Chapter Text
Saiko closed the door behind her, quietly, only to find someone already in the driveway. Hide startled, then waved.
“Yo, yo, going out?”
“Gotta visit a friend. You’re staying?”
His eyes slid over to the door, as though noting her secrecy. “Nah. Just had to drop something off for Haise.” He held up a paper bag that looked more like takeout than work stuff. Saiko frowned. But Maman couldn’t eat takeout. He nodded, calling back, “See ya around, have fun!” then headed inside.
Saiko watched him go in silence. Even his childhood friend wouldn’t use his name. Because the CCG didn’t like it? They knew it then, but…
The door clicked shut, snuffing out the chaos inside the house. It sounded like Shiragin and Uribo were arguing about something silly again.
Why didn’t the CCG tell him his name?
Something had been wrong with Maman when he came home this morning. He’d been missing again, though only gone for a night. Urie had said it must have been work. Somehow, Saiko couldn’t believe it. And when she saw him trudge in at breakfast, gaze glued to the ground, not even saying hello as he went upstairs, she knew she was right. Something was wrong.
It looked like Hide knew what and he was looking after him. He seemed grim despite the cheer, but maybe Maman would be alright then. It wasn’t like Saiko herself could do anything. Hide’s visit the other day had helped, so much so that for a few days, it felt like they had him back. He spent more time with them, even cracked a few jokes. But then the timer ran out. He returned to his old ways, withdrew from them once again.
If anything, the events of the past few weeks convinced her that today’s mission was critical.
Voices travelled down the wind from the bedroom upstairs. Maman’s.
“You didn’t have to,” he said, weary.
“Were you planning on walking around town in that state?” Hide asked lightly. “Can’t trust you not to get run over or something.”
“Can’t get run over,” he muttered, but made no further argument. Paper rustled and crackled. “Thanks.”
The silence stretched and Saiko turned to leave.
“You know,” Hide said suddenly, “even Touka’s worried. She was asking about you.”
But Maman didn’t respond, so Saiko walked down the driveway and made a beeline for the train station, wondering who Touka was. Lucky for her, Cochlea was only two wards over.
The ghoul prison was as inviting as ever, the still mausoleum air pressing on her skin. Saiko suppressed a shudder. The warden raised a keen eyebrow at her when she requested to interrogate Yotsume—there were no recent raids to bury her presence here, and clearly not many people came to talk to her despite Hinami being such a high-ranked ghoul.
He waved her through after an excruciating ten minutes where she hoped no one would be alerted to her request. Maman would panic, Akira would probably be mad, and the other Quinx might not understand her need to chat with a ghoul. Urie knew what she’d done last time, but he’d thankfully kept it to himself.
The hallways, suffocating despite leading to a dead drop on one side, didn’t feel any shorter than her last visit. She only saw one other person there, that investigator they’d worked with for Rose. Furuta. Somehow, his enthusiastic wave as he traipsed past didn’t ease her mind at all. He didn’t look like someone who’d lost their entire squad only a month ago, a traumatised sole survivor.
Hinami smiled as Saiko walked in. “Hello. I thought I’d be seeing you again.”
“Yeah, Uribo killed the vibe last time.”
She chuckled then stopped, seeming surprised at the sound coming from her own mouth.
Saiko dragged over a chair with a loud screech, into which she dropped promptly. It had been an arduous journey. To her chagrin, Maman was right—she needed soo much more stamina training.
Blowing air out of her mouth, she started. “Okay. Can we continue from last time?”
Hinami nodded slowly. “How is he?”
“Awful, honestly. He becomes normal, happier, from time to time, but otherwise he’s all closed off and cold.”
The ghoul gave Saiko a sad smile. “I see.”
“You’re not surprised?”
Hinami carefully interlocked her fingers, as though considering how much to say. “It’s a bad habit of his, cutting people off. Trying to handle everything by himself.”
Saiko kicked her legs. “Like Urie sometimes,” she mumbled more to herself, but Hinami seemed to have heard.
“That friend of yours does remind me of him too.”
“Really? In what way?”
“Hm. I suppose he’s sharp, but it’s more about how obsessive he was over reaching whatever his goal was. To the extent he was tripping himself up.”
Saiko frowned. “Maman doesn’t do that.”
Hinami blinked in confusion. “Maman? Oh, Onii-chan? He’s very motherly isn’t he?” She chuckled again, this time comfortably, then sobered. “He does, though. He can’t let go of anything, but he does it more subtly. There was this time, many years ago, where he’d grown so obsessive he just kept crossing line after line.” Her gaze grew distant, like she wasn’t looking at Saiko, but into a different time. “It was important to him, but I worried anyway. It felt like I was watching him lose himself.”
Saiko didn’t know what to say to that, so she chose to respond to the first part. “He’s technically our superior, but he never minds what we call him. I picked ‘Maman’ not long after we met, you know. It’d been a day off—not that I was really working back then anyway—and he’d commented my bangs were getting too long, and then offered to cut it for me. And with the way he’s always looking after us, feeding us literally three times a day,” Saiko shrugged, “Maman just felt fitting.”
“He used to do that for me too. I would pick out a hairstyle I liked from a magazine and the next thing I know he’s recreated it perfectly on me. It was like he was raising me, even though he had no reason to and was just a kid himself. Both him and Onee-chan,” she murmured sadly.
Saiko wanted to ask who that was, but reconsidered. It sounded like someone she wouldn’t give away to an investigator. “Did he get better?” At Hinami’s confused expression, she added, “You said it was a long time ago, so did he get better later?”
Hinami gave her a sorrowful smile. “If you’re asking how you can help him now, there isn’t a way. He’s too stubborn. He won’t listen.” Saiko must have looked especially pathetic, for she sighed. “It fluctuates. I suppose he was alright for a while, as Haise Sasaki, but it makes sense that he’s still struggling.” Her voice softened, eyes lowered to the ground. “He’s suffered a lot, Saiko. I don’t know if it’s possible for him to be the same again.“
-- -- --
Shirazu yawned, reclining further into the couch. It was starting to get hot and clammy, the skies finally clear after the last few days of nonstop rain. He was bored. So awfully bored, but there was nothing to do. Mutsuki was reading in his room. Urie was painting. Saiko was missing. Sassan had been here a few hours ago, but his friend had dragged him off somewhere—which would probably do him some good, he looked like death. So here he was, alone. He didn’t have the energy to go for a ride, and there was nothing good on the TV, but he flicked through the channels anyway.
“—And the Tsukiyama family—”
Shirazu paused at a news channel, where a panel was discussing old news, prompted from the CCG’s last raid. Through the heated debate and haze of boredom, he only caught a few passing arguments:
“—impossible to believe we’ve had ghouls not just hiding in plain sight, but in a position to influence human society—”
“—makes you wonder how much damage they’ve done—”
“—now re-evaluating the policies of the current Prime Minister—”
“—had the support of the Tsukiyama family—”
The Prime Minister had ties to ghouls? Shirazu blew a low whistle. Damn. Deciding he’d gleaned enough entertainment from them, he picked up the remote again.
Just then, the panel cut away to show an old family photo uncovered during the raid. Until recently, no one had seen the faces of the Tsukiyamas, with only passing mention of the other family members. According to the voice over, the wife of Mirumo Tsukiyama—the head of the family—had died many years ago. They zoomed in on the face of the son and heir, Shuu Tsukiyama, saying there was little known about him other than that he would be in his twenties now and was still alive and on the run from the CCG.
Shirazu’s brain buffered. He’d seen that face before, but where? Him—that guy they’d run into months ago on the wheelchair who was dressed real weird. He looked sickly and pale then, but it was definitely the same guy. The hair was unmistakable and he had had that rich people eccentricity he could see in this photograph.
And his voice…in the café.
He straightened as the pieces clicked into place. Oh my god. What was he supposed to do? Tell someone? Who? Sassan wasn’t home—he wasn’t sure he could tell him either way— and Urie was just, no. Mutsuki! Mutsuki was here.
Shirazu scrambled to his feet and sprinted up the stairs, leaving the TV running as the panel restarted their debate about ghouls and crime. He reached the landing and found who he was looking for immediately, standing in the hallway outside—
He skidded to a stop. “Tooru, the hell were you doing in Sassan’s room?”
Mutsuki, wide-eyed, stared back at him, then jolted out of his reverie. “Oh! Um, I just wanted a book—he said I could go if—I wasn’t trying to snoop or anything, I swear—”
“That doesn’t look like a novel,” he said slowly, indicating the small book Mustuki was holding close to his chest.
He looked down at it as though he’d forgotten he had it. “It’s a journal…”
Shirazu was aghast. “Tooru!”
“No! No, no, it’s not! I meant—it’s a journal, not Sensei’s,” he frantically assured him. Mutsuki held it out. “It’s from the archives, I think? It’s another investigator’s, see?” He opened the cover and pointed to the name on the first page. Kotarou Amon. “And the entries are old, from years ago.”
“Okay…so why did you take it?”
“I think he knew Sensei,” Mutsuki whispered, ”before all this happened.”
-- -- --
“Oh.”
Hide stopped and turned around to find Kaneki standing frozen in the middle of the street nearly a foot behind him. A middle-aged man almost ran into him, darting around Kaneki while shooting him a dirty look.
Kaneki was looking better now that he’d gotten a couple of hours of fitful sleep at Hide’s place, eaten something that wasn’t poisoned, and was getting some fresh air. They still had a heavy conversation ahead of them, but he figured he’d give him some time. Still, the point was to get him to stop thinking for a bit and that didn’t seem to be working very well.
“Uh, Kaneki?”
His gaze met Hide’s and he frowned. “What have I told you about calling me that?”
“I literally can’t hear you, man.”
As if to prove his point, a truck honked loud and long at the crossroads beside them, and for a moment, Hide was convinced he would be deaf by the time the driver lifted his palm. Some giggling teenagers hollered their apologies as they raced across the zebra crossing and vanished into the crowd.
Kaneki walked over so he was within hearing range, then spoke, “I just realised something.” They turned at the intersection and soon the crowd thinned, the pavement becoming more uneven, unkept weeds springing through cracks. “I think someone I thought was dead isn’t.”
“Like me?” Hide said cheekily.
Kaneki rolled his eyes with a faint smile. “Sure, like you. I think…he saved Saiko’s life. The build she described—it just makes sense.”
“That makes zero sense to me, but okay. Do I know this mystery hero?”
Kaneki tilted his head. “Probably? Since you know Akira.”
“OH. Yeah, I know who you’re talking about.”
Kaneki, for the second time in fifteen minutes, stopped in the middle of the street. This time when Hide turned he found an expression of complete exasperation.
“I swear to god, Hide—”