"H-Hinata-kun...?"

It's with effort that he cracks open his eyes, dizzy brown irises spiralling around without much success in focusing on her. His mouth moves, slowly, soundlessly, his tongue and teeth coated with a fine layer of crimson; it overflows, though, leaking from the corners of his mouth and streaking down his chin, his neck. His gray hair is matted with it, either held-fast to his skull or stuck up at odd angles and gelled with blood. He lies, crumpled, on the floor, just shy of reaching the couch tucked against the far wall, limbs held close to his body.

He's just so... red.

Rui, panicked, scans the room in search of something to stop the bleeding. Her hands are clumsy; her feet don't want to move. Everything's so quiet she can't even think. But she manages to snatch a blanket off the couch and drop to her knees beside Hinata, her fingers stiff but workable as she tries to look over his body for the worst of the wounds. She finds it on his stomach - a gash through both his jacket and his shirt, jagged and raw. She swallows, hard, and mumbles an apology as she presses the blanket against the wound.

Hinata lets out a low groan of agony, feebly trying to swat her hands away. 

She murmurs quietly to him, her thoughts whirling so chaotically she isn't even sure what it is she's saying; it seems to help, though, as his protests soon peter out, replaced by soft whimpers she considers to be just as unsettling, but marginally more preferable.

"Hinata-kun--" She cuts off, squeezing her eyes shut for a moment. Her uncooperative tongue feels stuck to the roof of her mouth, unwilling to let out her jumble of questions and pleas. Rui gives her head a fierce shake, grits her teeth, and forcefully hisses out a slow breath. In the heat of the moment, she'd almost forgotten her own stuttering heartbeat; but it's returned now, a staccato drumbeat pulsing in her ears, unbearably loud.

"Hinata-kun," she tries again, this time biting back a sigh of relief to hear that her voice doesn't tremble as she thought it would. "W-What... happened? Was it... were you attacked?"

It can't be what she's thinking. Fate isn't so cruel as to rip from her two people she cares about in such a terrible fashion... so brutally...

Hinata doesn't respond, not at first. He looks so pale beneath the blood; his eyes - closed now - flicker under the lids, as if desperately searching for something. Rui adjusts her grip on the blanket, leaning over Hinata to apply the same amount of pressure with a single hand, and uses her free one to gently slap his cheek. She waits a moment, does it again; on the second go, his eyes flutter open, and something between a smile and a grimace passes over his lips.

"Y-You're not... my i-imagin-nation... huh?"

"Hinata-kun, I need to call an ambulence--"

"Don't... it's not.... worth it... R-Rui-chan..."

"That's quitter talk," she mumbles, her eyes narrowed in an effort to stop the tears she can feel burning at the corners, because this isn't the time to be crying - to mourn. Hinata is right here and she's not letting him go so easily. Screw the fact that she hardly knows him; he's a life she can save.

His lips twitch, like he wants to smile, and that's enough for Rui.

"Tell me... tell me what happened," she begs again as she removes the blanket for a moment.

She's careful as she peels back the layers of his shredded clothing to look at the whole of the wound. Rui can stomach quite a lot, having seen more than her fair share of atrocities while under Kaori's tutelage, and more than once she's been the only one aside from her mentor to retain the contents of her stomach after witnessing something gruesome - but this is barbaric. The wound is deep, cutting into the heart of muscles and tendons, and - dear God - Rui catches glimpses of things that should never see the light of day.

Which means...

Hinata walked here while practically eviscerated. Rui feels sick just thinking about it.

Don't think about, then. Don't, don't, don't. Focus on Hinata-kun, idiot.

She tries. Not to think. To focus. To breathe in and out. To move her hands and uncurl her fingers from her palms because she's no help to anyone with her hands fisted out of sheer terror. As one might imagine, it's difficult, hinging on impossible, for her to completely put aside her misgivings and to keep at bay the rapid-fire snapshots of a broken, bloody Kaori. Absently Rui wonders how long she can possibly refrain from blinking without causing herself unfortunate side effects.

She asks him again how, why this happened. And he just looks at her, brown eyes dull and pained, scrunched almost closed.

Something in his eyes, though, asks her to leave. Above everything else, he wants her to go, to abandon him. He seems desperate to communicate this, even as she shakes her head, mouthing the words that won't come. Unable to think of anything else, she again shifts her weight and slides a hand down to wrap around his; his hand shakes in her grip, doesn't let up for a moment despite her squeezing. When she tries to catch his eye he twists away, and her heart sinks.

Is it... that he doesn't want her to suffer along with him?

Rui can't imagine that Hinata's so cruel as to push her away without a reason; maybe she's considering this for her own benefit, but she doesn't want to be hated by Hinata, not now, of all times.

Glancing around at the gore-ridden scene, Rui admits she can't be much help to him.   

But when Rui reaches for her phone, shaky fingers struggling to close around the slick plastic casing, he suddenly lunges forward, unbridled desperation in his movements, and seizes her arm with both bloody hands.   

Rui stiffens, some stuttered question on her lips.   

Hinata shakes his head, slowly, his eyes latching onto hers - begging her.   

"D-Don't... Rui-chan... please."   

Her phone drops from her fingers and sinks to the depths of her pocket once again.   

She's probably an idiot - definitely a fool. Her heart aches like it's being squeezed by an unseen hand just looking into Hinata's eyes, though, so how can she deny him? Perhaps it's something against his values to be treated in a hospital. She's heard of people like that, who disengage themselves from the world of modern medicine because it clashes with their ideals. She doesn't support it, but she... she's not even sure there's anything that can be done for him at this point. If this is the last time they're going to see one another, then she'll respect his wishes - even if it physically pains her to do so.   

Hinata flops back onto the floor, listless, lifeless. His breathing's turned ragged and shallow, and she swear she can see his heartbeat jumping just beneath the thin fabric of his once-white shirt. He still watches her as she frantically tries to stem the tide of blood flowing from his battered body, and there's faint amusement in his features that she can't quite comprehend. Doesn't he want to be saved? Doesn't he want to live?   

She wants him to be alive, but apparently that doesn't mean much coming from a stranger.    He still hasn't told her how he ended up like this.   

There must be a reason for that - something he thinks she'll shy away from. Which makes the answer obvious.   

Rui breathes in deeply, dredging up what little courage she has stored inside of her, and leans over Hinata, bringing their faces only inches apart.   

"A ghoul did this... right?" she asks in a breathless whisper.   

Hinata goes still, his breathing all but vanishing. His pupils dilate more the closer she leans in, which she initially attributes to his fear, perhaps because he's recalling the attack. But Rui freezes in the next moment as a wave of black ink spills over Hinata's eyes, seemingly washing away the brown of his irises to reveal the demented red beneath.   

He's too quick for her to even scream.   

There's teeth and a flash of movement, a gaping red maw and her vision blurs out; white-hot pain erupts from Rui's shoulder, and a soundless gasp tears free from her lips. All rationality disappears from her thoughts as she lurches backwards, terror lending her strength, simultaneously shoving hard at Hinata; her palm connects sharply with his cheek, the drying blood slick against her skin, and she digs in her nails, eliciting a muffled hiss from him.   

It's enough to unclamp his jaw from her shoulder, and she falls back, uncaring towards the teeth that tear another strip from her flesh. Rui, eyes wide and hand instinctively pressing over the wound, scrambles backwards until her head and shoulders slam into a wall and she whimpers from the impact; blood gushes up through her trembling fingers, rushing down the length of her arm in thick, fast rivulets like a hellish river.   

She can't breathe, she can hardly see straight - but she looks ahead of her, unblinking once again, keeping Hinata in her sights.   

Ghoul.   

In the bright, artificial light he's picked out in perfect detail. Crouched opposite her, hands braced against the floor, his head lowered. Drops of crimson drip from his lips, peeled back over his teeth in a snarl.   

He's... a ghoul.   

The realization shakes her to her very core, disrupts her reality so savagely that she feels disconnected from the whole affair. Like it's happening to someone else, like this is a dream she's looking down on.   

Hinata is a ghoul.   

More like a nightmare, then.   

"R-Rui..."   

Her breath hitches in her throat.   

Hinata lifts his head, hesitantly, and she can see that he's shaking bodily. He wraps his arms around his stomach, grits his bloody teeth together so fiercely the muscles along his jaw pulse. And he stares at her, eyes narrowed - still black as night where they should be white, red where she expects brown.   

It's not Hinata, not the man she knows - but it is, all the same. And she can't reconcile that in the maelstrom of fear and confusion that's taken hold of her mind.   

"Get... get out, please..."   

What?   

"I can't... it hurts, Rui, not to... not to just... rip you apart..."

She can't comprehend what he's saying, which he seems to understand, because he repeats himself, each rendition more broken than the last, until his voice is hoarse and he's practically screaming at her to run.   

"Rui..." he breathes, and the tension spikes in his shoulders; he doubles over for a moment, grinding his teeth together, his chest heaving. When he looks up at her again, she can see the pain - how much it tortures him not to just throw himself at her, to sink his teeth into her supple flesh. It's taking every last scrap of his morals not to act on animal instinct. "Don't... do this to me, I beg you. I've been... trying real hard... not to be a monster..."   

Rui still cowers against the wall, fighting back the urge to just scream - because everything is not supposed to be this way. She may live in a world inhabited by creatures that stalk humans like prey, but she was never meant to come into contact with them. She's always been cautious, taken all the right measures to keep herself out of the headlines as another victim - but then again, in the back of her mind, hadn't she stupidly assumed that ghouls would somehow distinguish themselves from humans? Didn't she think, so naively, that she'd be able to pick one out of a crowd without hesitation?    

Kaori is dead. Rui knows that now, can accept it. Her mentor's been dead for weeks, and there's nothing she can even remotely hope to do about that. Whatever Shin turns up... she knows the truth.    

And she hates ghouls for that. That, too, is just another fact.   

Soft, melodic ringing suddenly breaks the silence, and while Hinata cringes back, Rui stares, transfixed, at the phone she doesn't remember drawing from her pocket.   

Bastard Nomura flashes across the screen.   

Hinata doesn't try to stop her this time as she accepts the call.   

"H-Hello, Nomura-san?"   

"Kitamura-san," he greets her, sounding out of breath. "Good. Thought you'd ignore the call."   

"I'm not..." - she cuts Hinata a furtive glance; he's watching her, a sad resignation burning beneath the black of his eyes - "...as rude as you, Nomura-san..."   

"Right, right. Well, whatever... Actually, is everything alright on your end? Your voice is weird. Don't tell me you caught a cold."   

"I..."   

She swallows thickly, shifting her eyes away from Hinata.   

"I'm fine," Rui says, adding something of an edge to her voice that she hopes effectively counters the rough tremor Shin had picked up on. "Just tired. It's late, remember? And I hope you had something worthwhile to call me about, Nomura-san, because I don't appreciate pointless conversations."   

She can imagine Shin rolling his eyes, unimpressed with her attitude.   

"Look, I'll get straight to the point," he says, "I'm here. At the ward. There's nothing, Kitamura-san - shit-nothing. And before you pout and demand I look harder, I'm going to tell you that when I say nothing I absolutely mean it. There's meant to be guards that patrol this area in order to keep out nosy people like your beloved Ikehara, but I haven't seen a trace of them in the hour that I've been here."   

He pauses for a moment, and Rui can hear nothing in the background - nothing. Just like Shin said.

"You know, I took up your request because I thought maybe some poor reporter got themselves caught on patrol and was being detained because of their immense stupidity. I thought it'd be an easy fix. But these guards... they don't report in often because there's so little to report. It's not strange to have radio silence from them for weeks on end. What is strange is that they're just up and gone from their stations.   

"God, I shouldn't even be telling you this.

    "Anyway, I'm already screwed if the higher-ups find out I broke protocol, so I might as well spill the rest to you. I found her phone - Ikehara's. The thing's cracked but still functional. Ikehara was recording something when she dropped it, and... I think it's safe to say things ended badly for her.

"...I'm sorry about that.    "I'll look around here for a little while longer but I wouldn't expect too much from it. When I get back to the eighteenth ward, I'll look into what happened here, Kitamura-san. So brace yourself for whatever I end up finding.   

"Just remember something, huh?   

"The ward is closed for a reason."   

He hangs up, just like that, without even a word of goodbye.

See? she thinks, drawing in a shuddering breath, and whether it's from relief or the continued effects of her fear, she doesn't know, or care for that matter. You were right for once. Kaori's... gone.

    It's the closure she'd been so desperately seeking, and while she feels herself on the verge of tears, there's a hole in her heart that's suddenly being filled in. At least she knows, beyond a shadow of a doubt. It was the not knowing, her ignorance, she thinks, that really took a toll on her. So there's some comfort in the news, even if she would have given anything for it not to have turned out this way.   

Ghouls did this. They took Kaori from her, from the world, all for the sake of their damnable hunger.   

She has every reason to loathe them, she does. And she doesn't deny that there's a white-hot ember lodged in the pit of her stomach every time she thinks about how awful Kaori's last moments must have been.   

"Rui...?"   

She shakes her head, gritting her teeth as she pushes away from the wall, holding her arm stiffly to avoid stretching the shredded muscles of her shoulder. She doesn't dare look at the wound; Hinata's injuries were bad enough, she might be sick if she sees her own insides.   

Hinata scrambles back as she takes a step towards him, his expression grimly frantic.   

"R-Rui, don't--"

"H...Hinata-kun!"   

He blinks as she fists her hands at her sides, even as she's crying, even as she's shaking.   

"Ikehara-san... Kaori is dead." She speaks softly, her voice barely above a whisper. But she is thunder in this deafening silence. "So I'm just thinking about her, everything she's ever taught me... and, you know, she was fascinated by ghouls. I always thought she was so strange, but... brave, at the same time. Kaori... never worried about other people thinking she was crazy. And she... she told me not to mind it, either."   

"Rui, just--"   

"Kaori says... she said... don't hate what you don't understand, Rui, because you're only going to end up hating yourself for it later."   

She forces a smile through her tears.   

"You didn't kill me, Hinata-kun."

His eyes widen, like this is news to him.

"So... I'm trusting you. I'm trusting Kaori. And I'm accepting the fact that I'm probably as insane as she was. Just... don't let me end up hating myself later for this."