Chapter Text
In which Akira makes a good-intentioned suggestion that will ruin everyone’s lives in short order
She’d overheard Shirazu talking about the new café that Haise was obsessed with, and so she suggested to Haise that they grab coffee there to discuss some minor work matters.
She wanted to keep an eye on everything in his world—especially after he lost control fighting Orochi—but, if pressed, she’d admit that she also wanted to make sure the precious protégé had some sort of life outside of the Quinx squad. She understood better than anyone what workaholic tendencies could do to one’s state of mind.
It was a nice café. The barista was polite but aloof with her, and Akira honestly couldn’t understand what Haise saw in her. It was impossible to miss the dopey smile he had on his face as he talked to her, though, or the fulsome glances she was shooting him as she prepared their drinks.
“She keeps looking at you.”
Haise seemed genuinely shocked. “She does?”
“I bet if you asked her out, she’d say yes.”
The young man blushed and tugged at his collar. “But if she says no, then I’ll be so embarrassed I’ll have to stop coming here. It’s not worth the risk. Besides, am I even allowed to ask out…a civilian?”
They both knew he almost said a human.
Akira narrowed her eyes at him. “I never took you for such a coward, Haise. Ask her out, or don’t, but either way quit moping in front of me.” She stirred some creamer into her coffee, then pointed at Haise with the spoon. “Just don’t talk about any CCG business with her. Otherwise, I think you need to get out more.”
He stared at her in shock with that innocent, wide-eyed expression that made it so hard to remember how dangerous he could be…Maybe Akira had let her guard down too much.
Then he grinned ear-to-ear. “If you say so, Akira…”
Putting that smile on his face gave her the same kind of joy that she got from giving Maris Stella a new toy. She could begrudgingly admit that it was something she enjoyed doing.
Akira set aside the frisson of apprehension she felt at loosing Haise on the unsuspecting barista. They’d go on a date or two, Haise would get some social enrichment, and all would be right with the world. At this point, she knew she could trust Haise in most situations. It was only when ghouls were involved that he required a bit of extra supervision.
Little did she know what she’d just set into motion.
Haise didn’t talk much about his very limited personal life, and certainly not to the Qs, her main secret source on everything Haise was up to. Whatever they were, they weren’t very discreet. But his mood seemed, on average, a bit less stormy. More optimistic.
And he was frequenting that café more than ever.
On rare occasions, she accompanied him to Café :re and made small talk with the barista that she strongly suspected Haise was dating. After several visits, there was a friendly enough rapport that the girl asked to see a picture of Maris Stella, and Akira finally acknowledged that Haise might have acceptable taste in women.
It was good for her to get out and talk to people who weren’t investigators, too. Besides, that desire to keep a distant eye on everything in Haise’s world persisted.
It didn’t last forever, of course—nothing did.
The Auction raid cast a long shadow, and for weeks and weeks afterwards Akira was in such a fog from seeing Takizawa alive—and now an artificial ghoul with Aogiri—that she didn’t keep tabs on her own artificial ghoul charge like she normally did.
When she finally began to tune back in, she couldn’t shake the awareness that something was very, very wrong with him. Haise was twitchier and more distracted than she’d ever seen him.
Basking in the joy of his Christmas party at the Chateau, she almost believed he’d turned a corner, that maybe they’d all turned some sort of corner towards a better future.
During his promotion ceremony, those hopes were dashed. Everything about his words, his behavior, telegraphed how ill-at-ease he was even before she’d brought up the prickly issue of Fueguchi in Cochlea.
What little maternal instinct she possessed was blaring in her head: Haise was deeply unwell.
A few days after, she suggested heading to his favorite café, and he immediately rejected that idea—in that pleasant, friendly way of his. Maybe there had been a breakup?
And yet, when she decided to quietly follow him after work, he headed straight to Café :re.
That weekend he disappeared—complete radio silence. There was no response to any of the (admittedly non-urgent) files and emails she sent his way, which was highly unusual.
On Monday he seemed a bit better…but something was still very wrong with him.
It was time for Akira to get off the sidelines and do a little bit of recon.
She entered Café :re during a lull in service, sat at the bar, and requested her current favorite drink, a cortado.
When the cup and saucer appeared on the counter in front of her, Akira took a sip to clear her head before she spoke to the girl—Touka, was that her name?
“Listen, I strongly suspect that Haise’s bad mood recently has something to do with you.”
The barista appeared to be in a fog of her own. She snapped out of it when Akira addressed her.
“Well, it’s complicated.”
Akira mustered up every iota of sympathy she could muster—not that it was very much—and said, “Do you want to talk about it?”
“I like you in spite of yourself, Akira.” Touka smiled but her eyes still had that distant, worried look. “But I don’t think you can help me.”
Akira didn’t know quite what it was. Maybe that harried air to her, the refusal to make eye contact, the nervous fidgeting with her hands…it set off more alarms in her head. “I’ve watched a lot of people wait too long to ask for help. You have that look.”
Touka sighed. “I understand what you’re saying, and I’m grateful that you’re trying to be there for me, but I’m just…dealing with a complicated personal situation.”
Akira nodded, finished her drink, and left.
Something was very wrong with Haise because something was very wrong with the girl.
Akira had trailed her car through sparse late-night traffic for nearly forty minutes, as she drove farther and farther beyond the city.
Finally, Touka’s hatchback pulled off on a quiet highway shoulder overlooking a steep drop-off and a wide expanse of black forest beyond that.
Akira actually drove by, not expecting her quarry to stop so suddenly. She had to park around the next bend and race back, as there was no safe way to turn around with any timeliness. It was better this way, anyways—every internal alarm Akira had was going off and she would be less likely to spook Touka approaching on foot.
It was all in vain, though—Akira rounded the corner just in time to see Touka make a confident cat pass over the guard rail and disappear over the edge. She skidded to a halt, nearly breaking a heel. She couldn’t even scream, only slap a hand over her mouth in shock.
Did that really just happen? It’s very dark out here, maybe my eyes are playing tricks on me.
Akira didn’t get to her rank by freezing up in a crisis, though. Checking her cell phone, she saw that reception was nonexistent up there. She sprinted back to her car, grabbed the grappling hook and long-range walkie-talkie from her trunk full of emergency supplies, and ran back to the spot where she’d seen Touka disappear.
Like the hero she was, Akira fired the grappling hook at the post of a guard rail and rappelled down the cliff face at a reckless speed. Assess injuries, stabilize if possible, call for help, she checked off in her head. Then, This will crush Haise.
She landed, ready to act, and was brought up short at the sight of Touka standing in front of her. Alive and well, and with a look on her face far fiercer than Akira thought possible.
The blue-haired girl’s hands were curled into fists, and she was leaning forwards like something feral poised to attack. In a blink she straightened up and lost the vicious expression.
“Akira?”
“I saw you jump over the cliff…what is going on?” Because she knew, but she didn’t want to know.
Touka groaned and buried her face in her hands. She gave a muffled lament: “Of course you’d be here, now. That’s just the cherry on top.”
She raised her head again to stare at Akira dead in the face. “Did you think I was trying to kill myself? Is that why you came after me?”
“Well—yes.”
Touka heaved a great sigh. “I’m too stubborn to just die. I’m not suicidal. That guy was, though.” She pointed at a dark shape on the ground, about twenty feet away.
And in the moment that Akira squinted through the shadows to try and discern whether there really was a body there, the air roiled and an unearthly glow lit the clearing. With a sound like arrows whizzing by, the walkie talkie flew out of her hand in pieces and the line of her grappling hook was cut.
Akira watched as the severed lifeline fell in surprisingly neat coils at the foot of the cliff. “Huh.”
“Probably wishing you’d grabbed a quinque before coming down here, huh?”
“Maybe.” Akira felt surprisingly calm. Her demise was nigh inevitable, it seemed, but getting hysterical wouldn’t change anything.
The ghoul sat on a boulder and looked up at the waning moon. “What do I even do now,” she asked, mostly to herself.
Akira thought about it for a moment. “Well, tactically speaking, the only real option for you appears to be killing me.”