Kaneki lay awake staring at his phone listening to one of only a million voicemail messages Hide had left him.
"Oi Kaneki! Ogenkidesuka? I was in front of the station when I saw Takatsuki-what's-his-face signing autographs at the bookstore, so I thought I'd hit you up. Anyway, give me a call when you're feeling better."
At last something finally motivated Kaneki to get himself together and get out of bed.
Kaneki left his house wearing a blue hoodie.
People surrounding Kaneki from all different directions talked and laughed.
Kaneki paused. A smell filled his nostrils.
A pleasant smell.
People… so many people…
People… These are… People…
Children…
People, more people…
Women (niku)
Girl (niku)
Man (niku)
Niku... Niku
Family (niku)
Children (nikunikuniku)
Boy (mottoniku)
Girl (nikunikuniku)
Woman (Niku, I want Niku)
Man, boy, girl children (nikunikunikuniku)
(I need niku)
NIKU!
Reality hit Kaneki with such a force he momentarily forgot where he was.
Drool ran down his chin.
A girl that had just walked past him looked behind her shoulder at him as if she sensed something in the air around Kaneki.
It was the same kind of sense the way a Zebra senses a Lion is near.
Crowds of people continued to move around him.
Kaneki's stomach growled. He was so hungry. And there was so much to eat around him. So much…
(niku…)
No. Humans? People? Food? No, no.
The hunger forced Kaneki to bite down on this finger. Hard.
Under normal circumstances it would have hurt but the hunger blinded Kaneki to the pain his teeth would have inflicted.
He was salivating uncontrollably.
"Hey… that man…?," a Woman began as she walked past.
The man— (niku)— she was walking with interrupted her. "Don't get involved, baka!," he told her.
Kaneki knew he would have eaten someone then and there. He wasn't strong enough. Hunger was winning…
He would—
Kaneki managed to gather his resolve and sprinted home as fast as he could.
There was a dull throb, barely painful, behind his left eye.
When he arrived he flung the door open, slammed it shut, then yanked his yellow and black running shoes off his feet.
He stumbled around, his body slamming into walls.
He threw open the door to the bathroom and gripped the edges of the sink below the mirror.
He panted, struggling to breathe. He looked up at his reflection and his breathing stopped altogether.
His right eye was normal; light gray. Teary.
But his left eye…
Bloodred veins slithered in many different directions from his lower eyelid. The iris was a bright red that seemed to illuminate in the shadowy darkness. The sclera was pitch black. The kind of black in which an Oni emerges from.
Red veins also webbed from his eyelids all around as if chasing the black pupil.
What the hell is this?, Kaneki mentally asked deliriously.
He felt his cheek under his left eye.
Then he saw her face.
The girl. Rize. The one who almost killed him.
He screamed and shoved his fist full force into the mirror, shattering it into pieces.
Kaneki couldn't take it anymore. He rushed into the kitchen and took out a long kitchen knife from the dish rack that sat on the counter.
He pulled up his jacket and the shirt underneath, and held it with a tightly clamped jaw.
With the bare skin of his abdomen exposed, he gripped the knife with two hands.
Sweat stung Kaneki's eyes as he cried.
If I have her organs inside me… if I have… I'll just cut them out. I can't live like this!
Kaneki raised the knife upwards and plunged the knife into his skin.
His body dropped to the floor heavily.