Second Chance
@harpalium
He blinked. One moment he was staring at himself in the mirror with white locks dripping down in front of his eyes and the next he was staring at the face of a long lost friend of his. The first sound that the other male made was enough to pull at his heart strings, tears threatening to spill out of his eyes. This, of course, had to just be a dream. There was no way he was sitting here, in Anteiku, with Hide like they use to do in their more innocent years..
Ignoring the other’s voice, just for now, his eyes glanced around the coffee shop and landed on Touka-chan..Only to be pulled away by a chime at the door. Rize entered. Grey hues turned back to the blond that sat in front of him, who most likely could tell that Kaneki’s attention was elsewhere though the reason was different than why it actually was. “Yeah..” Kaneki forced himself to say with a small lump in his throat. “That’s the girl.” He watched as she made her way to sit in the same exact spot as she did years before when he first showed her to Hide.
Was this God’s way of apologizing for all the cruel tricks and jokes that he played on Kaneki? Giving the young ghoul, or.. now human, a chance to change anything in this life that occurred on that day and actually prevent most or any of it from actually happening? He could keep Hide, his best friend, alive.. He could keep himself human and not have to worry himself with the ghoul world. But.. Eyes glanced back to Touka and the manger behind the counter. He’d never get to know them, or form the strong family-like bonds with them.
“Hide.” Kaneki forced a little grin, not wanting his friend to figure out what was wrong or start to ask questions about it. He knows Hide well enough to know that Hide was already catching a whiff of something being wrong inside of Kaneki’s mind and heart. “What day is it?”
God, he had so much power in his hands right now.. He could change so much, prevent his world from being destroyed and Hide’s world from being crushed and eventually taken away from him. But does he want to go through with it? Actually ignore Rize when she comes over in a few minutes? Brush her off and just go home? Wouldn’t she follow him though, wanting to get her prey.. and if she did, not in the allyway where they’d be interrupted by the falling beam, Kaneki might actually die and this ‘second chance’ would all be a waste..
He was going to do things right this time. If the opportunity for Rize to come over happened, if things happened the way they did before, then Kaneki would go with it.. There was no way he was going to miss out on having that family-like bond with everyone but there would be one thing he will change this time around. That one thing was actually a human. That human was Hide and Kaneki was going to keep that light in his life alive and protect him at all costs this time around.
