Kaneki only recovered from the blood loss inflicted through his own stupidity much later. 2 days later to be specific. Yet even while he slept, the door was knocked on meticulously for fifteen to twenty minutes. This punctual stranger refused to give up on his goal and on the third day, the day on which Kaneki awakened. The knock came once more.
It would not be wise to open it of course, he realised. With the corpse being hidden and the blood the decorated his bedroom.
Kaneki had no idea of the pattern that the stranger had maintained in his visits. Hence, the suspense he had lasted for much longer than necessary. In that time, he inspected the wound that should have adorned his head. The only remains of that psychotic episode were the bloodstained walls and shelf. The majority of which were adorned with the crimson substance, the decorative vase that he had bought in his youth went from white and blue to a more grisly brown.
Oxygenated blood had a unique colour after all, initially it is vibrant and eventually it is disgusting. Just how death creates shock and then dies down to a constant reminder to all those who are involved in anyway.
The hunger he felt however was much more real, it gave the world new colours. The tingling sensation in his chest from fear. The hungering beast that lived within him, it desired a feast. Perhaps since no one had found out about the first time he had acted like a famished animal, no one would find out this time.
His reasoning, which was only partaken in his head, grew stronger by the second, yet it wasn’t Kaneki who was making the decision, instead this decision was seen from a perspective that was so foreign and uninvolved that it seemed almost unrealistic.
Just like how he saw the splinters in the door, the dust and nails adorning the floorboards and the filament in the ceiling lights. The detail, with how the nails were bent, the filament was curved, the splinters being like islands upon the smooth wood. All of this he noticed, yet the feeling of hunger and fear grew fainter in comparison. This was lost upon him.
The beating of his heart grew fainter and fainter. The searing sensation in his eye almost completely disappeared. The thrumming of an underwater world was the replacement to the quiet apartment atmosphere, this was vastly different to the darkness of his sleep or even his calmer moments when awake.
Suddenly the thrumming was interrupted by a sharp pain in his lower back. The hunger returned, as his consciousness was hit by the full force of the desire to feed. The moment of calm he experienced seemed to have completely disappeared. The overall level of sensory input decreased, however the specificity of what he could see, hear and smell only grew.
—
The investigator genius was about to leave for the third time when he heard activity. The laboured breathing, the soft knock on the floor and the sudden absolute silence.
His hand was on the on his quinque as soon as the door flew open, the impact of which left it shaking on its hinges twice this week.
Before he could be dismembered by the incoming onslaught of crimson appendages, he ducked the incoming assault. It was easy to see the agitation and desperation of this famished ghoul. The assault was meant to kill, not maim. Yet, that made it much more predictable and easy to stop. A dash forward and a slice to the stomach, the pain should have some stopping power, whilst killing the ghoul instantly was always an option. That would defeat the purpose of a fact finding mission.
Furthermore, it would be irritating to kill something instantly when the time dedicated to learning something about it was this long. Instead the disabling blow would have to do for now. At the very least, that was the plan. The following cut to the arm by Arima was meant to completely tear the appendage off, if not keep it barely attached. What happened completely threw the calm investigator off, as the first cut was not even a quarter as deep as he intended, whilst the second was a merely a scratch on the forearm.
The surprise he felt hopefully was kept to a minimum, after all, a ghoul with such killer instincts could not have stayed under the radar for this long. Especially his radar. This could be the lucky break that Arima had been hoping for in his search across the wards. However, for this to count as anything, the ghoul had to be disabled and alive. The investigator swiftly overturned the quinque whilst dodging the second onslaught of the now horizontally aimed kagune, instead he did what the ghoul did not expect, the hand of the ghoul lay on the floor meters from the borrowed quinque that Arima was using.
The ghoul started clutching his arm, in this moment the next strike pierced the calfs of the panicked youth. Making him lean back and fall from the pain and a lack of balance. The ferocity of the initial assault was gone by the natural reflex of fear when faced with a more powerful and imposing foe.
The grab of the collar and the sharp pull led Kaneki to be dragged back into the apartment, Arima then immediately closed the door.
He inspected the damage, the ghoul would live. That however, was only the easy part.
—
- N/a
