by Shin Towada
“There’s no such thing as quiet in the Ghoul world.”
He’d mainly been talking to himself, but Touka shot him down anyway. She’s probably right. There’s no rest for Ghouls.
“But always being on alert wears you out.”
Being able to breathe was important for more than just staying alive. But Touka just dismissed him as a “wuss.” She wasn’t going to throw him a life preserver.
But he was kind of used to her now. She treated everyone else who worked at Anteiku the same way, as well as some of the regulars. And Kaneki thought that he’d grown a lot since the days when he rejected everything about being a Ghoul.
Despite all that, there was someone who weighed heavily on Kaneki’s mind lately. He was worried about Hinami Fueguchi, the girl who had lost both of her parents and was currently living with Touka. She was sometimes shy, but she was a kind, sweet girl. He worried that she was sad.
She was living with Touka, but Touka had to go to school, and she often got home late after her shifts at Anteiku. Sometimes Hinami came to the café, and Kaneki talked to her or taught her kanji, but it wasn’t enough.
Hinami spent the majority of her time alone in Touka’s house. Kaneki wondered if she spent her time alone dwelling on things: her beloved parents, the terrifying investigators, all the conflicts in her own life as a Ghoul.
Especially seeing her mother killed in front of her own eyes. She had always been there for Hinami, protecting her. It was like she was missing an important part of herself. There was no way she could not be in some kind of pain. When Kaneki thought about it, it made his own chest ache.
“Hey, Touka. How’s Hinami doing these days?”
“Oh, fine as usual.”
But his only source of information only gave him a halfhearted answer. He wanted to hear more about her, but Touka just stared at him and said, “Give me a hand so we can get this over with.” The conversation seemed like it was over; she was in an even worse mood now. He could see an aura of anger over her. She’ll kill me if I say one more word. He started putting the clean dishes away as a way to avoid her. She was still glaring at him.
The author Saneatsu Mushanokouji put it like this in On Life: “To feel the fear of death, one must still have work to do while they are alive.”
I want to be a bridge, telling Ghouls how people feel and letting people know what Ghouls think and feel. Because there’s nothing but hatred between the two groups now, but if each had an understanding of the other, I think that could change. Even if my presence is unwanted, I still want to be involved with both humans and Ghouls.
And he felt the same about Hinami. While Touka’s attitude seemed to say, “Don’t get involved,” Kaneki himself had the right to worry about her, and if he had his way he’d like to help her move forward in a better direction.
“Hm, what should I do?”
Sitting in the auditorium at the end of a class at his college, Kaneki wondered to himself what he could do to make Hinami happier.
“She needs a hobby …”
Maybe he was being too simplistic, but he got the feeling that she wouldn’t be so sad about being alone all the time if she had something she could devote herself to. But Kaneki himself had a very small repertoire of things he did at home alone, and the only thing that came to mind was reading.
He headed off to Anteiku for his shift, backpack on his shoulders, with his arms folded.
“But she does like books by Takatsugi, so maybe reading’s not such a bad idea.”
Hinami loved to read books by Sen Takatsugi, who was also Kaneki’s favorite author. Books were, on one level, a means of absorbing knowledge, so why wouldn’t it be good for Hinami to read other books, not just ones by Takatsugi?
He was thinking about buying kids’ books for her from used bookstores or the Internet when he suddenly thought about what it must be like to have Touka as a landlord.
“Books take up a lot of space. Touka would hate that …”
The thing about books was, the more you read and liked them, the more you wanted to have on hand to read. Before you knew it you needed more bookshelves, and then all of a sudden they filled your house.
But Touka’s house was a reflection of her own personality: simple, with not much in it. If books started taking up too much room, she might get angry. And not just at Hinami, but at Kaneki too.
So he went back to square one. Kaneki looked around him, hoping he’d hit on a good idea.
“Aha!”
He had it. And the timing couldn’t have been better.
Right in front of him Kaneki saw the library.
“Hey, Touka, the next time you’ve got a minute, why not take Hinami to the library?”
As soon as he got to Anteiku he ran up to Touka and made his suggestion, but she gave him a confused and doubtful look. Not about to let her negative reaction get him down, Kaneki continued.
“I know Hinami spends nearly all her time in the house. She must get bored when she’s alone. So she could check out books she likes from the library …”
“The investigators know about her. And they got a guy not long ago near the café. So, no,” Touka said.
There was no way she could go outside without taking extreme precautions. Touka’s opinion was also out of concern for Hinami.
“If you just pay close attention, then … Look, if she’s in the house all the time it’s not good for more than just her mental health.”
“Anyone can pay close attention. Like, you could,” she said.
“I, uh …”
“But if something happened, it’d be your responsibility. The suspicious characters hanging around the café might be gone, but this area’s still full of danger, you know.”
He had thought it might go like this, but Touka made her disapproval very apparent. He could see that what she said was right in parts, but he couldn’t come up with a rebuttal.
“But she must have all kinds of things running through her mind, sitting at home alone.”
So Kaneki tried a purely emotional argument.
“Thoughts about her mother, or about her father … Even if she wants to move on, it must be hard when she remembers what happened, and she must be sad. Those kind of feelings can eat away at you.”
Even Touka had nothing to say to that.
“But she’s trying hard not to show it to us. I think she’s just keeping it all to herself so she doesn’t make anybody worried,” Kaneki said, adding that it was because she was a sweet kid.
“Fiction books give the reader a chance to step away from their own reality and into the shoes of the characters, and they show you a world that isn’t the one you already know. And sometimes the story’s not so different from your own, and it lets you get closer to your own feelings,” he said.
Sometimes you’re confronted with the ugly parts of yourself that you don’t want to see, but books can also tell you a lot about the things you don’t notice when you’re just trying to get through somehow.
“So when you close a book you’ve just finished reading and return to reality, all the pain and sadness you couldn’t put into words before are still there on those pages. And that can be comforting. So I think reading could do a lot to help Hinami.”
I’ve said all I wanted to say. All I can do now is wait for Touka’s answer.
“What are you saying, you weirdo?”
“What?”
Touka was slightly weirded out. It seemed like Kaneki’s argument did not resonate with her at all.
“But, but—seriously! Hinami loves to read, so I think it would be a nice change of pace for her.”
Kaneki was getting discouraged. Touka folded her arms and sighed in resignation.
“Sunday, 2:00 p.m. In front of the library.”
“What?”
Kaneki had heard her but didn’t
understand. Touka put her hands on her hips.
“What you were just talking about! The library!” she yelled. “Anyway, I don’t know anything about books,” she grumbled and turned away. I guess she agrees.
“Thanks,” he stuttered.
“This is all about Hinami. No need to thank me.”
“But …”
“Shut up!”
II
On Sunday, Kaneki got there five minutes before they were supposed to meet. He was standing in front of the library reading a paperback while he waited for Touka, who he thought would probably be late, when she appeared.
“Wait, why are you here so early?” he asked, putting his book back in his bag.
“Hinami,” she said, turning around.
“Thank you, Mr. Kaneki!”
Although her face was hidden underneath a hat that was pulled down, Hinami’s smile reached her entire face.
“She’s been worried since yesterday, because she thought if we were late she might not be allowed to get books,” Touka said, giving Kaneki a mean look.
Kaneki laughed drily. “Well, shall we?” he said to Hinami, before darting into the library like he was running away from something.
“Wow …”
She was amazed by the rows and rows of bookshelves holding countless books. With her hat off because it actually made her stand out more inside the library, Hinami’s eyes danced with excitement at the crowded shelves of books.
“Mr. Kaneki, can I look at everything?”
“Of course you can. As long as you’ve got a library card, you can check out whatever you like. Pick a book,” he told her. She timidly reached out to the shelves. She took one book out and flipped through the pages before taking out the one next to it and checking it, too.
“Wow, they’ve all got so many words,” she said.
It took very little to impress her. Seeing her that happy was enough to prove it was worth taking her. But there were far too many books and she didn’t seem to know how to choose one.
“They have some books by Takatsugi, but how about a children’s book instead?”
Kaneki picked out a few books that he had read as a child and gave them to Hinami.
“Mr. Kaneki, is it okay if I read for a little while?”
“How about it, Touka?”
She hesitated. “Just for a minute or two.”
Hinami sat down in one of the chairs in the reading room and started reading one of the books Kaneki had picked for her. He and Touka sat down beside her.
“Look, Mr. Kaneki. This book tells you how to say the words.”
Unlike the books by Sen Takatsugi she was always reading, the children’s books gave pronunciations for kanji. The content must have been much clearer and easier for her to read too. Since all of Hinami’s learning came from books, this was perhaps a better way to build basic academic skills.
And of course, if her reading comprehension improved, she’d enjoy Sen Takatsugi’s books even more.
But since Takatsugi’s novels were Hinami’s standard for books, her vocabulary was a little warped.
“This word isn’t used like this in the books I always read,” she said.
“Oh, that’s because Takatsugi uses words in unique ways. In general it’s used like this,” he told her.
“Do words mean the same thing when they’re written in hiragana as they mean in kanji?”
“It just makes it easier to read if a word is written in hiragana, that’s all. The meaning is the same.”
“Wait, is this Tsukumogami’s island?” she asked.
“Oh. That says Kuju-ku islands. It’s written with the same characters as Tsukumogami, the old lady with the white hair that shows up sometimes in Takatsugi’s books.”
Hinami was struggling more than he’d expected. Kaneki dealt with each of her questions patiently and thoroughly.
“Okey-dokey.”
Just then, an eight- or nine-year-old boy with a book under his arm came and sat down near Hinami.
He started reading the book he’d brought with him, but something drew his attention to Hinami, who was asking about the most minute details about words. He glanced over at the book she was reading, then tilted his head.
“What’s wrong with you, can’t you read?” he asked.
He was confused at the sight of a girl older than himself who couldn’t even read a kids’ book.
Hinami looked at him in surprise. The color drained from Kaneki’s and Touka’s faces. They hadn’t imagined that someone she’d never seen or met before would say that kind of thing to her.
The boy seemed to realize that he’d said something he shouldn’t have and clapped his hand over his mouth.
“You little bastard,” Touka muttered.
“Touka!”
Filled with anger, Touka stood up and started to make a move toward the boy.
“I, I’m sorry, kid, but get out of here, right now!” Kaneki yelled, pushing Touka away from him. She still looked ready to hit the boy. He was so scared by Touka’s hostility that he couldn’t speak, and he ran away with his book.
“Yeah, you better run!”
“Calm down, Touka.”
She thinks if someone attacks you, you’ve gotta hit back. Touka watched the boy run off.
“Is it really that weird that I can’t read?” Hinami had been frozen since the boy had talked to her.
“Hinami, it’s …”
It wasn’t that uncommon for Ghouls not to be able to read or write. But it was a different story for humans. A human child Hinami’s age should have been able to read a book at that level easily.
Ghoul or human? Kaneki didn’t know which side of the divide he should stand on in order to comfort her.
“Not at all, so don’t worry too much about what kids like that say to you,” Touka said, jumping in. Kaneki nodded in agreement with everything she said.
But Hinami closed the book she had been reading, and her shoulders slumped.
In the end, with Hinami feeling so down, Kaneki chose a few books for her before they left.
“This is all your fault.”
Touka kicked Kaneki’s foot out of frustration as they walked. Since the idea of going to the library in the first place had been his, Kaneki could not argue with her.
“I’m sorry, Hinami,” he said. She shook her head. This also hit Kaneki hard.
She probably won’t get to go to the library anymore.
But things went the opposite direction.
“Really? She wants to go back?”
When Touka told him that Hinami wanted to go to the library, it was not long before the due date for the books she’d checked out.
“She says if I’m out of the house, the time goes by just like that when she reads the books she got from the library,” Touka said, drumming her fingers in frustration on the counter at Anteiku. “Even though the more she’s around humans the more chance she has of something bad happening again. You know what, Kaneki? You really are a pro at making trouble.”
If it had been up to Touka, going to the library would have been a one-time-only thing, regardless of how Hinami felt.
But I think she feels that she owes it to Hinami. Even Touka can see the contradiction of her heading off to school while Hinami sits at home, hungry for knowledge.
“So what are we gonna do?”
“She wants to go back no matter what, so I guess we’re going to take her.”
Touka’s entire body exuded disgust, but the plan was made: the three of them would go back to the library.
“Hurry up and choose so we can get back home, Hinami,” Touka said as soon as they’d arrived at the library, to hurry her along.
This time they went on a Saturday instead, in hopes of avoiding contact with humans as much as possible.
&n
bsp; Hinami nodded obediently and ran off. Evidently she was looking for the sequel to a book she had borrowed the other day.
But despite the nasty memory of the last visit, as long as she had a stack of books in front of her she was a bubbling fountain of curiosity.
“Mr. Kaneki, what kind of book is this one?”
“Oh, this is a British fantasy novel. It’s so popular they made it into a movie.”
“And this one? Is it funny?”
“Hmm, just a second, let me have a look inside.”
As this trivial back-and-forth repeated itself over and over again, the time passed.
“Hey, Hinami, have you decided yet?”
“Yeah.”
By the time she finally decided which books she wanted to check out, it had been over an hour. Kaneki could feel Touka’s irritation as they headed to the counter.
“Hey, you!”
Just then they heard someone call out from the other side of the bookshelves. Kaneki, Touka, and Hinami all turned to look.
“Oh, it’s you.”
Standing there was the boy who had said those heartless words to Hinami when they first came to the library.
Hinami’s body stiffened immediately.
“Kid, you’ve got a lot of nerve …”
The boy was frightened of Touka for a second, but then he turned to Hinami and said, “I’m sorry about before.” He bowed his head. “I didn’t mean to bully you, I just asked because I didn’t understand. I told my dad later and he told me off. He told me that some kids can’t go to school because they’re sick … So I’m sorry. Please accept my apology.”
The boy ran over to Hinami and held something out to her. “Here,” he said.
Kaneki looked over from where he stood to see what was in the boy’s hand. “A bookmark?”
The bookmark was silver and shaped like a spatula, with a four-leaf clover engraved at the end.
The boy looked puzzled by Hinami, who stood there stiffly not taking his gift, but she eventually stuck it in one of the books she was carrying.
“Okay, bye,” the boy said, running off. All Hinami could do was watch him walk away in a daze.
As they walked home Hinami took the lead. “This is really bad,” Touka said, quietly enough that Hinami couldn’t hear.
