Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

-----(15) Pasadena, California, USA-----


The fifteenth time Kaneki opens his eyes in a new life, it is the cycle when he meets the reincarnation that reminds Kaneki of Hide the most. It’s not in the eyes, like the fourth time around, or in his smile, like the previous incarnation, or even the way he calls Kaneki’s name like the last one, or the way this Hide lingers on the vowels of Kaneki’s name, slow and easy. The truth is that there is very little this man shares with Nagachika Hideyoshi, not with his bubblegum pink hair, pierced ears, straight European nose, his sharp tongue, and his even sharper grin. His name is Eugene this time, and he wrinkles his nose distastefully when Kaneki tests the foreign name on his tongue. Gene, just Gene, he says as he stretches, all strong, inviting lines, and effortless balance, leg against the ballet bar.

Kaneki meets Hide unexpectedly in this life. After his twenty-fourth birthday as Alexander Garcia, Kaneki had given up on meeting Hide in this life, had allowed his friends to set him up with a girl and begun dating, tentative and new. She convinces him to go to a tango class with him, and he relents, even as he has nightmares over his awkward limbs that he has never managed to master this time around, the images of his slow, stupid feet stepping on her toes for the umpteenth time waltzing through his mind.

The studio is tucked away on a small street, just a few blocks away from the heart of Old Town Pasadena, with deep, red bricks and well-maintained windows. It’s bigger than it looks from the outside, all wide, open spaces and mirrored walls that reach the ceiling. Five couples are already there when Kaneki and his girlfriend arrive, but it’s their teacher who catches his eye.

It’s different every time, the little tells that give away Hide. Kaneki thinks it’s the way this Hide pulls off the lid of his coffee and stirs in cream, the way he sips the coffee before it’s fully blended, too eager, only to flinch at the bitterness and return to stirring. Kaneki looks at the six foot tall man who introduces himself, “Gene, just Gene,” when one student calls out his full name, and Kaneki can’t resist the way the shape of the name forms in his mouth, the way the corners of his mouth pulls up as he stresses the ‘e’.





Over the course of a few weeks, Kaneki introduces himself (Alexander, he had said, but call me Alex) and they bond over their embarrassing names (Alexander isn’t an embarrassing name, he had confided, unless your parents named you after Alexander the Great), and awful romance novels. Hide’s secretive grin when he admits to buying cheap vampire romance novels and takes a shot each time the hero manages to make the lead swoon with his undead splendor makes Kaneki’s heart skip a beat, the words, “Does that make you one?” on the tip of his tongue.

He’s reduced to a teenage cliche, an awkward, bumbling mess, and his girlfriend leaves him after the fourth class, cross and indignant when she says he has eyes for their very male instructor and not her. If he was a good man, a better man, he would chase after her, to at least make things right, because it’s not fair that she started dating him, a man who has spent lifetimes chasing after one person, an endless song that had yet to reach its da capo al fine. It’s entirely unfair that the man she starts dating forgets about her the minute they walk into a dance class together, his eyes unable to see anyone else but their instructor.

It’s really not fair, but Kaneki has found Hide, had thought for years and years that maybe he would never find him this time around; it has happened before. Maybe they are separated by continents, by seas that sheer willpower alone cannot cross, or maybe age, one of them born too early or too late, time a wall that separates them. Kaneki doesn’t know; he knows he has died early in some lives, remembers drowning once, remembers being four years old unable to keep up with her older brother with her short, chubby legs, as she chased him across a frozen lake until the ice cracked. Kaneki remembers the chill that had overcome her tiny body, the warmth that had encompassed her, lulled her to sleep until Kaneki awoke again, a new person, tiny and warm in his new mother’s arms.

So he attends the tango classes without a partner, and Hide pairs off with Kaneki, the odd man out, and Kaneki doesn’t let his mind stray when he leads Hide across the room, or when Hide corrects his stance, his hand hold.

He goes to every class, feels his bond with Hide deepen until they are friends, until they meet on weekends and the odd weekday in cafes, Kaneki with his black coffee, Hide with his latte. It’s hard not to catalogue all the differences between Gene and Hide; there are so many, more than there are similarities.

Hide would have never worn a smile so sharp, would have never wielded words like weapons.

“Fag,” one man says when Kaneki walks Hide back to the studio before he returns to his office. The man is dwarfed by Hide, but he’s fearless as he invades Hide’s space, perhaps emboldened by the cheery shade of Hide’s hair, the clean cut of his blazer, and Kaneki digs his fingers into the meat of Hide’s arm, urging him to back down.

But this isn’t Hide, this is Gene, and while Kaneki may remember that life, every life, Hide never does, none of them ever do. Although this man understands Kaneki as effortlessly as Hide had, as if he was always meant to, destined, Kaneki is forced to acknowledge this difference when Gene doesn’t back down, when he closes the space between the two of them, leans in and lilts, voice low and dark with promise, “Darling, don’t be shy.”

The man’s face burns, dark and blotchy, and Kaneki shouts, “Officer!” He waves his arms, and the man spits, spins on his heels without checking for law enforcement, just hisses ugly words and uglier promises.

“What were you doing?” he hisses when the man turns a corner and disappears from their sight. “Were you trying to get into a fight?!”

“Fuck him,” Gene says pleasantly. He continues along down the street, hands in his pockets. “I’ve met hundred of assholes like him, who throw the word ‘gay’ around like it’s a slur.”

Kaneki often wonders if Hide, if Gene, knows. If he can see through him, this secret, just like he does with all the others he knows without Kaneki breathing a word. Gene understands him like Hide did, and Hide had known that they could have been. They could have been happy together, maybe. They could have. Maybe Gene knows the words Kaneki keeps buried, deep down, paints over them with layers and layers of different colors until they are muddied and indecipherable, because this Hide isn’t his.






She comes on a Saturday, crosses the entrance of the studio like a summer breeze. She’s small, tiny, with a full face and plump curves, and Gene has to stoop down to kiss her, his smile pressed against hers before she pulls back and says, “You forgot your lunch, dummy.”

“Maybe I didn’t mean to forget it,” he teases, his fingers playing with the tips of her stray hair. “Maybe I didn’t want food poisoning.”

“You’re the worst,” she grouses, punching him in the arm as he laughs, bright and infectious. “I don’t know why I keep you around.”

“I’m cute,” he offers as he loops his arms around her and rests his chin on her head. “You like my butt.”

She sighs, leans into his embrace. “It is a very nice butt.”

When she leaves, the ladies in the class don’t waste their time in swarming Gene. “What a cute girlfriend,” they say as they circle him, eyes bright. “How did you meet her?” They ask. “What’s her name?”

They never fully settle down, and when they finally leave for the day, just after one, Kaneki hangs around. He pulls out a sandwich and chews on his bologna as Gene picks at watery spaghetti. “It’s amazing,” Gene says around a mouthful, cringing. “Every single time, she accomplishes the miracle of pasta that is simultaneously both soggy and raw at the center.” He picks at the stray vegetables in the tomato sauce-soup, smiling fondly as he nibbles at the undercooked broccoli and mushy carrots.

There’s nothing that can ever fully soothe the ache Kaneki feels when he sees the man who is not Hide smile, the vindictive words that burn deep in his gut; but it should be for me that you smile that smile, no one else.

Instead, he says, “Why didn’t you correct that man?” When Gene looks at him and waits for clarification, it’s the first time that Gene hasn’t instantly understood him, and Kaneki wonders if he has created the distance. He had always known Gene had someone, had thought, secretly, that it was a man, but maybe the realization that it is a girlfriend that Hide returns to every day that makes Kaneki step back. Maybe it reminds him too much of the past, of Touka and his marriage, of Hide and Hide’s decision that he’d be happier with a wife, with children. “Why didn’t you say you were straight?” he reiterates, and pretends he’s not gripping his sandwich so tight the mayo is dripping from it.

Gene considers his question, puts down his lunch and leans back, eyes on the ceiling. “Does it matter? Whether or not I’m gay doesn’t matter; it’s not like I’m trying to date them. Clarifying the issue just makes it sound like being gay is shameful,” he says carefully, meeting Kaneki’s eyes. “And it’s not,” he says purposefully, meaningfully. “I won’t let people think it is.”

He knows, Kaneki thinks as Gene’s grey eyes search his. He knows.







That night, he pulls the covers over his head as he curls into himself, his phone clutched tight in his hands as he whispers wetly, “Mama.”

“Alejandro,” she says softly. It’s like she’s there with him and not miles away in San Diego; he thinks he can feel her fingers running through his hair, her blunt fingernails scratching his scalp. “Mijo, what’s wrong?”

“I like men.” It’s hard to say, almost impossible as he thinks, machismo. He thinks of all the shame he is bringing to his family by saying the words, the truth he had long ago locked away. Machismo, something in him whispers. Men do not love other men.

Sometimes, he remembers being something other than Mexican, just like he remembers being someone other than Alexander Garcia. Sometimes, he remembers being a monster, eating people because that’s what it takes to survive, to make it from one day to the next; he remembers breaking the hearts of the people who love him with bloody hands, with a sullied heart. He remembers crying as the sun set across an ocean, the warm hues of the water as it sparkled under the dying light, the pain deep in his chest as he said goodbye to someone so precious, irreplaceable. There are days, nights, where memories blur, and he isn’t Alex anymore, isn’t his mama’s Alejandro, isn’t anyone who matters, not anymore, because Kaneki Ken died in another time, in another place, in another world.

He is Kaneki Ken, there’s no way he can separate Alexander Garcia from Kaneki Ken, but more than anyone else, he is Alex. It’s the life he had lived for twenty-five years, with a family that loves him, that he loves, with friends that he could never replace, would never want to. His memories of Kaneki Ken, so sharp and clear they are sometimes overwhelming, cannot replace the ones he has made as Alex, do not erase what he has experienced until now, in this life.

“Mama,” he says, because he loves her, because he can’t imagine his life without her, without his family. He thinks of his papa, of how warm his hugs always are, the beer gut his father has always had, how he had liked to press his face against that firm swell as a child and listen to the monster that growled inside his father, echoing like the caves they found during one of their camping trips. He thinks of his brothers, and how they taught him to ride a bike, who had held his hand as they walked to the RiteAid on hot summer days and bought him ice cream. He thinks about all the things he could lose with these three simple words, and hiccups as the tears spill forth even more, unending. “Please don’t hate me,” he begs. “Don’t hate me. I love you, don’t hate me.”

“Mijo,” she says, voice soft, so very far away. “I could never hate you. We love you.”

He cries harder. “Mama. Mama.” He struggles to get the words out, “There’s someone I like --love.” It shouldn’t hurt this much, he tells himself. This isn’t the first time Hide has fallen in love with someone else, this isn’t even the first time he has had to move on without Hide. Alex has things Kaneki never had; a family that supports him, parents who love him unconditionally, a mother who will never abandon him. He tells himself he has lived through worse, has lived through broken families and broken bones, broken minds, broken souls. “It’ll never happen, though, he has someone else.”

“You deserve the world and more,” she says. “If he wasn’t meant for you, then you will find someone who is, and they will be worth the wait, the tears. Someday, this will be a forgotten memory, and you will be happy.” He wishes she was here, that he was back home, in San Diego.

But he was meant for me; I was meant for him. I’ve chased him across fifteen lives, across countless worlds, untold timelines. I love him, and I don’t want to love another.

The words feel melodramatic, even to him, so he buries them with the rest of the secrets he can never share, no matter how much he loves his family, a seed never meant to sprout.

His mother murmurs soft words until he falls drifts off to sleep without meaning to.







It hurts more because he had always known they would accept him. The truth is that, more than culture, deeper than the roots machismo reach, greater than even the word of God, his family loves him, will never not love him, no matter who he does or does not love. This unconditional love and acceptance hurts, because this is a life he in which he could build something with Hide. For once, he has a stable foundation to build on; perhaps, this time, they could build a home together, both him and Hide.

But this Hide isn’t his, and even if Kaneki can fall in love again, with another man, another woman, he doesn’t think he can fall out of love with Gene. In between learning that he is a ballerino by trade and that he taught tango classes while he was in LA, during his company’s off season, and that his grandmother was a 10 Dance champion, Kaneki had fallen in love with the confident curve of Gene’s smile, his cutting wit. Gene, who had looked at Kaneki a month after they had become friends and said, “I don’t know who you see when you look at me, but I’m not them.”

He’s not Hide, he’s nothing like Hide, and maybe that makes it all the worse, falling for the same soul all over again, falling for a completely different man.

Falling in love with someone who could never be his.







It’s all over the news when it happens.

The queer community is up in arms, demanding justice.

Everything is rather hush-hush, the media suspiciously quiet on the issue. Very little is released, even less is confirmed.

Kaneki knows he shouldn’t look, shouldn’t search for more, but he turns on his computer anyways, opens Chrome and googles ‘Old Town Pasadena murder’. Someone has posted a picture on Facebook, and he knows he shouldn’t click on it.

Police had flooded the area, the vicinity already cordoned off with yellow tape, but someone had managed to angle their phone just right that they managed one good snapshot of the scene between the wall the investigators had made with their bodies. Angry, vicious red is splashed across the front of Gene’s studio, forming the words ‘DIE FUCKING FAGGOT’ in bold, sure strokes. Out of the corner of a white sheet, peeks a hand. That’s Gene, Kaneki knows with delirious certainty, that’s Gene under that tarp.

What have they done to you?

There’s so much red, red across the windows of the studio, red across the slate grey of the sidewalk, seeping into the white of the cloth.






The funeral was meant to be a quiet affair, but it has devolved into a media spectacle. There are reporters and cameras gathered around the church, microphones shoved into mourner’s faces as they try to dodge questions. Protesters have gathered, holding up signs and demanding justice for Gene’s murder, for queer justice.

It’s a circus.

Kaneki watches as Gene’s family weeps over his closed coffin, as his mother lays a trembling hand upon the lid and cries for her baby who was too young to have been taken from her so cruelly, so suddenly. Kaneki watches, heart in knots, as Gene’s girlfriend kisses a flower before setting it across the polished wood, words of eternal love falling from her lips like her tears.

Kaneki stands by Gene’s coffin, one hand against the warm cherry wood, and thinks, this is the last time I ever want to be at your funeral, Hide. I can’t do this again.

He thinks, I should have never turned on the computer that day. That isn’t the you I want to remember.

He thinks, I’ve forgotten what your smile looked like, Gene.

Ever since that day, there has only been red. Everything has been dyed in red, permanent and inescapable.

-----(16) France-----

She meets Touka in this life. They grow up in the same building, their flats across the hall from each other.

They meet when they are five, in the daycare they both attend. Touka introduces herself as Emeline and says her hobby is catching fireflies in the summer when she visits her grandpere in the countryside. Kaneki says she’s Cosette and she likes fireflies, but she likes books more. She has books on fireflies at home and invites Emeline over that day so they can look at it together.

It’s a surprise, when their mothers pick them up from daycare, to learn that they live a hallway apart from each other.

“We’re going to be best friends!” Emeline says, Kaneki’s hands in hers, eyes wide and eager. Kaneki thinks about how she hasn’t had a best friend since Hide, and Hide feels so very long ago now. She doesn’t remember much of her life as Kaneki this time around, it’s mostly a vague niggling in the back of her mind, half-forgotten dreams in the mornings.

She thinks she’d like that, though, having a best friend. Especially if it’s Touka.

“The best,” she replies as solemnly as she can, pinky curling around Touka’s, Emeline’s.






At sixteen, Kaneki decides to come clean.

Because they have been best friends for ten years, and sometimes it feels like lying when she looks at Emeline and remembers fragments of a past they had both shared, more vivid now that time has passed and she has grown older, but still less defined than they were when she was Alex.

They sit in her room, Kaneki on the floor, her legs crossed, her arms hugging her knees tightly to her chest, and Emeline stretched across her bed, flipping through a magazine.

“I have dreams of a past,” she says slowly, carefully. “Do you want to hear about it?”

“Sure,” Emeline says, rolling over and rearranging herself until she is crosswise on the bed, her head just above and to the left of Kaneki’s own. “Tell me about it.”

“I was a man,” she begins, leaning into the bed behind her. “I lived in Tokyo. I had a best friend, a wonderful friend. You were there, too. I married you.” She picks at the carpet and counts to ten in her head, feels the thundering of her heart, sure that Emeline can hear it too, and so can the entire of France. “We were in love and we had children, sweet children. It was a happy life. But I learned that my friend had loved me, had always loved me,” she mumbles into her knees, ears red. Thinking about how deeply Hide had loved Kaneki Ken always leaves her flushed with embarrassment. It’s hard to imagine that kind of overwhelming love, of ever being the recipient of it. “He had sacrificed so much for me. We… the two of us had only ever married because of him. And I had realized when he died that… we could have been happy together. It wasn’t that we weren’t happy together, Eme, just that...”

She looks up at Emeline, doesn’t see disgust or accusation in her best friend’s eyes, only understanding. It gives her the courage to plough on.

“I died with so many regrets, Eme, so many. More than anything, I wanted to make him happy. I wanted another chance, to get it right.” She squeezes her knees, tries to anchor herself in the moment since she can’t in certainty. “I think that’s why I’m here now,” she says, uncertainty coloring her words.

“What, am I not good enough for you this time around?” Emeline stretches so she can flick her forehead, eyes crinkling as she laughs. “Some best friend you are.”

Kaneki cranes her head back, heart lighter than she thinks it has any right to be, as she says, “I’m the one who was and never will be good enough for you, Eme.” She hopes it shows, how much she means every word she says, how Touka is always one of the best things in her life every time they find each other again. Touka, all versions of her, Emeline or not, are irreplaceable treasures in her heart.

“You bet I am.” Emeline rolls onto her back, limbs spread-eagle across the bedspread. “So? How’re you gonna find your man? Gotta get things right this time, yeah?”

It’s hard to breathe after Emeline says that, like the world is closing in on Kaneki, trying to crush the air from her lungs. She remembers being four and drowning, and thinks that was less painful than this feeling, the anxiety that claws at her, consuming her. “No,” she says, strangled. “I already know who he is.” Etienne, she doesn’t say. The new boy in our class, the one with dark, dark hair and pretty grey eyes. Grey eyes, like Gene’s. Even in this life, she can’t escape Gene and the way he had made Alex’s heart constrict, the way Alex had mourned his death until the last of his days. Alex had never forgotten Gene, was haunted by his ghost, and now, she thinks, Gene haunts her too. In her dreams, she remembers the red-soaked tarp, the tears that never dried, how they had collected in the depths of Alex until it became an unending well that he drowned in every day, every night.

She says, “I don’t want to fall in love again. I’ve had enough sorrow and heartache to last me a hundred lifetimes.”

-----(37) India-----

She is born into a prominent Brahman family and given the name Sudhir.

Her family tells her they expect great things from her. They make plans for her, they talk of the life she will lead, and with whom, and she sits as her mind screams, no, this is not right.

She breaks their hearts when she finally stands up one day and proclaims who she is, that she is a woman and she loves men, can only ever love men in this life. She breaks their hearts when she says she is not their son, but their daughter. She breaks their heart, and they turn away from her, unable to look at her, but she walks away on her own two feet, finally able to look at herself in the mirror.

She doesn’t meet Hide in this life, doesn’t meet anyone from her life as Kaneki Ken. She thinks it’ll be a lonely life, spent in nothing but fear and disgrace.

She walks through this life alone and scared until she finds a home with others of her kind, and names herself Kritika. She hopes to one day shine as confidently as them, no matter how dark the world she finds herself in.

“We can have choices,” the guru of her family tells her. “But to have these choices, we must learn. That is why we must put our all into learning.”

So she learns to dance, to balance as well on the tips of her toes as she does when both feet are planted firmly on the ground, learns to entertain and enthrall with the flick of a wrist, a roll of her hips.

In this life, Kaneki does not fall in love, does not marry, but she has a family. She has more sisters than she can count on her fingers and toes, and although it is always difficult, although life is always a struggle, she wouldn’t trade it for the life her parents had planned for her.

She laughs as one of her sisters leans in close, gleefully regaling her with a bawdry tale of sailors alone at sea.

-----(42) London, England-----

If anyone asks Kaneki in the future what it was like meeting Hide again in this life, she will say it was electric, as if the stars aligned and their encounter was destiny, heralded by forces beyond their comprehension. The minute their eyes had met across the room, it was as if the axis of their world had shifted, clicked into place. Everything finally turned they way they always should have, little invisible gears finally lining up and turning in perfect synchronicity.

She is proactive the moment she catches her breath; she rises from her seat and crosses the room, and compliments Hide on her hijab, on the rich, blue of it, the delicate, intricate patterns stitched with so much care. She flushes, and Kaneki falls in love with the way the way it shows even beneath the rich color of Hide’s tanned skin, the way it makes Hide’s dark eyelashes stand out even more. “My name is Sarah,” she says instead of stumbling over the words, I love you, I have loved you for more lifetimes than you can believe, have missed you for more than I care to count.

“I’m Aliyah.” Kaneki thinks Hide’s name this time around is the prettiest name she has ever heard, thinks it’ll sound even better when she finally gets to say it herself.







They begin dating before the end of the second week of the semester and spend most of their time with their fingers laced together, heads bowed in towards one another as they whisper, the world narrowed to the point where they connect, fingers intertwined.

Aliyah, when Kaneki finally leans in to kiss her, tastes of something smokey, of something rich and secret; already, she is addicted. She tells Aliyah this as she smiles against her lips, helpless with joy as Aliyah butts their head together, eyes fluttering shut as she says, “You remind me of the stars.”






It isn’t long before they move in together in a small flat, a little less than an hour away from King’s College by tube. There isn’t much room for one person, let alone two, but Aliyah just smiles, small and secret. “That reduces the distance between us, doesn’t it?”

Kaneki thinks she has never loved any Hide as much as she loves Aliyah.






Neither of them are particularly religious, Kaneki is a lapsed Jew and Aliyah practices Islam loosely, and follows only the dietary restrictions, prayer, and the more prominent Muslim holidays.

Neither of them are particularly religious, and maybe Kaneki is naive for thinking that would be the only obstacle they would have to overcome together. She finds herself falling into the same pitfalls she had when she had been Kaneki Ken, taking advantage of Aliyah’s quiet generosity, the easy way Aliyah molds and shapes her life around Kaneki.

Kaneki doesn’t notice the way Aliyah goes quiet, the blankness that overcomes Aliyah’s face when she introduces Aliyah as her girlfriend.

It takes months and Aliyah’s tears before Kaneki realizes something is wrong, that all is not well, that Aliyah is carrying a weight in silence, and she is buckling under it, succumbing.

“Oh, sweetie,” she murmurs as she wipes away tears, legs bracketing Aliyah as she curls into Kaneki. “I’m sorry. What’s wrong?” She kisses Aliyah’s dark hair, threads their fingers together with one hand. “Please, tell me.”

“I can’t,” Aliyah says, voice wobbling as she hiccups. “I can’t.”

They have been dating for seven months and they have never done more than cuddle. Kaneki understands, is willing to wait until Aliyah is ready before they do more, but Aliyah’s confession sends chills through her. She doesn’t know if this means Aliyah can’t have sex with women or can’t have sex with her, doesn’t know if she means she can’t handle being in an illicit relationship with another woman, not when it goes against fundamental tenants of her religion. Because unlike Kaneki, she believes, believes in the Qu’ran and in Allah, believes in heaven and hell. Kaneki, who has lived too many lives to believe in anything than the life they live on earth, cannot understand such ardent belief, faith that requires no evidence.

“I hate my body,” Aliyah finally says, voice small. “I hate my body, I don’t want you touching it. I don’t want anyone touching it.” She doesn’t say it, but Kaneki can hear it: I never want anyone to touch it.

“Are you...transgender?” She asks, worried of upsetting Aliyah further if she is wrong, so wrong. “Are you a man?” She can’t imagine being with a man in this life, feels discomfort bone-deep at the thought of kissing one. But this is Aliyah, Hide, and that’s all she needs, she thinks. Even if Aliyah does decide to go for the change, if she undergoes the hormone therapy and the operation, it won’t change how she feels --she has loved Hide in countless lifetimes, through countless worlds, countless timelines. She loves Hide, the soul, and whatever incarnation Hide becomes each lifetime. “We can make things work,” she says as reassuringly as she can. “I know we can.”

“No,” Aliyah says. “I’m not. I’m… I’m not.”

Kaneki pauses, considers what Aliyah is saying, and asks, “This isn’t an image issue, right? This isn’t… you don’t think you’re ugly, right? Too fat or too skinny or too…too something?”

Slowly, Aliyah shakes her head.

“Do you…” She thinks of her days in India, of the people she met, of how there were as many genders as there are colors in the world, and asks, “Do you think of yourself as a woman?” When Aliyah stills for a heartbeat, Kaneki knows she has found the crux of the issue. “Are you uncomfortable...identifying as either?” She waits --she waits for Aliyah to confirm or deny it, but Aliyah just looks at her, eyes lost and scared.

“What’s wrong with me?” she whispers.

“Nothing,” Kaneki says fiercely. “Nothing is wrong with you.”

“I can’t be your girlfriend,” Aliyah says. “I can’t be, because there’s something wrong with me.”

“There’s nothing wrong with you. You don’t have to be anything. You’re the person I love, that’s all that matters.”

They try different pronouns. They try the more exotic ones, like zir and zie, but that just makes Aliyah more uncomfortable, makes Aliyah ask, “Is there something so wrong with me that we must make up new words for what to call me?” They test out the more neutral pronoun they, and although it doesn’t put Aliyah on edge as much as the other pronouns, Aliyah asks Kaneki to stop after the third day. “It just… it doesn’t feel right. I’m one person, not multiple people.” They settle uncertainly back into she, and Aliyah says quietly into the darkness of their flat that night, “All that matters is that you understand me. It doesn’t matter what words we use.”

“Yeah,” Kaneki agrees, even as she feels Aliyah pulling away from her. She’s losing Aliyah, she realizes, she’s losing her in inches. She’s losing Hide, again.

She doesn’t know how to keep Hide. She didn’t know how to keep Hide before, she doesn’t know how to keep Hide now.

She doesn’t know how to keep Hide from leaving her in any life.





Two months before their second anniversary, Aliyah sits next to Kaneki on their tiny, secondhand couch, and lays her head on Kaneki’s shoulder.

“I’m sorry.”

And Kaneki hears the words she doesn’t say. I’m not good enough, I can’t keep you in this limbo forever. You should find someone else. You should find someone else, fall in love again, live a proper life, not a half-life with me. You deserve the world.

Kaneki rests her head against Aliyah’s and doesn’t choke on her tears when Aliyah says, so softly it is nearly drowned out by the static of their tv, “Ya’aburnee.”

I love you.

May I die before you, for I cannot live without you.

“You’re so unfair,” Kaneki whispers, spiteful and vindictive. You’re so unfair, each and every time. She doesn’t need sex to be fulfilled, doesn’t need sex to be happy. She doesn’t need a woman, doesn’t care that Aliyah is stuck in a twilight between man and woman, unable to fully cross over into either world without feeling disingenuous and wrong, a liar hiding behind a mask. Kaneki doesn’t need anyone but Aliyah.

She wonders if Aliyah hears her unspoken words, too.

-----(79) Kansas, USA-----


Kaneki wears thick glasses too large for his face and clothes three sizes too big for him. He’ll grow into it one day, his parents say, and it’s cheaper this way.

They always talk about money, of ways to save it and ways to make more, of how Kaneki will grow up and become a lawyer or a doctor and make more. They talk about how Kaneki has to be a good son, an obedient son, of how he has to study hard and make good grades, or else he will achieve nothing, be worth nothing.

They talk, and Kaneki doesn’t, because good children don’t speak; they are spoken to.

When he goes to school, he doesn’t talk, either, because he is the strange child with the strange, unpronounceable name. Xianliang, the other kids jeer, what kind of name is that?  They pull on his hair, point at his clothes and the too-long belt that barely keeps the pants above his hips, and laugh. They take his glasses and leave him blind and stumbling, unable to navigate the world without them. They neuter him and laugh, because he is cowed, back already broken underneath the expectations of his parents, the heavy weight of their love.

He doesn’t try to stop them when they take his glasses and break it, just thinks, Mother and father will be furious when they find out I’ve broken another pair.

He doesn’t see when the bullies are dealt with, little fists flying and teeth biting down on unprotected arms until the other boys are forced to beat a hasty retreat, their own angry tears pouring down their faces. He doesn’t see his hero brush herself off before striking a pose, but he hears her declare herself Wonder Woman.

Her hands are so warm when they help him up, when they stay closed around his own as she leads him to the nearest teacher and announces he needs to see the nurse and the biggest Mickey Mouse band-aid the school has. After a little fussing from the teacher, she leads him to the nurse’s office, his hand in hers the entire journey there.

“Hide,” he breathes, because it has been so very long since he has last seen Hide. He thinks it’s been dozens of cycles since they last met, maybe more. Things are fuzzier now after so many iterations, after so many lives as simultaneously the same person and a different person. Memories, he learns, are like pebbles, and each life smoothens the edges, takes a little bit of what was once a full and complete memory away with it, until what is left barely resembles what it was when it was whole.

“Opal,” she says crossly. “I don’t know what a Hide is, but my name is Opal.” He thinks she smiles at him, it’s hard to make out the blurs that make up his world without glasses. “It’s my ma’s favorite precious stone, you know. That’s why daddy named me opal, because I’m their precious baby girl,” she confides in him, full of infectious delight that only children have.

“Xiangliang,” Kaneki says. “It means worthy and bright. My parents wanted…” He stops, once again crushed by their expectations, by life.

“That’s a super cool name!” Opal says, swinging the hand that holds his. “I like it.”

Kaneki had never liked it, but he thinks he likes it a bit more now.

They reach the nurse’s office and the nurse lets Opal pick out a band-aid for him. “This one is the best,” she tells him as she puts it on him. “You can show it off to your parents when you get home!”

Xiangliang Yeung falls in love at age six. He falls in love with a warm hand, bright laughter, and a strong sense of justice.

Opal Jackson is colored with different hues of brown, all of them rich and warm. Her hair is a furious nest of more tangles than curls that her mother sometimes manages to tame into braids or pigtails. She likes to wear overalls, but still climbs trees and hangs upside down from the playground’s bars, even when she wears skirts, and isn’t the least bit embarrassed by who does or does not see her princess-print underwear.

Her smile, with one baby tooth prominently missing, is the brightest, most amazing thing in Kaneki’s life, and he falls a little more in love each day.

“Boys are stupid,” she declares one day as they play on the monkeybars, “but you’re okay, Xiang. I like you.” She smiles, then, unrestrained and brilliant, and Kaneki sees that smile for the rest of the week. Each time he closes his eyes, he sees it, thinks he’d imprint it onto his soul if he could and carry it around him with him for the rest of this life and all the lives that come after it if he could.

He doesn’t play with her one recess so he can gather all the prettiest flowers he can find in the field and runs up to her just before the bell signals the end. Proudly, he holds out his half-smooshed flowers and asks, “I like you! Will you marry me?”

Opal laughs, then, and Kaneki decides if he can’t take her smile with him as he slips from one cycle to another, he’ll take this laugh instead. She kisses him on the cheek and says, “Okay, sure.”







The winter of their eighth year, Opal moves away, and Kaneki never sees her again.

He writes to her at first, once a week, then once a month, until he enters middle school and his parents tell him he needs to focus on studying and not silly girls half a continent away.

He doesn’t hear from her after that.

At night, when he can’t sleep, he turns on his desk lamp and pulls out the shoebox filled with her letters and picks one, any one, and reads it. He wonders if she thinks of him at all, if she thinks of him fondly or only remembers him as the jerk who had stopped writing to her without warning. She had kept writing for months after he stopped, for a little over a year, until they had stopped.







He thinks of Opal on his wedding day and wonders if she married too, if she has the American dream; a house, a white picket fence, 2.5 kids, and a dog. She probably never thinks of him, but he can’t stop thinking about her.

-----(108) Tokyo, Japan-----



Tomochika is the one who confesses to him.

It has been over one hundred cycles since Kaneki was Kaneki Ken, over one hundred different lives since he had laid, dying in bed, filled with regrets, and just one wish; the wish to do everything all over again, to get things right this time. It’s one hundred and eight different tries, and Kaneki is tired and worn down.

He’s still happy to see Hide; he always is.

It’s a chilly April day when they meet during the first day of middle school, both of them stiff and awkward in their new, freshly pressed gakuran. Tomochika sits next to Kaneki in homeroom. He’s in the home economics club and wants to be a chef, and has designated Kaneki his official taste tester, often foisting new recipes onto Kaneki during lunch.

“Osamu, Osamu!” Tomochika always calls as he races down the hallway, bento box in one hand. “Will you try this for me today?”

The way Tomochika hangs off Kaneki is familiar, nostalgic, and Kaneki hates the way it makes him bitter as he yearns for a time long since passed.







They attend the same high school and then the same university. They’re following the same paths as they did in the past, and Kaneki steels himself for the inevitable crash and burn. He dates men, women, and doesn’t entertain the notion of dating Tomochika.

Maybe Hide had it right all along. For them to last, for them to stay together for a lifetime, they have to be friends. He remembers Touka, Emelie, and watching a French Hide from afar. That was a life that had Hide in it until the end, Kaneki realizes, one of the few. Perhaps love, romance, is what makes everything break down, what ruins everything, the drop of water that ruins Tomochika’s chocolates each and every time.

Every effort is put forth into maintaining the perfect distance --just close enough that they are friends, that Tomochika doesn’t feel Kaneki pull away, that Tomochika doesn’t think that Kaneki hates him, that Kaneki doesn’t want Tomochika in his life at all, and with just enough space between them that Kaneki won’t fall again, won’t fall any deeper.

But then Tomochika hands him the first chocolates that didn’t come out a ruined, congealed mess since he had began trying his hand at them in their second year of high school. It’s Valentine’s Day of their third year in university and Kaneki is mesmerized by the light dusting of pink high on Tomochika’s cheekbones when he says, “O-Osamu… I like you. Will you go out with me?”

Stupidly, Kaneki says okay.

Stupidly, foolishly, Kaneki takes Tomochika’s hand and kisses the palm of it. “Okay,” he says again. “Let’s try it.”

Let’s try this again, one last time. I don’t think I can do again.






Kaneki has nightmares most nights. He dreams of days long since past, of Gene, broken on the pavement, hate-filled words corrupting the sanctuary that was his grandmother’s studio. He dreams of Aliyah and the shadow she cast when she had walked away, the black hijab she wore. He dreams of Hide and the urn he had held in his hands, how he had never wanted to let it go, didn’t want to release Hide to the sea he had adored so much, not when it was the last of Hide Kaneki had left. He dreams of dozens of other lives where he had found Hide only to lose him again, and again, and again.

He dreams of the futility of this all, the definition of insanity haunting his thoughts. Insanity is the state of repeating the same action over and over again expecting a different result.

What do I expect from this? Absolution?

Does he think falling in love with Hide, building a life with Hide, erases the past? Does he think it soothes the hurt he had felt as Kaneki Ken? The pain of knowing the grief he had caused Hide, how much he must have suffered in silence?

He wonders if all of this is an illusion, a delusion of a man who had gone insane the day his best friend, the pillar of his life, had died.

Tomochika has no patience for his theatrics, though. In the dead of night, no matter the time or day, he stirs as if summoned by Kaneki’s dark thoughts, and rolls over, drapes himself over Kaneki, body warm and loose-limbed from sleep, and snuffles into the crook of Kaneki’s neck. “You’re thinkin’ too loud, go back t’ sleep.” And Kaneki does fall back asleep listening to Tomochika’s breathing, feeling the beat of his heart until both of their hearts fall into a steady rhythm, synchronized.

“I won’t ask what haunts you,” Tomochika says over dinner. “Everyone has their own secrets to bear. I’m here, though, if you don’t want to carry it alone.”

“Okay,” Kaneki says, staring at the miso soup Tomochika had prepared. “Okay.”

“Do you believe in reincarnation?”

Tomochika rolls over onto his stomach and looks at Kaneki, eyes searching. “I don’t know. I guess it’d be more accurate to say I don’t think about it.”

Kaneki hums, and thinks of the endless secrets he has buried deep inside himself.

Kaneki is half a head taller than Tomochika, but that doesn’t stop the shorter man from clinging to Kaneki like he had when he was Hide, especially when drunk. He hangs off Kaneki’s neck with his arms looped around Kaneki’s shoulders, his face red and eyes glazed as his giggles are broken by the occasional hiccup. “I can wait, y’know,” Tomochika slurs after Kaneki pries him off so he can rearrange him, and carries Tomochika on his back, the other man’s arms once again curled around Kaneki’s shoulders. His breath tickles Kaneki’s ears as he says, “I can wait...forever… and ever… I can wait.” He hiccups again, and Kaneki feels tears against the back of his neck. “I can wait… it’s jus’...it’s jus’... It’s lonely, Osamu…

“Why is it so lonely, even when you’re righ’ in front of me?”

“I don’t know, Tomochika,” Kaneki lies, fingers digging into the meat of Tomochika’s legs. “Why do you feel lonely?”

“I don’ know…”

It’s silent for most of the walk back to their apartment, Kaneki’s heart constricting as he remembers the night Hide had escorted him back home, drunk and babbling. Touka had been there, waiting for him. There’s no one waiting for them in their apartment now, there’s only him and Tomochika, Kaneki and Hide. It’s just them, Osamu and Tomochika, Kaneki and Hide, it shouldn’t be this hard, there’s no one else, but he can feel the distance betwen them growing, knows Tomochika can feel it too.

“I don’t want to be the one to make you cry,” he tells Tomochika.

So don’t make me, Tomochika doesn’t say, just leans into Kaneki and sniffles into his shoulder.





They graduate and Kaneki finds a job at a small construction firm doing paperwork and writes into the early hours of the morning, working on his manuscript. They rarely see each other although they share the same living space. Kaneki awakens to breakfast already made, Tomochika already back in bed if he has the night shift at work, or already at work if he has to help open the restaurant and do prep work that day. Lunch is in the fridge and dinner is on the table when he comes home, plastic wrapped with little post-it notes with instructions on how to warm them up when Tomochika’s day ends earlier than his, the other man already passed out in their bed by the time Kaneki gets home.

It’s a distance that they have been cultivating since that night when Tomochika, drunk, had cried into Kaneki, the only time he has ever seen Tomochika cry.

I’m making the same mistakes all over again.

It’s scary, taking a chance, baring his soul.

He has spent so long keeping secrets he no longer knows how to share them, doesn’t know if he can anymore.

Tomochika isn’t leaving; perhaps, he never will. Maybe Tomochika will stay with Kaneki until the end, both of them old and wrinkly, together until one of them sleeps and simply never wakes up again.

It would be easy to just continue like this, a stagnant pool breeding poison and disease.

It would be easy; Tomochika’s giving him the choice.








“I need to talk to you,” Kaneki says.

It’s a Sunday night, Kaneki curled around Tomochika, the palm of one hand flat against the other man’s stomach, Tomochika’s hands playing with the fingers of the other.

“Okay,” Tomochika says. “I’m all ears, you know I always am.”

“Yeah…” He buries his nose into soft auburn hair, breathes in the familiar scent of Tomochika’s shampoo. “Once… There was a time my name was Kaneki Ken, and your name was Nagachika Hideyoshi. You were my best friend…”







“When you look at me, who do you see?”

Carefully, Tomochika places both hands on Kaneki’s face, looks Kaneki in the eye. “Who do you see, Osamu? Me, or a ghost from the past?”

It’s not a question Kaneki can answer.

Maybe this won’t be the life where Hide won’t abandon him.








Throughout a hundred and eight lives, Kaneki has never met anyone as stubborn as Tomochika. No one has ever stood their ground as obstinately as Tomochika, and unlike Hide, Tomochika isn’t afraid to push when he feels he has to.

Unlike Hide, Tomochika knows when to walk away.

Maybe Hide hadn’t valued himself enough, Kaneki thinks. It had taken the other man too long to walk away; if he had done that earlier, maybe he could have healed his broken heart before the heartache had poisoned him, before it had turned into cancer, before it had killed him.

Tomochika knows when to walk away.

He kisses Kaneki on the cheek, a duffle bag with enough necessities for a week in it slung over one shoulder. “Take your time to think things over,” Tomochika says.

He doesn’t promise to still be waiting when Kaneki finishes thinking.









A week passes, then a month. The seasons start to change, and Tomochika is in the process of moving out, half of his things packed away and the free time he has left spent browsing for open 1DK apartments in the Tokyo area.

Kaneki knows the answer, has known the answer after a few nights of contemplation, the answer startlingly clear, simple and obvious. But the time has passed, he messed things up this time, like he always does, and he doesn’t deserve the happy ending, not with Tomochika. Tomochika has spent eight years waiting for him, quietly, without a word, and maybe it should pale to one hundred and eight lifetimes worth of waiting, but Kaneki has come to realize: It’s unfair. It’s unfair to foist equal responsibility onto Tomochika, to think that because Kaneki has spent lifetimes chasing after Hide, that means that the waiting has been harder on him.

It’s difficult waiting, not knowing anything.

It’s unfair, waiting for someone who looks at you and sees nothing but another person.

He wonders if that is why they left, if that is why Aliyah left, if Kaneki hadn’t understood anything then, like he hadn’t when he was Kaneki Ken.

So he doesn’t say anything as a little more of Tomochika disappears from their apartment every day, neatly packed away into cardboard boxes that stack higher and higher.









Everything is packed away, nothing remotely Tomochika is left in the apartment. He has been living out of a duffel bag for nearly two weeks now, washing clothes when he runs out. The only thing left is to find the perfect apartment in Tomochika’s price range within a reasonable distance from the restaurant.

Things have progressed this far; he had resolved to give up, the only right thing to do, but then he comes across an open apartment listing on the kitchen table. Tomochika is in the bathroom, and the red circle around one apartment, 20 minutes away from the restaurant by subway, 1,300 yen below Tomochika’s budget, and in reasonable condition, is a herald of the end. It’s happening, he realizes, months after the inevitable, it’s finally happening: Tomochika is leaving.

Tomochika shuffles out of the bathroom, starts when he sees Kaneki holding the listing, tears streaming down his face. “What’s wrong?” he asks softly, wiping away the tears.

“Don’t leave,” Kaneki whispers, releasing the crumpled newspaper so he can clutch at the loose sleeves of Tomochika’s shirt. “I know it’s not right, I know it’s not fair… I don’t… You deserve better,” he says, echoing Aliyah’s words. He wonders if her heart had hurt as much as his does now, if the desperation he feels now is even a fraction of what she had felt then. “I’m selfish and unfair and I dwell on the past and I can’t see the future…” Tomochika brushes his hair from his face, hands tender. Kaneki feels so fragile, breakable.

“I just… I just know… I want you in it. I want you in my future,” he says. He tastes the salt of his tears, his snot, and he thinks of how awful he must look. No one would want this mess, he thinks. Of course Tomochika won’t want him now. He continues to plough on. “I, Aoyama Osamu, like --love you, Kamiya Tomochika. I love you.” He cries harder, scrubs at his eyes with the back of his hand. “I know I should let you go… I know I should… but I don’t want to…”

“Then don’t, stupid,” Tomochika says, and kisses Osamu, chaste and sweet, salty tears, snot, and all.











“I did it!” Osamu shouts from the entrance of their apartment, hair mussed by the winter wind. “They’re publishing my novel!”

“Congratulations!” Tomochika says, leaning up to press a kiss to one of Osamu’s frozen cheeks. “I’ll make your favorites to celebrate!” He checks his watch. “If I leave now, I think I can make it to the grocery store before it closes.”

“I don’t need it.” Osamu curls around Tomochika, buries his still-subzero nose into the side of Tomochika’s neck, laughing when the other man stiffens and smacks his arm, grumbling. “Stay with me?”

Instantly, Tomochika relaxes into Osamu’s hold and smiles fondly as he says, “Of course. You okay with kaarage, salad, and miso tonight?”

“Yeah. Have I told you how much I love you, Chika?”

“Every day, Osamu.”