Disclaimer: I do not own Tokyo Ghoul. It belongs to its rightful owners.

Thank you so much to Emi Ogawa for adding this story to your favorites and/or following it. Also, a big thank you to Cinna Bae and Wikked for leaving a review!

CHAPTER SEVEN: STUBBORNNESS

NANA

"No amount of regretting can change the past, and no amount of worrying can change the future."

- Roy T. Bennett

I RAN.

I was out of breath, and tired, and scared, and everything in between. It was the fear of the unknown. The fear of everything. It was crazy how in a matter of minutes, everything could come crashing down. Everything had gone wrong in a blink of the eye. One minute he was here, the next he was gone, rushed to the hospital in an attempt to save what little life he had left. That was what I was truly scared of. Everything relied on one attempt.

That one attempt to save him. They only got one shot to save a life that didn't deserve to die that way. There were a million things that could have gone wrong. But, I knew that Hideyoshi and me getting there were one of the things that had to be right.

So, I ran. I ran as fast as my legs could take me. I hadn't been all too athletic growing up. I hadn't played any sports at all, actually, despite the mandated ones for a grade. I had little to no stamina. In that moment, it didn't matter. My mind was blank. My lungs burned. I had to go faster.

I had forgotten my phone and hadn't bothered wasting time putting on shoes. A few rocks and pebbles had come in contact with my feet along my run. It didn't matter. Pain was a factor that my brain had totally blocked out in its surge of adrenaline.

The hospital was a good ways away. I rushed through the glass automatic sliding doors. People were rushing about inside. Nurses and doctors rushed around to get to the back where they had no doubt brought him in an ambulance. No one paid attention to me with all of the commotion going on. Even the television hanging in the waiting room projected the news segment on the accident. It was too much all at once.

I ran over to the help desk. My feet padded against the cold, white flooring, struggling to keep me up when all I wanted to do was collapse from exhaustion. Two women were at the desk. One of them was scrambling through stacks of papers. The other was typing away at a computer in front of her. Neither of them had bothered to look up when I approached them. The hospital was in a frenzy; they didn't see me, and I didn't hear them.

"I need to find my friend!" I shouted.

There was no doubt in my mind that my words had come out as a bunch of gibberish. I couldn't hear what I was saying. Still, my voice was the only thing that was going to get through to them. The lady looking through the paperwork looked over at me. Her mouth moved to talk to me. I couldn't hear what she was saying. It was useless, and I was growing more frustrated with each passing minute. She couldn't help me.

Turning away from the woman, I took off into another jog. There had to be something down one of the hallways. The direction that most of the practitioners were going seemed to be the most logical answer. I had followed behind two doctors rushing down the white halls with clipboards in their hands. They had led me right to him.

Hide was sitting in a chair in another waiting room. His body was slumped, elbows on his knees with his face in his hands. I called out his name. Brown eyes looked up from the floor to meet my purple ones. They were already welling with fresh tears. It triggered a reaction in me. I had to get to him to make sure he was okay. That he wasn't sitting in that waiting room alone.

"Are you okay?" I asked.

I didn't have my notebook to communicate with him. He wiped away his tears before I got too close as if he hadn't wanted me to see them. His hand reached out to point a finger at my bare feet. He must have been in shock still; he forgot that I couldn't hear him. He must have been asking me where my shoes and the rest of my clothes were. None of that mattered.

I looked around. "Kaneki?" I asked this time.

He shook his head and shrugged his shoulders. He didn't know. Neither of us knew how our friend was going. Neither of us had the answers to the questions we so desperately wanted. Neither of us knew if he was still even alive. That was when everything began to finally sink in. It was real. All of it was all too real.

I dropped down into the chair beside him. I couldn't leave. Not now.

I couldn't have begun to guess how long I had been sitting in that uncomfortable hospital chair. My knees were tucked under my chin to rest against my chest. My arms were wrapped around them to cling onto the tiny amount of warmth that I had left. Shivers convulsed through my body as my hair finally began to dry where it sat up in its bun; locks of it had already begun to fall out of it due to my running. My feet were bare where they sat on the very front of the chair. It was no doubt that I looked like a madwoman to anyone walking past. What was I even doing here?

The tears had been on and off for hours. Or, it had felt like hours in that chair. My eyes stung and were puffy with the looming threat of fresh tears springing to them. I wasn't too sure that I could even cry anymore. White, dried tear streaks designed paths down my cheeks. They didn't seem like they were going to stop any time soon.

I had seen many movies where something of a tragedy took place. Never in my life did I think that something would have been unfolding around me. Regardless of the simple hardships that I faced, my life had been pretty peaceful. There were no extremely sad stories. There were no mistakes. There were no tragedies. Yet, as I stared at the white linoleum floor of the hospital, I couldn't think of the situation as anything but that.

A tragedy.

Oh, how easy it was for something to come to an end. Everything was not handed to us, nor promised. It was absurd of me to think my life was any different. How long had I thought that nothing would change? How long had I thought that the luck that protected my friends and I would go until it ran out? Perhaps it was simply a coincidence that Kaneki's life was put at risk. Perhaps it was fate.

Whatever it was, I knew that it hurt. I couldn't even hear the nurses and doctors droning on about his accident. I couldn't hear them. As much as I wanted to know that he was alright, how his surgery was going, and if he was in pain, I couldn't. I had no other option than to sit in the chair—quietly crying—waiting for someone to think to update me. It hurt. While I once thought my world was bright . . . Today, it felt like I had been left in the dark.

My emotions were all over the place. I was scared above everything. I was scared for him. I was scared that he was scared. He probably didn't even know what was happening to him. One moment he was okay, the next, he was rushed to the hospital for a surgery, hoping to save his life. I couldn't imagine how he was feeling-if he was awake. What if they had put him to sleep, and he never woke up?

My hands balled up around my legs. I would never forgive myself. The next emotion that I felt was guilt. Maybe if I told him to come home earlier, he wouldn't have been out. Maybe if I told him not to go with Rize. Maybe if I had told him how I felt, he wouldn't have gone. Maybe if I had responded to his text that morning, it wouldn't have potentially been the last time he'd reached out to me. Did he leave that evening thinking that I was mad at him?

I hoped not. I could have never been mad at Kaneki.

It wasn't fair.

It wasn't fair.

I was being a bit selfish as well. I didn't want anything to happen to him because he was my friend. I wanted everything to be a bad nightmare that we would all wake up from. My mind was spinning. While he sat there on that table, being cut apart and stitched back together, I couldn't think of anything but wanting our lives to go back to normal. For him to go back to normal. It was a lot to want considering. I found myself being disgusted with myself for it.

I was angry. I was angry at Rize for going out with him. I was angry at myself for letting everything happen. I was angry at myself for running here without a jacket, shoes, or my phone. I was angry at myself for shivering as if being cold was what I needed to worry about. I was angry at Kaneki. I was angry at the hospital. I was angry at the news. I was angry . . . so very angry . . . and terrified.

My eyes had started to sting with another round of tears when I felt something warm against my forehead. I looked up to Hideyoshi. He offered me a sad smile as he held out a can of hot tea. He didn't look much better than I had. His eyes were bloodshot. Redness has stained the skin around his brown eyes as if he had been crying, too. His lips were chapped, his orange hair was a mess, and his clothes didn't match as if he had just hopped out of bed.

I also felt bad for Hideyoshi. He and Kaneki had been friends for who knew how long. They had grown up together. They had stuck beside each other for over twelve years. Kaneki was his best friend—his brother. He was going through an entirely different pain than I was. Still in yet, there he was in front of me, trying to cheer me up. He was always a ray of light in the night sky.

I accepted the warm drink from him. It felt good inside of my cold hands. I didn't bother drinking it, just allowing the heat to warm me up a bit. He dug a hand into his pocket to pull out his cellphone. His thumbs tapped on the screen a few times before he turned it around to show me.

'Go home,' it said.

I shook my head. I hadn't thought about leaving; I wasn't going to go until I knew for sure that he would make it. It didn't feel right to leave until I saw him with my own eyes. I couldn't hear what was going on, so I needed to see. I needed to know.

He typed another message and showed it to me. 'You don't have your phone with you. You don't have any shoes. Your hair is wet. You're going to be sick, Nana,' it said, and when I shook my head again, he wrote, 'He's out of surgery already. He's not going to be awake any time soon. I'll stay here and let you know if anything happens. You look horrible.'

I took his phone to text out, 'I'm not leaving.'

Maybe I was being a bit too headstrong. It was good to know that he was no longer on the operating table. But, I wanted to be there. It didn't matter how ridiculous I looked or how little I was wearing. In the moment I had gotten that text message from Hideyoshi, my brain had turned off, and my legs acted to their own accord. I knew where I needed to be.

His chest inhaled and exhaled in what I assumed to be a sigh. 'Give me your keys. I'll go to your apartment and get your phone and some warm clothes . . . and some shoes.'

I looked down at my toes and wiggled them in the chair. They were painted a pale shade of pink. I had done them earlier that day in an attempt to keep my mind busy. Now, it seemed like such an unnecessary thing to have done. I was off painting my toenails while . . .

I reached for the table next to me to pick up my keys and drop them into Hideyoshi's hand. He must have known that nothing he could have said would have got me to move. I watched as he stood up and left me alone in the hall. And when he was gone, I felt the tears finally falling again.

I didn't know what I had done to deserve such caring friends. He hadn't needed to do that for me. He should have been where I sat, waiting for his best friend to wake up. Not me. For that, I truly was selfish. How long was I going to keep letting my friends look out for me? How long would I allow them to gather me back up every time I fell?

It had been pretty careless, though, for me to leave my apartment in such a rush. Anything could have happened. Kaneki was a testimony to how fast one's life could change for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. I needed to stop acting like I was indestructible. It was the least that I could do for the people who cared about me.

Hideyoshi returned a little over an hour later. The drink he gave me was cold and left discarded on the side table. The concept of time had been lost on me. I jumped when I saw him walk into my line of sight. He held out my school bag and a pair of white sneakers. His lips moved to form the word 'clothes.' I immediately thought about him searching for a bag all over my apartment before settling on my school bag, dumping out the assignments and paperwork to stuff it with jackets. It was a mess that I would have to clean up when I got back home. I chuckled softly as I accepted it.

I stood up to change in the bathroom down the hall. It was a stunning shade of white . . . sterile. Slipping into one of the stalls, I stripped myself out of my pajamas to change into the clothes that he had brought me. It was nothing but a simple black t-shirt, socks, gray sweatpants, and a black jacket. I changed into the clothes and zipped the jacket up before putting the shoes on.

My gaze was greeted with my reflection in the mirror when I left the stall. I did, indeed, look horrible. My eyes and face were so swollen that my eyes looked as if they were squeezed shut. My eyes, face, and nose were dusted a bright red. My lips were chapped, too, and my hair was only halfway into its previous bun. I decided to let it down completely in an attempt to let it dry. Tucking the strands behind my ears, I licked my lips and sighed.

What are you doing, Nana?

I made my way back over to where I was seated. Hideyoshi sat in the next chair over, thumbs typing messages into his screen with furrowed brows. I sat next to him, dropping my bag full of my old clothes on the floor in front of me, and curled back into a ball in the chair.

He looked over at me. His hand moved to display a thumbs-up. You look a little better and warmer, he seemed to say. I did feel a lot warmer. I dipped his hand into his pocket to pull out my phone. I told him a sincere thank you regardless of how it may have sounded.

He passed it to me, and the screen lit up with over thirty missed text messages. Some of them were from him, and some of them were from Megumi, but most of them were from Yumiko. She had even called me once or twice. I slipped the phone into the pocket of my jacket. I wasn't in the mood for talking to anyone.

'You didn't drink your tea. Are you hungry or thirsty?' he typed into his phone, showing the message.

I took it from him to reply, 'No. Are you? Have you ate?'

He nodded. It felt good to have him there with me. Even if the circumstances were bad, I knew that Hideyoshi and I could rely on each other. It wouldn't have been the first time that he had ever gone out of his way to make sure that I was okay. That was the way Hideyoshi was. He was there for all of us no matter what whenever we needed him. And I would always do the same.

He typed another message, his expression turning solemn. 'You know . . . besides me, I don't think anyone's ever cared for Kaneki this much.'

I stared at the message. He was talking about me. He was talking about the lengths that I went to in order to get to our friend. He was talking about my stubbornness to leave the hospital. Though it was probably a compliment to my dedication on his end, I couldn't help but feel a bit of sadness at his statement.

Kaneki deserved more. He deserved more than just us sitting in the hospital waiting for him. Every seat in the hospital should have been filled with people crying over him. He deserved more than just being referred to as a young victim on the news. But, that was how the world worked. It was how the world would continue to work.

He gave me a sad smile. 'If he makes it out of this . . . when he makes it out of this . . . Thank you, Nana, for sticking by him.'

I returned the smile. There was no need to thank me for that.

Hours later, I was woken up by movement. I didn't remember when I fell asleep. My body sat slumped in the same chair, knees tucked into my chest, and my head rolled over against Hideyoshi's shoulder. He sat with his legs wide, hands in his pockets, and head thrown back, no doubt snoring judging by the way his mouth was open. We had succumed to exhaustion sometime in the night. It was bound to happen soon.

His body jerked to sit up. The sudden movement spooked me out of my sleep. I sat up, moving my bangs out of my eyes as I blinked a few times to take in the surroundings. The hospital looked as if it had calmed down. The reporters that were outside were gone. The flurry of nurses and doctors scrambling had calmed down to a neutral state. Most of the visitors there for other people had gone and left. It was only Hideyoshi, an elderly couple, and I left in the hall.

The clock on the wall showed two hands pointed to five in the morning. We had been there for nine hours. We had been asleep for about three.

A doctor stood in front of us. His smile was polite. His dark eyes sparkled with a hospitality that wrinkled in the corners. His hair was black, gray, and balding. He was dressed in the usual white doctor's coat like the other one's had been. He was a bit on the shorter side for someone who looked in his late fifties. The badge clipped to his coat displayed the name Okiyama.

His mouth moved behind his mask to talk to us. I couldn't hear what he was saying, so I let Hideyoshi listen in silence. He was using the back of his hand to rub the sleep out of his eyes. He and I both had let out yawns, having only been running off three hours of sleep. Then, he walked away, and Hideyoshi jumped up, all but running down the hall.

I wasted no time in following after him. I gathered up my bag and cellphone to chase him. He led me over to a white door in the recovery ward. He stood in front of it, shooting me a glance before hesitantly pushing the silver door handle down to open it.

It felt like my heart was going to beat out of my chest. I could no longer tell if the feeling was fear. Was it anticipation? Was it excitement? Was it worried? All of the emotions had blurred together, nothing but a fine line separating them that I could no longer find. I was tired. Everything was still a shock to me. But, I needed to know. I needed to see him.

Hideyoshi pushed the door open and moved to let me enter first. I walked slowly into the room. In that moment, it felt like my heart had dropped. The hammering in my chest couldn't have been heard anymore. My lungs had stopped filling with air. I couldn't breathe. I didn't know what I had been expecting. The scene in front of me was just too cruel.

He wasn't awake. He lied sleeping on the hospital bed. His skin, while usually pale, appeared almost as white as the sheets he rested atop of. His hair was messy and dead without any shine or life. His eyes were shut where dark spots had accumulated underneath his long lashes. He was dressed in the light blue hospital robe. He looked tired . . . so, so very tired that it was obvious he wouldn't be awake soon. His body had been through too much.

He was hooked up to a breathing machine, the device covering his mouth to force his chest up and down. Wires were connecting his arms to machines . . . so many wires that it made me sick. One of which was a heart monitor. I couldn't hear it. I could only watch as the green lines moved on the black screen. Up and down, up and down, up and down . . . Kaneki was alive, at least despite how very dead he looked.

I walked over to him. The tears began again. There was something about seeing him look so fragile-so breakable—that made my heart hurt for him. He had just gone out to have a good time and ended up here. It was just too cruel.

It was a tragedy.

"I'm sorry . . ." I told him, wiping my eyes.

I didn't see Hideyoshi approach me. He was typing on his phone. The expression on his face didn't seem all that different than the one on mine. He placed a comforting hand on my shoulder, passing me his cellphone.

'It's not your fault.'

I knew that it wasn't. There was no way that anyone could have predicted it or prevented it. There was no way that I could have known that his date could have taken his life. Still, I couldn't help but feel somewhat responsible and helpless. We always all made sure each other got home safely. The one time I decided to be selfish . . . the one time I ignored him . . .

I typed in a response. 'If I wasn't such a coward and told him the truth, maybe he wouldn't have gone.'

'Or, maybe he would have still gone,' Hideyoshi wrote back with a shrug of his shoulders. 'You can't blame yourself for the unknown.'

I nodded. He was right. It was simply fate no matter how I looked at it. Kaneki, finally, had run out of his own luck. There was nothing I could have done to protect him. The sooner I accepted that, the easier all of it would be.

'I won't give up on him,' I typed, looking up at Hideyoshi.

He gave a lopsided smile. 'I was hoping you wouldn't.'

Kaneki remained asleep for who knew how long. After a while, Hideyoshi announced that he was going home. He wanted to shower. I had chuckled, saying that I would stay with our friend a little longer. At least until he got back. And when he left, I curled up into one of the chairs in the corner of the room, looking out of the window to the morning sky.

Birds flew through the blue skies of Tokyo. No matter what happened, what events took place, the sun would always rise. There would always be a tomorrow. Everything would always reset itself. Thankfully, Kaneki would live to see the sky turn from black to blue yet again. That was enough for me.

IT TOOK HIM two days to wake up.

I had been there alone that day. Yumiko had stopped by that morning to drop off a vase of flowers that she had picked up for him. She explained that she didn't know what else to get him. She had placed the flowers on his bedside, giving him a once over and waving her hands, asking if they gave haircuts around here. His hair was starting to hang into his eyes far too much. I laughed at her concern. Leave it to her to be focused on the way he was styled in the hospital.

Hideyoshi hadn't been there that day. He had to pick up a shift at work. I couldn't say anything; I, myself, had barely been able to pay attention in class. I had made my way straight to the hospital after my last class for the day. It was just going to be me and the comatose boy that day. It didn't bother me. The silence would help me be able to get some work done.

So, I had dumped myself in my usual chair in the corner and scattered my notes and notebooks in my lap. Chemistry had grown to become a true thorn in my side. Every day was filled with new concepts that I had struggled to get down pact from the previous time. Luckily, Kimi was able to give me some of her simplified notes. Hers were way easier to follow along than the professor's.

Then, there was my psychology class. The essay that Kaneki had gone over had been long since turned in and graded. It reflected as a ninety-two percent, boosting my grade in that class by a whopping fifteen percent. It was an assignment that was worth a lot and shouldn't have been taken lightly. I had made a mental note to thank him once he woke up. His skill in literature had proved useful in aiding my arguments.

I had been nose deep in chemical reactions when I saw something out of the corner of my eye. I glanced up. The pen instantly slipped from my grasp. That day, on the hospital bed, I witnessed Kaneki trying to sit himself up.

His eyes were squeezed shut in a grimace. His hand flew to grab the side of his stomach-right where his surgery had taken place. He blinked once . . . twice . . . a few times as his dull, tired, gray eyes scanned the hospital room. They landed on the flowers at his beside, then out of the window, and then landed on me.

So many feelings passed through his eyes. He had always been an open book to me. Confusion, sadness, fear, and then relief. He did nothing but stare at me for a few minutes. Perhaps shock had settled onto his face. I took in a sharp intake of air. I had not been expecting him to wake up. Still, I placed my notebooks on the floor and smiled at him.

He didn't smile back. His brows pulled low. He didn't break his stare. I watched as his lips parted and his tongue hit the roof of his mouth once . . . twice . . .

Nana?

I quickly got up to go get one of the doctors. Nurses flooded the room before I could say anything to him. They came in, surrounding him, talking to him, and hounding him with tests. I moved out of their way to sit in the chair I was previously in. It was better for me not to distract them during his check-up. But, Kaneki paid them no mind, his eyes still watching me with furrowed brows, not daring to look away.

The doctors had kept him company for the rest of that week. Hideyoshi informed me that it was hard to see him without a nurse or doctor coming around every thirty minutes. I hardly had time to come see him. Of course, chemistry was beginning to be too much to focus on two things at once. I had even made work of studying with Kimi in the library one day.

On one of the days that I had gone up to the hospital, Kaneki was asleep. The nurse had put him on some kind of pain medication. He had kept tossing and turning during the night, and the action was causing discomfort on his stitches. I had stayed a few hours with him. He had never woke up, so I left, shooting him a text to let him know that I had come to see him.

I tapped the pen against the table in my apartment. I was at home partaking in another one of my painful one-person study sessions. It was the afternoon; there was no class that day. I couldn't have been more thankful. I felt good about all of my grades except for that one class. It was better that I tried to get in as much as I could. I couldn't risk flunking the class. That would cause my GPA to plummet, and then I would be walking around exhausted like Anzai trying to get back up.

There was a steaming cup of coffee in front of me. I had gone out and bought some instant coffee to help keep me awake and increase my brain function. Or, at least, that's what a quick internet search had told me it did. My body felt a bit jittery. The increased brain function part was yet to be determined.

The television in front of me played the news. I had been watching it lately in case anything about Kaneki came on. It was few and far between. Most of it was about renovations of some buildings scattered around Tokyo. They would be blocking off one of the train stops due to maintenance until the next day. There was a small house fire that everyone made it safely out of. An elderly woman had lost her old dog. A majority of the sporadic ghoul attacks had come to a halt.

At that moment, the screen displayed what looked to have been a board meeting. Two men sat at a panel desk in suits and microphones in front of them. They were surrounded by paparazzi and interviewers raging for questions. The news flash on the corner of the screen showed that it was a physician review board. I put the pen down, my interest suddenly piqued.

'Did the girl consent to donating her organs?! Was her family contacted?!' one of the interviewers shouted. 'Was life-saving treatment withheld from her?! Did you do everything you could to save her?!'

The younger looking one of the two men spoke into the microphone, and the subtitles on the screen followed. 'She was pronounced dead upon arrival. We felt she died instantly at the scene.'

I sighed. They were definitely talking about Kaneki and Rize.

I knew that the doctors were under fire lately. During the freak accident, Rize died, and Kaneki was close to following with her. They had saved his life by doing an organ transplant the moment they got him to the hospital. It was sad to hear about Rize. She was used to save his life. I could only imagine how Kaneki must have been feeling.

I had been texting him every day to check on him. His replies were always the same. He was fine. He was ready to come home. He was with Hideyoshi. It was good to hear that he was up and about now. After only a week and a half of undergoing a transplant surgery, he was ready to leave.

I made work of gathering his assignments and notes for him during his absence. He hadn't missed too much in our Japanese Literature class. His other classes, though, I couldn't say the same thing. With his help, I had tracked down his other classes and retrieved his work from them whenever I could. His professors were nice enough. They had been hearing about the news and agreed to let him turn in the work whenever he came home from the hospital. It was a gracious act that was almost unheard of in college. Perhaps him being on the news had saved his grades.

Almost as if he had felt me thinking about him, my phone flashed with a notification from him. I swiped my thumb across the screen to open it.

'This hospital's food is terrible.'

I felt my lips turn up into a smile. I could imagine him sitting there on the bed, his face turned up at the bland food. Good to know he's well enough to complain.

My thumbs typed a reply. 'I can cook you something and bring it to you later, if you'd like.'

'Yes, please. I always enjoy your cooking.'

'Good. I'll swing by in a few hours.'

I didn't mind making him anything. I would have to make something that wasn't too harsh on his stomach; he was still in the hospital, after all. Yet, it had to be something that he would enjoy. What better meal to make than my favorite one? He had scarfed down plates of my rice and curry before. Hopefully, he didn't mind it again.

I was going to go after I finished studying. Just another hour and I would begin cooking. Chemistry, unfortunately, was something that couldn't wait. I had to give Kimi back her notes the next day. It was better that I put it to use while I had it.

So, when I had crammed enough material to beckon a headache, I got up and made work chopping vegetables. The rice cooker was filled with enough rice to feed both of us. I chopped potatoes, carrots, onions, and chicken thighs. The chicken was browned, the onions were caramelized, and the base was made. All that was left was to stir everything together with spices and let cook. It was such a simple dish that took no more than thirty minutes.

While placing everything into containers to bring to the hospital, I picked up my phone to check the time. There was a message from Kaneki on the screen waiting to be opened. My thumb danced across the screen to read the text.

'Thank you for everything, Nana. I'm so grateful to have you in my life.'

I sighed. Dummy . . .

There was no reason for him to be grateful. I was so terrified that I was going to lose him that it had been hard for me to focus on anything else. My study sessions, which usually took two hours, stretched on to four. It was hard to hang out with Yumiko and think about anything other than him. I hadn't been to Anteiku in over two weeks. I was afraid my daily life had taken a toll due to stress and worry. He shouldn't have been grateful. I was just grateful that he was okay.

And for that, I didn't mind suffering. I didn't mind checking on him. I didn't mind cooking for him. I didn't mind the thirty minute walk I had to take to get to the hospital. I didn't mind sitting up there reading my books while he slept. I didn't mind any of it. As long as there was still air in his lungs, and the green lines danced up and down on that heart monitor, I didn't mind.

Things would return back to normal once he came home. I pushed forward with that thought to motivate me. Once he came home, there would be no more anxiety about the situation. Once he came back home, I would know for sure that he was safe. He wouldn't be complaining about hospital food or yanking his stitches in his sleep. We would all be back in Anteiku laughing as if it had never happened; we would help him move past it. It was all that I could cling on to.

Everything was packed and ready to go. I had threw a few utensils in the bag as well as a bottle of water and can of green tea. I wasn't sure he would want it, but he had drank it a few times during his visits. I loved the brand. It was all I had to offer him.

I slipped on a pair of shoes at the door, grabbed my keys, his work, and my phone, and then I was out into the world. Tokyo had carried on as if nothing had happened. They were not affected by the disaster that had taken place. Everyone had their own lives to worry about. How many times had we watched devastation on the news and continued our walks home? How many times had we walked past yellow caution tape and thought to simply take a different route. It was human, I supposed. We lived, adapted, and learned how to survive.

The streets were busy. It was still a bit warm in the mid weeks of August. Cars drove up and down the streets while those who didn't own them walked the sidewalks. A good majority of them seemed engrossed in their cellphones. Especially the younger crowd, who walked with their friends laughing and pointing to things on their devices. It would have been a good day to go to the beach.

I wondered what sounds would have been going on. I imagined the fluttering of chirping birds up in the trees. Business men were probably yelling into their bluetooth earbuds as they stomped down the streets in a rush to their next meetings. Cars were definitely honking in the traffic, shouting at the person in front of them to go even the slightest bit faster. People discussed their daily lives on their walks: weddings, schools, families, and even vacations coming up in the colder months.

The Nerima ward in Tokyo was just stunning. In the daytime, it was filled with so much activity. It was peaceful enough for children to walk the streets hand-in-hand with their parents. People walked their dogs, drove bikes, and sat outside in the sun dining at restaurants. People went on dates, buying flowers from street vendors waiting to catch new couples. And at night, it was even more gorgeous. The way the skyscrapers and lights lit up the city was something that I didn't see back at home. It was so alive—so full of sound.

I approached the hospital in what felt like minutes. I had been so busy watching everything that my legs had been on auto-pilot, bringing me to my destination without a second thought. The double glass doors slid apart when I walked up to them to let me in. Immediately, my nose was filled with the fresh, sterile scent that only a hospital could offer.

There was a waiting room of people waiting to be admitted for the not-so urgent situations inside. There was a desk a bit away with three women behind them talking to patients. A security guard stood beside the automatic entrance doors. I walked inside, the women behind the desk, and the security guard all giving me a quick wave. I had been here so much that they knew me by face. More so because of the way I had burst in there crying the night of Kaneki's surgery.

They had him up on the sixth floor. I slid into the elevator behind a young woman holding balloons and flowers. The balloons were bright and read 'congratulations' on all of them. I pressed the button with the six on it, and she pressed the one with the three. The maternity ward. I could only guess that she was going to go congratulate a friend on a recent birth. I hoped that they were all okay wherever she was going.

She got out first, and I rode up the elevator alone. I got out on the sixth floor. Turning down a few hallways, I finally knocked on Kaneki's door and pushed it open to go inside.

The room was bright. Most of the major lights were turned off to let in natural sunlight from the huge windows on one wall of the room. Yumiko's flowers still sat on his bedside table now withering from not being taken care of. Everything was polished, neat, and clean, much like his own apartment was. Kaneki sat up in the bed hunched over a book. His legs were covered by hospital blankets as the air conditioning was blaring in the room. He was dressed in the common hospital robe, his hair hung into his eyes, and his expression looked the most bored I had ever seen him. I wanted to laugh.

When he heard the door close behind me, he looked up from his book. His lips pulled into a warm smile. He placed a black bookmark into the book before shutting it and leaving it discarded on the bed. His gaze followed me as I moved to place the food down on his bedside table. However, his smile dropped once he saw the stack of papers and the notebook that I had brought. He must not have been expecting me to bring his homework, too.

I took out a notebook from the stack to write to him, 'I made curry.'

He nodded, his eyes darting over to the bag of goodies. He looked . . . hungry. It looked as if they had been starving him. Whether it was due to patient neglect or because he genuinely hated the food there, I didn't know.

I unpacked the bag. I passed him the container of rice and curry along with the utensils. I placed down the water and can of green tea. He accepted the meal quickly. It made me want to frown. He really had been hungry in here.

With a quick signing of thank you with his hands, he dug in. I watched him expectantly. However, as soon as the spoon was in his mouth, he froze, his face contorting into a grimace.

I raised a brow in confusion. What was the problem?

It happened within seconds. He leaned over to spit the food out into the trash can on the other side of him. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, moving the food to the table as if he were too disgusted to look at it. His body shook with a gagging reflex a few times. One would have assumed he was mere moments from throwing up because of the food he ate.

I frowned. He had never reacted that way to my food before. It was as if it were the worst thing he had ever eaten in his life. So much so that he was literally retching and dry heaving. Had it really been that bad? I reached for the food to take my own spoonful of the curry. It tasted fine to me. Actually, I would say that I made it better than I usually did because it was for him. What was the problem?

He motioned for the notebook I was holding. I gave it to him. He had been so wrapped up in the taste of the food that he had just noticed the look on my face.

He shot me a weak smile as he held up the notebook to me. 'I'm sorry. I must not be that hungry after all.'

My brows knitted together low on my face. 'Do you think my cooking was that bad?'

'No!' He wrote on the paper, shaking his head at my question. 'I love your cooking! It just . . . isn't agreeing with my stomach right now. Maybe it's the medication I'm on.'

Ah. That made sense.

My expression relaxed a bit. 'Maybe your taste buds are out of whack right now. It tasted fine to me,' I teased.

'Maybe. I haven't liked anything since I've been in here.'

Poor Kaneki. It was obvious that he was growing tired of everything. Of the doctors, of being stuck in the bed all day, of being watched over. I didn't blame him for anything. His stress must have been through the roof. Food must have been the last thing on his mind.

I sat on the foot of his bed, careful not to sit on his legs. He shifted them over to make room for me. A small flat screen television hung on the wall opposite to the bed. It displayed a black and white movie that looked as if it had been filmed years and years ago. A small symbol in the corner indicated that the television had been playing on mute. I supposed he had left it on for background ambiance while he read his book. So it didn't seem so lonely in the hospital room.

He looked up at the television with me. The bags under his eyes were beginning to go away gradually since the last time I saw him. He had texted me days ago saying it was hard for him to go to sleep. Rightfully so, considering everything. It had kept him awake at night the first few days he woke up from his small coma. Thankfully, it looked like he was starting to sleep again.

I wrote into the notebook. 'How have you been doing, truthfully?'

'Truthfully?' He tapped the end of the pen on his chin before shrugging his shoulders. 'It's getting better, I guess. Look.'

He placed the notebook down. I watched as he slipped a pale arm out of the robe he was wearing. His other arm followed suit, the robe dropping around his waist where he sat. I could feel a blush heating up on my face as he exposed his torso to me. I had never seen him shirtless. Though he wasn't muscular, I couldn't help my gaze fitting over his collarbone, down his chest, and down his flat stomach where the curves of his body definitely displayed that he was a man. No matter how frail he was, he was built like a man. The slight curve of his hips pulled down to—

He placed a hand over the scar on his abdomen. Of course. I wanted to kick myself for staring him down, but focused on trying to get the heat out of my face instead.

The scar itself looked like it was healing. It was a bit higher up on his belly, swiping across diagonally from where his organs were impaled. From where the transplant took place. The cut was about eight inches long with strings of stitches trailing up the length of it. They pulled the skin close together so that it could heal back closed. It didn't look red or irritated or anything. It wasn't too bad.

I picked up the notebook and pen again. 'How long until you get the stitches removed?'

'In two more weeks, I'll be able to go back home. They said they want to keep an eye on me to make sure nothing gets infected.'

Just two more weeks. I couldn't help looking over his body again as he stared down at the scar. He had already been a thin boy, but now, it appeared as if withholding himself from eating was starting to catch up with him. His body looked as if he had lost ten pounds. There was now a slight muscle definition in his arms and abdomen. Though, I doubted it was from muscle gain opposed to him losing body fat. He was starving in here.

I frowned. 'Please eat something, Kaneki. You're losing weight.'

He waved me off as he put his arms back into the sleeves of his robe. 'I've been surviving on water. It's hard for me to eat anything. It'll get better once I go home.'

I just nodded. There was nothing else that I could do. If he wasn't able to keep any of the food down, there was nothing that I could do. I had already tried to feed him. It hadn't worked in the slightest. But, he was in a hospital, and I was sure that his doctors had taken notice. They had to have been helping him with his nutrition. Who was I to go against anything?

I motioned over to the papers on his table. 'I took notes for you. I also got your assignments and went to your other classes to get the ones from them, too. All of your professors gave you an extension, so there's no need to rush on them. I worked a little Nana magic.'

He glanced over at the stack. A sigh blew past his lips. Despite being out of surgery, he was still a college student. I kicked off my shoes so that I could sit with my legs crossed on the bed. He did the same, folding his legs to give me more room to be comfortable. His eyes gave a quick scan over my face. I tucked a loose lock of hair behind my ear as he offered a small smile, still looking me over.

'Thank you. What about you? How have you been doing?'

'As good as I can be.' I shrugged.

He was silent for a moment. He gave me another once over. I broke his gaze, looking down at my hands feeling suddenly self-conscious. His constant staring at me was starting to make me feel uneasy. Mainly because I couldn't tell what was running through his head.

He moved the pen across the page to write, 'Hideyoshi has been worried about you. I heard you stopped hanging out and going to Anteiku. Are you okay?'

Oh, he had been studying me.

I didn't know what to say. Was I okay? I couldn't tell anymore. Everything had happened at once. It felt like my daily life had been placed in a martini and shook up for a good ten minutes. Everything felt . . . different. I was doing my best to get everything back on track.

'I just . . . haven't been in the mood after everything. I've also been trying to get caught up with everything in school,' I explained to him.

Kaneki scanned my face over a few times before he frowned. 'Just because I'm in the hospital doesn't mean you have to rot away in your apartment,' he wrote down. 'I understand school, but you don't have to be alone.'

'I was scared. I was worried about you every day. I still worry about you every day.'

He sighed and smiled. He caught me off guard by leaning closer to me. His hand reached up to pat my head in affection. It was a gesture that was common between friend groups. Still, I couldn't help the blush dancing across my cheeks and ears. My brows furrowed in an attempt to cover up the embarrassment on my face.

'I know. The nurses told me that you were out there causing hell with all your crying. Hideyoshi said he had half a mind to drag you out of this hospital himself if you didn't leave,' he pulled away to write, his body moving with a chuckle. 'Thank you. I'm fine. Seriously. Go live your life, Nana. I'll be out of here before you know it, and you can catch me up on everything I missed.'

I smiled. It was easier said than done. However, as he hesitated and eventually wrote another note, I found my smile dropping.

'I'm sorry for scaring you like that.'

I blushed and looked away.

A nurse walked in not too soon later. She smiled when she saw us. I climbed off of the bed to go sit in a chair while he got examined. I couldn't hear what they were talking about. She wrote down a few things on her clipboard, checked his stitches, checked his temperature, and other things that I had drowned out. He sat there quietly.

It was embarrassing to know that he knew I was crying over him. Now that I thought back on it, perhaps I was being dramatic. He was taking his situation a lot lighter than I was, and it didn't even happen to me. He was the one stuck in the hospital.

He was right. He was always right. I did need to relax a bit. He was fine. He didn't require me worrying about him since he wasn't worried himself. He was going to come home, and everything would be back to normal. All I had to do was wait on him. And I would. I would wait on him for however long that took. When he was out of recovery, we would all be waiting.

When the nurse left, I came back over to his bed. I laid across the foot of it on my stomach. We spent the next couple of hours talking, playing card games, and reading books. It felt good to spend time with him. He didn't seem like he was in any pain. He was all laughs, smiles, and witty jokes like he usually was. But, I still caught the occasional sadness that swept across his face every now and then. It was understandable.

I would have been the same way if I were in his shoes. Finding out your date's organs were transplanted into you after a freak accident was enough to traumatize anybody. He was holding up strong. Perhaps he was putting up a brave face to not further worry me. I really wished that he wasn't.

I fell asleep to him reading a book sometime in the evening. I hadn't meant to. Cramming lately had taken away some of my hours of sleep. In his presence, I was comfortable enough to catch back up on them.

The sun was gone when I woke up. Instead of being at the foot of Kaneki's bed, I was in one of the chairs by the window. My feet were propped up on another chair facing me. Someone had placed a thin, white hospital blanket over me while I slept. Kaneki was also asleep in his bed. He was faced away from me towards the door, his blankets pulled high over him to keep him warm. It was a bit cold in the room.

I looked around the room in confusion. Hideyoshi was leaning against one of the walls. He was holding a can of soda, his phone in his hand as he typed away at it. He was dressed in comfortable clothes. His headphones were around his neck in the way that he used as a fashion statement. He brought the can up to his lips to take a gulp.

"Hide?" I called out to him.

He nearly jumped. His brown eyes trailed over to me with a sigh. He picked up my notebook that lay discarded on the foot of the bed. How long had he been there? How long had we been sleep?

Walking over to me, he wrote something down. 'You fell asleep on the bed and Kaneki couldn't stretch his legs out. He didn't want to wake you, so I carried you over here and put a blanket on you.'

'Oh. Thank you. Sorry.' I replied, embarrassed.

He waved me off. Ever the big brother he was. I imagined that if I had siblings, they would've been like Hideyoshi. Caring, funny, and observant to other's needs.

'I haven't seen you in a few days,' he wrote.

I was quiet. I was prepared for the lecture that came from seeing him again. It wasn't like I was avoiding him. I had just needed a moment to get everything together. To get my thoughts and emotions in order. Out of everyone, I knew that Hideyoshi would understand. Though, he'd probably be upset that I just didn't come to him.

He wrote another message onto the page. 'You're starting to get bags under your eyes. Your hair is a mess . . . I know you're worried, but Kaneki is going to be okay. He's going to a famous surgeon, for God's sake! He's coming home soon.'

I sighed. 'I know. I just get stressed about it every time it comes on the news.'

At that, the boy bent down to my height and wrapped his arms around me into a hug. It surprised me. Nonetheless, I reached up to return the hug. His touch was gentle and sincere. He smelled like clean laundry, pine, and a deep scent that was all his own. Cedarwood? It was a smoky aroma that reminded me of the trees back home.

If only he knew how much I needed that hug. I couldn't remember the last time someone had genuinely hugged me. Maybe it was my mother whom I hadn't seen in months. Maybe this whole time, that was what I needed: a hug. It was an embrace that let me know that I wasn't alone. I would never have to be alone. There were too many people who were worried about me and wanted me to ease up. Hideyoshi, especially, was one of them.

He pulled away after a few moments, writing down, 'Go home and actually go to sleep. I'll keep an eye on him for a while. Go hang out with Yumiko or something tomorrow, too. I'm sure she misses you.'

He was right. Had I been negligent to them as a friend? Had I been so consumed with Kaneki that I had forgotten about everyone else? I felt horrible. I would go to Yumiko's after school the next day to watch a movie with her and her sister. Maybe we could stop by that restaurant to see how Anzai was doing. He was sure to be there in all his exhausted glory.

I told Hideyoshi thank you. I stood up, folding the blanket and gathering my things. I would go home and take a nice bath with lavender bubbles to help soothe me. Some nighttime tea sounded great as well. I would actually sleep. Not get distracted by television, or school, or my phone. I wouldn't lie awake staring at the ceiling for hours. I wouldn't be so lost in my thoughts that I lost myself.

I paused as I was about to leave. I stole a quick glance over to the sleeping Kaneki before looking back over at Hideyoshi. Pulling the notebook and pen back out, I wrote out a message that I had been meaning to ask him. It was just something that I had observed.

'He's been acting a little weird. Have you . . . told him?'

Hideyoshi looked confused for a second. Realization fitted across his face when he found out that I was talking about my helpless crush. The crush that he knew about.

He took the notebook from me for the last time. 'No, I haven't. I don't think now is the time for that, anyway. Your secret is safe with me.'

I could trust him. With that, I left the hospital, into the streets of Tokyo, where bright lights awaited me on my walk home.

I WAS IN class two weeks later when I got a text message from Kaneki. My phone had flashed in my pocket with a vibration. I was grateful that the professor was turned to the board when it happened so he didn't see. My interpreter, Mrs. Mitsukuri, however, had caught sight of the small flash. She sent a knowing smile in my direction as she continued to sign along to the lesson.

I pulled the phone out to read the message. 'I'm getting my stitches removed today!' it said with over a hundred exclamation points.

I chuckled silently, typing back to him, 'Congratulations!'

Over the past two weeks, he was getting better and better. He still had an intolerance for food of any shape, way, or form. Still, he was progressing. His scar looked completely shut the last time that I had gone to go see him. I was honestly surprised that they had kept his stitches in as long as they did. That was the only thing keeping him from getting released. Perhaps they had done it so that they could continue to monitor his progress.

I hadn't even got the chance to put my phone away when another message flashed across the screen. 'I'm still going to take you out to eat like I promised.'

A bold statement. I tucked a piece of hair behind my ear as I read the message over and over. The last time he had offered, I had already set in my mind that I was going to decline the invitation when the time came around for it. Now, things were different. Not exactly in a good way, but not in a bad way, either. They were different enough—we had grown closer enough—for me to be down with the idea.

I didn't get my hopes up. Things hadn't progressed into a different territory. We were still Kaneki and Nana. Regular Kaneki and Nana that were friends, classmates, and neighbors all in one. That hadn't changed. The accident had knocked down whatever walls we had left between us and developed a deep friendship that was stronger than the connection I had with anyone else. I wondered if he ever thought the same way.

'Even though your last date was a disaster?' I asked him, my thumbs tapping on the screen.

'Yup. A total disaster. I'll see you on Friday, that's when I'm getting discharged,' he replied and quickly added, 'Ask Hide and Yumiko if they want to come, too.'

I found myself biting back a laugh. Of course.

On Friday, he wanted to meet at Big Boy. It was an American-styled restaurant chain that he and Hideyoshi frequented. They served his favorite food of hamburger steak the best, in his opinion. Hideyoshi had even offered to pay for him in honor of him returning home. It was the place that they went to for special occasions. There was no occasion more special than him getting released from the hospital.

Yumiko and I had agreed to walk there together after school. I kind of had an idea on how to get there. It didn't mean that we didn't use a GPS app to help get us there. We had even somehow managed to get lost on the way. Apparently, she knew a shortcut that ended up taking us in circles. She had thrown a fit, slapping her phone around as if that would get the GPS to stop telling us to go round and round. All that I could do was laugh.

We got there fifteen minutes later than we were supposed to. It was semi-packed. Tables full of customers talking and enjoying their foods littered the large restaurant. Women waitresses walked around in tight uniforms that showed off their curves. It was short-sleeved white button-up shirts and pinafore dresses that matched the restaurant's colors. All the girls were beautiful and dolled up in makeup and nice hairdos. It was one of the restaurants that appealed more to the male customers, and I instantly knew why they liked coming there.

Hideyoshi and Kaneki were already there. They sat at a table with two extra chairs on the other side of them. Hideyoshi waved a hand to call us over. Yumiko and I made our way to the table, taking the empty seats. They didn't look too upset with our tardiness.

I placed the infamous notebook and pen down on the table. Yumiko made work of explaining how we had got lost due to her lack of direction. Hideyoshi said that the moment we were late, he knew it had been her fault. That started a fight between the two, both of them spewing insults at each other in a lighthearted manner. The two of them fought like an old married couple that were sick of each other.

Kaneki had his chin resting in the palm of his hand with his elbow propped up on the table. His free hand swirled his straw round and round in his cup of water. The bit of color he had had started to return to his skin. He looked as if he had just gotten a haircut. The bags under his eyes were gone. He looked like he had gone back to normal. It was a good sight to see.

Yumiko looked over to him with a smirk. 'Well, well, well . . . If it isn't the boy who cheated death,' she wrote down.

Kaneki rolled his eyes with a chuckle. 'Good to see you, too, Yumiko. Thank you for the flowers.'

A girl with black hair, black eyes, and thigh-high socks came over to the table. I assumed that she had been waiting for the rest of the party to arrive. She passed out four menus to us. The boys didn't even bother looking through it; they already knew what they wanted. Yumiko and I skimmed it for a bit. I watched as everyone told her their orders. I had asked Hideyoshi to just order me whatever he was getting with water. He told the waitress, and she disappeared, off to go put in our orders to the kitchen.

Hideyoshi wrote down with a wink, 'She's so cute.'

It was me rolled their eyes next. If Hideyoshi was going to hit on every waitress there, we were going to be there all evening. He didn't care who it was, what hair color they had, or how they were dressed-if he saw a pretty face, he saw a pretty face. And he for damn sure didn't mind telling them.

He took a sip of his drink. 'But, man, Kaneki's doctor is taking a serious beating in the press,' he wrote on the page in the middle of all of us. 'It's all their talking about on the talk shows.'

It was true. Ever since that day I had seen the board meeting, there had been several other ones. It was in the magazines as a bit of a scandal. While there wasn't that much coverage on the news, there had been more talk in the tabloids. Even the gossip talk shows were talking about the unorthodox practice that had been performed that day.

Kaneki continued to swirl his straw around. I wondered if it was a good topic to talk about during his first day home. He had been released that morning after I had gone to school. I didn't even see him in our shared class.

'I guess the problem is he did an organ transplant without her or her family's consent,' Kaneki replied.

Yumiko raised a brow in interest. 'But, she didn't have any family . . . right? They said she died instantly.'

Kaneki's eyes went wide the slightest bit. Maybe he hadn't heard that fact. It still felt like it was too soon to go over the details. Today should have been a hangout day between friends to welcome him back home. We shouldn't have been discussing the accident. We could have done that another day. Whenever he was ready.

Yumiko issued him an apology after she saw his face. He shook his head and wrote to her that it was okay. It was time for a subject change.

Hideyoshi proceeded to tell us about meeting another one of his friend's girlfriends. According to him, the girl looked exactly like a pro wrestler he saw on television. He and Yumiko burst into a fit of giggles at the joke. I smiled despite not knowing who they were talking about. I didn't know if that was a compliment or a jab.

Yumiko told about a date that she had gone on two days prior. Hideyoshi had laughed, wondering who in their right mind would want to date her "old ass." It instantly started another fight between them. They were the same age, after all. Hideyoshi had turned nineteen two months ago in June. Yumiko's twentieth birthday was next month in September. I hardly thought of her to be that much older.

The date didn't go that well. It was a blind date with a guy that she had met on a dating platform. She explained how he was a weirdo who asked her what sized bra and panties she wore. That sent both Hideyoshi and I into a fit of laughter. She demanded that we stop laughing at her pain, that it wasn't funny, but she herself couldn't help the giggles.

Kaneki's attention was elsewhere. His eyes gazed around the restaurant; his mind must have been wandering. They landed on the girl who had taken our orders. She was serving steaming plates to the people two tables down from us. A bit of drool had trickled down the corner of his mouth. When Hideyoshi waved a hand in front of his face to get his attention, the boy quickly wiped it away with the back of his hand.

'Uh, Kaneki? We're telling funny stories over here . . .' Hide wrote down.

Kaneki gazed over the notes, not bothering to read the whole thing before he replied, 'I read it. Yumiko's dating a wrestler who wears panties. Uh, congrats, I guess . . .'

Yumiko sighed. 'No, Kaneki . . .'

I laughed. His summary of all of the stories put together had been more funny than the original ones. He looked away and sank further into his seat.

The waitress walked back to our table with four plates balanced in her arms. It was no doubt a skill that I didn't possess. She placed each plate in front of the person who had ordered it. She set down a steaming plate in front of me of hamburger steak. There were vegetables on the side and a fried egg on top of it drizzled with sauce. It smelled good. Kaneki had got the same thing without the egg. Yumiko had ordered an American burger instead, claiming it was one of her favorite foods.

We quieted down as we began to eat. The first bite of the hamburger steak was delicious. It was another reason why Big Girl was their favorite place to eat. It was tender, not too tough, and not too soft that it fell apart. The potatoes and carrots were steamed perfectly. Judging by the giant smile on Hideyoshi's face, he thought so, too.

Kaneki sat staring at his plate. He slowly lifted his chopsticks to take a bite of it. His face paled.

'Guys . . . The meat's properly cooked, right?' he wrote down, shakily.

Hideyoshi raised an eyebrow with a mouthful of food. 'What? Yeah, it's done perfectly. Is yours raw? Cook it on the hot stone.'

Kaneki nodded. He let his steak sit a bit longer until he moved the meat up to his mouth. The moment he ate it, his eyes nearly bulged out of his head. His eyes watered, and his hand shot up to his mouth to keep him from spitting it out. He was retching and gagging. We all jumped back a bit at his reaction. It was the same way he reacted to the food that I brought him to the hospital.

Yumiko and Hideyoshi moved to see if he was okay. People in the restaurant had started to stare at us. I sighed. It must have been the medication still in his system. He still thought everything he ate was horrible. Even if it tasted perfectly fine to the rest of us.

We left the restaurant not too long after that. Kaneki didn't bother touching his food again. He had hurried to eat our food to escape the looks our table was getting. We had split up at the front entrance. Hideyoshi was going one way, Yumiko was going another, and Kaneki and I walked together to our apartment building.

Some welcome home that turned out to be.

I had so many questions. Why did nothing taste good to him? Why could he keep nothing down? Had his medication really had severe side effects? What the hell was going on with him? Was he okay?

We said nothing to each other during the walk. His skin still appeared clammy from almost vomiting in the restaurant. His brows were knitted together in deep thought. The uneasiness on his face was easy to spot. He himself must not have known the answers to those questions. I recalled him saying that Big Girl had his favorite food of all time. So, if that was the case, why did it disgust him?

He stopped at my door to watch me unlock it. Once the door was pushed open and my keys were back in my pocket, I wrote another message. Though I had so many questions about his condition, I wouldn't ask. It wasn't the time. Not after such a peaceful walk.

'Are you glad to be back home?'

He nodded. 'I was getting sick of the hospital. Have you been sleeping again?'

His gray eyes looked into my purple ones with such . . . concern? His gaze was softened from their previous hardened look of concentration. His head tilted a bit to the side as if getting a new angle would allow him to see my face better. He didn't bother to break the eye contact as he waited for me to answer him.

I nodded. My fingers were moving together out of nervousness. I felt like I was squirming under his gaze. His eyes had got a lot more . . . intense recently. It felt like he was looking into my soul. He was looking for the faintest trace of a lie, of something else he could worry about. It was like he was looking for the real me, not the brave face that I had been putting up since that day. He knew.

Should I have told him? Was then a good time? Would I regret it? Would I regret not telling him more than if I did? What would his response be? Was it too soon?

I shuffled a bit as I wrote, 'Kaneki, I have to tell you something . . .'

Do it.

His brows pulled low in interest. His gaze trailed from my face, down to my legs, then back up to my eyes. Face face grew hot immediately. Had he meant to look me over like that? I could have sworn he had staring at not just my face, but my body, too. My mind was surely playing tricks on me.

He shook his head as if shaking away his thoughts. 'I'm not feeling good again,' he wrote. 'Can it wait?'

I nodded again. Maybe it was better that way. It wasn't the time for a sudden confession. He had just come home. It was better to give him time to settle in before just springing something that big on him.

We exchanged goodbyes and retreated into our apartments. Readjusting to life after the accident must have been hard for him. It had to because for the next few days, I didn't see him at all.

He didn't bother showing up for class. I hadn't seen him around campus. Hideyoshi told me that he had barely spoken to him; his calls were ringing, but getting sent to voicemail. He wasn't responding to anyone's text messages. I didn't see him around our apartment whenever I returned home at the end of the day. Our professor had even pulled me aside after class one day to ask how he was doing and if he had started on his assignments. I didn't know what to say. It was as if he had been avoiding everything and everyone.

I didn't understand how he could tell me to stop worrying about him. Every day seemed like worrying me was his biggest goal in life. He was hiding. He was shutting everyone out. That much I knew for a fact. It was like he was still locked away in that hospital, but at home at the same time.

I did my best not to let it affect me. I wanted to be the person that he leaned on when things were hard. I wanted to be there for him on the days when he felt like he had no one to come to. I wanted to give him a safe space where he didn't feel like he had to hide. It was probably a selfish want on my end. I knew nothing about what he was going through. I could only imagine the suffering, and even then, that wasn't enough. I just wanted to understand.

I had walked out of my apartment one day to knock at his door. There was no answer. Only the Gods knew how long I had been standing there waiting for the door to swing open. It never did. Not even as I knocked again, and again, and again. I would have assumed that he wasn't there had I not seen him step foot outside of his apartment.

He was in there. He didn't want to be bothered. He wanted to suffer in silence. It broke my heart to think of him inside sitting in the dark alone. It didn't have to be that way. We could suffer with him if that was what he wanted. If only he would open the door.

My phone flashed with a text message. I opened it, pulling my hoodie further over my head out of nervousness.

'Go away, Nana,' it read.

I looked down at the bright screen sadly. I couldn't be mad at his reaction. Any emotion that he was feeling was valid. Beyond that door was a boy alone, scared, and living with the aftershocks of trauma. Inside was my friend whom I desperately wanted to bring back into the light.

My thumbs typed a response as I stood in front of his door. 'Is there anything I can do?'

'Leave me alone,' was his instant answer. 'You're suffocating me. Always worrying about me . . . go worry about yourself. Fuck! I don't feel like writing little fucking notes right now! Just go.'

Oh.

The tears began to prickle at the rims of my eyes. His words stung in a place so deep within that I hadn't had the time to comprehend before I felt like crying. In all of the time that I had known him, he had never spoken to me that way. It all came lashing out at me in cruel words formed by pixels on my cellphone. It hurt my feelings.

He was right. I was being too overbearing, too caring about his business that didn't concern me. He hadn't asked me for help. I had just gone along assuming that I could help make everything at least a bit better. That wasn't how things worked. He needed to be alone to process everything. There was nothing that a deaf girl could add in to take it away.

A deaf girl.

That was what I was. If he had wanted someone to lend an ear, I wouldn't have been able to. If he wanted someone to listen to his troubles, I wouldn't have been the person he had called. I couldn't hear him. Like I had predicted, he had eventually gotten tired of communicating with me through handwriting and texts. I couldn't understand how he truly felt because I didn't understand. Perhaps out of everything he said, that was what made me cry the most.

Where did we go wrong? Where did it all go wrong? Did Hideyoshi tell him how I felt? Was that why he had suddenly snapped at me? Did I really step too far out of my place? Should I have fallen back from chasing him? Would things have been different if he could talk to me?

The tears ran down my cheeks in warm trails. I sniffled and turned on my heels to go back into my apartment. He wanted me to go away, so I would. I would leave him alone. Yet, for some reason, I couldn't get an image out of my head. An image of him behind that door crying, too.

Where had things went wrong?

I sent him a final message before turning my phone off. 'Okay. If that's what you want.'

This was definitely a very long chapter. Still, I liked the way it ended. It did what it was supposed to do. I also wanted to address that I know Tokyo Ghoul took place a while ago, but I wanted to move it to more modern times, such as with the touch screen phones, laptops, etc. There is a reason for such that will come in handy later.

Also, I have a tumblr! It is insanewiki on the website, and I will also have it linked in my bio. There, I will be posting art, reposting fan art, giving story updates, information and updates about other stories and/or upcoming ones, QAs, polls, memes, character bios, and more! I plan on it being a fun time and a way for me to connect more with you guys. Oh, and I'm really surprising myself with the consistent update schedule. See you guys next Sunday!

Fun Fact of the Chapter: Anzai was the second OC that I created—right after Nana. He also happens to be my favorite.