Chapter Text
“I don’t want to remember. That man I see… in my dreams, with the white hair… that’s myself, isn’t it? A monster." He swirled his glass around lightly, so as not to spill. Maybe it was a nervous gesture on his part, or maybe just an absentminded one. He frowned, and looked at his reflection in the black coffee. “After all, what could be worth remembering?”
The one he cared about most smiled sadly back at him in response. His heart—which sat half-eaten on the middle of the table—started to bleed.
“Dumbass,” said the blue rabbit, whose face was covered by a white rabbit mask. “Forgetting is just like abandoning.”
“I’m sorry…”
“But then, don’t you sometimes have to abandon one thing to save the other?”
The glass clinked as he placed it on the table, and the dream ended. Haise woke up. He could remember the taste of the coffee. He could remember the shade of the rabbit’s fur, both when it was white and when it was blue. He could remember the way the blood dripped on the table. But he couldn’t remember a single feature on that person. The one sitting across from him, the one his sleeping brain had casually labelled, “the one he cared about most.”
He sighed, and pulled himself out of bed.
Haise didn’t have to be an observant person to sense how the atmosphere changed when he opened the door to the :re café that day. When he’d looked in the window he’d seen Kirishima’s ribs shaking with laughter. He’d found himself stopping for a moment at the sight, a smile pulling at his lips. Haise’s eyes had wandered to find her smile directed at a customer, a man whose back shook with the same infectious giggles.
Then he walked in. Kirishima’s joy died the moment his eyes met hers.
“Sasaki!” she blurted.
The man at the counter’s laughter stopped right as she said that. Haise couldn’t see the man at the man’s face, but he could see how he stiffened and quieted down. The ghoul investigator’s eyes darted from one to the other. “Er, sorry,” he said, nervously, “Did I come at a bad time?”
“N-no,” Kirishima’s arms suddenly didn’t know what to do with the tray she was holding. Her eyebrows shot up anxiously, “Just…” Her eyes flicked to the quiet man at the counter, but only for a moment. Then she put on her best smile. “…what can I get you today?”
He didn’t like the smile but he stepped forward. “Coffee. Uh, black. As usual.”
He glanced at the man at the counter as he walked up. His head was shorn practically to the point of baldness, only tiny bits of blond fuzz sticking to his scalp. The man’s loose coat closely concealed his form, but the limbs Haise could see were worryingly thin. He didn’t know when his glance had turned into a stare, but the way the man twitched when he approached broke him out of it. He glanced nervously away for a moment, then turned to the man in the brown coat.
“Hey,” he said, not sure what prompted him to speak, “Sorry to-”
The man shot up and bolted before Haise could finish his sentence. In a moment, he was out the door but not before he saw a glimpse of his face. It was enough to make his mouth drop. Crescent shaped marks, white with age and rough with indications of healed stitches, on his lip, on the edge of his jaw, on his nose. Large, indented patches of white around his cheek, like patches of skin had been ripped off. Scars. Bite marks.
Tiny metallic bells rang as the door slammed shut. Kirishima swept past him and ran after the man, only to come back seconds later.
“Sorry about that,” she breathed. “I… are you alright?”
Haise flinched. Then he felt the tears stinging his eyes and blinked them back. He didn’t know the man. He’d barely seen him and heard his voice for about a second. And yet…
What a nice laugh. I wish I could hear it again.
“Who was he? The man that was here last time?”
Haise had waited until his next visit to ask Kirishima, but she only shrugged. “Occasional customer.”
“Oh. Are you two…?”
“Huh? Oh no. He’s not even a regular. I can’t even remember his name. We just got chatting before you arrived.”
The image of Kirishima and the scarred man shaking with mutual laughter flashed through his head. Liar. But he smiled. “Oh, okay. I was just wondering. You seemed… happy.”
She shrugged lightly. “He seems like a good guy.”
Something inside Haise wrenched but he smiled. “Well hopefully I’ll run into him again.”
He barely caught the way her smile stiffened. He dropped the subject and instead turned his thoughts back to the stranger.
Poor clothes. Thinness. Heavy facial scarring. Haise thought of how the man had jerked away. Ashamed of his appearance? The answer clicked immediately: Someone who’ll only go to the café at the earliest hours, when he’s sure no one will look at him. That made sense. He’d seen the scarred man early in the morning that first time, one unfortunate hour when Haise couldn’t sleep. An hour in the morning when the café hadn’t had any customers besides Haise and the man himself. So that was it, the answer.
(What was the question? One that he hadn’t realized he’d been asking himself: How do I find him again?)
He didn’t meet the man in the café like he’d imagined. Instead, he met him on the sidewalk, halfway down the block leading to its entrance.
The scarred man didn’t have a chance to hide his face this time. Instead, he froze on the street. He saw the man’s throat tighten with a gulp, and his hands grip the strap of the bag slung around his shoulder. Haise stopped with him. He looked at him for a moment, soaking in every detail of his scarring. His blood rushed so he could feel it pounding in his ears. It suddenly struck him—much too late—that he’d planned and fantasized about meeting this man again and he didn’t know why, or what he would do now. Any words he’d hoped to say suddenly stuck in his throat.
They stood about ten feet away from each other, staring. Then the man turned away and suddenly Haise had his voice back.
“Wait! Stop!” What if this is the last time I see him? “Please! Just a-”
The scarred man flinched under Haise’s grasp. The ghoul investigator hardly remembered sprinting up to grab a hold of him. The man didn’t struggle, but turned as much of his face away as possible; his voice came out thick but calm. “Please let go.”
“I—of course.”
The scarred man’s composure broke once the grip lifted. He jerked away, stumbling a few steps away before stopping to support himself against the wall. As the ghoul investigator watched, his collected but heavy breaths turned into shallow hyperventilating.
“Stay away,” he gasped the moment Haise walked up to help, “Please.” So Haise stopped, and stayed to watch the man curl up and fight his own breathing.
“Should I call an ambulance?” “Is there anyone you want me to call?” Both questions were met by a shake of the head. He didn’t know how long it had been when the man’s breathing slowed and he stood up shakily. Haise wanted to reach for him, wanted to pick him up and hold him tight. But he’d been told to stay away. The man’s breathing stilled at last. He walked a few paces away, then turned back. His gaze held Haise’s.
“Now,” he said, his voice still shaky, “What did you want?”
For some reason the question hurt. Haise’s chest ached, and his suddenly parched throat tried to protest but all that came out was— “I did this to you, didn’t I?”
The man’s face scrunched up a little. “You don’t remember?”
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” he croaked. “I’m sorry.”
He tried to cover his face. It helped. He calmed himself down, and looked back up at the man through blurry vision that cleared with a blink. He couldn’t see the expression on the other man’s face.
“What can I do to make it up to—not that anything could, but… please. Tell me what to do.”
“You don’t have to do anything.”
“Please.”
He could see more of the man’s expression, all worried lines underneath the scarring. “If it makes you feel better, then… we can meet again. To talk.”
Haise gulped, and nodded. He opened his mouth to ask more, but before he could the man was gone, ducked into some alley and leaving only the sound of panicked, running footsteps.
The scarred man found him so easily that Haise didn’t know whether to be scared or not. It took them about five minutes to arrange a meeting place: not at :re, but in the sunshine at a crowded park. The scarred man had turned down his offer for food, along with any suggestion for meeting place Haise had until he flat out admitted: “I wouldn’t feel comfortable at any place you pick.”
Haise nodded at that and swallowed the lump that formed in his throat. At the park, they sat at opposite ends of a bench.
“Just this distance away, no closer,” the scarred man said, “We can hear each other this way.”
For some reason the words stuck like a dagger in the back, but Haise smiled as best he could. “I understand.”
There were a million questions Haise needed to ask and they all died in his throat. He started with one he hadn't intended.
“What’s your name?”
“Nagachika Hideyoshi. You’re…?”
“Sasaki Haise. Nice to meet you.”
The scarred man proceeded to barrage him with questions before he could open his mouth again.
“Where do you work? What have you been doing in your free time? Have you been visiting bookstores? Have you felt comfortable with the people you’re around? How have you been sleeping?”
A bit of panic surged through him, but he answered with a smile. He glossed over his work at the CCG, stumbled a bit over the more personal questions. Did he feel comfortable with the people he worked with? He loved them; what else could he know? They were all he had. But there was always that uneasiness beneath the surface. He found himself touching his chin.
Nagachika’s eyes seemed to see through him, and his scarred lips twisted into a sad frown. Haise looked away and chuckled nervously. “These aren’t the sort of questions I was expecting from you.”
Nagachika shrugged. “It’s what I need to know.”
They continued to talk, and Haise took advantage of the sunlight to examine the man’s face. He thought of scars he’d seen sported by handsome actors in films: thin white lines across the cheek or jawbone, not enough to take away any attractiveness but enough for the added allure of mysterious tragedy. Nagachika’s scars were nothing like that. His face had been destroyed, ripped apart so that it could only be put together in a lopsided fashion. Haise’s eyes dwelled on each mark. Each lopsided white patch where skin had been torn off. Each branch of stitch-textured scars where they’d pieced him together.
Haise’s throat tightened. “So… so are you and Kirishima…?”
“Kirishima? You mean Touka?”
He swallowed. “She said you didn’t know each other, but I thought maybe she was lying to keep me away. It wouldn’t be unreasonable.”
Protect the one you love by lying to the ghoul who’d attacked him. It made too much sense. Nagachika didn’t answer, so Haise continued. “I just want to know if I should stop going to :re. If you two are dating then-”
“Wh-what?! No, man! How’d you even… no. We’re just friends, I guess. I don’t even know if I could call it friends actually.”
“Really? You seemed happy together.”
“Yeah. But it’s not so much friendship as… what can I call it? Shared pain? I mean, we don’t see each other much, but we understand each other. I guess it’s not really friendship or anything by most people’s standards but…it’s important to me,” he smiled bitterly, “Us rabbits have got to stick together, you know? Loneliness isn’t good.”
“Then, do you have a girlfriend or…?”
A pained frown pulled at Nagachika’s face. Haise winced. Why? Why did he feel the need to ask that? He added, “Or, just any friends. I mean—I just.” He stopped himself.
“It’s fine. But I’d rather not answer that.”
A breeze and a rustle of leaves filled the silence between them. Behind them echoed the sound of children playing. Nagachika interrupted it.
“Will you be alright?”
Haise blinked at the question. “I suppose?”
“You should go to the bookstore more often. And you should definitely keep going to :re. If you can’t feel good with the people you work with, then you should try to talk to people outside of it. Drink lots of coffee and make sure you eat enough.”
He flinched at the last sentence. “But—but you know what that means.” Nagachika stood up, looking away so that Haise could only see the edge of his tattered cheek and the snub of his nose.
“I should be going now.”
“Wait!” Haise jumps up, speaking before he can stop himself. “Could we do this again? Sometime?”
He wanted to smack himself for asking. He had no right to ask anything of Nagachika—a victim—no right to anything but accepting whatever punishment the man should have required of him. To beg for another meeting for his own satisfaction was despicable. Still, he met the man’s eyes pleadingly.
“Sure,” came the reluctant response.
“Right here again?”
A nod.
“When? Can you come Friday, same time?”
Another nod. Haise couldn’t stop himself from beaming.
“I—thank you.”
“No problem.”
“I’m glad to have met you, Nagachika.”
The scarred man drew up his shoulders a little at that. “Yeah.”
Haise watched until he had disappeared into the distance.