“Sis! Stay with me! Sis!” The cry was uncharacteristically shrill for the male voice that uttered it. In a dingy back alley, a young man knelt in the puddles of rain. In his arms he cradles an older, female figure. Both bear orange-red hair, a symbol of their shared blood. “Nishiki…” The older girl says his name, though it is barely audible over the patter of rain and the voices of men shouting. They don’t have time to sit here, there isn’t any time left. It has completely run out. The young man, named Nishiki, keeps his arms firmly under his older sister. “Damn it Sis! Don’t you dare die!” He’s crying now, he knows it’s too late, but his love for his sister keeps him there, tethering him to her as she whispers a last word. Though he is sobbing now, he can still hear her last word to him as he bends forward slightly to listen to her voice one last time. “Live…” Her head falls back, her eyes close, and she slumps in his arms as the last of her life force drains from her body. All he can do is let out an agonized wail as he realizes, the battle has been lost. He’s failed to keep safe the one person that he actually cared about. Now, he is truly alone.

A few days later, the young man is back on his feet, driven by revenge. Under a bridge, a confrontation takes place, away from prying eyes, away from help. “So, you’re the one who turned her in…” In his hand, there’s a cell phone. The screen shows a number, dialed exactly three days ago, an hour before his life fell into chaos. “Please...spare my life…” The man on the opposite side of the tunnel is shaking, Nishiki can smell the fear on him. Nishiki chuckles softly, a sound void of emotion. The man doesn’t bother to run, there’s no escape. It appears he knows it too. “You reap what you sow; both you and my sister.” Moments later, the unfortunate man’s life is terminated, a sharp kick to his head cutting his life short. In the darkness of twilight, red and black eyes glint from the shadows of the tunnel. “I will never trust anyone. Ever.”

The next day, Nishiki’s back in his classes. He’s working hard, throwing himself into his pharmaceutical studies with a new drive; forgetting everything he’s known since his mother and father died, since his sister began taking care of him. He stops and gets up, walking to the vending machine. His throat is parched, he needs some coffee. A girl is there, standing before him and he lines up behind her, waiting. She purchases her drink and goes to leave. A voice cuts through the silence “Hey, did you forget your change?” The girl turns towards the speaker, seeing a college aged boy with flaming hair smiling at her, holding in his outstretched hand her money. “Yes. Thank you.” She speaks very quietly, her head low, her shoulders slumped seemingly in defeat. A closer look at her face reveals features pinched with pain. Big brown eyes, small but proportionate ears and nose, with long arching eyebrows that are slightly furrowed. Nishiki offers a gentle smile, not knowing how welcome and yet hated it is. The next few hours consist of Nishiki thinking about the girl, she’s just a table away from him, and eventually going to sit with her. In his mind, he scrutinizes his one thought, searching for signs of weakness. “She’s a pale looking girl, but then again, she may be useful for something.”

That night, at the girl’s apartment, two figures lay in her bed. “So, your name’s Kimi then? Meaning noble future, right? Who gave you that name, your Mom or your Pop?” The silence is deafening as Kimi begins to cry, her form curling into a small ball as it begins to shake. “Hey.” Nishiki reaches for her, all the while thinking. “What? I don’t understand.”

Weeks pass by, each day melds into another and Nishiki’s heart begins to heal. He once again hunts, studies, and does things he never dreamed that he would ever do again. Life isn’t perfect though, and trouble looms on the horizon in the form of a strong one-eyed who has gained allies at Anteiku, the ghoul-run cafe. After Rize had stolen his territory, the fence sitters at Anteiku decided to redistribute his hunting grounds to another ghoul. That one-eyed ghoul he had met that day, Kaneki Ken, caught his attention and piqued his interest. A ghoul with one kakugan? More puzzling still, Kaneki was clearly male, yet smelled like a female ghoul. Having yet to piece together that mystery, Nishiki was still studying hard, but with a change; he was dating Kimi. He would never dare tell her he was a ghoul, would never dare to love her. He vowed to never love again, never trust anyone, not even her. “But” he thought “What’s the harm in keeping her around?”

The answer to this seemingly harmless rhetorical question came in the form of a situation that he had never even thought of. A fight with Kaneki, provoking him, questioning his values and why he “made friends” with such a shrewd human with so much awareness for the world around him. Kaneki snapped and his kagune, strangely similar to Rize’s, was revealed. He lost. Ken’s kagune had ripped through his body like it was “tofu” as Nishiki had commented earlier. Near death and being driven nearly insane with a hunger that he could no longer control, he didn’t even have the strength to call out to her. It just happened that Kimi had been very worried over all her boyfriend’s missed calls, and she had headed over to check on him. She was met with a grisly scene. “Kaneki you punk ! This wound just won’t heal!” Nishiki was bent over a basin, vomiting blood, a gaping wound through his stomach. “Nishiki!” Her bags of groceries forgotten and falling to the floor, Kimi rushed forward, bending over her boyfriend. She barely had time to comprehend the words he had uttered. “Flesh...I need flesh…” Moments later, Kimi found herself knocked to the ground, Nishiki pinning her down, a ravenous look in his...black and red eyes?! “Nishiki! Y-you’re a g-ghoul?!” He paid her comment no mind, the pain and hunger clouding his eyes. “Boy, am I glad I called out to you!” Kimi barely recognized the cackling, mocking voice that her usually gentle boyfriend was using. “Let me feast on your flesh!” A look of pain crossed his features as he bent forward, preparing for the first bite. He vomited on her, and she was shocked to find that it was pure blood, his own. He pulled back, releasing her from his grip, and she sat up. “Damn it, I have no strength left. I’m weaker than a human…” Kimi stared at him in shocked silence which he finally broke. A twisted grin contorted his face. “Heh, now my end will be the same as Sis’s. What a rotten life it’s been.” Nishiki expected anything at this point, for her to call the police, for her to try to come at him, run away even. What he didn’t expect was for her to softly call his name. “Nishiki…” Looking up, he saw that her shirt was slipped over her shoulder, revealing her creamy pale skin. In a flash he was on her, ripping into the much needed meal. Kimi made a pained noise, starting to shiver, but her courage kept her steady. “Nishiki...The day I met you, I had lost my parents and brother just two years younger than me in an accident. I was thinking that I would rather be dead than continue living without them. But you being there for me saved me. So, it’s ok...live.” Nishiki stared at the wall, his teeth still in her shoulder, trying to comprehend what she had just said. Then, he smiled. Not a twisted smile, but a genuine smile, one that he hadn’t shown the world since his sister had died. A smile he thought had been lost forever. Kimi was shaking more now, he could feel her blood running down his body, warming him. She was crying, accepting her fate willingly for the man she knew she loved. In that moment, Nishiki knew that he loved her too. He was more sure of it than he had ever been of anything in his whole life. Drawing away from her shoulder, he smiled at her, caressing her cheek to calm her. “I don’t need anymore.” He continued “What are you, stupid?” Kimi managed a watery smile, knowing that the Nishiki she loved was back. He uttered one more sentence before passing out, slumping against her gently. “It’s hard for me to trust people, but I think it would be ok to be betrayed by you..."