on doing against her.
Shooting straight at her with reckless abandon, the half ghoul soon found himself a few inches away from where she stood. She, in response to his sudden charge, stood exactly still, probably thinking that she was skilled enough to counter his attack.
Alright then, he mentally began as he swung his weapon at his opponent, let's see if you really are as skilled as you say you are!
Time, for Kaneki, moved as if it were in slow motion as he watched his weapon inch closer and closer towards its target, and right as it was about to reach its destination, there was a flash of silver.
It was over before he knew it. Something, presumably his opponent's weapon, hit his own mid-swing, stopping his attack dead in its tracks with a loud, metallic clang. Not a nano-second later, he found his arm moving towards the very opposite direction in which it had been swung in to begin with.
So, I guess she wasn't just bragging earlier, huh? Ken noted, smiling to himself wryly right before he felt something hard and sharp slam suddenly into the center of his sternum, cracking the bone into many, many individual pieces.
The pain, the sudden inability to control his breathing, and the burning pain that he felt in his lungs because of that sudden inability all caused memories of Shachi to flash through his mind, or to be more specific, the one that involved him taking a gut-shot from that monster of a ghoul.
Kaneki, being someone who's had to go through a good deal of pain and punishment over the past couple years, really couldn't say that the blow his teammate had landed on him hurt very much, but it did make it nearly impossible for him to breathe for a few of seconds afterward and that, however, did hurt. Especially when all of the oxygen in his lungs had been forced out of them that same amount of time beforehand.
Rubbing his chest in hopes of further stimulating his regeneration, the half ghoul heard his opponent, and recently newly dubbed sparring partner, let out a sigh of what sounded like frustration. "Really, Kaneki?" she asked him disbelievingly, her fingers massaging the bridge of her nose as she did so. "Come on, you and I both know that charging in like that isn't a good idea, even if you were just trying to see how good I am."
"It… was that obvious, huh?" aforementioned young man asked as he struggled to regain his breath, "And… by the way… what… what in the hell did… did you just hit me with?"
"With my Myrtenaster, of course," she answered, speaking in a way that made it seem like the answer to that question should've been obvious to him. "What else would I have hit you with?"
The half ghoul looked up at his sparring partner and shot her a disbelieving look, wanting to retort back with something witty and sarcastic, but stopped himself when he realized that he wasn't in any position to say something like that to her, especially since she was taking time out of her day to do exactly this for him.
"Ah." Letting out a quiet chuckle when he felt all of his sternum shift back into place, Kaneki turned his attention back down to the ground. "Sorry, I just wasn't aware that you were going to be using it like that."
"Hey, you're the one who told me that bladed weapons couldn't pierce through your skin," she shot back, her verbal counter acting just like the one she gave him earlier with her blade, quick and sharp. "So forgive me for thinking that I could hit you with it and have it not hurt."
Letting out a sigh and forcing himself back up to his feet, Kaneki was quick to point a little detail of that earlier conversation out to her, "Weiss, I never said that getting hit by such things didn't hurt."
Scoffing to herself, Weiss shook her head and rolled her eyes disbelievingly. "And, you never exactly told me otherwise now, did you?" she shot back without a missing a beat.
Ken couldn't help but smile a little at the girl's justification for quite literally caving his chest in. "Touche," he said back with an amused snort.
"So, tell me," the heiress began as she went to go and pick up the handkerchief she had thrown up into the air earlier, "did you learn anything from that exchange, or did you end up just taking that hit for no reason?"
Hm, did I learn something from that? The half ghoul asked himself, fingers on his right hand cupping around his chin as he moved back over to the spot he started their sparring session at.
"Well, I guess you can say I learned a few things," he eventually answered after giving it a few moments of contemplation. Shifting the hand that was on his chin over to the back of his head to scratch at it, he shrugged his shoulder slightly and elaborated further on what he meant. "I learned that parrying strikes at the right angle can lead to the opponent being wide open for an counterattack."
Lowering his hand and cocking his head to the side contemplatively, he continued on tentatively, "I also guess that I should probably be faster with my attacks, or at least make them more unpredictable because, by the looks of it, you predicted my attack pretty easily earlier."
"Hm, good," the heiress commented with a nod of her head, seemingly satisfied with the answer. "If you were able to pick that much up from that small of an exchange, I think that we might just be able to get you to close to halfway decent with that sword of yours, before we get assigned any actual missions."
Glancing down at aforementioned sword, which was currently being held in his left hand as he had to use his right for something, the half ghoul couldn't help but make note of how underwhelming it looked when compared to some of the other weapons he's seen during his still somewhat brief time attending Beacon–a fact that was only made more prominent when it was compared to his team leader's weapon of choice, which was literally a scythe as tall as she was, that could also be turned into a sniper rifle whenever needed.
When Ruby first demonstrated how she used it to him, Kaneki was immediately met with the mental conundrum of figuring out how exactly she, a fifteen year-old, was able to use such a weapon, as he was sure that using such a weapon was incredibly straining on its user both physically and mentally. She explained to him that she had her uncle teach her how to use it back when she was still in Signal Academy, Vale's premier middle school, when he asked, though her explanation only provided him with more than it did answers.
The inexplicability of the whole situation didn't make him any less impressed with the fact that she actually managed to master the beastly thing, though. If anything, Ken only became more impressed by the feat, the more he thought about it. Even he, the quick-learner that he was, was sure that he'd have trouble learning how to use it himself.
Fortunately, Ken wouldn't have to do anything like that. Actually, in contrast to Crimson Rose, the name his leader had given to her much-loved gun-scythe, his weapon would be a cake-walk to learn how to use.
It was as straight-forward as straight-forward got, in terms of weapons. It was pretty much a single-edged sword that could pop out of its hilt, something that wasn't at all special, considering that most weapons in Remnant had the ability to fold into much smaller versions of themselves for easier transport–something that Weiss was quick to point out to him when he mistakenly took it for one of the weapon's distinguishing features.
When Ozpin first gave him the weapon, the headmaster explained to him that the simplicity of the weapon was because it wasn't to replace his kagune at all, which meant, to him, that it was a weapon to be used when his bare hands weren't enough and the use of his last resort, his kagune, couldn't be justified.
It was something that the headmaster didn't want getting out anytime soon–the fact that he, Ken Kaneki, was a half ghoul–and using the one thing that pointed that fact out all willy-nilly definitely didn't lend itself to benefitting that effort by any margin. So, to help prevent things like that, Ozpin made him promise to abide by a certain set of rules that he came up with, regarding its use.
The list itself wasn't long and its rules were not at all too demanding. The half ghoul really only had two rules that he had to follow: the first being that he was to limit its use to only when the situation called for it and the second was that he was to not use it in any public settings without first consulting him.
Seeing that those rules were so easy to follow that he could probably do so with his eyes closed, Kaneki accepted Ozpin's proposition, the weapon, and then, the task of learning how to use it.
"So, are you ready to go again?" Kaneki blinked at the sound of Weiss' voice.
Turning his head over to where it came from, Ken found that the heiress had moved back to her original position at some point, pointing the tip of her sword right at him once again.
The student in this situation nodded his head in response. "Alright then, I'm going to try charging at you this time," she explained while cocking her head in the direction of his original starting position. "You just try and not get hit again."
"Understood," Kaneki affirmed with a nod of his head, rubbing at his now recovered sternum one last time before he then made his back over to where he started and got himself into a ready position.
Seeing this prompted the heiress of the Schnee fortune to begin the process she went through earlier and throw her handkerchief up into the air once again. Being a man who learned from his prior mistakes, the half ghoul made sure to keep his eyes fixed on his opponent instead of the piece of fabric like he did last time and waited for her to make her move.
Now from what that explanation she gave me earlier, it's probably safe to assume that she isn't going to try any slashing attacks when she gets close to me. Like it always did, Kaneki's mind when into overdrive in coming up with ideas on how to deal with a dangerous opponent. The type of sword she's holding is designed for stabbing, not for slashing, after all.
Welp, that complicates things. The one receiving the charge frowned to himself and adjusted the grip his fingers had on his weapon. A stab is going to be a much harder attack to parry since it takes less time to execute compared to a normal slash. I'm going to have to—
The handkerchief must've hit the ground when he was thinking, because something small and white, and coming his way so fast that his eyes couldn't track of whatever it was, suddenly shot out from the tip of Weiss' sword and towards him.
Instinctively, knowing that he didn't want to be hit by whatever was coming towards him, Kaneki scrambled to move out of the way and just barely managed to do so–an extremely small amount of space coming in between his shoes and whatever it was.
She was aiming for my feet? Ken asked himself in his confusion as he reset his feet, but forcibly shoved the question to the utmost back of his mind when he noticed a much bigger white blur rushing towards him.
Knowing that it was most likely Weiss going in for a stab while he was preoccupied, Kaneki's eyes frantically scanned the blur rushing towards him, looking for the tell tale sliver of silver that'd give away her blade's position and the angle it was taking towards his body.
Finding what he was looking for and noticing that it was heading right towards the center of his chest, the half ghoul instinctively stepped over to his right and twisted his body so that the sharp, but ultimately harmless piece of steel just barely missed touching the fabric of his shirt.
Planting the heels of his loafers into the dirt under him, Kaneki skid to a complete stop. His dull grey eyes never leaving his instructor as she too brought herself to a stop, as to prevent the chance of being caught off guard if she continued to charge him.
Much to his surprise though, the heiress didn't pursue him like she expected him to. Instead, she did the exact opposite and relaxed her body, before then turning to face him.
"That was good," Weiss stated as she put her free hand on her hip, though her words were far from sounding at all satisfied, "though, it would've been better if you tried to parry that thrust instead of just dodging it." She clicked her tongue in annoyance as she turned her head off to her right. "I mean, the last time I checked, I didn't drag myself all the way out here just to teach you how to dodge attacks of all things."
The half ghoul couldn't help but act a little bewildered by his instructor's…less than savory comments towards him. Not to say that he didn't expect them to never come, as she was taking time out of her day to help him–someone she really didn't trust in the first place–but he, at the very least, thought that they'd be able to get through the first session without incident.
Well, her grievances aside, I can't say that what she just told me was wrong. Kaneki let out an exasperated sigh as he made his way back to his starting position, adjusting the grip he had on his blade while he did so. If I want to get the hang of using this thing, I'm going to have to deal with any mistakes that I make and start relying on it more.
Ken, having notice that he had, at some point, reached his destination while caught up in his thoughts, stopped his feet from moving him any more forward. Alright, he began as he turned himself to face exactly where he knew Weiss would be standing and leveled the tip of his sword at her, let's try this one more time, shall we?
Kaneki, from as far back as he could remember, had always been somebody who could pick up and apply concepts faster than the average person–he could distinctly remember all of the praises his primary school teachers showered him with for that very reason–but even after smashing his head against the wall for the past few days, attempting to learn how to use the weapon Ozpin had given to him, he couldn't keep himself from thinking that what he was currently doing, wasn't going to get him the results he wanted in the time allotted.
Of course, there were advantages to sparring with Weiss as she, undoubtedly, had a wealth of knowledge that he could tap into and use when actual fighting broke out, but, in the end, having knowledge would only get him so far–knowing how to use a sword didn't mean anything if he didn't know how to use it effectively, after all.
Yes, technically speaking, if the half ghoul were to keep sparring with Weiss, he'd eventually reach a point where he was comfortable enough with his weapon to use it effectively in combat, but unfortunately, he just didn't have that time. Something like that could take him days, weeks, or even months to do and, again, he just didn't have that kind of time. The first-year teams would be required to go on actual missions in the upcoming weeks and if his team just so happened to get one that took place in an open, public area, he would need the thing to carry him through any confrontations.
Kaneki, not being able to do so, would only result in him slowing down his other teammates and he absolutely hated the thought of being a hinderance to anyone, so he worked on coming up with solutions to stop something like that from happening.
The most obvious solution would be to just spend more of his off-hours practicing by himself, but that had the downside of taking away from the amount of time he could spend with his new teammates, which he would need so that he could develop some sort of chemistry between the five of them.
Dammit… Kaneki cursed to himself mentally as he pushed himself back to his feet, after having been handed another defeat at the hands of Weiss, …why the hell am I having so much trouble with this? Something like this should be easy for me? So why—?
The train of thought that was roaring through his head suddenly came to a grinding stop when the half ghoul realized what his mistake was and when he did, he felt like slapping himself in the face. Hard.
He was simply expecting too much of himself.
It was an absurd thought to have, but perhaps, instead of trying to become a master swordsman in such a small amount of time, Kaneki should take things one step at a time and try to become competent with the thing first.
"Hey Kaneki!" The sound of Weiss calling out to him pulled him out of his thoughts instantly. Blinking owlishly and turning his head to face where the voice came from, he found himself staring at an heiress who was glaring at him with her arms on her hips. "Oh my— Did you seriously space out on me again?!"
Having been caught red-handed and knowing it, the guilty party let out an awkward chuckle and sheepishly replied with, "Um… Y-yeah…" He reached his right hand up and used it to scratch at the back of his head while he trailed off. "Sorry about that!"
"Hmph! So, as I was saying before I noticed that you were staring off into space," the prosecutor began coldly, prompting a smile as sheepish as his chuckle was earlier to crawl onto his features, "if you feel like you're having a hard time adjusting, don't worry." Her voice remained predominantly cold and uncaring, though he could've swore that he heard a tinge of sympathy in her words. "Nobody's naturally good at something like this. I know that this is rather cliche to say but, everybody has trouble when they first start out, it's just something you have to keep working at if you really want to get any good."
Ken opened his mouth, intending to tell her that he'd already realized as much and would be just fine from this point onward, but Weiss cut him off before he could do so. "And before you ask…" she trailed off as she suddenly cupped her free hand over her opposite arm's elbow, "…yes, that means exactly what you think it does. Even I, as unlikely as it sounds, had trouble when I first started out."
Kaneki couldn't help the owlish fluttering of his eyelids in response to the heiress's sudden confession of normalcy, not quite understanding where it had come from and what exactly its underlying purpose was. He could tell that she had most likely said it to keep his confidence from dropping due to the consistent string of failures, but why even bring up the fact that she herself had trouble when she was younger? It just seemed wholly unnecessary.
I guess she thought I would ask if she had trouble too, which implies that she's been ask something like that often in the past–a given considering what her last name is. I'm sure that there are people who would immediately jump to conclusions of grandeur because her family name was Schnee. A mental picture of a child version of Weiss struggling to use a sword suddenly popped up in his mind as he thought that. Still, that doesn't explain why she'd even bring something like this up in the—
"Kaneki!" The sound of the person he was pondering screeching at him interrupted his train of thought, shifting his focus onto her, he found himself staring at a girl who was massaging the bridge of her nose out of irritation. "Seriously? Again?! You spaced out again?!"
The half ghoul, not being able to deny the fact at all, simply let out another chuckle in response.
"Hey Weiss…" Kaneki began as he sat himself down at the base of a tree close to the area in which he and Weiss were sparring, landing with a light thump, "…you mind if I ask you something?"
Shrugging her shoulders, aforementioned girl, who was standing directly in front of him, stabbed Myrtenaster into the dirt and replied, "I don't see why not. Go on ahead. Ask."
Ken couldn't help but smile a bit at that. The way she just phrased that admittance, it reminded him of someone back from his world. "Why exactly did you agree to do this?" Cracking his middle finger, the half ghoul posed the question that had been bothering for the past couple of days. "Teaching me, I mean."
There was silence for a moment and then, she tilted her head to the side and asked back, "What do you mean?"
"Well, I was just wondering what changed," the half ghoul explained as he turned to face the row of trees over to his left, "before Ozpin brought up the idea of doing this, it wasn't like you were clamoring to spend time with me." Turning his attention back onto the confused heiress standing before him, he asked, "So, what made you change your mind?"
A stint of silence that spanned many seconds reigned over the two of them like a dictator, before eventually spurring Kaneki into speaking, "You don't have to say anything if you don't want—"
"—If you really have to know," Weiss cut him off as she crossed her arms over chest, her tone dripping with so much irritation that he was sure that he could fill an entire bucket with it, "it's because back when team RWBY first started, I promised Ruby that I'd try to be the best teammate I could and since you are technically my teammate now, I felt like not providing my assistance when you when you clearly needed it would be like actively going against that promise in a way."
"Well then, I suppose I should consider myself lucky you made that promise, huh?" Ken asked as he flashed a sheepish grin at what had to be the most heartwarming thing he's ever heard the almost very literal ice queen say.
Kaneki wasn't lying when he said that either. He really did mean it when he said that he was lucky to have Weiss make that promise, because if what he assumed to be the case really was, then it lead to him getting the best possible teacher he possible in the situation.
Being a member of one of the wealthiest families in all of Remnant–a fact that the heiress never failed to shove in people's face whenever possible–she was probably taught how to use the weapon at her feet by the some of the best instructors money could acquire and if all that she had told him a couple days prior proved to be true, then she's also had personal experience dealing with the one problem that hovered around his head the past week: dealing with the expectations one put on themselves.
When their training first started a week ago, the young man had been too confident in his ability to learn things quicker than most and thought that he would be able to master a weapon in a span of weeks, which, in all actuality, was entirely impossible.
In hopes of rectifying that problem, Ken tried scaling his goal back to just becoming proficient with the weapon, but that, however, only created yet another problem for him to have to deal with. He tried scaling the problem to a lot more achievable goal, but all that did was create yet another problem for him to have to contend with and he honestly didn't know if doing so made his actual goal of proficiency by semester's end any more attainable.
"And don't you forget it," Weiss replied smugly, briefly flashing him a proud smile at the praise before, as if suddenly realizing her mistake, her expression quickly shifted back to the stern one she usually wore–something that, in turn, made him chuckle a bit.
The ice queen, on the other hand, probably did have an idea, thankfully enough.
"Alright, now let's try that again, shall we?" she added as she went to go retrieve her handkerchief. "Now remember what I told you earlier," she began as she bent down to pick up aforementioned piece of cloth, "whenever you find yourself in a deadlock with somebody—"
"—I remember," Kaneki stated with a small nod of affirmation as he returned to his own starting position, or rather, a space bit off to the right of what his original starting position was, since his old one was little more than a pit in the ground now. "Trust me, I remember."
Hell, how could he forget? Kaneki could still feel the very literal sting of the last time he forgot to heed that lesson.
I can't believe that I lost track of the time this badly, Weiss berated herself as she stared at the setting sun, before turning her attention back onto the young man standing to her right, shaking her head disbelievingly as she did so. Next time, I should remember to use a timer to make sure something like this doesn't happen again.
"That's enough for today," she said to Kaneki, who looked he was already getting ready for what would've been their twelfth round of sparring. "I told the others that we were supposed to be done sparring over an hour ago, so we should start heading back before they start to worry."
The ghoul blinked his dull grey eyes in surprise at that. "Oh, really?" he asked her as he relaxed back into a regular stance, glancing over to where the sun was in the sky. "Huh." A small smile cracked his lips as he added, "I didn't even notice."
Weiss felt a small prick of annoyance hit her when she saw that smile of his.
How could someone like him have a smile like that?
The heiress had asked herself that question every time it found onto his face, but every time she had been unable to come up with an acceptable answer.
Aesthetically speaking, there was nothing wrong with the smile at all. It just made the owner of the smile seem so…harmless, so unlike what she had seen of him up until now.
The face that smile was painted across belonged to Ken Kaneki, the same man who killed four beowolves with nothing but his bare hands, burned through the Emerald Forest killing Grimm left and right like it was nothing, and decimated and devoured a DeathStalker with tentacles that sprouted out from his back–all with a smile of pure unadulterated glee on his face.
How then? How could a simple smile make someone she had seen do all those things look so… so… so harmless?
Honestly, Weiss didn't know and that annoyed her to no end.
"There something wrong?"
The heiress blinked when she heard that.
"Y-yeah, I just spaced out a little there," the heiress stated as her pale cheeks turned a shade redder. "Come on," she added before he could respond, crossing her arms over her chest and quickly turning away from him, so that he wouldn't notice. "Let's head back."
Kaneki blinked at the scene before him, silently wondering to himself what exactly he was looking at, as he retraced all the steps it took for him to get in this situation.
The half ghoul had just finished his daily sparring session with Weiss and as they made their way back to their dorms, he decided to do something that he had been thinking about doing ever since the sessions first began: offer to make her a cup of coffee.
Ever since she first agreed to become his sparring partner, he felt the overwhelming need to do something to pay her back for her efforts. He wasn't good at much. Other than fighting and reading, all he could really do, or rather, do well, was make coffee and he had seen her stealing glances at the coffee-brewing set Ozpin gave to him, so he assumed that she had some interest in what he was going to be doing with it and that prompted him to make the offer.
She seemed to be reluctant at first, but she eventually came around to the idea after some gentle coercing-gentle meaning: implying that it'd be one of the best cups of coffee she ever had-on his part.
So, instead of going with their original plan of heading back to team RWBY's room, Weiss pulled out her scroll to inform the rest of her teammates that the two of them would be making a quick detour to his room, a spare storage closet provided to him by Ozpin that the academy wasn't using, and they were off to the only private place he had in Remnant.
Like always, the walk back to Beacon was one that was made in almost complete silence. Conversation would occasionally spark between them, usually something about that happened when they were sparring, but they were almost always quick and unsubstantial, to the point that literally nothing that was said was at all worth mentioning again.
Not that he really minded anyway. It at least saved him from any more lectures on her part.
Eventually, the two of them reached his room and when he went to unlock the door to his room, Ken was surprised to find that it was somehow already unlocked, which immediately put him on edge due to him distinctly remembering having had locked it before he left for the day.
Now thinking that someone had broke into his room, the half ghoul reached for the doorknob, turned it slowly and pushed it open with his body pressed up against the wood, all the while peeking through the crack the opening door made he did so. He already knew that someone was inside. The last thing he wanted to do was manage to still be caught off guard by whoever it was. That would flat out be embarrassing.
When his eyes caught glimpse of who it was who actually broke into his room, the victim in the situation found his body going through a strange progression of states upon finding out who broke into his room. At first, he felt all his muscles clench up in response to seeing the figures of people, but they all quickly relaxed themselves when he realized that he knew who those figures belonged to. Then after that, the only muscles in his body that moved were the ones in his face, which had contorted to form an expression that he hoped accurately portrayed how baffling he found the sight before him to be.
There, standing dead center in the middle of his room, which was about half/a third of the size of the standard dorm room, were two very familiar faces.
The older and blonder of the two was wearing a mask that seemed to be made entirely out of cardboard and a thin piece of string, which had been altered in a way that made it look like a crude approximation of a DeathStalker's faceplate. The other and much younger of the two was wearing a mask, his mask to be exact, while eight, triangular-shaped pieces of cardboard, all of which painted black, stuck out from the small of her back. Kaneki, who was standing at his doorway with his mouth slightly slack jawed, realized who the two of them were almost immediately.
With the two half-sisters staring at him, an awkward silence began to permeate the air.
"Hey, why are you just standing there?" Weiss asked him, her voice irritated as he heard her footsteps move from directly behind him to right next to him. "I don't have all day, you… know…" Just like him, whatever thought was going through her head was forced to a dead stop when she saw what he had. "…um, what's going on here?"
The two parties of two stared at each other in complete and utter silence. Neither of them moved, nor did they blink. They just started at each other before, finally, Ruby decided to break the standoff.
"Uh… we can explain."
"…so that's basically what happened," Yang finished explaining with a cheery smile, her body bouncing up slightly as she clapped her hands onto her sides.
"Alright, so let me get this straight," Weiss began as she massaged the bridge of her nose slowly. "The three of you, after noticing that I hadn't come back to the room at the time I usually do, decided to come here and ask Kaneki if he knew where I was."
"Yep," the two half-sisters, who were still wearing the costumes they created, said in complete unison with one another. They even nodded at the same time.
"And then, after seeing that Kaneki wasn't here, thought it best to wait here and see if we were just running later than usual?" the heiress pressed on with her questioning, her tone remaining a consistent level of irritation throughout. "But, after a while the two of you got bored and decided that the two of you would try and reenact his fight with the DeathStalker?"
"Yeah, pretty much."
"Ugh… why am I not surprised?" the impromptu interogator grumbled to herself as she shook her head in what Kaneki assumed was resignation. Turning her head to look at him, she proceeded to cross her arms over her chest and ask, "Well, did you have any questions you wanted to ask them?"
"Just one," the half ghoul stated as he pushed himself off the wall he was leaning on, uncrossing his own arms as he did so. "How exactly did the three of you get in here? I distinctly remember locking the door when I left to go to class in the morning and I don't ever recall giving any of you a key, so unless any of you know how to pick—"
"—oh, yeah, that!" Team RWBY's resident livewire cut him off in her usual energetic manner. "Blake over there picked the lock for us."
As she said that, the blonde pointed a thumb over her shoulder as she said that, which prompted him to lean over so that he could look at what exactly she was pointing at. There, sitting on the foot of his bed with her back pressed up to the wall, reading a book and generally acting as though the four of them weren't even in the room as her, was Blake.
At the mention of her name, Blake looked up from aforementioned book, turned her head towards where they stood and gave them a quick wave, though all she actually did was raise her hand into the air for a second or two, of acknowledgement, before immediately returning her attention back onto what she was doing.
Well, I guess that explains that, the half ghoul thought to himself with a singular blink of his eyes, letting out a sigh before he started walking towards the wooden desk that sat next to the wall opposite of his bed–on it sat all of the things he needed to do what he had brought Weiss here to do in the first place. I better start boiling some water for Weiss's coffee.
"Um… Are we in trouble?" Ruby asked as a single bead of sweat ran down the side of her pale forehead, her voice coming out extremely muffled due to the mask that was covering her mouth. The way she spoke reminded him greatly of a child who had been caught with their hand in the proverbial cookie jar. He thought it was adorable.
"No," he answered flatly, shaking his head lightly as he reached his desk. Flipping on the electric kettle that Ozpin had been kind of enough to supply him with, he turned towards his young superior, subconsciously leaned his weight onto aforementioned desk and crossed his arms over his chest, flashing her an understanding smile. "Just make sure you have someone message me before you decide to break into my room, alright?"
The fifteen year old let out a relieved sigh at his words, which made him assume that she was probably expecting him to be angry with her, though that show of relief didn't last very long as a second later it turned into one of curiosity. "So how about you two?" She asked, her voice displaying that curiosity. "Why were the two of you so late anyways?"
"We just lost track of the time, is all," the half ghoul explained, having to raise the volume of his voice as the high-pitched ringing of steam escaping from the already mentioned kettle started to ring out through the room.
"Right, Weiss?" He turned his gaze toward aforementioned heiress as he asked that, meaning for her to confirm what he just said, but instead of her looking at him like he expected, he found her staring over at his bed with a visibly troubled expression. "Weiss?"
"Um, is no one going to question how exactly Blake knows how to pick a lock?" his sparring partner asked in a low whisper, probably doing so to make sure the person she was talking about didn't hear her, her tone making it aggressively clear that she thought that the fact that no one was questioning it to be absurd.
"Well, of course we asked," Yang huffed with a light indignation to her voice as she planted her hands onto her hips and leaned forwards, toward the heiress, lowering her own voice to match Weiss. Turning her eyes away, over to where the subject of their conversation sat, she added in a low, under-the-breath grumble, "It's just that she didn't answer us when we did."
"And none of you found that to be the least bit suspicious?" the salt-haired girl deadpanned.
"Well yeah, but if she doesn't want to talk about it, what do 'ya want me to do?" the blonde teen replied with a small shrug of her shoulders as she straightened herself out. "It's not like I can just beat it out of her."
Weiss glanced over towards her bow-wearing teammate and stared at her with a look that made it look as if she was contemplating something, before she finally crossed her arms over her chest and released what had to be her millionth sigh of the day. "Yeah, I guess you're right," she relented, much to the shock of everyone listening. Well, everyone other than Kaneki, who had witnessed her do something similar the day she learned about his true nature.
I should probably change the subject before things start getting out of hand, Kaneki thought to himself right as the kettle had stopped emitting sound, which meant that the water had finally came to a boil. He smiled at the coincidence. Huh… That was convenient.
"So, on a much lighter note," the salt hair began as he started to walk back over to his desk, intending to unpack all the things he would need. The act gained the attention of everyone other than Blake, who was, unsurprisingly, still reading her book. "How do you take your coffee, Weiss?"
"Black is fine," the heiress answered after a moment of hesitation on her part, which surprised him slightly.
During his several month long stint as a waiter at Anteiku, he found that most customers around Weiss's age disliked the taste of pure black coffee due to the inherent bitterness and often opted to put things like sweeteners, milk, etc. into their coffee to help soften the taste. Hell, there were still some adults who couldn't handle the taste.
Then again, now that he thought about it, Weiss was born into a substantially more wealthy family than most, so it would make sense to assume that her palette was a little more refined than someone born into your average, everyday Japanese family.
"Got it," the half ghoul stated with a small nod before putting himself to work on the coffee.
Pulling open a drawer in his desk, he looked for, located, and pulled a small plastic bag filled with dark-roast coffee grinds out from inside it. With a light pull, the bag opened up and allowed a bitter-sweet aroma to seep out from it. A smile tugged on the corner of his lips in response to it. He loved the smell. It reminded him of better times.
Sidestepping over to the metal stand holding a paper, water filter over an awaiting coffee pot, Ken tipped and shook a small portion of the bag's contents into said filter. Upon pouring in a sufficient amount, he reached over to the kettle sitting at the edge of his desk and picked it up by its handle, before proceeding to pour the newly boiled water into the pile of grinds slowly, but not too slowly, in a circular motion.
A wave of nostalgia ran over him as he watched the steaming water hit the little mountain of crushed beans and dampen them. Seeping through the pile and the paper filter, the water began to collect in the middle of the aforementioned filter, slowly gaining more and more mass before finally dropping down inside the pot.
The moment the first drop of that deep-brown, almost black liquid appeared, the half ghoul found his mind wandering back to his days at Anteiku. The energetic chatter of teenage girls filling the air, the sight of someone sequestering themselves off into a little corner with a book, the smell of freshly-brewed coffee permeating the air, the peaceful atmosphere that held the heart like a pair of a mother's hand…
Those were all things that he experienced daily at Anteiku. So much so that, at some point, they had become classified as mundane happenings to him, which was ironic, as he constantly found himself yearning to have them back.
Kaneki would never be able to describe just how much he wanted to return to those days, where he got to work alongside people who had gradually become something akin to a surrogate family to him, but he knew that he'd never be able to go back to those days, especially not now that he was in Remnant.
Irimi… Koma… Manager…
Those were the names of his coworkers at Anteiku, the names of his friend—No, his family. They were also the names of the people whose lives he failed to save…
…
Subconsciously knowing that the pot before him would overflow if he continued to pour water into it, Kaneki stopped the flow of water coming from the kettle's spout and allowed whatever remained to make its way down into the pot, before setting the kettle back down onto the desk. Reaching for a white porcelain cup/dish combination that he had prepared earlier to receive his work.
Taking the pot by its handle with his other, freer hand, the half ghoul poured it into aforementioned cup until it was three-quarters full.
Silently and like he had done so many times over all those months ago, the salt hair picked the cup and dish combination up off the wooden desk by the latter, and made his way over to his awaiting teammate, who was now standing by Ruby and Yang–who were both staring at him with a look that showed both confusion and curiosity.
Ken handed it to the heiress when he finally reached her and unconsciously flashed her that smile-the same one that he'd wear whenever he'd give a customer their order. Catching a glimpse of aforementioned smile in the reflection of the coffee as she took the steaming beverage from him, he briefly remembered how much effort it took for him to be able to use it at will.
The smile couldn't be too forced or too lax, nor could it be too professional or friendly. It took him weeks of practicing in the mirror to get right and even then, it took him even more time to get used to using it in a public setting. It seemed like it would be so easy at first, but he quickly found the opposite to be true.
Actually, it reminded him of his current predicament.
Kaneki, just like he would all those months ago, waited patiently with his arms crossed behind his back as he watched Weiss bring the cup up to her lips. She took a moment to blow on the steaming liquid, before taking a small sip of it. It only took a second longer for him to know her opinion of it.
Pale blue eyes widening, a small smile of satisfaction found its way onto her face as the heiress placed the cup back down onto the dish in her other hand.
"So, what do you think?" Kaneki asked her, although he was partially sure that he knew what she thought of it.
"It's very good, not the best that I've ever had mind you," she stated in a business-like manner, before suddenly stopping, probably to sound a little more dramatic if he had to guess as to why. "It's definitely in the top ten though. Maybe even the top five."
"Wow, I'm impressed, short-stuff," Yang commented, blinking as she did so, using a tone that held a hint of surprise in her voice. "You actually managed to breach the princess' top ten."
"Thank you," he replied while he subconsciously giving the two of them a nod that was demanded of someone of his position, and then turned his attention onto Yang. "Would you two care to try some? I have enough left for everyone."
"Really?" the blonde asked, her tone surprised. "Well…turning down an offer from a friend would be rude so…" she trailed off with a not so subtle, faux reluctance in her voice as she rubbed her chin. "Sure, I'll take a cup!"
"Oh, um… C-could I get a cup too?" Ruby chimed in suddenly.
"Two cups of coffee, coming right up," the white-haired ghoul stated without a second's hesitation, moving back to his desk to prepare his other teammates' orders. Suddenly remembering that there were four members of team RWBY, other than himself, in the room with him, he stopped in his tracks, looked over to where Blake sat on his bed and called out to her, "Hey Blake! Did you want a cup too?"
"Do you happen to have tea?" Was her response. Again, she didn't look up from her book.
"Um… No. I don't think—"
"—Then I'm good."
Ah, well, I guess that means I get to have a cup then, Kaneki thought to himself as he resumed his quest to get said cups, smiling to himself awkwardly. Reaching his desk, he opened the same drawer from earlier and found the three other cups Ozpin had given to him, and set them out onto the desk, lining them up in a straight line so that he could fill them more efficiently.
"Hey Kaneki, did you use to work in a cafe or something?" Ruby asked him as he began distribute the rest of the coffee. "You seem pretty used to this sort of stuff."
"Pft! That's a funny sight," Weiss commented off-handedly as she took another sip of her coffee.
Yang nodded her head. "Yeah, it'd be rather hard to picture short-stuff working a job as boring as being a waiter," she agreed with the heiress, doing so for the first time that the half ghoul's seen.
Letting out a light chuckle, Kaneki made sure to finish filling the last cup of coffee before turning and regarding the blonde's question, "Well, I can't say that I don't understand what you mean." He shrugged as he picked up two of the three cups of coffee and began walking over to Ruby and Yang. "Though, the fact of the matter is that I did work at a cafe for a time."
"Wow. So you're saying that the guy who can kick a beowolf in a single kick used to work at a cafe?" Yang asked no one in particular as she took one of the coffee-filled cups from him. She sounded completely underwhelmed by the fact. "Wow… That's really lame."
"Yang! Don't be rude!" her younger half-sister scolded her older sister before turning back to him, shaking her hands out in front of her embarrassedly. "I-I'm sure that working as a waiter can be a plenty exciting job! Right?"
Ken couldn't hold back the amused snort that came from him. "No, Yang's right. Working there could get pretty boring at times," he affirmed Yang's statement as he gave Ruby her own cup. "I loved working there nonetheless."
Sensing another question rising up inside the young girl, Kaneki immediately began to explain what exactly he loved about the job as he went back to the desk to retrieve his own coffee. "It wasn't your ordinary cafe though." He explained as he walked, "It was the kind of place where you could walk in and feel like your first time, was your hundredth if you get what I mean."
"There were times where the place seemed so peaceful, that I questioned whether not the outside world existed," he continued as he pressed the cup in his hand to a pained smile he hadn't noticed before, tipping it back and taking a sip of the liquid inside before leaning his body weight onto the desk behind him. "Considering what was going on in my life at the time… I suppose that was a good thing."
"Um… What do you mean?" The question left his team leader's mouth as she pulled his mask away from her face, revealing a look of concern. "What was going on at the time?"
Kaneki felt his entire body still the moment that question hit his ears. Cursing to himself silently, he glanced up from the brown liquid in his cup and shifted them around the room. Sure enough, he could feel the same question lingering on the others' lips. The way they were looking at him told him that much.
Dammit… I said too much, he thought to himself in a self-deprecating tone, mentally slapping himself in the forehead for the blunder. Well, I guess it's too late to back out now… I might as well tell them.
"I'm sure you all probably already know this, but I wasn't born a ghoul…" Kaneki began, stopping for a moment to give the four a chance to stop him if what he was saying was new news to them.
"Yeah, Ozpin told us that you were turned into one by some crazy doctor after you got into an accident with one," Blake summarized on everyone's behalf as she put her book down onto her lap.
Seeing no error in the girl's words, the half ghoul nodded his head and continued his explanation, "As you can probably guess, I didn't take the fact that I had been turned into a flesh-eating monster, that you were raised to hate from birth very well." His dull eyes fell back down to his cup and his reflection inside of it. "When I first found out… I was scared. None of the food I was eating would stay down and I hadn't eaten anything in over a week… I even tried to stabbing myself with a knife to test if it'd be able cut me… It wasn't able to." He took another sip of his coffee. "I was hungry and scared, and I wasn't sure if I'd be able to control myself… I couldn't even walk down the street without wanting to tear into someone."
"Thankfully, I was eventually found by the people who ran the cafe. They just so happened to be ghouls and were willing to teach me how to live a peaceful life as one," he began as he attempted to take another sip from his cup, but stopped when he realized that his cup was empty. He let out a small chuckle. "Even then, me still being half-human made it hard for me to feel like I really belonged. So, to have been able to work in a place like that-a place where the lines between human and ghoul were blurred-felt like a godsend to me."
The moment Kaneki finished with his story, he found himself immediately regretting having told it. Putting his cup down on the desk behind him, he looked up and was immediately met with the sight of all four of his teammates sending him pitying looks. Frowning to himself, he immediately moved to shift the topic to something less serious, but was stopped by the sound of the door to his room being suddenly pushed open-an act that caused everyone in the room to jump slightly.
All of them simultaneously turning their heads towards the door, they found Ozpin standing there, looking rather distressed for whatever reason.
"Ah, you're all here. Good," the headmaster began as he used a finger to push his glasses up the bridge of his nose. "I need to talk to you five about something urgent."
"Huh, what is it, Professor Ozpin?" Ruby asked him after taking a couple of moments to regain her bearings.
Ozpin took in a deep breath and answered her question, "Unfortunately, that's not something I can divulge in here, so I'm going to need the five of you to meet in my office in about an hour. I'll explain more there."
Without waiting for a response, the middle-aged headmaster turned on a heel and walked back out into the hallway.
Suddenly stopping, he and looked over his shoulder and added, "And make sure to bring a week's worth of clothing."
The group of five blinked and watched their headmaster turned to his right and walk out of sight. Looks of pure bewilderment spread across their faces.
-Chapter End-