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There was something unnerving about empty spaces, the way sounds bounced from here to there without a buffer, filling up the room at an exaltingly high volume. Sound was transferred in waves, and thus every rustling of fabric, the shifting of his arm, the brushing of black cotton sleeves against a seam, became like ocean foam crashing upon a beach. Hearing the very teetering pitch of your own breath was like listening to chalk clip at a blackboard for hours and hours and hours on end.
When would this lesson be over?
He could feel his life tick-ticking away.
He wanted to hold his breath. He felt like it was too damn loud, and it was shuddering in the air.
Could Arima hear his heart thudding erratically?
Could Arima see the perspiration that had gathered on his brow?
He wrung his fingers, urged to crack them, resisting the temptation with great restraint.
Could Arima see the strain in his muscles?
"What a mess you've made," Arima said, "Haise."
His fingers locked together.
Name.
A name is a name, a title, a gift, a choice, a product of fate.
But this name?
Sasaki Haise?
It was nothing but a fucking burden.
"Yes, sir?" His voice. It didn't sound like his. This was so exhausting. Who the hell was he now? Who the hell did he want to be, now that he had decided?
Sasaki Haise was going to die.
Did Kaneki want to kill him?
No. Kaneki didn't want much of anything anymore.
It was the nameless one who'd grown out of a blank slate who wanted to sever the cord and watch it fall away. Crumble into dust.
He wasn't simply Kaneki Ken, and he certainly was no longer simply Sasaki Haise.
He was a new entity altogether.
This was what it meant to learn. To grow.
You cast off your old selves like snakes cast off old skins. Being human meant peeling away the worn out scraps of personality that no longer suited you, and tossing them away. Being a ghoul meant clinging to the truths of what you know, hanging on by the threads of your mind to keep your sanity in check. And what did being him mean? There were no easy answers here.
He was a lost cause.
I don't want to die here, he thought, not here, not like this. I still have so much to do…
"That was not a question. I'm stating a fact." Arima watched him, his eyes cool and piercing behind his glasses. "What were you thinking? The operation was a disaster. Countless investigators are dead because of your incompetence."
"Yes, sir." He stated it this time, his voice that same old foreign lilt. Unwavering. Firm. This voice knew what it was doing. He did not.
"And the Tsukiyama heir is still alive." Arima was talking so much, it made his head spin. Once, not so long ago, hearing this man speak to him made him feel weak. Like he was enrapt in a cold tide, and he was being dragged into it. It couldn't be stopped. "What do you have to say for yourself?"
He did not answer. He merely stared.
What did he have to say?
A thousand words in a thousand languages could not impart the emotions he was feeling right now.
"I…" His fingers were biting into one another. He sat in this vacuous little room, the sound of his own breath beating like thunderclaps inside his ears. "I did my best."
"That's a lie."
Kaneki raised his eyes sharply.
A lie?
The room seemed so large. There were a thousand leagues between Arima and him.
And even that was not enough space.
"You'd know all about lies," Kaneki exhaled, in a voice that did not sound quite so composed, "wouldn't you?"
Arima's eyes slid sharply to his face. The room seemed to overwhelmingly large, spaces opened up between the chair and the man, between the prisoner and the escape, between the demon and the god. All that passed between them were sounds, and even those were nothing but wisps caught inside mouths.
"Is there something you would like to tell me," Arima said, the sole of his shoe sending a shock wave of a clack through the empty room, "Haise?"
Kaneki exhaled sharply through his nose.
That's not my name, he thought furiously. I will kill you for what you have done to me.
This isn't right, he thought immediately after. I can't do this. I can't do this, he's not the monster I think he is, he's… he's capable of kindness, I know he is!
But I want to kill him anyway.
Kaneki remembered being trapped in a wide, empty room, sitting in a chair, listening to his life tick-tick right on by.
His screams had echoed on the walls. His blood had painted the floor. And he'd left part of himself there that day.
Would he leave part of himself here today too?
"Am I going to be punished?" he asked. Because that did matter. He needed to know.
What was going to happen now?
"You didn't strike me as so self-involved." Arima watched him. Inscrutable. As always. There was a strange pause, the absence of sound becoming sound enough on the ridges of their brains, waves breaking themselves apart upon palisades and spitting up their regrets in the mist. "You're not begging. Why? Beg. Plead for me to find a way to return your stolen Quinx to you."
He did not want to think about that.
Not right now. He couldn't handle that right now.
He might actually kill Arima.
"You won't help me." Kaneki swallowed, his eyes widening. "You don't want me here."
Arima stared at him. He turned around.
Kaneki leapt to his feet.
"Are you just going to leave," he gasped, "and not even give me a solid answer? I know I failed! Does that disappoint you?"
Arima had stopped. He had been halfway to the door.
Kaneki took a deep, shuddering breath. It shook the whole goddamn room.
"Good!" He kicked the chair back, listening to it clatter against the tile and relishing in the booming sound. "Pleasing you is draining. I could pull the sun down from the sky and hand it to you, and I still wouldn't be good enough to satisfy your unreachable standards!"
Arima turned around slowly. Kaneki saw his eyes like a silver streak across the air. He would cut out Kaneki's tongue first. Maybe make him eat it.
"Should I mind my tongue?" Kaneki's hands balled into fists at his side. "What are you going to do if I don't?"
Arima turned fully around, his shoulders squaring. What was he thinking? Why was he so calm?
Kaneki was furious.
"What do you want me to do?" he cried, lurching forward half a step before reeling himself back. No. He didn't want to get close to this man. No. He didn't want to wrap his arms around him, to bury his face in his chest, to feel his hand whisk through his hair as he told him that it was okay. That he'd done his best. No. He didn't want this. He just wanted to know. He wanted Arima to know too. "I can't read your mind! I'm a failure— yes, I know that. I've always known that. Deep down, did you know that too?"
Arima. His eyes were tired and cold. Hard. Solid. He bore no pity, no love, no compassion. He was just a machine that no one man nor one hundred men could compete with.
"Say something!" There were tears in Kaneki's eyes. He hated this man. Oh, he fucking hated this man. He wanted to rip him apart, to smash his skull into the pristine white walls and fill this empty room with red, red, red.
But. Also…
He wouldn't mind it if Arima would tell him that it was alright.
That they were going to get Mutsuki back.
It was all going to be okay.
Yeah right.
"What happened to you?" Arima watched. All he seemed to ever do was watch. "Have you slept at all?"
No. He couldn't sleep. He saw Mutsuki's face on the inside of his eyelids. If he dreamed, he knew, he knew, he knew, Mutsuki's face and his own would blur together, and the end result would be a boy stuck in a chair, screaming until there was nothing left inside him but dust and rawness that could not be soothed.
"I want to know," Kaneki said, his voice firm. "Do you care about me at all?"
Arima's mouth remained firmly closed. His eyes had narrowed.
Kaneki laughed.
He covered his eyes, throwing his head back, and he let the sound lap up in the corners of the room, rushing like a waterfall from his mouth and splitting apart in streams across the floor. He would laugh forever, if need be, if that would get him what he wanted.
"Haise," Arima warned.
"This is pathetic," he murmured, his fingers digging into his scalp. "I'm pathetic, you're pathetic! What can I do? What should I say?"
"Haise."
"I just want to know!" He threw his arms out imploringly, tears stinging his eyes. "What do you want me to do? To say? Who do you want me to be?"
"Haise…"
"I can't keep changing on your fucking whims," Kaneki gasped, smiling tremulously as the tears began to fall. If one spilt against the ground, it would cause a tsunami. "Teach me. Praise me. Tell me what you want to hear!"
His hand moved.
"Kill me," Kaneki called out, watching Arima's hand freeze. "Love me. I don't care anymore. I can't care anymore. I'm not there anymore."
There was empty space between his words. Gaps in the waves, ringing silence that parted the sea like god had willed it. He heard his heart, the way it sang a song of panic, of anguish, of unimaginable despair.
Who would hear those songs once he was dead?
Arima's hand closed. It clenched at his side.
"Do you know what you are saying?"
That was a strange question to ask.
Especially coming from Arima.
The fact that Kaneki had not been skewered already had come as a shock.
"I know nothing," Kaneki whispered, a teardrop dangling on the tip of his nose, "but one truth."
Arima's eyes could freeze the sea, could snatch the words out of the mouths of nations. He made soundwaves become sound whimpers.
"Enlighten me."
Kaneki took a deep breath. Everything in him was shaking.
His knees, his shoulders, his lips, his hands. He shook like the earth beneath him was about to swallow him up.
Mustering up courage was hard, when all his emotions were fueled by fundamentally loving and hating this horrible, godly man.
He took a deep breath.
"I do not belong to you," he declared boldly. His voice shook.
His words were drops of liquid gold dispersed into a vast ocean.
Priceless and useless.
Arima did not look amused.
His hand moved again.
"I'm not yours," Kaneki gasped. "I'm not going to let you control me anymore!"
"That's enough."
"Kill me!" No, no, he definitely did not want that. "I won't answer to you, I won't kill for you, I won't lie to myself or to the world for you. Let this be the end of this, and let me be me!"
"You don't want to die." Arima's eyes were vicious. Cruel.
"I don't want to live if it means you think you own me!"
"Technically," Arima said coolly, "I do. Stop talking, Haise. You've already said too much."
"Stop? You stop!" He shook his head furiously. "I'm not Haise! And I'm not something you can stamp a number on and manage, like a watch or a book! I'm a person! Do you ever think about that? You can't just think because you stabbed the memory out of me the first time that you can control me! I'm not your fucking pet!"
Arima exhaled.
The sound. Oh, the sound…
Had the earth split in half?
Kaneki swallowed, and it hurt.
He watched the man, realizing he might have said his last words.
Should he run? Could he even flee? There was probably no point. He was in the CCG, he couldn't outrun this many investigators and Arima without hurting someone. Hurting Arima, fine, that was dandy, but no one else should get involved.
He thought of Akira. His heart sank.
He found himself on his knees. Willfully. He held up his hands.
"I won't fight you," he whispered.
"Why not?"
He wanted to tell the truth. That he did not want to see Akira's face when Arima dragged his half dead body through the CCG and made an example of him.
"Because," he said, raising his eyes to Arima. "I don't want to."
"Get up."
"No."
"Haise!"
"I am not Haise," Kaneki snapped. "And I will sit in this room until you either kill me, or call me by my real name."
Arima looked at him. He seemed to be itching toward his quinque.
He turned on his heel and briskly left the room.
The door locked behind him.
Kaneki sat on his knees, staring wildly.
The room was drained. Silence had drunk up all the waves, and the desert sands would scorch his ears and parch his brain.
He felt like he would wait here forever.
Like he would be trapped here forever.
A hell of his own design.