Tsukishima should've been in more pain. Numbing medicine couldn't explain how his leg felt even better than it had the previous morning, and Tsukishima could feel everything perfectly. He felt healthy and energized in ways he wasn't used to. His glasses were on the table next to him. He could smell everything. 

A burden sat in the back of his skull, weighing on and pressuring him to do something. It occurred to him that he could see perfectly. Why was he so hungry? Tsukishima hated eating, even if everyone said he needed to bulk up more. He could eat an entire person. Wouldn't people usually say a horse? The bright, yellow-white light began to give him a headache, the front left of his crown throbbing.

Yaku was probably dead. Tsukishima wondered how many people would die because of him before he got his act together. He needed to get to school. He didn't know where he was, what time of day it was if it was day at all. Yaku's heart had stopped beating against him.

What the fuck is this?

Tsukishima ignored the thought. It didn't sound like him. He heard footsteps coming in his direction minutes before the door opened. With just him and the woman from the previous (?) night alone, he could hear the blood pulsing in her veins. The slight throb of the brain in her scull haunted him. She probably had a headache too.

She smelled better than anything that'd ever graced him. He was really hungry, and she was a person. Why did that matter? She tossed him a fruit cup and a small boxed coffee. He gave the items a weird look before wordlessly opening and downing the snack. 

He'd never been a fan of fruit cups, but the contents never felt wrong going down. The smell made him gag and dry heave. It didn't smell rotten, just gross, like human food. He paused. He felt the acid bubbling in his throat and stomach, tossing what he'd eaten right back up and out into the small bin at the bedside. Tsukishima felt dazed. Maybe there was still a drug in effect. He cautiously sipped the coffee. It was lukewarm but otherwise good. He'd never liked coffee, much less black coffee. He didn't throw that one up.

The woman stood there, staring. The look in her eyes was cold now. Tsukishima couldn't find it in him to be surprised when she asked him to leave. The small medical center had been two stories underground with no windows. He could hear the barely audible wet noises of lungs passing by. Tsukishima was still hungry. Then eat. 

He realized that he had no idea what was actually going on. The woman hadn't charged him anything and had just given him his clean clothes, school bag, and sent him packing. We're in Tokyo. Why was he in Tokyo? How did he know that for sure? Where was the train station? He definitely couldn't get home on foot from there.

Tsukishima looked around the room, uncomfortable. Nagisa and Karma had decided to show up to class again, and they were staring at him. He hadn't seen the ghoul from the other night around, and the brunette from class-1 was back. She was also awfully quiet. Tsukishima had noticed that Isogai and Kaminari also seemed off. He didn't know if they were related, but something was going on.

The redheaded ghoul mentioned something about someone called Bakugou. Tsukishima wondered who that was, as well as why talking to him would warrant the guy killing him (killing Yaku). 

Class was becoming excruciating. The teacher was droning on and on, and Tsukishima felt sick. His stomach was caving. It should've been impossible for him to lose enough weight to show in such a short time, but his head was spinning fast and trying to pull him down. Maybe Nagisa's look, at least, was concerned. 

He was in the bathroom almost directly after the bell rang. Everything around him was loud—blood pumping, hearts beating, lungs retracting, he could hear it all. Hunger gnawed at him, but nothing he could eat would stay down. The new voice in his head was still there.

He leaned forward with his head down toward the mirror. He gripped the sink hard enough to turn his knuckles white. The right side of Tsukishima's face was going numb. I am having a stroke? Tsukishima looked up at the mirror, watching as his eye changed and new veins ran with black. What?

The floor under him dropped as the room spun. His headache from before returned with a vengeance, bashing in the back of his skull. Tsukishima. He had to be out of his mind for him to be seeing things. Tsukishima. He stared at his feet, checking to see if things really were moving around him. The skin around his eye was on fire, squeezing and tearing back from whatever had forced its sickness out to begin with. Tsukishima. 

Tsukishima was hearing things now, too. That's been going on for a while now, too. Tsukishima was beginning to confuse which voice did and which one didn't belong to him. The pulsing in his brain pushed forward, searing the area behind his eyes. He looked back up at the mirror, terrified. His face was the way it'd always been, and he realized he could see clearly. 

He pulled his glasses off and stared at his reflection. His eye was fine, he could feel his face fine, and why didn't he need glasses? His eye was...darker. Both had always been a very pale brown, but now they one was closer to matching his older brother's. It almost looked like they belonged to Yaku. Acid lept into his throat at the thought. 

The bathroom door opened loudly, a guy making his way to the furthest urinal. Tsukishima pretended to straighten his hair, something more than unlike him, and left. He needed to go home. Or, anywhere but home. Your family is human. I'm human, Tsukishima thought. Right? 

Tsukishima wondered if his family was becoming accustomed to him staying out late. The sun had gone down half an hour ago, and he'd been wandering around since school had ended that day. He was hungry. He could feel his body begin to cave in on itself, but nothing he tried to eat would stay down. 

He didn't want to stay home for a long time, fearing that he'd do something bad. He'd never forgive himself if he did anything he'd regret. 

Tsukishima trailed a small back street, trying his hardest not to think. There was a girl about his age up ahead, struggling to lift the lid of a dumpster her and her neighbors shared. She had green dreads—weird. Perfect. Help her. Of course, he would help her, it'd be awful to ignore her, but what was perfect? 

He came up behind her slowly, standing straight as to not hunch over her. "Excuse me? Do you need help?"

"Yeah..." she replied cautiously. "thanks."

Tsukishima lifted the top for her and tossed two of the three trash bags in for her. Someone walked passed the window facing the back of the home. Be quick. What? "It's no problem." That didn't sound like him at all. "I'm actually new to the neighborhood...Monoma Kei. What's your name?" The person was still hovering by the window. He would lose his shot. With what?

"Monoma?" She didn't answer his question. "Are you related to Monoma Neito?"

"Yeah. How do you know him..?" The person walked away.

"We were friends in middle school. Look, I have to go, but I'll see you around."

She turned quickly on her heel trying to get away. She looked nervous. You came on too strong, and she probably knows the kid is dead. Tsukishima panicked and grabbed her shoulder, turning her back toward him. "Wait! Before you go...um–" she smells really good– "...I'm sorry, just, I'm so hungry..."

The girl went limp before she could argue. Tsukishima stared at the blood pumping from her like a fountain. He chewed on the chunk missing from her neck, sucking down fluids before swallowing flesh. Liquid geranium stuck to his finger and mouth, clumping on his clothes like pudding. 

He groaned as the tender muscle melted down his throat. He tore her arm from its socket, turning it in his hold as he swallowed it in pieces. It's good, right? Tsukishima didn't get how it could be a question. He sucked at the elbow junction, enjoying the bits of fat that squished on his tongue. His teeth scraped on the flats a hand, chewy skin rolling into his mouth.

Tsukishima dug his fingers under her ribs, ripping and snapping them open and apart through her clothes. He splintered and cracked one set of the ribs, then dug his fingers between them, stuffing himself with the strips. His right hand wandered in and down to the large intestine, slurping it down thoughtlessly. He traveled back to his first bite, sucking down blood and mucus.

The heart tastes metallic, he noted, pushing the soft muscle against the roof of his mouth. He tore open further, grabbing an ovary and letting it sit in his mouth. It was weird. He didn't like the way parts of it popped and left weird liquid, while other parts were like chewed gum, never breaking down. He spit it a few feet away into the back yard. It occurred to him that he'd gone to his knees on the ground at some point. Like the arms, he carelessly shredded off the legs, then snapped them in half before digging into fatty meat on thighs.

┈

Tsukishima took a deep breath. He had the audacity to leave his mess in the family's backyard. Worse, he was now standing in Yamaguchi's old personal apartment after scaling the fire-escape.  

He'd stumbled into the bathroom as soon as he'd gotten inside, not bothering with the lights until he looked in the mirror. It was everywhere on him—his hair, his hands, his face...it was in him. She was in him.

No one had bought the apartment yet, and the Yamaguchi's still had to pay bills on the place, even if no one was living there. The lease wasn't over yet and the landlord for the place was terrible. Tsukishima peeled his uniform off of his body, tossing it into the sink. He'd have to throw it away. 

He stood in the shower, ignoring the print he left on the handle. The water rushing off of him and down the drain turned red, staining the spaces between tiles on the walls. Tsukishima stood behind the curtain until the water ran cold. If he looked closely enough, the water looked a little pink. 

Tsukishima grabbed the nearly-empty bottle of shampoo in the rack. He remembered how Yamaguchi had been washing his hair every day so he could hurry and buy a different brand. Tsukishima combed the shampoo through his hair with fingers, freezing when he hit something hard. An entire fingernail dropped to the bottom of the shower with a wet plop. Stubborn flesh clung to the back of it, straining a pink trail to the drain. Tsukishima got out of the shower.

A rough hand gripped at his brain as he stepped out of the shower. Tsukishima pushed his weight against the wall, staring downward as the room spun for a moment. Tsukishima. It hurt behind his eyes, then crawled out and down his face. Tsukishima. His skin burned, the faint air from the fan making him want to scream. Tsukishima. The bright bathroom lights stung his eyes. Tsukishima. He carelessly flipped the light switch off.

The spinning and pain suddenly stopped. His ears rung a little. The voice in the back of his head kept calling him. Tsukishima didn't see himself when he looked in the mirror. 

Yaku stared back at him, not saying anything. He didn't breathe or blink, just stared. Tsukishima was beyond unsettled. "I don't understand. What's going on?"

What is there to understand?

Tsukishima noticed that Yaku's (his?) reflection was pale. Even as it spoke back to him, it remained still. It was as if he were looking not at a friend, but at the body of one...the body of a friend who couldn't rest.

Your eye is mine. So is your tongue, and many of your insides.

That shouldn't have been possible. Surely, a ghoul and a human couldn't just be pieced together like that, right? Ghouls were ghouls and people were people...

Within you, there is me. Within me, there is us. Pay attention.

Tsukishima blinked. The reflection was his.

┈

(2169 Words)