She closed her eyes, bracing for the taste of a dirty rag that's been used to clean up shit and vomit.
Instead, a rush of rich, savory warmth spread across her tongue. It tasted like… meat. Perfectly cooked, deeply seasoned. The onions were soft and sweet, the sauce bright with just enough tang. Beneath it all was something else faint, almost impossible to pin down a gentle hum that settled in her stomach like a cup of hot tea on a bitter winter day.
Touka opened her eyes.
The table went quiet. Yoriko leaned in, fingers laced together, barely able to sit still.
"Well?" Yoriko whispered. "Is it… is it okay?"
Touka looked at Yoriko's hopeful, shining eyes. For years, Touka had forced down her best friend's cooking, smiling through the agony before rushing to a bathroom to purge it just so Yoriko wouldn't feel wrong.
Now, she didn't have to lie.
Touka's throat tightened, and it wasn't the food. Her vision went a little hazy. "It's…" She drew in a shaky breath, then managed a real, bright smile. "It's delicious, Yoriko. It really is."
Yoriko let out a long, relieved breath, throwing her hands up. "Yes! I thought you might like it! I changed it up a bit this time. I'm really glad you like it, Touka-chan."
"Eat up," Mitsuri cheered, already piling more onto Touka's plate with a bright, bubbly laugh. "We have so much!"
Touka looked down at her newly filled plate. A flicker of panic rose in her chest. There was no way she could finish all of it. The magic, or whatever the hell Manjiro had done, had only been on that one piece.
But as she stared across the table, Manjiro casually reached over with his chopsticks and tapped the side of her ceramic plate once, twice, three times.
A faint shimmer of gold passed over the plate, rippling across the ceramic and slipping into the food before it disappeared.
"Go on," he murmured, his tone lazy but reassuring.
Touka hesitated. After a moment, she reached for another piece and slowly picked it up.
She stared at him over the rim of her glass. He didn't fit anything she thought she understood. A multi-million yen penthouse, the kind of place only the absurdly powerful or obscenely wealthy ended up in and yet the Gourmet, one of the most dangerous, most unpredictable ghouls in the 20th Ward, had apparently just walked out of here without so much as a fight.
Thank you, Touka mouthed silently, angling her face just enough that Kimi and Yoriko wouldn't notice.
Manjiro didn't respond. He just gave a small, lazy smirk.
The conversation drifted easily from food to memories, memories to small confessions. Yoriko admitted how nervous she always got cooking for Touka, how badly she wanted to get it right every single time. Mitsuri chimed in with stories that swung between heartfelt and chaotic, punctuating everything with animated gestures and laughter.
Even Touka, slowly at first, started letting bits of herself surface, careful at the edges, then a little more freely as the night went on. The tight knot of anxiety she usually carried in her chest began to ease, loosening bit by bit.
And somehow, impossibly it felt normal.
Then Kimi leaned back in her chair with a soft, tired sigh.
"Oh, right," she said, like the thought had only just crossed her mind. "My boyfriend's been acting kind of weird lately."
The mood at the table shifted in an instant.
Mitsuri gasped, her eyes going wide. "Wait, you had a boyfriend! What's his name?"
Touka blinked, turning slightly toward her. "Since when?"
Kimi waved a hand, a faint blush creeping onto her cheeks. "A while now. His name's Nishiki. He's usually really sweet, but lately… I don't know. He's been kind of distant."
She frowned slightly, thinking back. "He finally met some underclassmen from his department yesterday, but when I saw him after, he looked awful."
Kimi frowned, staring into her teacup. "He had a bruise on his stomach, like he'd been kicked through a wall. And when I asked him about it, he just snapped at me."
Touka flinched, her gaze dropping to her plate. She knew exactly what Nishiki was. And if he was that banged up, then he'd either been hunting in someone else's territory… or picked a fight with the wrong person and lost.
The dinner eventually wrapped up, giving way to the girls' sleepover. A pile of blankets had taken over the leather sofa, turned into a makeshift nest. After the heavy meal and everything that followed, the girls had fallen asleep where they sat. Yoriko and Kimi were curled together at one end, Touka resting on a futon near the floor. Across the room, Shinobu and Mitsuri slept just as deeply, their breathing slow and even in the dark.
It was peaceful, quiet in a way that felt almost unreal. Normal, in the best sense of the word.
Then, somewhere in the penthouse, something hit the floor.
CRASH!
The reinforced skyline windows blew inward. A barrage of crimson, crystal-like spikes tore through the penthouse, ripping across the room. Curtains shredded. The glass coffee table burst apart, scattering across the floor.
Before the last shards had even landed, the front door slammed open, ripped clean off its hinges and hurled into the wall with a heavy crack.
A metal canister bounced across the splintered hardwood and rolled to a stop.
Hiss.
A thick, heavy white smoke burst from the canister, spilling fast across the floor. It carried a faintly sweet scent, highly concentrated CCG-grade sedative, heavily modified by Aogiri. Yoriko and Kimi breathed it in once, and that was enough. Their bodies went slack almost instantly, pulled under into a deep sleep.
Touka's eyes snapped open. She choked on the first breath, coughing hard as her body fought the drug, her mind struggling to catch up with the wreckage around her.
Shinobu and Mitsuri's eyes snapped open at the same instant.
Airborne toxin.
Their training as Hashira took over. [Total Concentration Breathing] Their breathing shifted, controlled, deliberate, cutting their intake down to the bare minimum, slowing everything just enough to keep the toxin from spreading.
Mitsuri moved first.
She launched off the mattress with terrifying speed, ignoring the glass raining down around her. She crossed the room, heading straight for the umbrella stand by the hall where they'd stashed their things.
"Shinobu-chan!" she called.
Mitsuri yanked two long, wrapped bundles from the stand and tossed one across the room. The purple-wrapped hilt spun through the air Shinobu caught it cleanly, tearing the sheath free as she landed on the armrest of the ruined sofa, already crouched over Yoriko.
Mitsuri drew her own weapon a long, pink blade that bent and flexed as it cleared the sheath, snapping through the air with a sharp snick.
The smoke began to thin, slowly spilling out into the cold night beyond the shattered windows.
Footsteps echoed across the splintered hardwood.
A figure in an immaculate white suit stepped into the apartment, pressing his thumb to his index finger.
Crack.
Behind him, a taller shape slipped in, draped in a dark robe, an eerie mask hiding everything as it moved without a sound.
From the shattered window, a third figure dropped lightly onto the glass-strewn floor.
The boy reached up, pulled off a black rabbit mask, and tossed it aside.