I recognise that this work was produced on the traditional lands of the Kaurna and Ngadjuri peoples.
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…
Ken quickly rearranged the box in his arms so that the three stacked above stopped wobbling. His children follow behind him like ducklings, and Yomo as well.
The newest home.
Hopefully the last they'd move to for a decade at least.
His family had been in this time year now. It hadn't been easy, although it had, strangely, been mundane.
It still blew Ken's mind to remember he was older than Yomo – and not by an inconsiderable margin. Yomo was eighteen. Ken was twenty-eight. He was Yomo's senpai. His actual senpai.
And Yomo was kind of treating him like it.
While there had been rather a lot of tension when Yomo first hunted them down to find his niece and nephew, their treatment of his sister's children and Touka's scent had left him concluding that he'd had an even older sister. That She'd been separated from her family when she was young. Which in many ways was true.
Ken and Yomo's relationship had been almost smooth since that moment.
He'd have to do something to help Yomo, he and Touka had decided. Bring him into their mundanity by providing an example: make it clear that he was welcome in the Kaneki household and that he didn't have to be alone they way he had been previously.
And the way to do this, Ken was realising, was to ask the man – boy – for help. To ask favours.
"Yomo! There's still our camping things under the boot back in the car, I'm sorry to ask but could you bring them up?"
"Hn."
"After that, do you mind helping to set up Ayato and Ichika's room? I need to polish up some of my lesson plans."
He nodded, putting the box of books down and walking back out the apartment.
One way or another I'm pulling you into this family kid.
Ken wasn't lying, either: he did need to further edit the lesson plans he'd made for Seisen International's senior high school.
That had been a delightful change – he was going to teach literature! It was an old dream brought to life. It also meant a discounted private education for his own Ghouls – which was very appreciated.
It did feel a little strange to go from peacekeeping just over a year ago (or seventeen years from now) to teaching, however, the stint working in a professional kitchen, a café, and in a library had been a fun cleanser.
Mr. Yoshimura had certainly pulled through on their documentation. Although Ken himself was very dedicated to ensuring his professional eligibility.
He'd been thinking of Ammon when he initially applied to the school; Seisen International was in fact a small catholic school focused on providing lesions in English and Japanese for Japanese children raised in an English environment.
And as it was situated in the ninth ward, only one ward away from Touka's university, it seemed ideal. So, once he'd secured the job they'd moved.
He'd promised the kids it would be the last move, as well.
It should be, but Ken felt one could never be sure. Touka knew one couldn't be sure. But he felt optimistic. Even with their new neighbours.
That was the last reason for their move.
A very scary, very necessary, form of self-preservation.
See, the neighbours across the hall were CCG Ghoul investigators.
Ken was trying not to think about it too hard in the moment, putting away cutlery as he was.
But those neighbours were going to keep them safe, keep them invisible. And more?
Those neighbours were going to be his and Touka's infor reforming the CCG. Because, as Touka had noted while scouting apartments in the ninth ward, these neighbours were the Mados.
Once we do this, and we will, the Kaneki's will be above reproach in just the same ways as the Wushu clan.
He would approach them after they finished unpacking to introduce himself. He'd take Ichika with him – she could eat human food without hazard, after all.
And –
And…
And there was a lady with purple hair in a white chemise staring out the window.
Miss Kamishiro…
Kakuja.
Audio and visual psychosis.
Paranoid delusions.
Violent episodes.
His knee was bouncing.
His wife was watching out for him, she was his last line of safety in that sense. It wasn't right, or fair, but it was necessary. They had kids – if there was any chance of his harming or eating them then it was quite the problem.
They needed a solution…
At least being a Kakuja didn't make him depressed. There seemed to be no affect disorders correlated to the condition.
Silver linings.
Someone took his hand. He looked down to find Ichika smiling at him and pointing towards the room she and Ayato had claimed.
Yomo was being decorated with shrine ornaments like an American Christmas tree…
Ken laughed and ushered Ichika to join them, while Yomo sighed.
…
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…
Touka sighed into her palm.
She liked this topic.
She liked this subject.
She liked this professor.
She even liked this class.
But other the students?
She gave her desk a look. Spending so much time around eighteen-, nineteen-, and twenty-year-olds without a care in the world outside their work and their studies was rather… annoying? She sighed harder. She didn't know what was up about it, but whatever it was it wormed under her skin.
She was honestly very proud of herself for getting into this university and degree. For years, she never thought it would be possible for her to make it this far or be viewed as deserving enough or intelligent enough for "higher learning."
Touka thought that might be a part of the annoyance – how casually some of these other student degraded those not attending a university, or how lazy and reactive others seemed…
She'd rebelled against the idea of "higher learning" for the years before her matric year in high school. Then she's just wanted to show she could do it – if she had wanted to.
Touka glared at a twerp of a boy trying to gain her attention.
Touka had the cores to enter – she just hadn't wanted to.
And that was the truth: she'd spent the time reflecting and introspecting to understand why she didn't pursue it – her Ghoulish nature and the restrictions inherent left aside.
But she hadn't wanted to go. She hadn't wanted to study.
She liked working. Liked doing things with her hands and feeling productive after an entire day of bustling and helping.And felt powerful being her boss. Watching her little caffe grow and grow and just bloom had been so – she didn't know she could do that, and then it just happened. It had been truly blissful.
She began taking notes again, the lecturer having moved onto a new subject not covered by their readings.
But someone had to be here: while her darling Ken could lead a successful rebellion like no other, he wasn't the best at "out of the box" thinking.
Ask him to storm a building of a hundred fighters with only five men and you'll get the building. Ask him to find a weak point to exploit in a newly introduced policy restricting freedom of movement, however, and you'll get a literature review dotted in metaphor about the injustice of parliamentary systems…
At least she did like the classroom. The view out of the windows were – soft? It let the sun come in when the clouds were thin, and the light lit up the room, bouncing off the pastel colours painted onto the walls.
Her notes always looked more appealing in the sun's light.
Touka did her best when she could see the results of her work clearly. Studying Law? And Politics? To be a "lawyer?" She sighed for the third time. It made sense; to really change the works constraining you needed to have a dam good understanding of those laws enabling it… but it was good by technicality.
This was an important step in her plan to fix the world.
These were interestingtopics to learn at least.
But seeing her hard work pay off? She could spend an entire day educating herself and not see anything change. It was in the quizzes, the assignments, and how quickly she could respond to the flash cards in Tou-Tou's hands.
She smiled.
She would never say it to her face, but Tou-Tou was adorable – and that nickname was too cute not to use. Gods, she didn't know how Mr. Yoshimura took her younger self seriously at all.
And there was something else. Mr. Yoshimura had been instrumental to their new life so far. It still blew her mind, his capacity for kindness.
She'd not tell her kids this, but she's hopping that they all have their first job there, with him to watch over them.
They owed the old man a debt in this time and the last.
They might never be able to pay the debt of that degree… But what she learned here, she'd use to fight.
She smiled into her palm.
Fuck the system.
…
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…
The parents tucked the kids in before they settled down on their second-hand couch. It wasn't late; the advantage of having young ghouls in the house was that they slept early.
Ken had always found it curious that, for a species who needed food roughly once a fought night, they still needed sleep to the same degree as their human cousins.
He'd brought it up to Touka once and she'd explained as a difference in times of wakefulness. Ghouls could see very well in near total darkness. Thus, she'd reasoned, the ancestors of ghouls had sleep during the day and hunted at night.
At the time it had led to him and Touka talking for hours like armchair biologists about evolution and the genetic ties between humans and ghouls.
Which Ken had turned into a conversation about the impact of the theory of evolution on religious canons and how there were still many holdouts who refused to believe that ghouls and humans could be alike in any way – let alone having linking ancestors.
Tonight, however, he and Touka talked about coffee and its politics, their legs tangled so they could face each other fully.
Well, coffee, politics, and their plans for the night, Ken reflected.
Yomo had provided them with an address that morning for one HySy studio so that they could have masks made. In fact, he'd been rather emotive when he realised that the Kaneki's didn't already have any.
Toyka was a little surprised by Ken's retelling but explained her "brothers" reaction to their inability to hide their identities as source of his worry. Ken rather agreed: a ghoul unable to hide their ghoulishness was a very vulnerable ghoul indeed.
So, two hours after putting their kids to sleep, the eldest Kaneki's got dressed up left the apartment looking for all the world to see as if they were out for a "date."
He and Touka didn't often get time alone.
He reached out and took his wife's hand as they ran, moving from roof top to roof top. He could see her smile in the moonlight.
An hour into their "date" they were perched a block away from HySy. Although, the mask studio wasn't quite a studio so much as a two-room freestanding capsule apartment squished into a suburban street…
They scented the air.
About – six? Twenty minutes past?
He turned and looked to Touka, her sense of smell better than his own. She held up six fingers and pointed to their east. Right.
He nodded, before pulling her down with him onto the sidewalk and walking her to the "studio".
They broke in with practiced ease, quietly stepping into the room's small entrance way – Ken did make sure to remove his shoes. No need to make a mess.
The room wasn't as much of a mess as they had expected. That said, on entire half of the room of covered in what seemed to be raw materials, a stool, an overwhelmed desk, and – Ken tisked – a severed head.
But no artist…
They approached the second room; Ken could hear breathing.
Slow and Steady.
Touka reached out and opened the door, tensed.
It squeaked and the breathing changed – that was all the warning Ken felt was needed.
One moment all was still, the next, three ghouls were bathed in the red bioluminescence of their kagune. Their artist, it seemed, was surprised.
Good. Ken struck.
He made sure to be gentle, batting away at Uta's defence's, swift as they were, until he could coil two of his Rinkaku around him, immobilising him.
He made sure to squeeze hard to cut-off any yelling.
The artist was quite stunned; his sunny Touka made sure to set things straight.
"We need two masks. You're going to make them. In exchange for your cooperation, he'll fight you. In exchange for your labour and resources, we'll pay you. Happy?"
Ken relaxed the powerful tentacles.
"Uh…"
Uta mouthed what he'd been told, the gears in of his mind turning. "Sleepy?"
Ken's expression fell, becoming as blank as his scarring allowed. "Then I'd suggest you wake up."
"Right… I agree?"
Touka smiled: "delightful. I'll sit first."
Ken released him, taking in his appearance for the first time. "Oh. You have blond hair?" I expected black…
Uta nodded, a shaky smile forming. "I do. You have white hair?"
Ken smiled, stepping aside, "I do."
Touka was sat with her back strait on his modelling stool while Uta took slow and deliberate measurements, marking them down in a notebook.
Amusingly, while Uta was much more energetic as a teenager, he was no less enigmatic.
That had Ken feeling nostalgic.
This was like trying to talk to a friend's son; so many of the mannerisms Uta displayed were the same, yet there was also mix of new and strange ways in which he moved and expressed himself.
He was so young; he hadn't yet developed his infamous style of assessing his clients, it seemed. Or he was still shocked.
He did ask for their input, as he progressed, to "see if they had any sticking points."
They told him their preferences.
A blood red rabbit mask, with a cute button nose.
And a grim smiling mask, an eyepatch over its eye.
Uta nodded enthusiastically; eyes alight – seemingly unable to stop himself from grinning.
And maybe – if they could save Yomo?
–They could save Uta too?
…
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