Hide:

"So... You're a soup kitchen?" Hide asked, gazing into the contents of the large, brushed steel industrial fridge.

"Well," the old Manager murmured from behind him. "Yes and no. We fill the same function, certainly, providing sustenance for people who would otherwise be hungry, but the majority of those we distribute to aren't homeless, although, there are some. These are people who have integrated with the human population to some degree, and are trying their best to live morally upstanding lives despite their needs. Most of them have jobs, hobbies, friends, that sort of thing; but they still get hungry."

"... Where do you get the meat?" Hide asked after a moments hesitation. "I mean, even if your customers aren't killing people, someone still has to have died, right?"

"A number of places," Yoshimura replied calmly. "Some of them more moral than others. A percentage is taken from locations with high suicide rates. We move in before the bodies are found, take them, and harvest what we can. In honesty, though, that only accounts for a fraction of it all. We have members working with mortuaries and other such establishments around Tokyo. When preparing the bodies for burial, our workers retrieve whatever internal organs they can without it being noticeable from the outside and bring them back here." The old man let out a long, tired sigh. "The problem is staying hidden, really. The need to hide means that we can only take a certain amount from every cadaver, and so, can feed fewer people. I think that's a tragedy, myself."

"So you don't kill for meat?" Hide asked. "Not at all?" Yoshimura's smile dropped slightly, a momentary strain edging into his expression.

"No," he answered quietly. "We kill for meat. Sometimes, there isn't enough food scavenged to feed everyone we care for, which is when the workers of Anteiku go to hunt. We try to limit ourselves to the dregs of society, where we can. Rapists, murderers, that sort of thing. You'd be amazed what an enhanced sense of smell helps you find when you're searching for bad people to kill." He glanced sidelong at Hide before continuing. "Nevertheless, murder is murder, and we do kill people."

"... Well," Hide admitted after a few minutes of quiet. "That answer could have been worse. It could have been better, but it could have been much worse. So why the coffee shop?"

"Several reasons," came the reply. "Largely, it's because it makes us easier to find. All of the members of our staff are ghouls, and that is a rarity. Most of our clients find us by noting our scents all collected around the shop. Most of them get close enough to verify what we are, before taking their leave. It may not surprise you to know that to most ghouls, a large gathering of others is not usually a good situation to be in, ghouls tend to be territorial, after all, but they get close enough that we can smell them, track them down, and explain to them what we do. It's... advertising, I suppose." He stopped there for a moment, seemingly waiting to see if Hide had a response, before continuing. "But that's only a part of it, really. The cafe helps its clients learn to mimic normal human behaviors, providing a place to observe ordinary folk at their leisure: eating, talking, that sort of thing. Other than that," he smiled. "I just rather like coffee."

Hide thought on this for a long moment. It was a lot to take in, that was for sure. He stepped forwards towards the fridge, extended a hand to one of the shelves, an picked a small, paper wrapped slab up from its space. The meat was surprisingly weighty. He gazed down at it for several moments, the manager watching him impassively. Eventually, he sighed.

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"Look," he muttered. "Bottom line is, you help people, right? And at the end of the day, there'd be more dead on both sides if you guys weren't here. It's not... clean... but I'm not gonna pretend I know how to do it better, so I can't really blame you for that." Yoshimura nodded, allowing himself a small smile. Hide continued. "Comes down to it... no, I don't think you're evil. I... I don't really know what you guys are."

Yoshimura closed his eyes, leaned himself gently against the basement wall, and let out a long breath.

"Young man, you have no idea how much hearing that from you means to me."

"Why?" Hide asked, confused.

"To be honest, I like to think it means my wife would have approved. She was a good human, too."

The ramifications of the statement hit Hide in stages. Realization, followed by a slight pity, followed then by a much greater realization. Slowly, he placed the wrapped meat chunk back on the refrigerator shelf, then joined the old man against the wall, allowing himself to slide down onto his rear, his knees poking into his chest. He chuckled absently.

"Life sure is weird, huh?" He murmured.

Yoshimura laughed.

"Truer words were never said."

----------------------------------------

Kaneki:

"Wait, they gave you a job?" Ken asked, the phone clutched against his ear in his currently undamaged hand.

"Yeah," replied Hide's voice on the other end of the line. "The old guy said he liked what he saw in me."

"... Does he know about how many times you came in there just so you could hit on that Touka girl?"

"You can shut the hell up, Kaneki," came the chuckled reply, almost before he'd finished speaking. "So, how's your new boyfriend doing?"

"They're still operating," Ken replied, shooting a brief glance down into the hospital theater where Suzuya lay, drugged off to his happy place while a medical team saw to his wounds. "Turns out fighting ghouls sucks when you can't regenerate, which, apparently, I can do now. And don't call him my boyfriend, you dick. We haven't even been on one date yet."

"... so there's a yet, huh?" From the tone of his voice alone, Kaneki could tell that Hide was grinning on the other end of the line.

"I really hate you sometimes, you know that?"

"Hey, man, I'm just looking out for my bro," his friend responded, irritatingly chipper. "Your last date tried to eat you, remember?"

"Vividly." He responded, deadpan. "So, Touka got out okay?"

"... Couple scratches," Hide answered after a short pause. "They seem to think she'll be fine by tomorrow."

"Glad to hear it." Ken murmured. "So, only question left. Who the hell just tore my apartment to shreds?"

"Well, that's kind of the question of the hour," murmured a familiar voice from the doorway behind him. "By descriptions, it sounds like Jason."

Ken turned, catching sight of the investigator who had first interviewed him, Koutarou Amon. He stepped forward, a hand extended. Kaneki glanced down at the mangled remnants of his left hand, before awkwardly wedging his phone into the crook of his shoulder so as to shake with his good one.

"Jason?" He asked. "You mean the serial killer?"

"Yeah," Amon replied, matter-of-factly. "The serial killer, and a known member of a ghoul terror cell. It looks like we need to put you under a tighter security detail." He broke the handshake, pointing back towards the hall beyond the doorway. "To that aim," he said, with a touch of what Kaneki could have sworn was regret. "I would like to introduce you to my partner, Inspector Kureo Mado."

Standing in the hall was, by Kaneki's estimation, possibly the single ugliest man in the history of creation. Unkempt grey hair falling down around a face that seemed constantly stuck between a grin and a leer. He smiled, at least, Ken assumed it was a smile, as Amon pointed him out.

"Pleasure to make your acquaintance," Mado said cordially, stepping inside and extending a hand for Kaneki to shake. "You must be the remains of Ken Kaneki, correct?"