It had all started the week before.
“Hey, Touka, tomorrow’s a national holiday—we should go somewhere.”
Touka Kirishima, sophomore, general track student, Kiyomi High School—that was my position in human society.
I got up every morning just like a person, went to school just like a person, and studied just like a person. Everything I did was perfectly normal. Anyone who said I was a Ghoul would’ve been laughed at.
Our mere existence was abhorrent to people. And if our identities were discovered we’d lose it all, just like that.
But in the middle of my nerve-racking daily life, where I had to be so, so careful, there was someone whose presence was as encouraging to me as a warm spring breeze: Yoriko Kosaka, who was my friend.
She was sitting across from me at the desk, taking her lunch bag out, when she asked me to hang out.
“Where’d that come from all of a sudden?”
“Well, it just came to me!” Yoriko set her elbows on the desk and put her head in her hands. “What’s with you? You’re always so busy with your after-school job, so I thought you might like a change once in a while …” she said.
Touka lifted her chin, which had been pressed into the palm of her hand. Now that she thought about it, something had been worrying Yoriko lately.
But all it did was make Touka feel like she was being confronted with a reality she didn’t want to see. She started worrying about me after my battle with Mado. You could say that the fight’s just being prolonged.
That sort of bastard just deserved to die.
Every time she tried to rationalize it away like that, the image of the wedding ring nestled on his finger underneath his glove came back to her. Even he had a family.
“I mean, am I right? Let’s go somewhere!” said Yoriko.
“Yeah.”
“Anywhere you want to go? The aquarium, an amusement park?”
Seeing Yoriko’s excitement, Touka put her hands to her face. Could Yoriko see it on her face?
“Oh, no, nothing comes to mind …”
In response to Touka’s vague equivocation, Yoriko said, “Oh,” as if she’d realized something. “I guess you go on dates when you have a day off,” she said. She’d kept incorrectly thinking that Touka and Kaneki were going out.
“What? I told you, it’s not like that!” Touka hit the desk as she rose out of her chair. “Okay, okay, let’s go somewhere! We can go somewhere!”
“But …”
“It’s fine! Just tell me where you want to go!”
Touka ran her hands through her black hair, and her eyes flitted around. Then she hit on the bunny character from the Zakku-C series that hung from her phone.
“The zoo.”
“Huh?”
“Let’s go to the zoo.”
The aquarium mainly involved walking around inside, and at attraction parks you had to ride the rides, but at the zoo all you had to do was walk around outside and look at animals. This, she felt, she could deal with much easier.
“The zoo … what a great idea!”
“Right?”
“Yeah! And maybe we can see some baby animals too … Oh, and they’ll have somewhere we can sit outside and eat lunch!”
“Yeah.”
“Okay! I’ll make the lunches!”
Yoriko was suddenly in action. Touka’s face started twitching beyond her control. This has all gotten completely out of hand.
I’m gonna have to scout out where the toilets are beforehand, and …
“Let’s meet at the station, then! What time’s good for you? I wonder what the entrance fee is … Oh—is there any animal you really want to see, Touka? And any lunch requests? Just let me know!”
Yoriko looked happy, miles away from Touka’s unease. She was overwhelmed by Yoriko rattling off question after question, and she felt self-conscious.
How can she be so damn cheerful? Touka thought. But at the sight of her friend being so excited, Touka naturally broke into a smile.
Touka reached over and flicked Yoriko’s forehead right between the eyes.
“Ow!” she exclaimed, pulling her body up straight again and still smiling happily.
“A trip to the zoo with you.” She giggled. “I really can’t wait.”
“Whoa, they have those too?”
The next morning, when they got to school, Yoriko passed her a map of the zoo that she’d printed from the Internet. “Look!” she said.
Yoriko had come over to share what she’d found out at home: this animal had recently had babies, that animal wasn’t on view due to renovation work.
“My dad even printed us some discount coupons.”
The coupons had been printed nicely on thick paper, just like a real ticket.
“Wow, you went all out.”
“That’s what my mom said too.”
So she’s been talking to her parents about going to the zoo with me.
“She told me, ‘Now don’t get too carried away and put Touka in a tough spot.’ And that I shouldn’t overdo it with the lunches. The menu I came up with was, like, enough to feed five people.”
“Five … ?” This is terrifying.
“Oh, you guys are going to the zoo?” Touka heard a voice behind her ask, pulled in by Yoriko’s words. She turned around to see a few boys from their class looking down at the map of the zoo spread out on the desk.
“Oh, yeah, maybe.”
“Taking lunch to the zoo, huh. Hey, Yoriko, you can cook?”
Embarrassed by the group of boys, all Yoriko could do was mutter, “Oh, um, yeah,” quietly. Touka thought the conversation would end there, but one of the boys continued.
“Yoriko is a good cook. I’ve eaten her cooking before,” he said, jumping in.
“Yeah? How’d that happen?”
“Well, we were in the same class in sixth grade. It was in home ec. She was so good at it, our whole group was totally relying on her. Right?”
“I-it was really no big deal.”
She’s being humble, but she must be pretty good to have someone compliment her like that.
I can’t share that feeling, and I hate my body for it, but hearing someone say Yoriko’s great makes me so happy; it’s like it’s me he’s talking about.
“Totally. Yoriko wants to be a chef,” Touka said, speaking for Yoriko, who was getting flustered.
“You already know what you want to do—that’s amazing,” the boys said. Yoriko was increasingly uncomfortable at so much praise.
When the boys had gone away, Yoriko put her hand to her chest and said, “I was so nervous just then!”
“What did you have to be nervous about?”
“Talking to that many of them at once! But whoever you talk to you always sound like yourself, Touka. I wish I could be like that.”
“But you shouldn’t be nervous about talking to our classmates, you know?”
“I know. You can just say what you want to say to anyone—classmates, teachers, or even strangers. It must be nice …” Yoriko said, looking downcast.
Yeah, I can speak my mind, but does it really need to worry her so much? Touka puzzled it over. Then she pointed to the map of the zoo spread out on the table.
“Anyway, Yoriko, what do you want to see while we’re there?” she said, forcibly changing the subject.
Yoriko seemed to be regrouping herself as she looked down at the map, tracing the illustrations of animals with her fingertips.
Touka hadn’t noticed them until then—the eyes glaring at the two of them, trying to keep them restrained.
It happened at lunchtime that day.
We were eating at the same desk as usual, when the group of boys who’d talked to us in the morning appeared again.
“Hey, look at that—Yoriko, did you make that?”
Again, Yoriko was too embarrassed to speak, so Touka said, “Yeah, and?”
“So amazing. Give me some—just a piece,” he begged, his hands clasped together. For some reason, Yoriko looked to Touka.
“All right, I mean, I don’t care,” Touka said without thinking deeply. As if whatever Touka said went, Yoriko passed a little piece of fried chicken to the boy. He stuffed it in his mouth, eating it in one bite.
“Whoa, that was so good!” His eyes were gleaming.
That’s one face I’ll never be able to make.
“Hey, is it really that good?” Another boy came over, lured in by what the boy who’d eaten the chicken had said.
“Knock it off, Yoriko won’t have anything left to eat.”
As the boys scattered, Touka thought, Making someone that happy with her cooking must make Yoriko happy, too.
But Yoriko’s face was stony, and her eyes were downcast.
“Yoriko? What’s wrong?”
“Oh, no. It’s nothing …”
“They say you’re a great cook, how nice!” A girl’s voice cut in. Touka turned to look and saw three girls from their class. Although her words sounded in praise of Yoriko, the way she’d said them as if she were insinuating something made Touka furrow her brow. The girls said nothing more but quickly averted their eyes and began whispering among themselves.
“What was that?”
“That group of boys is popular with the girls, so that might be it.”
Now that she said it, they were all good-looking guys, and what’s more, every single one of them was active in clubs and sports.