Grief never ends. But it changes. It is a passage, not a place to stay. Grief is not a sign of weakness, nor a lack of faith. It is the price for love.
-Unknown
(XLIX)
When Hide wakes up, he stares at the ceiling, and frowns.
It was Cycle 48.
This was it. This was the Cycle when-
No.
It can't be Cycle 48, that was the last Cycle, when he was pushed under a car-
No, there was more deaths since then-
-a whispered giggle at his throat, a sharp pain of teeth at his neck-
That was Cycle 48.
-"Yum yum."-
He remembers now.
-screams when the blood leaves the wound and the tongue comes out and starts licking and sipping and drinking-
Cycle 48 was the previous Cycle.
This Cycle was Cycle 49.
How unlucky.
Tick.
This was it. This was the Cycle when everything ended.
Tock.
(He begs that his is true to a God that doesn't exist as he punches the mirror in his bathroom.)
He goes on about his life, in the best way that someone in this kind of position can go on about their life.
He goes to college, even though he now knows exactly what his professors are going to say. He walks around campus first by himself, then with Kaneki with an eyepatch because he's much too afraid of losing control (the idiot, he doesn't know how much control he has), and then by himself again when Kaneki begins to work more and more and hang out with ghouls despite denying that part of himself, still considering himself to be fully human, when he clearly wasn't.
Idiot.
(Hide considered himself to be a bigger idiot anyway.)
He wants to believe that this Cycle is different from the others. He wants to believe that the weather has changed, even if only slightly, or that he never has the same conversation twice, or even the same injury, though, he's largely given up on that one when he got the same papercut in every cycle, if he lived that long that was.
Or, maybe he got the papercut, or maybe he thought the got the papercut and actually didn't, or maybe he forgot that he didn't get a papercut at all but believed that he did because it has happened so many times before so why shouldn't it happen again?
Wow, time loops were weird once you thought about them in more detail, once you got over the small little fact that every time you die you wake back up again in the same way as all the previous times.
He does mainly the same things for each loop too, but makes extra sure that there is something different about each one, whether it be something as small as never taking public transport in a Cycle or only ordering black coffee when he went out, much to Kaneki's confusion and fear it later dawned on him, to something as big as never giving Kaneki his food (which he later learned was a bad thing as it caused his friend to have his suicidal existential crisis a lot later and in a different location, giving Hide the fear of his lives and making a silent pact with himself to never do it again).
Other than a few exceptions, nothing too dramatic changes. A girl smiles at him when they didn't before, and he doesn't bleed out in an alleyway because he was too friendly with a ghoul. He doesn't forget to give Kaneki the notes for history and he doesn't forget that never before has he met Touka in a way that makes her happy to see him. He forgets the joy of seeing something for the first time, or the wonder and excitement of learning something new, or the heartbreak that comes with bad news.
After all, nothing about this now is new.
So, when Kaneki disappears one day, seemingly out of the blue, he isn't surprised. Upset, of course. Angry at Anteiku for not telling him the truth like every other time and pissed at the guy who took him in the first place, absolutely. But, surprised?
Only surprised that he lived that long, really.
He doesn't know why he's doing this.
He was out in 11th ward, straying further than he normally would, even with the risks of being killed by a ghoul that was as dangerous as the infamous Jason.
He doesn't know why he's doing this, dressed in a dead man-a dead ghoul-'s clothing, and with no shoes but instead thick walking socks that he brought at last moment, dressed as if he could never eat human food and weak to look as if he ate their flesh instead. The loose change, along with the tracker that would act as the bug that he made himself, jingled and jumped in the only pocket that didn't have a hole in and Hide couldn't help but wrinkle his nose at the stench of piss and blood that he gave off, haven forgotten how bad the smell was all those Cycles before due to almost never living long enough to make it this far, before sighing slightly and trying his best to hide his smile and excitement.
This was pretty far along the small timeline in his head, wasn't it?
(How did he go on from here, not knowing all of the possibilities that would happen next?)
(he should be fine, he survived the first time around.)
(He still died the first time around.)
(But, he didn't die here.)
He puts his hand in his pockets, one hand fiddling with the loose threads caused by the holes in the thin fabric and the other silencing the jingle of the small objects in the pocket, and he tried to push back the dead ghoul's face that the clothes originated from and the raising anxiety and desperation to live and instead tried to focus more on the problem at hand, making sure his head was down to hide the fact that he was in fact inspecting everyone he was walking pass.
He quickly came across the café that he knows that the ghoul would be drinking coffee in, and he quietly enters the shop, and just before he passes the ghoul he 'accidentally' trips, and drops his change in front of him, and makes sure to suppress the smile that is fighting to come forward.
Bingo.
"Oh, sorry!" He mutters as he quickly crouches down and starts picking the coins up one by one, feeling the way that the ghoul's stare burned into the back of his head. He did smile when he saw that one of the coins had rolled right to the foot of the ghoul, though he did wince slightly at the thought of having to be so close to the ghoul.
But, he's done it before, and he'll do it again.
This was it. This was the Cycle that ended everything.
"There's one more by your foot." Hide mutters quietly, and quickly slips the bug at the bottom of the shoe as he picks up the coin, nodding to the ghoul's words of being careful, and he quickly leave the café, leaving the ghoul behind.
He did it.
He gets down the road towards the tube station, when he realises that he didn't get anything at the café like last time, and wonders how that will affect everything, since he has a bad history of dying after he changes the timeline.
He should be fine.
He's going to be fine.
(He doesn't sleep well that night, nor the nights after.)
Almost a week later and awful nights later, he's still living even though Kaneki is still missing and he's still alive, so he couldn't have done anything wrong with Jason, even if he didn't stick to the timeline.
Maybe he'll be alright.
He'll be alright.
This was the Cycle that he gets to the Anteiku raid, after all, and makes sure that Kaneki survives.
(He doesn't particularly care if he does or doesn't at this point.)
(Kaneki was his life, after all.)
He's currently at the college library, staring at a computer screen that reflected the sun's rays into his eyes, since it's been about five days since he's left his flat out of absolute fear of dying and he doesn't want to die this far into the Cycle, not when there was so much more work to do and he couldn't do that, not to himself and not to Kaneki.
Never to Kaneki.
So, he was trying his best to catch up with all the coursework that he had been missing (not that his professors mind due to their amazement at all the 'pre-reading' that he's apparently done as well as knowing that Kaneki, the light of his life, was missing), with a tab open that tracked the bug that was still on the bottom of the ghoul's shoe, not that it should surprise him at this point.
It's not the first time that he's used this site after all, even outside of this particular event, back when he got bored more often and decided tracking criminals for the useless police force a fun pass time, which in retrospect, was until one guy noticed and chased him around 20th ward until he lost Hide in an alley.
Ah, the fun he used to have in those days.
Sighing, he clicked off of the open tab that held the location of the ghoul and instead went back to his work, reading over some of the online notes that someone who attended had put on the group chat for the class as he contemplated just dropping out of college all together and joining the CCG outright, seeing as that would be much more useful to his (and Kaneki's) future than studying for the quiz that they were apparently having in a week (but, for the life of him, he couldn't remember doing, and he wonders what other things changed that he has yet to notice this time).
It does take long for him to give up on the notes, have a quick peek at his phone, the college festival planners' group chat had been going wild while he was 'studying', and it reminds him of that one time that he talked to Touka while putting posters up for the group, and he took down Kaneki's because of the CCG case.
Well, he might as well and save the environment and not put the posters up in the first place.
He sighs as he turns his phone off and looks back at the screen, finding himself surprised to not see the sunlight glaring into his eyes via reflection anymore, before frowning slightly while packing up his paper, not that he made much of a dent on them in the first place, the idea of joining the CCG sounding nicer and nicer as the notes that he had just taken didn't make sense as they should have.
He grumbles to himself as he packs his backpack and goes to leave the college library, putting it on as he comes up to a crossing that was empty and pressing the button. He rolls his shoulders at the weight of the bag, wondering how his notes are able to pull him down this much as he looks up at the road and feel his blood becoming ice as he made eye contact with the person standing at the other side of the crossing.
Jason.
The ghoul that he bugged not even a week ago.
The reason why his friend wasn't here.
He turns around, and runs.
He runs.
And runs.
And runs.
It's getting dark despite it only being early evening, which means that there are less people out, preferring to stay in nice and warm and safe and Hide can't help but envy then at the moment, turning a corner into a smaller, less known street, hoping to use his knowledge of the ward to lose the ghoul. He keeps sprinting, running across an empty road, and though it seems like he had achieved his goal when he looks behind, he can't help but keep running in fear that he's just around the corner, just behind him to not be seen but close enough to catch up.
And, well, you know what they say about looking behind and missing what is in front of you.
He looks forward and manages to come to a skidding hold almost immediately, his breath short from the running and the fear of having the ghoul right on front of him, holding a metal weapon that he thinks is weird for a ghoul to have, for what use did pliers have in a ghoul's day to day life?
"Y'know, you smell rather sweet for a human." He says in the creepiest voice in the world and Hide can't help but hold his breath at the suggestion of being eaten. "I've never known a human outside of the CCG brave enough to tag a ghoul like that." The ghoul smiles, sending a shiver down Hide's spine, before taking a step forward towards the human.
Hide takes a step backwards in fear, and then there's car horns blaring, and then there's darkness.
(LIII)
When Hide wakes up, he sits up too, coughing and chokes on the blood that was in his-
Oh.
That wasn't real.
(But it had been.)
He sighs, and softly touches his neck, carefully going over where Kaneki once bit Cycles ago, or when he was accidentally pushed over the stairs, causing glass to go into his neck, or when Touka got too suspicious and decided to nip it at the bud to make sure nothing flowers or any other thing that could have possibly happened to him in the last 53 deaths.
Tick.
Cycle 53, huh.
Tock.
This far already?
Tick.
Well, this was it. This was the Cycle when everything ended.
Tock.
(He spends far too long talking to a God that doesn't exist as he cries and sobs in the shower about how it should have happened Cycles ago before leaving the building to go to college.)
(He should probably stop cycling to college on the first day of waking up in a new Cycle, because he was getting the impression that cycling with your mind busy on other things like previous deaths or a boy with pretty, grey eyes and black hair would only and always end with being hit by same car.)
(You'd think that he'd know better by now, it was the fifth time he's done this.)
(Maybe he should stop everything instead?)
(?)
When Hide wakes up, he stares at the ceiling, and counts.
It was Cycle 59, and the cracks were still in the plaster, and the paint was still peeling, and the mold was still there, and he was still here.
Was this it?
Was this going to be the Cycle when it ended?
Was this Cycle 59?
He's breath caught in his throat, and he look across the room at the ticking clock.
Tick.
He could have sworn that the last Cycle was the one where he was killed by a clown masked ghoul and an awful cackle for a laugh-and had that been Cycle 56, or was it Cycle 57?
Tock.
He was running out of time, he was outoutoutou-
Tick.
Was he though? He always ended that up here anyway.
Tock.
It took some time (he had all the time), but Hide came to the point that maybe the Cycle number didn't mean anything.
Tick.
This was it. This was the Cycle when everything ended.
Tock.
For better or for worse.
Tick.
(He asks a God if this was the best thing to do as he shuts his door without looking back.)
"Nagachika, I really don't like having my territory violated. Can't you knock? Where is your respect for your elders?" Hide tried to hide his nervous swallowing by rubbing the back of his head, hiding the way that a sickening feeling of déjà vu that slips and slides down his throat and settles uncomfortably in his stomach with a heavy weight, making him feel like vomiting all over the elder's floor.
That would go down great.
"I'm sorry man, I didn't mean to-"
"You say you're sorry, but you're speaking too loud and clear for that." Hide laughed slightly at the reply, though, at the same time, he could feel stomach acid raising to his throat and he wonders how many times he's going to live out this scene in front of him, and how many times he's going to die here.
Too many.
Then, Kaneki trips backwards in the most dramatic way just like before as he came to the terrible realisation that Nishio is a ghoul, like he did in every Cycle that he lived long enough to get to. Hide tries to ignore it, he really does try, but it's happened so many times that he wonders if he should just not come at all to not risk any potential deaths, or at least stop the feeling of flushed skin and cold insides and the taste of sour stomach acid in the back of his throat.
-kick to the ribs-
He doesn't want to die.
-flying into a pile of broken planks of wood-
-"Hide!"-
-a warm, lumpy and foul-smelling liquid splattered across his face-
He can't die now.
"Hide, snap out of it!"
Please, he's too scared to die now.
-a kick that knocks a dent in his-
"Nagachika!"
Hide jumps back in surprise, tripping over the mess that they've made trying to find that stupid DVD, landing on his ass while he tries his hardest to take a deep breath, to calm down, to convince himself that he isn't going to die. There's some muttering, talking, bickering, arguing, in the background he thinks, something of concern maybe, but he can't focus on it, not when he can't breathe properly, making him feel light headed and he might be fainting at this rate if he can't get a hold of himself.
God, what if he dies because he's not breathing then he's back to square one where he wakes up staring at the ceiling again and he doesn't know how many more times he can look up at that stupid ceiling, so he holds his breath and then breaths out slowly in hopes of trying to calm down, trying to get oxygen to his brain, but then the thought of dying comes back into his mind and he can't breath again and oh god he was going to die again and again and again…
Time moves too fast, or it moves too slow, and he doesn't know how long he's there on the floor breathing or not breathing, until someone gets too close and he scrabbles back from the threat until he couldn't scramble back anymore, and he can hear them talking quietly to him but he couldn't for the life of him figure out what they were supposed to be saying, and they grab a hand, softly rubbing their thumb on the back of it and he can't help but let out a confused sigh at the feeling, focusing on the way that it manages to calm his thoughts and soul, to give him an anchor in the mess of his thoughts and a tie to the physical world, making him forget about the past and future for a moment and focus on the present.
The present, where Kaneki was talking soothing words into his ears and he was having to take long deep breaths and Nishio stood in the background looking lost and very much out of his element despite the fact that he lived there.
Where was he?
He was in Nishio's apartment.
He's never died in the building before, he's safe, for now.
He wasn't going to die. Not yet.
He was going to be fine.
He was going to make it to the end of the Cycle.
He looks up at his best friend's face, and he's only reminded of the reason why he's okay with everything he's done so far, and he suddenly feels light, lighter than he's been in months, lighter than he's been in years, and he's able to smile, even when the thought of not being able to smile like this in months, years, pass through his mind.
He's missed this.
He missed Kaneki.
He missed him so much.
He wants his best friend back, that's all he wants now. He doesn't care if it's not truly what he wants, but he's got the point where he doesn't care and just wants him back.
But, that is far too much to ask for, isn't it?
"What the hell was that?" Hide looked up at Nishio, his hand still in Kaneki own. He opens his mouth, but no words come out, and he wonders what someone is supposed to say in the situation. 'Sorry, I had a flashback to that time in your future when you kill me, or almost kill me, who knows at this point!' doesn't really work and sound all that pleasant, but just shrugging it off as a one off will cause an interrogation from a concerned Kaneki, and he can't have that either because he's good at changing the subject but not lying directly to his best friend's face.
Ugh.
He had really messed this up, hadn't he?
"It's a panic attack, nothing to be particularly worried about." Kaneki says as he lets go of Hide's hand (he tries not to let out a wine of the loss), and smiles and bows to Nishio. "I am sorry about the mess and inconvenience we have caused you Nishio-sempai, but we have invaded on your hospitality for long enough, so we will be going now. Thank you for having us." He says as he turns around to help Hide up and to walk him out of the apartment.
He doesn't remember much of the journey back to his own apartment, only the feeling of warmth and acceptance from his best friend and the small words of encouragement that filled his ear as he struggled to do what is considered normal but succeeded despite that.
Nothing can describe the happiness that comes to his heart with Kaneki being there for him in his life.
When Hide wakes up, he stares at the ceiling, and counts.
There are less cracks in the plaster this time, only a single small one that was barely noticeable unless you looked at it in a certain angle and then squinted, and there was no mold to speak of here, leaving a nice white ceiling-
He wasn't in his room.
Sitting up quickly, Hide took a quick look around the room while a hand went up to his neck, a weird habit for anyone who didn't know what situation he had been in, which meant everyone would find this weird, and instantly relaxed as he recognised the sun-bleached cream of the walls and the massive pile of coursework that overflowed the coffee table and the rough and worn fabric of the sofa under his hand and the look of confusion on Kaneki's face as he looked up from taking notes from his book on the armchair that was considerably newer than the couch that Hide was laying on.
"You're up." He said, though the way that it was said made it sound like a question, which made Hide wonder if there was some doubt in him that he wouldn't wake up at all.
Why would he think that? He only had a panic attack, and not the first one, he wasn't going to die. Not yet anyway.
No, because he was going to make it to the end of the Cycle this time.
"Yeah, I guess?" He smiles back at his best friend, using the fact that his hand his around the back of his neck to feel the soft and smooth skin that laid there, and he wondered if there was ever going to be a Cycle where there was not going to be the unblemished skin he finds there now but a huge and ugly scar that is almost impossible to hide. Kaneki smiles back, his eyepatch rising with the movements and in that moment, Hide wishes he could see both eyes, even if one of them could turn into a ghoul's at any given moment.
He wants to be able to see all of Kaneki, even the part that is considered 'ugly' and 'monstrous'.
He sometimes wonders why he feels like this, and what to call it.
(He knows what this is, and is too much of a coward to name it.)
"That's good. Feeling any better than earlier?" his best friend asks, looking back down at his notes, seemingly doing his work but at the same time there's a look in his eye and tremor in his hand, and it's at these points with Kaneki that Hide wishes he's had been granted the ability to read minds instead of die without dying, but at the same time, it reminds him why he approached the weird seven year old boy who sat in the corner and always read a book instead of playing with the other kids.
It was nice, not being able to properly read someone and being surprised by some of the actions they took.
"Yep, I'm fine now that we not at-" He stops dead in the middle of his words and frowns over what to say while Kaneki looks up in confusion, his face blank while his single visible eye held a stormy grey confusion laced with the raindrops of panic and a wind's gush of concern. He opens his mouth again to settle Kaneki's anxiety, to calm his best friend's mind and to make sure he didn't become a worry of the future, but instead of words air comes out and he's left gaping until he closes his mouth again and merely shakes his head, looking away from Kaneki before the puppy dog eyes kill him and makes him spill everything that he's hidden from him for so long.
"What are you hiding from me, Hide?" Hide turns to look at his best friend and frowns disapprovingly at him, something that he knows will shock him. Hide never shows this side of him, never to Kaneki, never to his best friend.
"I'm not the only one hiding something, am I Kaneki?" He mocks as he picks up his coursework and starts writing, using it as an excuse to not look at his best friend.
They spend the rest of the time in an awkward and unnatural silence that neither of them want to break, until it apparently gets late and Kaneki says he has to go home and eat, even though he gently let Hide down with the offer of food by saying that he had leftovers that he needed to eat anyway.
(Leftovers of a dead human.)
Instead, Hide just has to smile and walk Kaneki to his front door, and just before Kaneki leaves, he stops in his steps but doesn't turn around to Hide.
"When did everything change?"
Kaneki didn't stay long enough for Hide to answer, he never did.
(His best friend might say that everything changed the day that he went on a date with a ghoul, but Hide's world changed long before then, when his feeling became something as disgusting what it was now.)
(No one should feel like this towards their best friend.)
With that, everything changes.
It was a slow and gradual change. Kaneki gets the job at Anteiku again, but clearly for different reasons than before. This takes up a lot of his time, just like it did last time, but this time, he uses his job as an excuse to not hang out with him, saying that he either had to cover someone's shift for make a supply run or some other nonsense excuse to not spend too much time with Hide.
Hide gets the reasoning, he thinks. He told Kaneki to his face that he knew that he was hiding something, that alone would make someone weary of them, and Hide knew how hard Kaneki was working to make sure that he kept the fact that he was a half ghoul under wraps.
So, he pretends that the panic attack and the short conversation afterwards never happened. Kaneki pretends too, but everything isn't okay anymore. Kaneki's distant, straying away from his only human friend and gaining more and more ghoul ones, to the point that Hide wondered that, if Kaneki had been born a ghoul, would he have been that small and meek seven-year-old that he found in the corner of a classroom that sunny lunchtime?
Still, the point was that everything is fine and dandy up until the point where he gets kidnapped again.
But, instead of looking for Jason this Cycle around, Hide waits until it's time to give in the anonymous tip, and after the raid is done, he applies for the small part time job that they have going.
Not too long after that, he's smoothing down his hair and smiling and checking out for any bits of dirt on his face because it's his first job interview in literal years and he does not want to fuck this up.
He can do this, his acting skills are amazing at this point, he can pretend to be confident even if he didn't feel it right now.
He's done this before, there was nothing stopping him from doing this again.
(It only took him fifty deaths to get this far again...)
He sighs, and tries to smile, but it hurts to look at in the mirror due to how fake it looks, so he quickly gives up and focuses on something else that doesn't bring his mood down, because he hasn't come this far only to give up now. Leaving the bathroom, he pays his bedroom no mind as he walks through and picks up his hat and leave the room, ignoring the calendar that marks off the sixth month that he's been here, but instead takes it as the second month in which he hasn't seen Kaneki, only having the knowledge that he's out there, somewhere.
If all goes well, he could be dropping out of college in about a month.
If all goes well, he could be seeing Kaneki again.
If all goes well, he would only die, and not wake up, and not have to relive this all again.
He steps out of the apartment lighter than he's felt in months, maybe years at this point. He manages to wave to the old lady coming up the stairs and to not feel just obligated to hold the door open for the parent of two when leaving the building, and he wonders if this is what it's like to be happy.
He misses this, being happy.
(Not as much as he misses his best friend though.)
(He would give up so much more than his happiness if it guaranteed Kaneki's own.)
(He almost takes his bike to the CCG, but thinks differently and walks instead. He's glad he did so when he makes it there alive and on time.)
He has a love hate relationship with the way that time seems to fly while he works for the CCG.
At one point, he's taking the interview with a bored paper pusher, and he explains why he wants the join, how he knows that he's only a runner boy and won't be seeing any action (not yet at least) and how he's only really looking for some part time work that could count as experience for his college credits (or until he could drop out, he's never getting that diploma at this rate).
The next, he's having a meal with Amon and he stops halfway through his bite and wonders what time it is, what the day and the date is, where in 20th ward they're currently eating.
"Are you okay?" Hide looks up to see his companion, dropping his utensil into the bowl, sad eyes taking in the worried look in Amon's etched face, and Hide wonders how on earth this look was so similar to the one that Kaneki wore the day that Hide had a panic attack, and wonders why everyone was so worried about him when everything was clearly fine. He's never lived this long, he's never felt so free and relaxed and confident.
He's never been better, in fact.
(And if the fact that he couldn't seem to smile to himself or go down certain streets without panicking or even being in his bed sometimes made himself so sick and shaky that he had to sleep on his sofa despite the fact that the broken springs would cause knots in his back that not even a shower could fix, well, he wasn't telling that to anyone.)
"Hmm, I'm fine," he replied, looking down and mixing his noodles, his mouth suddenly dry and his stomach churning, and he couldn't stop his leg bouncing underneath the table. He could feel the pitying look from someone that one time he might have called his friend but now realises that just because he could read him easily doesn't mean that he properly knew him.
The CCG investigator frowns at his apathetic words. "Hey, I know will writing is hard, but if you need any help-"
"I don't need one."
"I know that people in your position are rarely in harm's way-" Amon tries to explain, but is interrupted by Hide standing up and growling.
"I do not need one because I am not going to die. Not this time." He puts his hand in his pocket and brings out money that could easily cover both meals and walks off.
He doesn't realise what he said until he was laying on his bed, staring at the ceiling and counting the cracks that laid above him, and he mindless thinks about filling them in before he died.
He lied to Amon; he was going to die. He was going to die one of the most horrible deaths that any human could have.
But, the worst thing was, he wanted it.
Hide wondered how scared he was in the original Cycle as he watches Amon and Kaneki fight on the screen, going so fast that the camera could pick up every action.
Frowning at the screen, he leans forward, entrapped by the fight, and he wondered what the outcome of the fight was for Amon, as he knew that Kaneki would live to make it to the sewers at least to go and find the CCG's Reaper. Amon's fate, however, was unknown to Hide, and he felt like he should know, he's been through this before, he should know what will happen next.
But, at the same time, it's been the equivalent of years since he's been here, in this position.
So, instead, he watched as back up came for Amon, and Kaneki activated his kakuja, and sighed as Marude carried on giving on orders to his men, before sighing and wondering what time exactly he was supposed to leave to make sure Kaneki got to live, even if never told Hide anything or trusted him enough with the information that he was a ghoul.
Kaneki was Hide's best friend, and he hoped that Kaneki considered him to be his best friend, and best friends help each other in times of trouble and Kaneki was in trouble and he needed help.
It's when Amon loses an arm, and Kaneki suddenly gets a hole in his side, that he starts to shake and feels sick and leaves Marude's side and runs out of the truck and ignores his superior's shouts as he runs into the rain and dodges the people guarding the barricades and going down an alleyway, jumping over upturned trash and dead bodies as he ran and ran and ran and tried to think of whereabouts he met Kaneki in the first Cycle.
He couldn't remember.
He knew it was in the sewers, but he couldn't remember.
He nearly screams in frustration as he takes another turn and comes to the main road, only to take a step back as a ghoul kills an investigator and turns to look at him.
No.
Not now, of all times.
Not here.
Turning, he runs again back but he falls forward when a huge weight hits his back and he does scream this time and he feels teeth enter the back of his neck and-
And nothing.
(-)
When Hide wakes up, he sits up and feels the soft skin of his neck and feels the tears stream down his face and the anger and sadness of so many months leave him as an empty shell.
He didn't die this time.
He broke.