守りたい // hidekane

05

"Why would you let him in?" Touka questions the other, taking a sip of her coffee. They had decided to close early today so she's enjoying herself her own cup of coffee. Yomo had already left a few hours ago.

"Touka, it's part of our policy to help fellow ghouls, is it not?"

"B-But, I could've sworn he was human!" Touka argued. "Just a few weeks ago, he was eating those burgers with that friend of his while they were ordering their drinks."

The manager simply shook her off, "I wonder, have you heard the news about a certain organ transplant recently?" 

"Not the details." Touka crosses her arms, trying to figure out what the manager was trying to prove.

"Well, there were two students who were victims of the sudden falling of the construction beams." He started, "One of them, the girl, was killed instantly under the weight of the beams. And the other one, the boy, was in critical condition, nearly dead. He was opted to have a organ transplant immediately. So the doctor took it to his liberty to transplant the organs from the deceased girl to the boy in order to save him."

"Those organs..." The manager's expression turned serious, "seemed to have belonged to Rize."

Touka's mouth hung open, flabbergasted. "R-Rize? Dead? Because of some construction beams?"

"It seems so that the impact was too hard, even for our regenerative abilities." The managed nods, "Thus, the fact that Rize's organs were transplanted into a human would mean..."

"Don't tell me.." Realization dawned on Touka as she figured out what he meant. "That boy...he was the one who had Rize's organs transplanted into him?"

He nodded, and Touka sunk back into her seat, "What does that make him then? A ghoul? A human?"

"This is the first such case that I have ever encountered, but it seems that the boy, Kaneki, is slowly morphing into one of us."

"Wh-"

Ring! The sound of a phone going off startles the two. It came from Kaneki's jacket that was placed carelessly on top of the counter.  There came a clicking sound and Kaneki's voicemail was heard on loudspeaker.

"Hello, you've reached Kaneki Ken's phone, leave a message after the beep."

Beeep.

Kaneki woke up, still nauseated from the beat up he got from somebody, a ghoul, with the name Nishiki he presumed. It took him a moment to process everything before he realized that he wasn't in his room. Hell, he isn't even on a bed, but on a couch. His hunger hadn't subsided and parts of him still ached. He noticed the blood on his clothes but when he looked underneath, there were no open wounds of any sort. Not even a scratch.

He sat up, a little bit to fast, causing blotches of black to cover his vision. When he finally snapped out of it, he observed his surroundings. The small coffee table in front of him sat his eyepatch, which he hastily put back on. It seems like a normal room to him, a small kitchen area at the side and chairs here and there, there's also a door at the side and he's assuming that it might be a bathroom. Then behind him is a sliding glass door to a balcony. He made his way towards it and slid it open, looking out at the dark sky that lay out before him. Holy crap, what time is it? He finds the wall clock and reads the time, 6:30 pm. God he's been out for how many hours already?

The door flew open, startling the male. He turns to see an old man and Touka walking into the room.

"Oh, Kaneki, I see you're awake now. Feeling better?" The man asks, the smile not leaving his face.