The Closed Ward | Tokyo Ghoul

Chapter Nine | Oceandust

Rui does what she can.

She doesn't feel as though that amounts to much, but she does it nonetheless.

Before anything else, Hinata has her clean and dress her own wound. She understands without him telling her what a distraction she is, while oozing blood and with the sharp of scent of fear wreathed around her. It's still too much to look at, so she takes care of it in the bathroom, risking glances through the mirror whenever her fingers brush over unscarred flesh or the bandages unravel in her grip.

Teeth marks.

That's what she's covering up.

It was real in the moment, but now, Rui wonders if she trusts herself not to believe that everything that's happened, every revelation she's been hit with in the last half hour, was some nightmarish fever dream concocted by a grief-addled brain. It would be some sort of sick karma if her punishment for wasting her chance to save Kaori was this - entrusting her life not only to a man she's only had three conversations with (one of which taking place while he was on the verge of death and ending on quite the harsh note) but a ghoul. The creature that stalks the streets of Tokyo at night, preying on mankind without remorse - the thing she's grown up learning to hate.

But, more than that... it's Hinata.

That doesn't... it shouldn't mean anything.

She won't deny that it means everything.

Squeezing her eyes shut, nose wrinkling at the pounding in her head, Rui leans forward, bloody fingers wrapped sloppily around the edges of the sink. She's dressed the wound, but she can't say it won't get infected; God knows what Hinata has stuck in his teeth. Well, that, and her medical skills aren't exactly top-notch; she knows only what she's learned on-the-job with Kaori, a woman who was once prone to inflicting some sort of injury on herself at least once a day. But - like with everything Kaori did - she wore her cuts and bruises proudly, said they were proof she survived.

Swallowing thickly, Rui bows into the sink, forehead scraping against the cool metal of the faucet. Her stomach churns, doing flips with every throb of her shoulder. This won't ever heal right, that much is obvious to her. She's lost muscle, flesh; she'll be lucky if there's no hinderance to her movement. Surely it'll scar, puckered red flesh she'll have to hide for the rest of her life. And, again, that's if she's lucky.

God, is she shaking. Like a leaf caught in the wind. Helpless, flung around by forces she'd be so much better off keeping her distance from - but so powerful, so primal she's no choice but to follow their pace.

She wants to blame it on blood loss. It'd give her some solace if she could convince herself she's not in the middle of quite possibly the most compromising crisis of her life. But she's grown numb to her own pleading, and the protests fall silent as she breathes in and out, counting to ten in her head before releasing each lungful of air.

Hinata is a ghoul - she's trusting him.

Just... take that in. Don't get overwhelmed. He's... Hinata's still out there, he needs you.

First, though, Rui straightens up abruptly, a hand clamped over her mouth. Her feet sliding over the blood-slicked floor, she throws herself at the toilet, catching the edges as she heaves into the bowl. Bile burns the back of her throat and bubbles on her tongue; it feels like only acid comes up, and she remembers faintly that she hasn't eaten today. Lucky break, given the circumstances.

Her arms are trembling by the time she's finished, and she slumps back against the small off-white tub. The curtain dangling over the side shifts with her weight, and she groans as she has to scramble to sit up before she falls face-first into the tiled floor. Splotches of black dance on the boundaries of her vision, forever just out of reach, never quite settling enough for her to look at them directly. She closes her eyes, gives her head a quick shake, tries to even out her breathing.