Rui swallows hard past a lump in her throat she didn't know existed before stepping beyond the threshold of Kimi's apartment. A quick sweep of the space had told her Kimi lives on a low-income budget; she decorates the apartment sparingly, dresses moderately. Nothing spectacular or even homey occupies the apartment as far as she can tell. It feels like blank space - waiting to be customized and made wholly Kimi's, but Rui also feels that might be impossible, given her identity.

"Rent's cheap," Kimi informs her cheekily when she catches Rui staring out through a crack in the blinds and the grimy handprints that dot the window. "Otherwise we wouldn't be here."

Kimi drops herself into an armchair positioned just shy of one of the windows, legs crossed but arms splayed out over the arms of the chair. When Rui hesitates, wringing her hands out and shifting on her feet, Kimi rolls her ankle, pointing the toe of her sneaker at the vacant chair - inviting her to sit.

"Hinata, go get Kiyoshi."

"What?" Hinata, having been in the process of dragging a stool from the kitchen island over to join the girls, straightens up instantly. "Yoshi's fine, isn't he? 'Sides, shouldn't I--"

"Get lost, brat."

"Kimi, Rui-chan--"

"Doesn't need you twiddling your thumbs and staring at her like a kicked puppy for the next hour," Kimi finishes smoothly, grinning a little at the defeated look that slowly crawls across Hinata's face. "So get, kid. I'm not gonna eat her or anything. I've more self-control than you, after all."

Rui's hand unconsciously wanders over the fresh bandages wound around her shoulder, some of which she now realizes can be seen poking out from under her jacket. If she's being honest, she hasn't thought much about the wound since the night Hinata tore into her flesh; it seems inconsequential in the grand scheme of things. But perhaps it's because she still refuses to look at it when she changes the bandages; she hasn't seen the indents of Hinata's teeth, or the red, raw insides that she knows will have her running for the nearest toilet again. It's still surreal to her despite vividly recalling the pressure of his jaw and the agony of release.

She sheepishly drops her hands into her lap when it becomes clear that Hinata is staring; she bites her lip, lifting her brows in an innocent gesture. The last thing she wants is to give Hinata the impression she's repulsed by him, or even terrified. And while some part of her, deep and dark inside her heart, harbors feelings of ill-will towards his species as a whole, for Hinata, she only feels an intense desire to understand him. Whether that's leftover remnants of Kaori's influence or her own curiosity, she doesn't know, but she clings to the feeling, because otherwise she fears she'd drown in the uncertainty of Hinata's world.

"...Rui-chan, call me if ya need anything. Don't hesitate, okay?"

She nods, the small movement fitful and anything but reassuring, but it's all she can muster. Kimi's looking at her like she's never seen anything so amusing, and Hinata appears so fragile all of a sudden, and really, it's almost too much for her. Hinata seems to get that, because he cracks a faint smile, shoots Kimi a warning glare, then executes another of his whimsical bows and backs out of the apartment, taking an immediate left the moment he's clear of the door to join Kiyoshi down the hall.

"So, Rui-chan... Mind if I just stick with Rui? Little personal, I know, but it's too cutesy for me to call you by Hinata's pet name." Kimi's eyes narrow as her lips curl upwards at the corners; Rui's flushed again, but now she makes no real effort to hide it. There's no real point, she reasons, given that Kimi isn't making any obvious mention of it. "And we'll likely be talking for a while, so..."
"You're... you're fine to call me that, honestly," Rui rushes, waving her hands around in a placating manner.

"Good. Then let's get on with it. Got any questions we can use as a good ol' springboard?"

Rui's quick to answer this - it's something that's been running through her mind on a near-constant loop.

"Kagune..." She tests out the word, exploring the syllables curiously. Somehow, it tastes exotic to her. "What are they? Hinata-kun mentioned them, but he... well, it didn't feel right to press him about it, ya know?"

Head cocked, Kimi considers the question. She twirls a lock of her red hair around her finger, pulling it taut after a moment. Rui tries very hard not to fidget in her seat. It's more difficult than she'd like to admit, and the maelstrom of anxiety and eager anticipation currently sweeping through her systems isn't helping in the slightest. She's inherited a lot of Kaori, more than she really understood during their time together, and each new thing she discovers shakes Rui to the core. This hunger for knowledge is so primal... it almost scares her.

Apparently coming to a decision, Kimi uncrosses her legs and slides from the chair, standing languidly and waving Rui back when she starts to follow suit. She presses the heels of her hands into her back, sighing with pleasure as her vertebrae crack into place, then kicks at the legs of her chair, sending it skidding backwards across the weathered wooden floorboards - all while Rui watches, bemused yet riveted, her spine stiff, eyes perpetually wide, ready to see just what it is Kimi's intent on showing her.

"Don't scream, kid," she advises in what could almost be a teasing voice, but Rui catches the steel in her words, the edge to them that promises she will not enjoy the consequences of disobeying Kimi. She swallows thickly but bobs her head, and Kimi smiles again. "Good girl, aren't you? Well, no need to delay, then..."

It happens in an instant.

She shudders, eyes squeezed shut, as twin tails - thick, corded muscle colored crimson and threaded with burgundy veins - erupt from Kimi's lower back, curling around her waist, seeming to fill the whole of the room despite their relatively short length.

Rui stifles her shout of surprise, only just, by biting down hard on her knuckles.

"These," Kimi says, turning slightly to the side and extending one of her tails, as if stretching it as she did her back, "are kagune. Bikaku kagune, to be exact." Gauging that Rui's unlikely to either pass out or run off to the nearest CCG investigator, she continues, "I won't go into much detail, 'cause I never was one for caring about the nitpicky stuff, but there are four types of kagune found in ghouls. Bikaku, rinkaku, koukaku, and ukaku - each of 'em with their kakuhou sack in a different place."
Kimi scratches her head, frowning. She crosses her arms and hums, contemplating how best to explain everything. Satoshi had already given Misaki the talk before they'd come to see her, so she hadn't had to give any technical explanations before, and incidentally, they weren't exactly her forte.

"The sack's full of Rc cells - they're what make up the kagune." Kimi blinks, revealing pitch-black scillia and irises that perfectly match her kagune. "For bikaku ghouls, we've got our sack at the base of our spine. Rinkakus have it a bit higher up on the back, 'round the waist, and koukakus are just under the shoulder blades. For ukakus, they're right around the shoulders. I can't really show you what any of them look like besides mine, but... maybe Hinata'll show you his. They're actually damn pretty."

For Rui, trying to associate kagune - of any kind - with pretty is... troublesome, to say the least. Because she finds Kimi's tails far from revolting (rather, she's completely entranced by them, and can't keep from tracking their undulating movements around Kimi's body), to call them pretty seems demeaning in some way. There is raw, undiluted power in a kagune - beyond human comprehension. Pretty doesn't much cover it, in Rui's opinion.

She eases out a slow breath through her nose, unclamping her jaw from her fist. She hasn't broken any skin, thank God; instinct screams at her that blood and ghouls are not the best of combinations, whatever logic says about Kimi's self-assured self-control. She isn't shaking, which she can't quite believe, but is intensely grateful for. Closing her eyes for a moment, Rui lifts her head, meeting Kimi's inquisitive gaze with a firm look of resolve.

"Get your fill?" Kimi asks with a crooked grin before effortlessly sliding her kagune back into her spine - or her... kakuhou?

The terminology'll take some getting used to...

Plopping back down into her chair, Kimi tucks her legs up beneath her, indicating she won't be standing again for some time. She drops her elbow onto the armrest and props her cheek up on her knuckles, watching Rui through her dark lashes, eyes once again a soft, earthy brown.

"I think some shocked silence would probably be the normal reaction," she says, "but I'm betting you have some more questions, right? So fire away. We've got some time before Kiyoshi and the brat come back dragging Satoshi. He's stubborn as all hell, probably won't budge until Misaki convinces him it'd be nice to come over and help out."

Rui fiddles with the hem of her jacket, kneading the pads of her fingers into the soft, fluffy fur edging around the army-green fabric. It's just something to occupy her hands, a habit she's had trouble ignoring since she made a conscious effort to forgo clinging to her phone. The reminder of Kaori's final message becomes far too incendiary for her thoughts at the best of times; right now, especially, even seeing Kaori's contact on her phone would likely have her mind caught up in the flames of her remorse, her endless guilt she only just manages to keep at bay when she isn't alone. So she fiddles, wearing thin the edges of her jacket, and focuses on recalling the more intelligent of the questions that had been plaguing her these last few days.

"Are ghouls... that different from humans?" Rui looks away, but quickly snaps her gaze back to Kimi, wanting to know the answer, to watch her body language, her facial expressions as she goes over what she's willing to tell her. "Hinata-kun... I never would have guessed he wasn't human if he hadn't..."

Kimi flicks a glance at her shoulder but otherwise ignores the drop off in Rui's voice.

"Separate species," she says, shrugging, like what're ya gonna do about it? "We look similar, yeah, but on a cellular level? We're just different, Rui. Humans run around sucking down hamburgers and ramen, and ghouls... we feed on you."

Kimi doesn't look at Rui as she says this. Her eyes have slid past her, to a far off wall, glassy and distant just like Hinata's, so long ago in the cafe. It's not Rui she's thinking about right now, and Rui lacks the heart to pry open an old wound.

"But... other than that... we've both got hearts. We've got feelings. Ghouls aren't just a bunch of wild animals, Rui, remember that for me, will ya?

The creak of the door distracts Rui from answering, though Kimi's attention has already drifted away from her, so she doubts she would have gotten another question in anyway. Muffled complaints interspersed with a light, lilting voice precede Kiyoshi and Hinata's return to the apartment, and they're followed by a man and a woman, maybe nineteen years old each. The man's significantly taller than his companion, dressed plainly in jeans and a plaid shirt, his ebony hair styled away from his forehead. The woman who hooks her arm through his and leans her head into his shoulder looks as delicate as a porcelain doll, skin milky white and unmarked as far as Rui can tell. Her chestnut-brown hair spills over the man's shoulder, tickling his collarbone, and she's smiling even as he loudly complains that there's no reason for them to be here, none at all, and they'd be better off going home before things get too complicated.

The girl spots her first, and while Rui expects the smile to slip from her lips, replaced by a wary frown or a look of discomfort, she merely ups the wattage and breaks away from the man to skip closer to her, even though Rui makes no move to meet her or rise from her chair.

"You're Rui-chan, I take it?" she asks politely, bending down slightly to even out their heights.

"This is Misaki," Kiyoshi pipes up from his place atop Hinata's shoulders. "She's Satoshi's girly friend."

"Shut up, mouse," the man, presumably Satoshi, mutters, but it's lacking any real conviction, and Kiyoshi only sticks out his tongue in response.

"...girlfriend?"

Misaki giggles, tucking a stray strand of hair behind her ear as she accepts the stool Satoshi pulls over for her and sits down beside Rui.

"A tad abnormal, right?" she guesses from Rui's slack-jawed expression and subsequent attempts to hide her embarrassment. "You guessed I was human already?"

"Well, no, I... Hinata-kun mentioned that Kimi-san helped Satoshi-san with a problem similar to mine, so I naturally assumed you were human... like me."

"Smart cookie," Misaki says approvingly, flashing Hinata a wink, to which Rui flushes as pink as her hair and Hinata splutters out some incoherent response. "And it's true, Kimi was a huge help to us when I first found out Satoshi was a ghoul."

"Damn straight I was," Kimi huffs, though she cracks a grin when Kiyoshi, after slipping down from Hinata's shoulders, crawls into her lap. "You two were hopeless before I got involved. Satoshi was so bitter about the whole thing he was acting like a five-year-old the whole time, always complaining and threatening to take off if you didn't just accept him."

"I was desperate, damnit," Rui hears Satoshi mumble.

"It's rough, hearing it for the first time," Misaki goes on, seemingly glossing over the whole extraneous exchange. She claps her hands together in her lap, leaning closer to Rui. "I had a panic attack, I swear, from seeing Satoshi's kagune. I think I called him a tentacle man and ran out of the room!"

"Somehow tentacle man was worse than ghoul," Kimi adds, "because she eventually came back."

"Of course tentacle man is worse," Hinata laughs, ignoring the death glare of epic proportions that Satoshi throws his way. "That's way too hentai for someone like Misaki! Too bad for her, Satoshi's a total pervert either way!"

"That's it, Hinata, we're having a rematch. Get out your damned kagune."

"What? No way! We fought last time I was here! And I brought Rui-chan!"

"Should've thought of that before you pissed me off."

"You're always pissed off, man."

"And you're always an ass."

"Not in front of Rui-chan, idiot!"

"Then fight me!"

"Not in front of Rui-chan!"

Rui sits there, quiet apart from the occasional burst of laughter, as Satoshi tackles Hinata to the ground. Misaki bites back a laugh of her own, clapping when Satoshi pins Hinata by his wrists, gasping when Hinata kicks him off and grabs a book off the end table to clock Satoshi upside the head. He's stopped mid-swing, though, by Kimi's recently-conjured kagune, which wraps snugly around his wrist and drags him back, butt sliding across the floor and face contorted into a look of childish persistence.

Kiyoshi, seated across from her in Kimi's abandoned chair, offers her a small, pleased smile that she doesn't quite interpret at first.

But then he mouths: See? We're a normal family. Sorta.

Despite the din of the ongoing brawl and the rush of her own racing thoughts, Rui blinks, her world utterly silent.

She'd thought that something had seemed off about all of this. Not off, actually, achingly familiar - which wasn't what she'd been expecting from this encounter. It's familial, the electric current she can feel threading through those gathered in Kimi's apartment, the mark of a family. It's heart and soul, something so very human she'd nearly forgotten where she was, who she was with, just for a single, solitary moment. But that one moment is worth so much more to her than she could ever put into words.

Because it doesn't matter whether they're humans or ghouls - they're people, living and breathing, surviving by any means necessary.

A small smile flits across her lips as she nods to Kiyoshi and looks back at the men fighting it out on the floor, with Kimi hovering over them like a bad-tempered mother waiting for her sons to realize just how much trouble they're going to be in once they've finished.

She really had been foolish to think that simply being inhuman was enough to turn her away from someone like Hinata.