For When Your Heart is Broken

8: Idiot Me

    He had to do a lot of climbing stairs to finally reach ground level, where he could get a damn cellphone signal.
Thinking ahead of time, he had written the digits down on a separate piece of paper, which he now clicked into the dial pad hastily.

God I hope she's not a pain in the ass like Tsukiyama-san used to be. He prayed silently, hitting the call button before he could talk himself out of it.

The ringer sounded for nearly five rounds, and he was about to try again whenever someone picked up on the line.

"Hello?" It was a soft, casual female voice, though not dainty as he would have expected.
Then he realised: Oh yeah, it's the small photographer girl.
"Hori, right?"
"Who's asking?"
"Kaneki Ken."
"Oh, grief—"

Then, at the same time, they asked: "Do you know where Tsukiyama is?" with the exception of their honorifics.
Kaneki still uses "-san" while Hori uses "-kun".

"Ouch, alright then, plan B, when did you last see him?"
"Monday."
"Wow, I saw him later than that on Tuesday. He was looking really out of it— what did you do to him this time?"
It was Kaneki's turn to say ouch... Hori, Tsukiyama's best friend, was asking what he did to him this time.
As if he didn't already feel like hell.
"I... I didn't—" sighing, he quoted the goodbye letter, "It's what I haven't done."
"So he finally up and left, then?"
What's with that— finally?
"What do you mean finally?" He asked.
"I'm not sure if you're even conscious of how much you mean to him." She murmured, seeming tired, "He loves you, you know... he was bound to stop chasing and attempt to take flight from his feelings eventually, even a kid could see that."
"Wait, say that again?"
"He was bound to run away from his feelings?"
"No, no, flight, Hori-san, he probably took to the air to leave as far away as quickly as possible."

        A pause after a thoughtful hum.

"Yeah. He could've gone around the world and back by now, though." Hori leaned back in her bed, where she had been filtering through pictures to keep, rejects to throw out, "And with his level in fluency of European lifestyle and language—"
"Ah! Right!" Ken exclaimed, "It's obvious that's where he'd go!"
"Well, I don't think you understand: Europe is a very large continent. He can speak several variants of Italian, French, German, Japanese, and English. He could be anywhere from the outskirts of Japan, to the United States, to Bulgaria."
"Who-what-ee-uh?"
"Exactly."
"What can we do?"
"He won't answer my calls or text back..."
Oh this is serious... "So I'm just going to sit this out for a few before getting ahold of Mister Mirumo Tsukiyama."
"Who?"
"For the love of all that is well and good, you don't know the n—" Chie buried her face in her pillow, groaning.

I don't think this is a good sign. He thought.

"That's his father, dipstick." She said.
"Oh." That should have been obvious anyways, but... he was more focused on getting his Knight back.
"What do you even want him for? You have plenty of other subordinates that are more than happy to take over the positions he held in your society." Clicking at the mousepad of her glowing laptop, she chewed on a sucker.
"It's not... I want– no, I need him back." Kaneki sighed. "...I ...I can't do this without him."
"Should've realised that sooner, I guess."

There was a click, then the line went silent.
Kaneki nearly shook with fury.

Fuck, I hate that everyone's so goddamned right about this...

Something had to break, and soon, otherwise he'd be gone and both of them would be left unfulfilled for the remainder of their lives, which would always leave the question:

What if...?