The Closed Ward | Tokyo Ghoul

Chapter Twenty-Five | People Like Me, We Just Don't Play

Shin gives himself thirty seconds. Half a minute for his drug-addled brain to flood with adrenaline and reboot itself, half a minute to listen to the erratic hitch in Rui's breath; thirty seconds for his hand (out of Rui's line of sight and curled into the folds of his hospital gown) to spasm and shiver from the surge of fear that lodges itself in his throat.

The second his internal timer winds down to zero, he sucks in a sharp breath, polluted with the too-clean smell of antiseptic, forcibly relaxes the taut line of his shoulders, and lays a hand at the back of Rui's neck. She tenses at his touch, wide eyes straining to look at him while still keeping the presently vacant hallway in view. She's trembling, he can tell, and fighting hard to convince herself (or him) that she isn't. 

"When I say run--"

"Nomura-san, you can't run!" she sputters, cutting him off as she snaps her head around to stare incredulously at him. "And I... I'm not leaving you, that's..." 

Something complex happens with her expression: a myriad of emotions fighting for dominance, and he only catches flashes of each. Most of them he ignores; her concern is flattering, to a degree, considering the rocky start they'd gotten, but it's simple to dismiss. The indecision he could write off as a result of her fight-or-flight response going haywire, but when it's abruptly followed by what he can only describe as a hint of self-loathing, his rationale fails him. Wanting to run - even if it means abandoning him, a man she hardly knows and couldn't look in the eyes just weeks ago - isn't a crime, not by his standards. 

"Kitamura."

She shakes her head, lips a wobbling yet unyielding line.

"Kitamura, I'd like to remind you that only one of us is actually trained in subduing ghouls."

Her eyes harden as she gives him a pointed sweeping glance, lingering over the bandages across his torso, the gauze taped to his throat. She's skeptical and she's right to be. Realistically, weaponless and crippled as he is, he won't put up much of a fight. He'd be lucky to last longer than ten seconds - and that's factoring in the time it'd take for him to bleed out on the slick-smooth floors while the ghoul decides whether or not he's even worth devouring. 

But, much as he loathes the truth of it, this is what he signed up for when he fell in with the CCG. Like Emi, if he'd given a damn, he could have escaped the Academy, done something with his life that he had actual passion for. 

He didn't, though, and that's fine. It's alright. 

"Kitamura--"

"Nomura-san, we're wasting time--"

"Kitamura--"

"--and arguing with me isn't going to accomplish anything--"

"Rui."

Her jaw clamps shut with a rattling clack of teeth. He'd feel almost smug for having quieted her if not for the silvery shine to her eyes. Dammit. Crying isn't on the list of things he's capable of handling well. 

"We can't both make it, Kitamura. We've lost too much time as it is," he says, consciously rounding out the edges of his words; less likely to cut into her any further that way. "I'd rather it be you who gets out safely."

"Because I'm a civilian," she murmurs, mouth twisting into a guilt-ridden grimace.

Shin can't help but roll his eyes, even with the looming threat of a bloodthirsty ghoul haunting every passing second. 

"Yes, of course," he says dryly, "because you're a civilian and I'm doing my damn job. It has nothing to do with the fact that you have people who'd work themselves into hysterics if you died. Or," he adds, seeing the protest coming to life on her lips, "that I'm critically injured. Basically incapacitated and literally useless. The most I can do is give you a head start." He pauses, murmurs a quiet curse and squeezes the back of her neck lightly, hoping to emphasize his next point. "I was spared once, Kitamura - speaking from experience, my luck probably isn't going to hold the second time around."