Akira goes shopping
A long stretch of quiet filled the next couple of months. The loose affiliation of politically homeless ghouls and humans all agreed to the plan: keep their heads down, stay out of any funny business, and keep on the look out for any relevant news.
If they could just wait it out while the bigger fish—Aogiri and the CCG—weakened each other and themselves, they had a chance to accomplish something. The two provoked each other on a regular basis, nothing new there, but it seemed like they were both waiting to deal any significant blows.
The information they'd given to Itori loomed large in the back of everyone's mind. The bartender was waiting, too. The more Akira thought about it, the more she came to believe that the Clowns were holding on to that information for their own purposes.
Maybe she was thinking about it in the wrong way. Akira filed away information in her mind nonstop, for the sake of using it to her advantage as soon as the opportunity arose. She had specific goals she worked towards. The Clowns were different. Maybe they didn't have goals. Maybe they just wanted the game to last as long as possible, and that meant sitting on explosive information.
It was almost a moot point—it was now very obvious to anyone who saw her that Touka was pregnant, and anyone with half a brain could do a little asking around and find out that Haise had been hanging around the café at the right time. They'd missed the window for the canary trap to work—that knowledge could no longer be used to separate friend from foe.
Still, that seed had been planted and it could yet be used by a savvy player in all sorts of creative ways.
Akira had planted seeds of her own, though, and a few were starting to bear fruit.
She got a couple of small tips from Hide as he monitored Aogiri Tree's movements, her only indication that the boy was still alive. In exchange, she answered the odd question he had about the CCG's current investigations. He seemed concerned with figuring out what the Washus were most interested in, and what their next move might be.
As always, the answer was Aogiri. Even in that stretch of quiet, the CCG still had tunnel vision for the gang, to the detriment of what could be several other serious cases that got no attention. Now that she was looking, Akira saw what Nagachika meant when he talked about them making illogical decisions about which ghouls to pursue.
I think Aogiri majorly disrupts their plan and their control. Like I did, texted Nagachicka. Be careful that they don't start wondering about you, too.
When she stopped to think about the tightrope she was walking, waiting to see who would make the next big play and what form it would take, Akira felt like she was on the verge of a panic attack. On a day-to-day basis, though, time passed at a steady pace.
Haise remained elusive. He'd been transferred and promoted well out of her sphere of influence, so their paths rarely crossed anymore. Rumors started building that he was putting together a huge case. The kind of high-profile affair that the CCG rarely saw.
Twice, she saw him coming down the hall at work. He made a quick detour as soon as he spotted her.
Once, she managed to hop on an elevator with him. He immediately hit the button for the next floor.
In the ten seconds she had, she tried her best: "Come to the café with me sometime. We should talk."
"I told you to stay out of my business. Stop going there."
She glared at him. "I'm going to get my cappuccinos wherever I damn well please."
He stared at the doors in angry silence.
The door dinged, having reached the next floor. Glancing up at the security camera in the corner of the ceiling, she said what little she thought she could get away with. "I don't know about that new partner of yours. Watch your back around him."
He didn't say a word, just shot her a dirty look over his shoulder as he briskly exited.
She continued to stop in at Café :re regularly for a casual cup of coffee, at first to spite Haise and then because she enjoyed this new part of her routine. It was hard to pinpoint when it happened, but she'd begun to look forward to her time spent there, chatting with the ghouls she begrudgingly considered a step above acquaintances.
Eventually, she ended up in the habit of stopping by on the way to work when she needed an extra pick-me-up. The dark-haired ghoul she'd stormed past the night of the Tsukiyama family extermination, Irimi, often took her order in the mornings.
Akira was surprised to find a kindred spirit—they both enjoyed listening to Gershwin and Coltrane, they both had similar taste in clothing boutiques, and they often joked about how they'd feel worse about being unmarried at their ages if the men in their lives weren't so hopeless, and then the other employee with the ridiculous pompadour hairdo would pretend to be offended…
Akira enjoyed watching their antics while sipping her drink. Well, maybe not every man in my life is hopeless, but that story's not over yet…
It was through Touka that she learned Haise wasn't as distant as he seemed: The ghoul often fell asleep on the couch, only to wake up in her bed. When she left a copy of the ultrasound on the table, it was missing the next morning.
"He has a key to the place and I sleep like the dead lately so he's free to come in as soon as I close my eyes…I just wish he'd stay and talk. Let me apologize, explain, anything." The barista stretched and yawned.
Akira shook her head. "Short of kidnapping him—and he wouldn't go without a fight—I don't see how we get him alone and shut him up long enough to listen."
"If only. As soon as the little monster's born, I might track him down and kick his ass myself. I'm thinking I owe him after everything he's put me through."
Akira chuckled and finished her cappuccino. "I'll be cheering you on."
She left Café :re and drove to her next destination. There was an order for her ready at a local art shop, and she wanted to browse for some new clothes at a place Irimi had recommended. Maybe even make a purchase if she saw anything that interested her enough.
It was a busy day in the area she was headed to, so she had to park a couple of blocks away from the main shopping street.
Within half a block, though, something felt off. Almost as soon as she perceived something in the air, someone came up from behind her to start strolling at her side.
She maintained her efficient walk. Glancing over, she saw that it was the tattooed ghoul with the haute couture haircut and the sunglasses. He must have followed me from the café. But we're on a crowded street. I'm safe for now.
"Can I help you," she said in a bored voice.
"I noticed we were headed in the same direction. Mind if I join you?"
"Yes I mind. Get lost."
He ignored her rejection. "So prickly."
They got more than a few stares—the polished blonde woman walking side-by-side with the pierced degenerate who looked like he would burst into flames if hit by direct sun.
He spoke again. "It's lonely, you know."
"Really."
"Being one of the creative people," he sighed. "Doomed to always observing everyone, but from the outside. We're not built to be alone any more than anyone else, and yet that's how we are forced to live our lives."
Bullshit, she wanted to say. You know Yomo, you know Touka. You could leave the Clowns and eat suicides and be part of their little community if being lonely bothered you so much.
Instead, she said, "You have some choice in the matter. Not as much as you might like, but enough that your fate is your own. If you're on the outside, it's your own doing."
He scoffed. "So judgmental. You make it sound so simple. Spoken like someone who's always had every door open to her. And yet, with all that freedom, you choose to turn your back on your coworkers…friends…family…why is that? I'm really very curious. Where does such deep ingratitude come from?" He asked with such an innocent air, it nearly concealed the vicious intent of his words.
Akira rolled her eyes. "Go scurry off and play your mind games with someone else. You're not going to make any headway here."
He laughed. "Oh, really? You're an iron woman, is that it?"
"Far from it. I'm just too brutally honest with myself. You're not going to whisper anything in my ear that I haven't already pondered at length."
He looked at her silently for a moment, then stared straight ahead. With laughter in his voice, he remarked, "I knew it wouldn't work if there's nothing to work with. Once you get promoted past a certain level at the CCG, it's like they surgically remove your heart."
She glanced over at him as they walked. "I do have a reputation for being cold. That always mystified me. I'm not cold, I feel things very deeply. I suppose it's because my feelings don't control me. They don't even enter the equation for me."
"Now those were dangerous words, investigator. Never say never, you won't like what happens when you tempt fate like that."
"I'm not superstitious."
"You keep telling yourself that. I am superstitious. I know when to stand back and watch you become the architect of your own doom. It's quite entertaining."
"You're wrong about me. I constructed my own doom a while ago, and I knew what I was doing every step of the way. And I can be creative, too. I used to be good at origami when I was a child. I see the finished product in my mind, and I know how to get there." And now that I see the end I want to this, I can help make it happen. I think.
"You're a regular Michelangelo," he drawled. "You're really no fun. I was hoping to get something juicy out of you. Maybe something Itori would reward with a free round of shots."
"What is she up to, anyways? For such a gregarious barkeep, she's been very quiet." Akira thought she might as well attempt to take advantage of the situation, though she didn't expect any results.
"Itori is a spider at the center of a vast web. If she didn't react the way you wanted her to, it's because she knew more than you realized. Or maybe she was under her own orders. Either way, I don't pick her brain. I just get drunk with her and occasionally do what she tells me."
"Well then, this has been a huge waste of my time. Move along now. I have some shopping to do." As an afterthought, she added on, "And you might want to stop following me. You wouldn't want to run into some of the company I keep."
The ghoul lowered his sunglasses to look at her. For a moment she was taken aback by the way he brazenly stared at her with those black and red eyes. "I know the company you keep. Touka's a good girl, and Yomo is a dear, dear old friend of mine. Why, if I was ever asked to do anything that could jeopardize their safety, I don't know what I'd do. Things become so complicated when your prior commitments pull you away from the people you care about."
She frowned at him. Is he saying he bombed this confrontation on purpose? As a way of warning us to watch out?
"And I think you've misunderstood me. I'm not here on Itori's orders, or anyone else's, today at least. Our conversation would have been much, much less cordial if that was the case." He sketched an elaborate courtly bow and turned down the next cross street, waving her off as he went. "Toodles! Pleasure talking with you! I'm sure I'll see you again soon…"
She pulled the frame from one of her shopping bags and removed the tissue paper covering it. "This is the line you suggested, right?"
It was a panel of calligraphy: You mustn't ask too much of human endurance, one must be merciful.
Amon nodded. He picked it up and hung it on a waiting nail next to her Tsujigiri piece.
They both stood back to admire the dichotomous display—war and peace, side by side. A reminder of the two paths they could take.
"It certainly fills up the wall," Akira joked.
"I first heard those words from an evil man, but I've realized that doesn't make the words any less true." Amon continued quietly. "He was Russian, so he was always talking about Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, too. There was one other quote from Solzhenitsyn that's been on my mind…the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either—but right through every human heart—and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. And even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained. And even in the best of all hearts, there remains an unuprooted small corner of evil."
Silence rang out in the room for a long moment as he finished reciting the passage.
Akira spoke hesitantly. "That line doesn't run between humans and ghouls, either, does it?"
"Through all our hearts. Yours and mine, human and inhuman hearts alike." Amon got that faraway look in his eye. He spoke of his childhood so rarely, and she didn't want to pry. She had a suspicion that he was remembering some last bridgehead of good he had seen in the ghoul he used to call Father.
She smiled to herself and shook her head sadly. "The Clowns fired a warning shot at me while I was out. I like to think I fired one back, but realistically, if they don't already know where I live they will soon. Your job from here on out is to act as my bodyguard anytime I'm off CCG property."
Amon nodded, eager for the responsibility. "Of course."
Picking up her other shopping bag, she reached in and fished out an elastic wrap bandage, the kind used for sprains. Throwing at him, she said, "Use that to cover your hand. I also got a dress while I was out and I want to show it off. We're going out tonight, somewhere quiet where we can be anonymous. Of course, you're unemployed so I'll have to cover the cost, but I'll just add that to your tab."
He could only respond with a hesitant, "Okay?"
I think I see Uta as an angsty artistic type who laments being an outcast but is secretly in love with his own loneliness because suffering is so *aesthetic* and thus will never take any real steps to change it…I've met a couple of art school dropouts like that haha
That quote by Solzhenitsyn, from Gulag Archipelago, is one of my favorites. I think it really sums up what I find so captivating about Tokyo Ghoul, too—you see so much of the goodness in the villains and the evil in the heroes, until it feels like no one is really a hero or a villain because of the side they're on, they're all just people.
As for the other quote…I had the hardest time finding something short and punchy that made sense in context, and I'm still not 100% satisfied, but I figure you can't go wrong with Dostoevsky. Maybe the fact that it's quietly kind instead of the hardcore mic drop line I originally envisioned is actually very fitting…
Next week: Akira's poppin' bottles