the reality of brutality TOKYO GHOUL FANFICTION Amon x akira

hobo wisdom

I needed to find a phone, of course I lacked any so I entered a nearby convenience store and walked over to the register.

"Please, I need a phone," I said. The man at the counter looked at me with scrutiny.

"Do you have an ID?" Again, I was baffled, why did I need an ID to use a phone? He answered my question in the following response. "Drug dealers use local phones sometimes to do their deals and I don't want no police shit at my store. Give me an ID so I know who to alert when you kids do your dumb shit."

"Um, I'm 21."

"Do I look like I care? ID or no phone." Jesus, what a dick. I spun around and left. The ghetto was an urban setting with concrete buildings as well as typical ones lined across the area. There were no bus stops that I could see or any way of transportation I could use. I supposed I could have used the pervert's car if I had kept the keys, but his murder would too easy to trace if I had. After a while of wandering I settled on a nearby bench next to another homeless man. He turned to me.

"You lost?"

"Sort of."

"What brings you here?" he actually seemed friendly and I needed company and human interaction terribly.

"I didn't mean to come here, it kind of just happened. I don't know how to get out."

"I've been here for years," he said. "I have a son, but I haven't talked to him in around 5 years, I don't want him to see how deteriorated my life has become. I have no education so I can't find a job and no places to make myself look presentable to be hired."

"How do you live here?"

"I don't haha. But after a while you sort of get used to it. I love watching the kids play around here, I love seeing their innocent vitality. It reminds me of my son and I wonder if he still has that child livelihood. He's 21 now. Kids start to branch off and do their own thing at that age, I hope he's doing well. I do miss him."

"What did you do before coming here?"

"I lived in a nearby ghetto, but I was too rowdy as a child to realize how precious education was. I fooled around and got in fights, got expelled from multiple schools. I joined a gang at one point, but I fucked up and they were the ones that killed my wife. I had to use all my money to send my son away, and I've lived penniless since." he turned to me. "what's your story?" What could I really tell him, ha. The truth?

"Do you know about ghouls?" I asked.

"I've heard they're from Tokyo."

"My parents were killed by ghouls. I've dedicated my life to researching and eliminating them."

"I'm a ghoul," he man confessed. I suddenly panicked, was he going to attack me? He didn't seem phased.

"I understand why humans kill ghouls," he said. "Many prey on the innocent, there's really no other way to be a ghoul than to kill. I've killed many humans in my past and I regret it, although there was nothing I could do to avoid it. It was either they die or me, and at a young age I couldn't distinguish between morality and selfishness. Should humans feel guilty for eating animals? Humans are more sentient than animals so morality and empathy gives their lives value, but are they actually any better?"

"I don't know," I replied. "I never really thought about it. Living as a human has made me bias to how I perceive them. They have always seemed superior to me than other living things because I'm one of them, everyone I care about is one of them and everything that I benefit from has come from them."

"Humans do treacherous things as well, they hurt their own species to make our lives comfortable. The clothes you're wearing were likely made in sweatshop labor where the workers work endlessly under terrible conditions and are paid far less than the work they do. Despite this, it doesn't make ghouls better than humans. You can't quantify how good either is because they're made up of individuals and each individual is different. You can't generalize a group when the group isn't consistent in the least bit. You can't hate ghouls just in the way you can't hate humans - you can only hate individuals." His philosophy actually made some sense and for once I saw things from the perspective of a ghoul.