Ah, school life. The weekend had come and gone, and the morning fog lay in rolling waves upon the tarmac. Little elementary school kids marched through the mist in neat lines, their laughter ringing out like chimes, rousing the city from its slumber.
Their innocence—a blissful ignorance.
However, in contrast to the normalcy of such a morning, a category of people was already engaged in hyper activities. May it be training for the athletes, light yoga for the middle-aged women trying to retain their youth, farmers tending to their fields, scientists deciphering the puzzle of a unique cell—
There were those breaking countless limits, sculpting their flesh into efficient vessels...
*** *** ***
Clang!
Metal struck metal as blows were exchanged.
Within a spacious white room – that was spotless and bright, seemingly made out of high tech-reinforced material – two figures leaped back away from the other, rebounding from the impact.
A moment passed as the duo stood at a stalemate, sizing each other up as they took a breather.
On one side of the ring stood a lady drenched to the bone in hot steamy, sexy...
(AN: Pardon me, some things just gotta flow)
Draped in a a charcoal tanktop and tactical pants and boots, Reina was slightly slouched due to exhaustion. They had been at it for over three hours. Intense sparring with little to no time for rests in-between.
'Dammit! What happened to the era of gentlemen?! This bastard has been handing my ass to me from the first hour!' She stretched the top of her tanktop to allow cool air in. Reina was in need of a shower, she was all smeared in grime.
"You should know by now, that you wouldn't be getting any lady-treatment in this line of work," a gruff voice commented, garnering an unladylike bulge at Reina's forehead veins.
The man stood taller in comparison to Reina, despite being her sparring partner the whole time. His breath was slightly laboured, a testament to the strain of staying a step above Reina. The latter had monstrous potential, despite being a 26 year-old lady in the Investigator's line of work.
Souchi Takeru; a man of few words.
Many would've described him as such. He was the leader of a five-man squadron in the CCG. It was a –not so new– project, that teamed up more than two Investigators.
'All this due to the variable a few days ago.' Takeru thought to himself, his already knitted brows scrunching up further.
There hadn't been a prior pattern from the Lovecraft Art (as the general public had deemed to catalogue the incident) that matched the extensive ghoul data they had been amassing over the years in this here ward.
'Now that is the fucking Million Dollar Question!,' he mentally screamed.
"This is the 20th Ward, by some otherworldy force, the ghouls have always been reserved...tamed, if you will. That too calls for a case of study, either those zombie freaks are being spanked into line by a bigger Zombie, or, the ghouls received Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior..." Little did he know.
Takeru was so engroced in his chain of thought that he failed to register Reina's figure creeping towards him. When he did, it was too late. Reina pounced onto him, discarding her stealth once she was close enough, and clasped an arm around Takeru's neck, her momentum causing the taller man to bend forward.
Reina's feet touched ground with Takeru tucked into her grasp. He was trapped in a headlock, fatigue finally gaining up on him, rendering him unable to writhe out of the position.
"Don't go mumbling off in your own damn world, we're in a freakin' battlefield you stupid Squad Leader!" Reina squeezed her lean arms for emphasis and Takeru tried to tap out in defeat.
But no way in hell was she going to let up, she was on a mission – all the sweat and grime on her, would be passed on.
However, Takeru found himself in a slightly difficult situation at the moment. Not because of some high-stakes mission. Not because of a looming threat or an unsolvable puzzle. No — his current crisis was far more… pressing.
Literally.
A flush of vivid color painted his usually stoic face, seeping up from his neck like a traitorous tide. His sharp composure, the one that rarely cracked even under pressure, now faltered under the most unexpected enemy: Reina's chest.
His head was caught — snug, immovable — between the curve of her toned arms and the unrelenting softness of her breasts, framed by muscles that hinted at countless hours of training. She hadn't done it on purpose. Or maybe she had. With Reina, intent was always a little hard to read.
To anyone looking, it might've seemed harmless — maybe even comedic. But to Takeru, whose nerves were currently short-circuiting under the heat of proximity and the softness brushing against his jaw, it was anything but.
He didn't dare move. Not because he couldn't — but because he might.
His breath hitched slightly, eyes darting to the side as if searching for an escape route that didn't exist. Reina, meanwhile, seemed blissfully unaware – or deliberately so – continuing whatever she was doing as though she didn't just compromise his entire nervous system.
Her voice, when it came, was casual.
"You alright down there?"
Takeru grunted something that might've passed for affirmation. Or surrender. Either way, his dignity took minor damage.
'Ugh, I gotta get out of this situation before the rest of the team shows—'
"Well, well, well. Captain. Look at you, getting all smooth this early in the morning," a breathy voice announced the entrance of a lady –dressed in the same attire as Reina – who was slightly taller with brown mischievous eyes.
'Oh, Fuck Me!' Takeru mentally prepared himself for the upcoming endeavour as more footsteps shuffled into the training grounds.
*** *** ***
In a cramped-up apartment complex, amongst the many mediocre units that echoed the groans of adults as they prepared to leave for their slave companies, a much quieter one sat cloaked in stillness. No alarm blared. No lights flickered on. No kettle boiled in the kitchenette.
Only the subtle, rhythmic thump of flesh meeting wooden floorboards. Again. And again. And again.
Inside, lit by the faint orange glow of a streetlamp through closed blinds, a figure moved like a shadow in ritual. Pushup after pushup. No music. No timer. Just breath, movement, and the hollow groan of aged wood beneath him.
He was topless, his torso wrapped in a sheen of glistening sweat as drip-by-drip, it accumulated in a pool beneath him.
'13,799—13,800—13,805—13,80...'
Undisturbed, the numbers kept rising within his mind. Steadily without any distractions. Hours had melted into the night whilst he kept pushing his body to get a grasp of the vessel's current limitations.
Just as easily as he counted his reps, a section of his mind had been tasked with studying his body. The Physiology of a ghoul!
His arms were churning, but he kept on. The motion wasn't smooth — it was efficient. Calculated. Mere fatigue wasn't pressing on him as it would a typical human. His cells refused to tire. They regenerated.
Each repetition wrung a bit more strength from his marrow, and yet — more was always there. A relentless surge of energy, coaxed from the meal he had harvested in the alley just a few nights before. The remains of a delinquent who thought himself a predator, now repurposed as data.
It wasn't about the taste.
Kaneki wasn't indulging. He was testing.
"How drastic," he whispered between breaths, "would my body react in a state of starvation?"
He'd already read everything the scientific community had published on ghouls — from dissected specimens to thermal body scans, to the desperate theories of biologists who still clung to human logic while peering into inhuman design. But Kaneki didn't theorize. He verified.
The alley meal? A low-tier ghoul with an underdeveloped kakuhou and poor nutrition — Kaneki had sensed it before the first bite. Yet it sufficed.
His body hadn't just absorbed the nutrients — it rewrote them. Optimized the strain. Converted junk data into viable stamina. Ghouls were designed to consume flesh for sustenance. But he was designed to improve upon it.
Every cycle of cell regeneration worked differently for him. Faster. Cleaner. Aggressive. Like each cell had a memory, and remembered its previous failure. Then corrected it.
Mutation as refinement.
The floor under him cracked again.
His apartment was beginning to show the effects — walls bearing fractures that branched out like veins, light bulbs flickering despite no surge. Paint dulled. The air was no longer stale, but charged, like it carried static in every breath.
A mild hunger flickered behind his ribs. Not gnawing — informative. His body's way of telling him how long he had before decline began. But Kaneki didn't fear starvation. He wanted to experience it.
To measure it. To understand what happened when a being like him pushed past the limits of a ghoul's restraint.
Would he enter a frenzy?
Would his cells cannibalize each other?
Or would he evolve?
No one could answer him.
So he would answer himself.
He had already made notes — mental and physical — on the shifts in his biology post-consumption. His endurance had tripled. His heart rate now adjusted based on intent, not exertion. His body seemed to decide which systems needed blood flow at any given moment, rerouting it like a machine fine-tuning performance.
Even his perception was changing.
Colors were deeper.
Time stretched when he focused.
And in silence, he could hear the street rats scurrying beneath the floorboards two units over.
He dropped to the floor, held himself there — a plank a hair's breadth from the cracked wood — and paused.
The hunger would come.
And when it did, he would greet it.
Not with desperation — but with curiosity.
Because he was not a ghoul trying to survive.
He was an anomaly preparing to ascend.