Ello, men and women, and welcome to the latest installment of Tokyo Ghoul: Remnant. Under normal circumstances, I would've put something comedic here, but I, unfortunately, have an agenda I need to fulfill, so you're going to have to deal with me being serious (somewhat).

So, first things first… Recently, this story has finally reached one of the landmarks that I've dreamed of hitting ever since I started writing on this site: a follower count that reaches the thousands. You all can't believe the grind I had to go through just waiting for that number to hit four digits… At one point, it was stuck on the number 999 for, like, three whole days. The anticipation was killing me.

Next things next, if aren't already aware of it, I started writing a new story. One that's simply named: TG-R: Prism. It's basically an off-shoot of this story, where I delve into content that I cut from the main story for whatever reason, alternate plot lines, any side stories and also… *shifts eyes side to side warily* any lemons I decide to write. So, if any of those things interest you at all, then go check it out and look out for more content on it. I already have a five-thousand word chapter up, which contains a good amount of action and bloodshed.

Last things last, my beta-reader, FineChyna, has started her own Tokyo Ghoul/RWBY crossover. Please do me a favor and check it out. She's told me what to expect from it in the future and I think that it could really go places. It's called Glass Lilies, if you want some more quality TG/RWBY content, go check it out.

Also, I should probably tell you all before you start bitching about it in the reviews, she never asked me to give her a shout out, or anything like that. She was actually very adamant that I not do so. So much so, that she threatened to deal out some sort of punishment to me if I did. So… um, yeah. If I don't update in the next two months, you know what happened to me.

Anyways, let's get this story started while I'm still riding the high I got from hitting a thousand followers!

-Mandatory Disclaimer-

I'm really sick and tired of having to come up with things to put here. So, that's why I'm not going to put anything here.

-Chapter 13: Nurturer's Paradox-

Kaneki took a deep breath through his nostrils, reveling in the smell of the fresh, clean air that only the forest could provide. He smiled contentedly, letting out the same breath. When was the last time I did something like this? The half ghoul asked himself, staring up at the endless expanse of clear blue that lay up above him. An amused smirk crept on to his lips as he soon found himself answering his own question. However long it's been, it's been way too long.

Kaneki normally wasn't one to actively to search out alone time, but it had become rather hard to find some over the past few months, and even he needed some every once in awhile.

I should bring a book with me next time I come here, he noted idly as he took a moment to shut his eyes and just bask in the serenity of it all. God knows I'm going to be spending a lot of time out here until my arm grows back.

That was the plan that was given to him by Ozpin. He would be excused from all classes until either one of two criteria were met: either his arm fully regenerated, or a week passed without any sign that it could. Until then, he would be free to do anything he wanted, as long as it didn't involved a classmate or teacher that didn't already know of his ghoul nature. This left him with a lot of time to kill until his team got out of class. And unfortunately for him, that point was still several hours away as of the moment.

So, with nothing better to do, Kaneki repositioned his head on his forearm and allowed himself to be dragged down into sleep.

For some inexplicable reason, an overwhelming sense of dread welled up inside Kaneki's chest. It was a feeling he'd felt many times before, but this time it was completely different, mainly because there was absolutely no context for it. One moment, he was lying on a cliffside overlooking the Emerald Forest, reveling in the peaceful and quiet atmosphere it provided; the next, his chest felt like it was ready to cave in.

Wha-what the hell?! A million questions raced through his mind as he tried to force his eyes open, only to find that his eyelids absolutely refused to budge. It was almost as if there were some sort of outside force keeping them closed against his will.

"Excuse me."

A voice, one that sounded vaguely familiar to the Kaneki, called out to him. He instinctively stiffened at the sound of it. That voice… he thought, his mind filling with even more questions. Why does it sound so familiar? Who—?

"Excuse me…" The same voice cut off that train of thought. "Little boy, can I ask you a question?"

Kaneki was about to open his mouth to protest, but quickly realized that his mouth was also being extremely uncooperative. Fuck! He cursed angrily as he fought against whatever invisible chains bound him into paralysis. Why the hell can't I speak?!

As if doing so just to spite him, an answer slipped out from between his lips; however, it wasn't one he consented to giving. "Um, sure, go ahead. I don't know if I'm going to be that much help to you, though."

That voice… He recognized it almost immediately and felt the pounding in his chest lighten, just a bit. Is this another one of Haise's memories? It has to be… Why else would my voice be so high-pitched?

"You're going to be fine." Now that his panic had been subsided significantly, Kaneki was able to calm down and analyze the voice that was speaking to him. Almost immediately, he recognized that it most likely belonged to an adult woman. "The question is far from being a difficult one."

"Ah, o-okay then." He felt himself subconsciously nod as he unwillingly answered the question. "Go ahead and ask then."

"Is your name is Haise Sasaki?" As she asked that, Kaneki felt a wave of foreign confusion well up inside of him. His eyebrows furrowed, again without his consent, before his eyes slowly opened, revealing a pair of strangely blurry legs that were completely covered by long, black boots. Looking up, he found himself staring at an equally blurry face staring down at him. He couldn't completely make out what her expression was, due to whatever was obstructing his vision, but he could just somehow tell that she had been frowning at him impatiently.

The young Haise whose body he was currently inhabiting, most likely not knowing how else to answer an adult's question, nodded. "Um, yeah, that's me. Do you need something from me, Miss?"

"Why…" The woman trailed off, her impatient frown shifting over to one of clear confusion."Why are you crying?"

The younger version of Haise was more than ready to deflect the attempt to try and pry into his personal life. "D-don't worry about me Miss, I'm fine," he stated, wiping away some of the tears obscuring his vision with the sleeve of his shirt, eyes subconsciously turning down towards the floor after he did so. This made it impossible for him to see the woman's face. "I just took a nasty fall out of the tree, is all."

"You fell out of a tree without receiving a single bruise?" The woman countered. This, apparently, shocked the younger Haise, most likely because he was fully expecting the woman to just let the issue go, just like how all of the other caretakers would.

"U-uh—" he began to stutter out a response, but the woman cut him off before he could get out an answer.

"Does it have something to do with that girl I saw stomping away from here a couple of minutes ago?" The woman's question hit the nail right on the head, the accuracy leaving Haise completely speechless, which was a detail that the woman didn't fail to notice. "It does, doesn't it?"

Left without any other path to take, the young boy was forced to nod his head and answer truthfully. "Yeah."

The woman sighed, which didn't surprise Kaneki at all, but her next words did. "Wow, you kids sure are growing up fast these days. Not even nine years old yet and you're already getting into a lovers' spat."

Kaneki felt a familiar warmth grow on Haise's face as he stuttered back a response. "W-w-what? The two of us aren't anything like that!"

The woman let out a loud laugh-one that only made Haise blush even more. "Calm down, I was only joking," she told him, still coming off the tail end of the laugh.

"A-a-ah, s-s-sorry!" The warmth on the young boy's cheeks only worsened as his stuttering did. "I-I w-w-was just—"

The woman let out another laugh, but this time it was noticeably less powerful. "Come on, didn't I just tell you to relax? Calm down. I'm not gonna bite, I swear."

Kaneki quickly felt his mouth open once more. Knowing his younger self, he knew that Haise was probably going to try and apologize again, but before he could let another wave of stutters flow out from his mouth, the stranger before him cut off.

"Are you seriously going to apologize again?" She asked him, before letting out an impatient sigh. Kaneki felt his eyes widen at the sudden change in the woman's tone. At first, she spoke to him in a calm and understanding way-the same way one would expect the stereotypical mother to speak-but now, her tone was sharp and impatient. It was almost as if the earlier her had never been there to begin with-as if it was a figment of his imagination-which surprised him a great deal because everything she just did just seemed so genuine. "Right after I just told you it was alright?"

A foreign sense of fear suddenly spiked up inside of Kaneki when he heard the change in tone. It mixed with the already present feeling of suspicion that had been in him, ever since the woman appeared.

No doubt fearing a tongue lashing if he were to make a sound, Haise kept his mouth firmly shut and lowered his head even further, as if doing so would magically make his aggregator disappear.

Probably sensing the fear she instilled into him, the woman immediately went to perform damage control, but her attempt wasn't a very convincing one, since her tone sounded more tired than it did apologetic. "Look, I didn't mean to snap—"

"N-no, it's fine," Haise said, attempting to calm the woman's worries, even though he wasn't completely sure if they were genuine or not. There was just something about having a full grown adult woman expressing guilt towards him that just didn't sit right with Haise-a detail that didn't surprise Kaneki at all, given that the young boy didn't know a woman of any age who would actually do so. "I was just, uh, surprised by it, is all."

Kaneki felt no deceit coming from the memory's owner as that was said, which confirmed to him that what his younger counterpart was saying to be the truth, and not some attempt to try and get the unknown woman to calm down. Truth be told, he couldn't blame his dark-haired counterpart for being shocked by all that was going on. At that age, he'd probably be just as surprised.

For a few moments, the stranger didn't speak a word in reply. Instead, all she did was stand there for awhile, before eventually letting out a quiet sigh.

At first, Kaneki took the sigh as a sign that she was going to walk away, but was almost immediately proven wrong when he noticed that the footsteps he expected to hear weren't moving away from him like he had anticipated, but were moving to close the short distance between the two of them instead.

Instinctively looking up to see what the woman was doing, Kaneki found Haise staring at the cobblestone wall that stood next to the tree he was sitting under. Blinking at the empty space before him, Kaneki felt a foriegn wave of confusion wash over him, lasting until the second he felt something set itself down right next to him.

Head shooting over to where he felt the vibrations came from, both Haise and Kaneki were finally treated with their first good look of the woman they had been talking to. Haise blinked at the woman owlishly, but inside his mental prison, Kaneki's eyes widened at what he saw.

After seeing that she had Haise's attention, the woman opened her mouth, probably to say something to him, but whatever it was, never reached Kaneki's ears. Another voice suddenly came from where the woman sat, instantly knocking the lone intruder clean out of the memory and back into the present.

"Wake up!"

The moment Kaneki's eyes were pried open, he was immediately met with a mess of long blonde hair-and underneath, a face that had the cheekiest of grins spread across it.

"Morn-ing!" Yang singsonged the moment she saw his eyes snap open.

"Um…" The half ghoul blinked owlishly at his teammate, who was lying across from him, her head propped up on one of her hands. "Good morning?"

"Good to see that you've finally decided to wake up, sleeping beauty," Yang teased, suddenly shooting to her feet. "C'mon, the two of us need to get a moving," she told him, waving her hand in a 'get up' motion. "The other three are waiting for us at the room."

"Yeah…sure," Kaneki replied, moving to sit up. He reached a hand up to drag his fingers through his hair. "Just give me a second to, uh…to, uh, regain my bearings."

Yang immediately adopted a frown. "You alright?"

"Yeah," he answered, nodding. "I'm fine." He shook his head to try and dislodge the cobwebs from his brain. "You just, uh, caught me in the middle of a dream, is all."

"A good dream?"

A bit of a chuckle escaped from his mouth as he moved to pick himself up off the ground. "I'm not quite sure, really."

"Hm, well, that definitely didn't sound like you were trying to hide something from me at all," Yang replied, crossing her arms over her chest, her tone dripping with an all too familiar sarcasm. "So, I'm just going to completely drop the subject without questioning a single thing."

Kaneki couldn't help but laugh at that response. "Hey now," he said, voice full of mirth, "after all that I told you during my first days here, I think I deserve to be able to keep some secrets from you guys."

"Secrets, you say?" His ever-bombastic teammate perked up when he said that. "Could you possibly be talking about what you did on the day you went on that 'errand' a few days ago?"

"What do you mean?" Kaneki once again blinked owlishly at the girl before him.

"Oh, I just happened to hear from a mutual friend of our's that you happened to cross one another's paths while you were out. I was wondering what all that was about."

"I'm still not following you… Are you talking about the time I ran into Velvet a few days ago?" He asked, his tone confused. "How do you even know about that? Did she say something to you about it?"

"Well, I did say that it was 'mutual friend', didn't I?" She asked him, her tone cheeky and matter-of-fact. "And, it's not like you're in the top ten of any popularity polls at school right now, right?"

Kaneki could only let out a sheepish chuckle in response to that very clear stab at his person. "Yeah," he agreed, scratching at the back of his head. "Wait, how did something like that even come up in conversation anyways?"

"Oh, she came up to us in Oobleck's class today and asked where you were," Yang explained, her smile growing a tad bit bigger as she spoke. "She said something about wanting to say goodbye to you before she left on her mission."

"Ah, really?" Kaneki asked, leaving the guilt that stabbed his heart when he heard that on full display.

"Yeah, you should've seen her face when we told her that you were holed up in the infirmary," Yang stated, snickering a bit. "It was so freaking adorable!" The blonde clasped her hands together. "Her eyes got really wide and she started asking us if you were okay. Her ears even started to droop a bit!"

Damn, Kaneki cursed to himself, his mind quickly going to work, thinking up ways to make it up to his rabbit-eared friend when she got back. Still, despite his guilt, he couldn't help but smile a bit when the mental image of that event popped up in his head.

"But, now that I think about it, Blake's face when she heard that you and Velvet spent a day together was pretty adorable too," his teammate suddenly added, for no apparent reason. "For a second, her eyes got all big and then immediately tried hiding it by going into that mode."

Kaneki was initially confused as to what Yang was talking about when she said 'that mode', but a moment later, he soon realized what she was referring to. There were times where Blake would act completely against her nature. It happened every once in awhile, whenever she got really, really irritated, but the change was so drastic at times that it almost felt like he was talking to a completely different person.

"Ah, really?" Kaneki couldn't help but let that question slip from his mouth.

"Yep." Yang nodded. "She even started to mumble things under her breath. Said something along the lines of 'is that why his clothes smelled washed?', I think."

Kaneki couldn't help but blink owlishly in response to that. Not knowing how the two correlated with one— Ugh, dammit.

"Hey, Yang," Kaneki called out to his teammate as the two of them continued to make their way to where they were supposed to meet the rest of their team. "Could I ask you a question?"

Yang, who was walking slightly in front of him, glanced back over her shoulder at him. "Go right ahead, short-stuff. What do you need from big sister Yang?"

"But I'm two years older than you," Kaneki mumbled, before moving on to the question he was going to ask. "Anyways, why'd you guys decide to meet at my room? I thought we'd all be meeting at yours like we usually do."

"Team JNPR," she answered simply. "Didn't want to risk having them see you by accident."

"Oh, alright then." It was now his turn to answer something simply. "Any other reason you're just not telling me?"

"Well, I wasn't supposed to tell you this, but…" Yang trailed off as she put an index finger up to her lips, which made her give off an air of deep contemplation, "…we all sort of thought that you wouldn't want to leave your room."

"Huh? What gave you that impression?" he asked, genuinely not knowing what lead the four of them to that conclusion.

"Cut us some slack, will you?" She said, her voice harboring a mock defensiveness to it. "It's not like you've proven to be the most outgoing person in the world. We all just kind of thought that you'd rather spend the day in your room then out of it."

"True…" Kaneki conceded with a sideways nod of the head. "But still, I find your readiness to jump to that conclusion rather disheartening."

"Ah, you shouldn't worry about it too much," his teammate reassured him. "You being an almost shut-in makes us symmetrical personality wise."

The snowy-haired half ghoul raised an eyebrow. "What exactly does that mean?"

"Well, just think about it. Ruby and I are pretty outgoing; you and Blake are both homebodies; and Weiss's an in-betweener. Together, we have the base for a fully-functioning democracy!"

"Yeah, I guess you're right," Kaneki replied, letting out a quiet chuckle. "Though I can't help but feel like that's not the only reason…"

"What?" Yang let out an unconvincing gasp of shock. "Me? Lie to you? Never?!"

"…You could at least try to fool me," Kaneki muttered to himself, shaking his head in disbelief.

"Hey, I wouldn't be much of a role model if I lied to my younger brother like that, now would I?"

A full blown laugh escaped from Kaneki in response that statement. He didn't know when exactly Yang took it upon herself to act like an 'older sister' to him, but he ultimately decided not to question her antics. Her acting that way didn't hurt anyone, and besides, there was a part of him that was genuinely curious as to what it was like having an older sibling-a curiosity that was most likely fueled by his rather lonely upbringing.

"No," he stated, right as his laugh began to die down. "No, you wouldn't."

"Good! Now that you've finally accepted big sister Yang into your life, I can answer the question you just asked without feeling an ounce of guilt!"

Despite having just that said that she'd answer his question, his newly-minted, self-proclaimed older sister didn't say anything. That prompted the half ghoul to ask, "I thought you said—"

"Yeah, I did just say that, but, before I give you that answer, let me take a second to tell you the first rule of having an older sister." After she said that, Yang suddenly closed the distance between them, roughly draped an arm over his shoulders, and whispered right into his ear. "It's that the older sister is always allowed to play dirty."

With that, she pulled away from Kaneki and continued down the hallway at her earlier speed-an act that caused a bit of bitterness to grow in him, which caused the amused smile that was already on his lips to grow even bigger.

So, is this what having an older sister is like? He thought, moving to follow her. Maybe I should start questioning this whole big sister act.

Kaneki was, of course, joking when he thought that.

Kaneki didn't really know what he expected to find when he and Yang reached his room, but the absolute last thing he expected was to find that it was completely drenched with the smell of coffee. Well, his room did usually smell like coffee, but it usually never did so with him outside of it.

"Why—?" Kaneki began, but was immediately cut off by Yang, who shushed him into silence and ushered him towards the door with a series of light pushes to the small of his back. Realizing what she wanted him to do, he reached for the knob and pushed the door open. Almost immediately, the source of the smell was revealed to him.

There, standing huddled closely around his desk, were the other three members of team RWBY. He could just barely peek in between their bodies from where he stood in the doorway, but he could see that they were doing something with his coffee brewing set. Exactly what was unknown to him, though.

Fueled by the curiosity and the tiniest bit of worry that was welling up inside of him, Kaneki announced his presence to the three. "Hey, what are you guys doing?"

Since they were all so enraptured in doing what they were doing, the sound of his voice caused the three of them to flinch in shock. All of them did so in drastically varying manners.

Weiss's flinch was a very minimal one. One could say that she never even flinched at all. Blake's, on the other hand, was the very opposite of that. The moment he spoke, she jumped in the air like…well, like an unsuspecting cat noticing that there was a cucumber behind it for the first time. Ruby's was in between those two types, going with the classic flinch of the shoulders and high-pitched yelp.

Kaneki probably would've found the entire sight extremely humorous, if it wasn't for the fact that he was still curious about what exactly they were doing in the first place.

"A-ah, Kaneki!" Ruby exclaimed shakily, as she and the two next to her turned towards him. "Y-you finally made it!"

Confused, Kaneki blinked owlishly. "Um, yeah, I made it…" He replied. He walked over to where the three stood and asked, "So, what were you guys doing with my coffee set?"

"Um…" Ruby began, stealing a couple of glances at the two girls standing around her, who both glanced back at her with concerned gazes.

Why do I feel like they broke something? Kaneki asked himself, trying to peer over his teammates and look at his coffee set. Might as well get this over with…

The moment he began doing so, Ruby immediately moved to stop him. "Kaneki, I swear it's not what you think!" She exclaimed, throwing herself in front of him, probably to try and stop him from seeing the shattered remnants of his coffee set. Luckily for her, he wasn't about to even contemplate trying to run through her over something so petty and immediately stopped dead in his tracks, which prompted a relieved sigh from his teammate.

"Look, you three," Kaneki began, reaching up and scratching the side of his head. "If you broke—"

"Ruby's telling you the truth, Kaneki," Blake cut in suddenly, drawing his attention almost immediately. "Trust me, we didn't break anything."

"Oh, so why were you all acting like—" he started to ask before being cut off once more, this time by Yang, who once again slung her arm over his shoulders as she spoke.

"It was because they were working on a surprise for your lonely butt," she explained to him like a mother chastising their child. "And, you know, I may be real off base here, but I'm sure they kind of wanted it to surprise you with it."

"Oh." The word slipped from Kaneki's mouth the moment Yang finished her explanation and not a moment later, he frowned guiltily. "Ah, sorry." Subconsciously, he immediately went to apologize for his mistake. He also would've scratched the back of his head too, but his arm was currently being pinned to the side of his body by his self-proclaimed older sister figure. "My bad."

"It's fine," Weiss waved his concern off both in a figurative sense and a literal sense as she waved her hand, much like a noblewoman shooing away one of her servants. "It's not like we needed it to be a surprise anyways." She shot a glare at Yang and added, "Though, some help keeping it a surprise certainly would've been appreciated."

The blonde let out an awkward laugh. "Hey, in my defense, you never told me to try and stall for time. All you said was to go and get Kaneki."

"Still, some of us might've thought that much was pretty self-explanatory," Blake chimed in flatly.

"Hey, why are you suddenly on her side?" Yang shot back incredulously. "Is it because you're still huffy about earlier?"

Blake leveled a glare at her blonde-haired partner. "I thought we agreed to not speak about that in front of him."

"'Huffy'?" Kaneki repeated the word immediately, his tone carrying the confusion he currently felt.

"It's not—" Blake began to say, but Yang cut her off before she could finish.

"—nothing you need to worry your little head about, short-stuff," Yang finished for her dark-haired partner, playfully slapping Kaneki between his shoulder blades.

A confused frown formed on his face after he heard her say that. What in the world are they talking about? He began to cycle through every possibility, but eventually, he found that train of thought running straight into a dead end when he realized that he didn't even know where to begin. Despite that, he still found himself curious to learn what Blake and Yang were talking about.

But, before he could delve any further into the topic, his attention was grabbed by something that poked him lightly in the left bicep.

Turning towards aforementioned side, he soon found himself staring into the lively silver eyes of a certain young girl. He opened his mouth to ask her what she wanted, but he soon found himself being cut off when she grabbed him by the top of his left arm and pulled on it.

"Come on, Kaneki," Ruby instructed him, in a way that made it seem like she was just barely able to hold in her excitement. "Weiss and I'll show you the surprise." She pulled on his arm once more before adding, "I swear that you're gonna love it!"

"He better," Kaneki heard Weiss mutter under her breath. "I swear if I find out that all of my hard work went to waste…" He gulped a bit at that.

Seeing no other option but to comply with the demands of his team leader, Kaneki gave her a nod and allowed himself to be pulled along to wherever she wanted to bring him, which was most likely to his desk, with Weiss in tow, leaving Blake and Yang to continue their standoff.

As they began making their way towards their destination, which did indeed happen to be in the general direction of his desk, he felt a shock run through him when the entire room suddenly went dark. He would have thought that he had gone blind if it wasn't for the fact that he could feel something soft on his head-probably some kind of fabric if he had to guess.

"Is all of this really necessary?" He asked the two leading him to their destination.

"Yes!" Ruby groaned, with much more energy than he first expected. "It'll spoil the surprise if we just let you see what it is as we walk up."

"Fair point," he replied with a nod of his head, conceding his defeat to the fifteen year-old girl currently leading him somewhere with a series of light pulls on the arm.

Well, at least this isn't the first time something like this has happened, he thought to himself idly.

The walk to their destination, of course, didn't take very long at all. Really, it only took him a few moments to find himself being stopped once again.

"Alright, here we are," Ruby told him, forcing him to a stop with another pull of the arm. "Now, I'm going to take the sheet off your head on the count of three." He nodded in response to that statement, which prompted her to begin the countdown. "One…two…three!"

The moment she reached three, Kaneki felt someone pull off the fabric that covered his head. When he was finally allowed to see again, the first thing he saw was his desk and the three porcelain cups displayed out on top of it in a perfect triangle. All three of were filled with an all too familiar dark brown liquid.

For whatever reason, it took him a few seconds for him to fully comprehend what he was being presented with. "What…?" he began, but trailed off when he found himself lacking the words to continue.

"Well, what do you think?" Weiss asked him, standing next to him with her arms crossed over her chest and quick with an explanation. "We thought that you could do with a little pick-me-up after all that happened at the docks and, since you drink more of the stuff than Professor Oobleck, we all agreed that the best way was to make you some coffee."

Kaneki blinked owlishly at Weiss, while simultaneously letting that explanation linger in his mind before finally giving her an answer.

"U-uh, yeah," he stuttered, an all too familiar warmth growing in his chest, an equally as warm smile growing alongside of it. "I love it, actually." That elicited a small smile from his sparring partner.

"Good," Weiss stated, nodding once, which prompted a certain someone on his right to clear her throat. "Oh, by the way, I'm sort of obligated to tell you that this was all Ruby's idea and that all of the credit for this goes to her."

"Wait," Kaneki said, furrowing his brows in confusion, "what does that have to do with any—?"

"She's under the impression that she can get you to give her a better score for the contest," Weiss cut in, which prompted him to turn his attention back on to his team leader, who was currently looking up at him with an ever-so innocent smile spread across her lips. "If you knew that she was the one who came up with this idea, that is."

Kaneki found himself blinking owlishly for what felt like the hundredth time in response to Weiss's explanation. "Um, wait, what was this about a contest?" He asked Ruby.

"Oh, yeah, I can't believe I completely forgot to tell you!" Ruby answered, her tone coming off as bashful. "The three of us were having a hard time figuring out who should be the one to make the coffee and after watching these two argue about it for a while," she glanced over at Weiss and then at Blake-who, at some point, stopped glaring at Yang and focused her attention over at the three of them at the desk-before finishing her explanation, "I thought that it'd be fun to have a contest to see who could make the best cup."

Ah, so that explains why there are three cups instead of just the one, Kaneki thought to himself with a bit of relief, since it was a question he had been a mulling over for quite awhile now. Though, that does bring up the question of why the two of them would even argue about something like that in the first place…

That wasn't to say that Blake and Weiss never argued about anything. No, in all actuality, the opposite rang true, but he never thought that they'd argue about something that nonsensical. Their opinion on how the Schnee corporation used Faunus labor? Sure, because that made sense given their circumstances, but to argue about something like who would be the one to make him a cup of coffee? It made him wonder about how deep the tension ran between the two after what had happened at the docks, and if it had to done anything to cause the argument.

Making a note to ask Ruby about it before she left, Kaneki forced a smile. "Well, I definitely wouldn't want your hard work to go to waste…"

Kaneki felt himself swallow hard when he put the last of the three cups down before him; and wasn't just because of the fact that he still had a mouthful of coffee in his mouth. It was also partially due to the daggers that were being stared into the back of his head by the three competing in the contest he was being forced to judge.

Why did I even agree to this again? he asked himself before letting out a regretful sigh. Oh yeah, it's because I don't know how turn down Ruby.

It was a fact that became extremely clear to him after the first time he got pressured into doing something by Ruby and her cuteness. He could remember it like it was yesterday. One moment, he was walking into the school library to check out a few books; the next, he was guiding Ruby through what they were taught in literature class a few hours earlier.

At the time, he wasn't too surprised by the fact she was having trouble with the subject matter. She was skipping two years ahead, after all, so suddenly having to deal with high school level material was probably a jarring experience for her. So, feeling a bit of pity for his young team leader, he had moved to help her.

Kaneki wouldn't necessarily call that decision a mistake, but he'd be remiss to say that he didn't find the endeavor just a little bit frustrating. It wasn't like Ruby was an especially unwilling student. She was always eager to go through the material that had been assigned to them, but she constantly struggled to pull out any of the core themes from said material. A problem that had only been exacerbated by her habit of taking things at face value. It took him a good while, but he did eventually manage to get her to understand what he was explaining to her.

Kaneki couldn't help but smile in response to the memory. The reaction he got from Ruby when they reached their first breakthrough really was priceless. Then again, having to spend over an hour going over the same material over and over again would do that to a fifteen year-old as energetic as she tended to be.

Still, all of that was really besides the point. After that initial tutoring session, Ruby got into the habit of asking him to help her with those literature assignments. He personally didn't mind doing so for the first few times, but he eventually began to worry about her using him as a crutch after the sixth time it happened. Yet, despite feeling that way, he couldn't bring himself to say anything about it to her. A decision that he largely attributed to the fact that tutoring her reminded him of a lot of when he'd help Hinami read through Sen Takatsuki's novels.

Of course, that inaction probably lead Ruby to think that he'd be willing to help her with any problem she couldn't solve on her own, which, thankfully, sounded a lot worse than it actually was in reality. She would only ever ask him to help her when she really needed it. That was greatly attributed to her title as team leader and her desire to live up to the billing. Again though, all of that was besides the point. The point being that he could never say 'no' to her.

"So what do you think, Kaneki?" The voice of the very girl he was thinking about rang out in the air, breaking him from his thoughts almost immediately. "Have you decided on a winner yet?"

"Quiet, you," Weiss snapped at her partner, though one could tell that she was holding back quite a bit when she said that. "Give him a minute to think. He's never going to be able to decide, if you're pestering him the entire time."

Ruby's mouth opened, probably to say something in protest to the impromptu lecture, but was cut off by a certain someone who had chosen to keep silent for the entirety of the tasting process.

"Yeah…" Blake said, pausing mid-sentence to let out a sigh, "…Weiss is right." She gave an uncharacteristically uncertain-looking nod. "I'm sure he'd get done a lot faster if you were to let him think."

Hm… Kaneki thought to himself, narrowing his eyes at her in concern. He decided against saying anything about it, already knowing how bad of an idea it would be to drag whatever was bothering her out on to the surface. The last thing he wanted to do was distress her, after all. Especially if there was nothing to drag out in the first place.

"No, it's fine," Kaneki cut into the discussion, waving off his friends' concerns both verbally and physically while he shook his head slowly. "Sorry, I just lost myself in thought there. I did decide on the winner though, if you all were curious."

In the end, he found choosing a winner to be an extremely simple affair, especially since all of them tasted so different from one another in terms of quality. Only one of them tasted bad, only one of them tasted middle of the road, and only one of them really hit it out of the ballpark. He could distinguish the best one from the three in less than a second, actually.

"Sweet!" Ruby exclaimed with a triumphant undertone to her voice that he couldn't help but notice. "So which one did you think was the best?"

He couldn't help but note the particular way his leader phrased her question. The way she said it implied that he'd have to choose from the three cups instead of the three contestants, which was pretty much what he was going to have to do because of a certain rule that they told him to follow.

To remove any bias from the competition, he wouldn't be allowed to know who made what cup. He had to admit that it was a smart rule to implement, but he couldn't help but think that the three of them were taking things way more seriously than needed. Maybe there's a prize I'm not aware of? He theorized offhandedly, before shrugging and giving his answer with as little as grandeur as possible.

"This one," Kaneki answered, pointing at the cup he had just put down, making sure to speak with very little hesitation. "This one here is the best."

"Yes!" Weiss exclaimed triumphantly next to him, which prompted him to turn his head towards the apparent winner of the contest, thus allowing him to see her in mid-jump. "Ha! I told you two that I would win!"

Perplexed by the sudden outpouring of emotion from his usually composed sparring partner, Kaneki couldn't help but stare at her in shock, all the while wondering about what exactly they put on the line to warrant such emotion.

"Ok, ok, we get it," Ruby told her partner, her tone crestfallen while proceeding to hang her head with equal sullenness. "You're better at making coffee than us…" She crossed her arms over her chest as she huffed, "You don't have to rub it in, y'know?"

Still utterly baffled about what exactly was going on, Kaneki glanced over at Blake to ask her, and found her staring down at the cups on the table with a determined pair of amber eyes. Her arms were crossed-one gripping her chin, the other her elbow. "Hey, uh… Blake," he said softly, hesitating a slight bit because of his reluctance to snap her from her thoughts. "Is everything alright?"

As expected, the sudden calling out of her name was enough to shake her from both her thoughts and the pose she had been holding.

"Ah…um, yeah," Blake replied, her eyes never leaving the desk. "Ev-everything's fine," she stuttered out, while nodding her head once. "My mind was a little preoccupied there." A little smile crawled on to her lips as she sent the driest of quips his way. "Something I'm sure you're more than familiar with."

Kaneki hummed amusedly, before asking, "So, which one was yours?"

"H-huh?" His friend noticeably flinched at the sudden change in topic, which elicited another hum from the young man.

"What?" Kaneki asked in response to the bewildered expression she was directing towards him. "I thought you'd want to know how you did." He then proceeded to flash her an apologetic smile after realizing his mistake. "You don't have to have to answer if you don't want to, of course, but seeing that you were staring at the cups so intently…"

"Uh…" She trailed off as her eyes adverted themselves from him and her hands suddenly busied themselves with hugging her elbows, something he took as a clear sign to not press the issue any further.

"Oh, just tell him which cup was yours, already!" Yang cut in suddenly, her voice coming in the form of a frustrated groan, though the reason for her frustration was completely beyond him. "I mean, it's not like you have anything to lose by telling him, right?"

While Kaneki appreciated the help his self-proclaimed older sister figure was trying to give him, the last thing he wanted to do was make Blake feel like he was pressuring into giving an answer. He immediately moved to reassure her that an answer wasn't necessary. "Like I said, you don't have to—"

"No, it's fine," Blake interrupted him, her tone still managing to sound dry, despite the fluster that had appeared on her face at the same time. "You just caught me off-guard," she mumbled, jerking her head in the direction of the three cups. "It's the one on the top-left, by the way."

When those last two words slipped from her mouth, Kaneki felt the entirety of the world freeze around him. Every muscle in his body felt as though someone had encased them in industrial-grade cement, which immediately began to contrast with the thin sheen of sweat that suddenly made its way on to his forehead.

His reaction must've been noticeable, because he soon got Blake waving her hand in front of his face while asking him, "Um, Kaneki, you alright?"

"Y-yeah," Kaneki instinctively stuttered. "I'm fine. Nothing wrong here at all." He inwardly groaned at his own stupidity when he heard that last sentence slip out from his mouth.

Ah, no… As he thought that little admission of regret, the sudden urge to take his head and slam it against his desk multiple times over began to well up inside of him. Why did I say that last part? Could there be anything more suspicious to say after a question like that? I might as well just screamed out that there's something—!

"Ah, I knew it," That statement, which was immediately followed by an exasperated sigh, coming from Blake's mouth forced his earlier train of thought to a dead stop. "You didn't like it, did you?"

Kaneki, not knowing how to answer without feeling as though he was hurting her feelings, simply smiled at her apologetically, eliciting another sigh from her.

"Look," Blake began slowly, making it sound like she was trying to speak to a child. "I appreciate that you don't want to hurt my feelings, but you already know how I feel about being treated like a porcelain doll." Despite her obvious irritation with him and his apparent coddling, she still somehow managed to speak in her usual dry tone. "If you want to say something to me, then just go ahead and say it."

Kaneki felt his heart skip a beat after hearing her say that, as it briefly dug up memories of the night she was referring to, and the emotion that seeing her cry drew out of him. It was definitely a jarring sight to see to say the least.

Still, she managed to push whatever emotions that ruled over her that night down and talk to him like there was nothing wrong at all. That in itself should've been enough to teach him that she wasn't someone who needed words minced for her sake. Actually, thinking back on some of the conversations they had during their investigation, he seemed to have taken those words to heart, but at some point during the past few days, he had forgotten that lesson.

I'm starting to see why Touka liked to call me an idiot all the time, he joked to himself. He smiled apologetically, scratching the back of his head. "S-sorry about that," Kaneki apologized.

"It's fine," Blake waved off his concerns dryly before flashing him a reassuring smile. "Just make sure you remember it this time, alright?" He nodded his head in response to that request, doing so with no hesitation as to prove his seriousness to her. "Good, so what did you think of my coffee?" she asked him, which only elicited the same apologetic smile from him.

"Um…Blake?" Kaneki said worriedly. Blake ignored him, staring at her empty cup of coffee, just like she had been doing for the past five minutes. "Is everything alright?"

"Kaneki," Ruby whispered to him while leaning his way, her voice containing the same amount of worry that he had in his. "I think you broke her."

"Broke her and a half," Yang added on to her half-sister's previous statement whilst nodding her head in agreement.

"Yeah, definitely broken," Weiss tacked on with a sigh after the blonde. "And to think, all that it took was Kaneki telling her that her coffee was the worst one of the three."

Kaneki couldn't help but let out a sheepish chuckle at that. Never in a million years did he think that the answer he gave would lead to a reaction like this. Maybe I was too harsh on her? He pondered her reasoning to himself, as he was still genuinely confused as to what caused the reaction that he was currently witnessing. No, that couldn't be it… Could it? All I said was that I thought that the taste of her coffee was way too strong…

"Should we, like, snap her out of it?" Ruby asked, immediately snapping him out of his thoughts.

"Yeah, most definitely," her partner answered with a nod of her head. "She'll be like this for days if she spaces out anything like Kaneki."

The young man in question was half-tempted to retort to the heiress's quip, but was cut off before he could decide whether he wanted to or not.

"Alright, so what are you waiting for, short-stuff?" Yang asked, nudging him in the side with her elbow. "Go snap her out of her little trance. You're the one who put her in it first place, after all."

"Uh… alright then." Kaneki nodded, already knowing that there was no way he could argue with Yang when she actually had logical reasoning before her actions. He found doing so when she didn't have logic on her side a hard enough task as it was.

So, without uttering a single word, he walked over to Blake, reached out, placed his hand on to the closest one of her shoulder and shook it lightly-an action that made her to jump a bit under his grip. "Blake," he began, drawing her eyes towards him immediately. "Is everything alright?"

Blake blinked at him three total times-rather cutely, if he might add-before her she finally gathered the wits to respond. "Ah, sorry," she apologized with the faintest hint of a blush on her cheeks. "Did I space out there again?"

"Yep," answered Yang and Ruby in unison.

"Mhm," Weiss hummed in affirmation after the half-sisters gave their response, nodding her head once as she did so. "And might I add that it was for a whole six minutes this time."

"Yeah…now that I think about it, you've been doing that a lot lately, haven't you?" Ruby asked Blake off-handedly, though from the way she phrased the question, it was clear that his team leader meant it to be more of an observation than anything else. "I noticed that you were spacing out during Oobleck's class earlier today too, and you're usually one of the few who actually pays attention."

Kaneki felt a spike of worry run through him when he heard that. It had only been a couple days since the two of them finally returned to Beacon and, unlike himself, Blake needed to return to class not even two days after. So, he didn't think that it was too much of a stretch to assume that she was still focused on to what happened out on the docks. What she had to go through the past couple days would have left their mark on anyone. Yet, despite being aware of that, he decided that it'd be best to not do anything about it at all.

She had literally just told him that she didn't want him coddling her just a few minutes ago. After that, he would've needed to be the densest of idiots to think that she would want to tell him about any of the problems she was having, which meant that the best course of action was to, ironically enough, take no action against it.

Though, he ended up changing his mind on that rather quickly, which was mainly because he heard a detail that made everything click to him.

"Ah, so you noticed that?" Blake asked, though it was clear that she meant it to be rhetorical.

"Of course!" Ruby exclaimed loudly. "I mean, it's kind of hard not to notice you staring at Kaneki's empty seat for an entire class."

Blake blinked owlishly at her leader before she shifted her attention on to her two other teammates, asking them, "Did you two—?"

"Mhm," Yang gave an affirmatory hum back in response, her usual grin gracing her lips. "You were making it pretty obvious."

"No, why would I?" Weiss was the last to give an answer. Her voice went from indignant to a mix of matter-of-fact and condescending as she added unnecessarily, "Unlike the three of you, I was busy being a good student and remained focused on the lesson the entire time." Immediately after saying that she was glared at by the two-half sisters next to her, which prompted her to add, "Okay, okay, maybe I did notice you staring at his seat a couple of times. No more than that though."

Crap, she cursed to herself mentally. I was hoping that only Ruby noticed. An exasperated sigh escaped from her lips as she turned her attention to the last person she wanted to be standing next to her as of the moment. How am I even begin to explain this—?

"You don't have to say it if you don't want to," Kaneki suddenly stated, completely cutting off her train of thought. "Besides, I think I already know why you were spacing out."

Blake felt her heart skip a beat when she heard him say that last part. "W-what do you mean?" She silently cursed herself for the stutter that came out.

"You still feel guilty about what happened to me, don't you?" Kaneki asked, casting his dull grey gaze off to the side. Blake opened her mouth to respond, but she was promptly cut off the moment she did so. "Like I said earlier, you don't have to talk to us about it if you don't want to. I just thought that you'd feel better if you knew that I don't think that you have to try to make it up to me, or anything like that."

At first, what Kaneki had told her had shocked her completely speechless, which left her staring at him with her mouth hanging wide-open for several straight seconds, before she was finally able to muster up the cognitive power to actually say something. "H-how did you…?"

In response, he flashed his usual sheepish grin. "It all sort of clicked when I heard that you were spacing out while staring at my seat." She felt her cheeks suddenly get warm when he felt the need to remind her of that detail. "And, when you factor in the fact that you spaced out twice during that contest, it became pretty obvious to me that you were trying to do something of that manner."

Blake was once again rendered speechless by what Kaneki just said, though her reasoning was a lot different this time. Last time, it was because she was shocked that he was able to so accurately tell her the reason why she had been spacing out.

This time, her silence was caused by her shock too, but shock aimed at herself and her lack of it instead. He just read her like a book and she wasn't at all surprised by it. In fact, that detail only made a smile want to break out on to the surface."Also, while we're on the subject," Kaneki began in a surprisingly jovial manner, drawing her from her thoughts and towards him. "You shouldn't feel too bad about not doing so well on your first attempt at making coffee. It took a lot of practice for me to reach the level I'm at today." A light-hearted chuckle escaped from him. "Well, that and a lot of verbal abuse from my teacher."

"Wait…'verbal abuse'?" Ruby interrupted the conversation going on between them suddenly, doing the double-take that Blake was sure that everyone in the room wanted to take. "Um, I know that it's none of my business, but what exactly do you mean by that?" Her tone coming out immensely awkward as she spoke.

An amused scoff left Kaneki's mouth at that-one that seemed rather misplaced given the original topic of their conversation. "Oh, it just means that the person who taught me the ropes at the cafe I told you all about was a harsh teacher."

"Um, you do know that answer really doesn't clear anything up, right?" It was now Weiss's turn to butt into the conversation.

"Oh, um, how do I explain this?" He muttered to himself, scratching at the back of his head. "I guess you could say that every time I made a mistake, I would be called a lot of things that I wouldn't be able to repeat in a school environment…or with Ruby around."

That last part elicited an indignant 'Hey!' from their young team leader.

"Wow, whoever taught you to make coffee really sounds like a…piece of work," Yang stated, probably pausing to stop herself from saying something vulgar around Ruby.

"Yeah, she was rough around the edges to say the least," Kaneki conceded, though his voice sounding much more nostalgic than anything else, which caused a spike of irritation to rise up inside Blake for whatever reason. "Actually, knowing her, she'd probably beat up me if I even insinuated that she wasn't." Blake's irritation continued to intensify.

"Hm," Yang hummed to herself quizzically, narrowing her eyes at him. "Y'know, you really don't sound too bitter about how she treated you. Actually, you don't sound like you minded being mistreated by her at all. It's almost as if you enjoyed it or something." The blonde sounded uncharacteristically sheepish as she added on the last part.

"Well—" he began, but was forced to stop when a certain blonde suddenly shoved him in the shoulder with enough force that she almost knocked him off his feet.

"Okay, time to stop this conversation before it gets any weirder," Yang told everyone rapidly, her cheeks reddening a great deal as she did so, which immediately tipped everyone else in the room off as to what she really meant to when she said that…well, everyone other than Ruby, and the realization caused the remaining three to fluster as well.

Oh, please don't tell me that means what Yang thinks that means… Blake thought to herself, greatly annoyed by the path their conversation-one that had been prominently serious a few moments ago-had swerved off on to.

Thankfully for everyone, Kaneki immediately moved to deny Yang's claims. "H-hey, let me explain!"

Of course, the derailed mess that their conversation had turned into didn't end there…

-Chapter End-

Well, I have learned a lesson these last few days. Never try to finishing chapters late at night. Otherwise, your inner twelve year-old will crawl out from whatever dark corner of your mind that you shoved it into and take control of your body. I mean, how much more low brow can you get? I literally just made a joke about Kaneki being a masochist. That is some generic harem light novel-level humor, right there.

Anyways, self-bashing aside, I hope you enjoyed this chapter. I know that it was very light and fluffy, but this was really just a set-up chapter for me. This is pretty much the new chapter four. Hell, this one even has coffee in it, just like chapter four. Just go and replace chapter four with this chapter, it'll get about the same mileage, but with better grammar.

Also, before I go, FineChyna says 'hi'.