Hunger

Kaneki stares up at me, eyelashes covered in tiny droplets of water, lips chapped and cold. The mauve petals of a rose, they are parted, exposing his front teeth like a blade pushed only halfway into its sheath. I cock my head. He's still so beautiful. My mouth stretches into a smile that quakes at the edges as I lean down towards him. My hair hangs over my face and sticks to the tears that dot my cheeks like splatters of paint on an otherwise blank canvas. My fingers caress the side of his face, though he doesn't waver in expression even slightly.

I wish that I could still hold hands with him and whisper in his ear and call him at three in the morning when there's nobody but the stars and moon still awake. I would trade anything in exchange for our once becoming the now. All I can do presently is watch and wear a mask disguising everything that runs through my mind as he slips farther and farther away from my yearning touch.

Soon he won't even be there anymore.

I grit my teeth and look back into his eyes, the look in my own that used to be of pure adoration different, somehow. Kaneki can't look back in the same way either, though that's probably for differing reasons. His eyes, his eyes. Open, unblinking, his one kakugan still red. They look watery and dead. I want to reach out and wipe the tears away, but I'm afraid I might crack him.

His skin is slightly dull now. His cheeks seem thinner, or perhaps that's just a trick of the the light. It's quite faint, and it's becoming increasingly difficult to tell what is and isn't merely a deception of the evening darkness.

I softly wipe my thumb across his cheek, gently removing some of the moisture. His skin is dry, but not in a way that's necessarily unpleasant. It's almost a sort of. . . crispness, freshness. Like leaves, or the fragile wings of an insect. I stroke him carefully, as if he is a doll that must not be broken.

My fingers, bored with touching and feeling and stroking across his cheek, move down to the rougher skin of his neck. They slide across him effortlessly and softly, in zig-zags and swirls. I stop at his collarbone momentarily before moving back up across his throat, and my hand spreads. My palm covers most it, and my fingers clench around the width.

My fingertips are so, so cold.

I draw my hand away from his beautiful neck and close my eyes, thinking about all the happy times we had spent together before he decided that he was going to leave me. I try not to cry, I try not to feel anger or regret. Laughing and talking, book recommendations, shared coffee. Even with what was undeniably happy, the saliva I swallow when I remember anything tastes bitter now that it's laced with the salty taste of his blood.

The hunger was just too great.

I know that my choice was the right one to make. I just wish that I hadn't been forced to make it.

In the nights that I've been able to sleep, which are few and far inbetween, I've been having odd dreams. Dreams that I can't and absolutely refuse to forget. They're so beautiful and they've been burned, like cigarettes extinguished on concrete, into the caverns and grottoes of my mind. I'm always swimming and swimming through the air. It's difficult, a sort of numb feeling like having cotton balls stuck inside of your body. The sky is darker than what you could call black, the sun is missing. There always comes a point where I can feel myself slipping downwards, a bird with wings clipped, but I don't care and I've forgotten how to. Everything is so lovely and cataclysmic, so fantastically apocalyptic and final. The wind only blows upward and it sweeps my hair across my face. I effortlessly forget how to breathe and I give up.

I am happy with the choice to end it all. I am happy with the end.

But before I can crash into the ground, he catches me and holds me safe and sound in his arms. I can see the smile on his face and even though I'm smiling too, I can tell that something is wrong, that something is amiss. Before I can even form a supposition of the problem, of the missing piece, I wake up. Sometimes screaming, sometimes silent, sometimes crying.

They've been happening more and more lately, and I believe that I've found a meaning.

I plant a kiss, soft and gentle, on his forehead and place a hand over his mouth.

"I have a secret that only you can know." I lower my voice in both volume and pitch. "I still love you."

He has no reaction to me telling him so. Of course, it isn't like he would. He loves me too. He loves me too. He loves me too. He loves me too. He loves me too wants to let me eat him tear into him swallow chew bite teaR BREAK DESTROY DELICIOUS I CAN'T CONTROL--

I move back a bit, trying to imagine the thoughts he would be having right now. He would be tired, cold. . . He would be lonely.

An idea blossoms, venomous and bitter. I look down, and as the light passes over the planes of my face, shadows exaggerate the stretching skin at the corners of my lips as they form a grin.

"You won't be lonely much longer, love. I'll find you a friend."

Touka comes to mind. No, I think, too much romantic possibility. Hide? No, a human would be bor--

Ah.

Perfect.

I'll just use Kanae.

I stand up, now embued with purpose. I know what I have to do. I look down at him one last time.

"Au revoir, mon cher."

I finally know what gourmet food is, I think. I try to smile, staring vacantly at the head I severed, before closing the freezer door.