Tokyo Ghoul: King

Chapter 6: Warmth

You were currently asleep, but your mind was a bit on the edge from what had happened only hours ago. You had activated your kakuja for the first time ever, and it had an unpleasant side-effect: You went berserk upon its activation, and were left mentally shaken up due to the rage-induced blackout. As a result, you were now experiencing a nightmare.

In the nightmare, you were running away from some sort of a creature in some nightmarish world. Your surroundings seemed to be completely devoid of life, with dark red skies and darkness all around. What little you could see of the thing running after you from the brief glances over your shoulder invoked an innate fear in you, forcing you to run as fast as you could. After a long while of running, you tripped. When you tried to get back on your feet, your back was impaled by something sharp, most likely the creature's claws. In that moment when its claws cut into you, you woke up, cold sweat all over your face and your heart beating like a jackhammer. You just sat there for a moment, unable to do anything. After a moment, you could muster yourself to walk.

"Probably a bad idea to drink coffee after something like last night." you quietly told yourself. You lied back down onto the couch and tried to get some sleep. But you couldn't sleep and just lied there on your back. It wasn't particularly fun to lie there, alone with your thoughts, especially after a nightmare.

You rose up from the couch and decided to take a look around the apartment. You took a quick look to Eto's room and found her asleep, slumped over the small table her laptop was on. You hadn't ever really had a good look at Eto's room until now; it was cluttered and full of trash, mainly empty cans.

"Not a huge neat freak, I see." you thought. You then took a blanket from the bed Eto had in the tiny room and carefully placed it over her shoulders. She mumbled something incomprehensible and wrapped the blanket around herself. Looking at her, for some reason, made you notice that she was quite cute when she wasn't in her bandaged attire. You didn't know the exact reason why you hadn't noticed this before, even more so that you were even thinking about it. It felt strange, feeling even the slightest positive feeling, what with you having gotten used to either being mildly angry, agitated or depressed.

Your thoughts then moved on to what she might be planning next. Your guess was some mental conditioning regimen to allow you to control yourself while using your kakuja. You happened to catch a glance of a news article on her laptop screen. You knelt down and began reading the article. It was just about a lady being crushed under several I-beams and a kid being injured. You cared little about the fate of the two victims of the incident, since you had your own affairs to attend to, namely getting reins over your Kakuja's power and avenging your family, which would involve you killing the ones who killed your parents and the people who would come after you to avenge their lost ones in return. You used to be scared of the thought of senseless violence, but nowadays you knew better. Sometimes it was the only option. At least you had avenged yourself, even if by being consumed by your pent-up rage.

It did make you wonder, what would you do after that? Your best guess was to stay with the Aogiri Tree and give your two cents in the destruction of the entirety of CCG. You also wondered if you'd lose your "humanity" in the process of revenge. While conflict with the CCG was inevitable, what if there would be some form of truce between humankind and ghouls? In this case, knowing only war would not work. You considered this, as while your view on the world was skewed with negativity, some small part of you did seem to long for those peaceful days.

You shrugged these thoughts off for now, went back to the couch and lied down. After a small while of shifting around for a comfy position, you fell asleep. Thankfully, you didn't have another nightmare.

Later that same day, you woke up when a ray of sunlight hit your left eye. You felt much calmer than some hours ago. However, once you opened your eyes, you found a pair of dull green ones looking at you. You quickly knew that it was Eto, as practically no one in Tokyo had green eyes like hers.And since it was Eto, you weren't particularly startled.