Binge eating

      Sprawled on the unmade bed, Touka allowed her gaze to wander the ceiling of her room. Just now she, unbeknownst to Nishio, his girlfriend and Ken, had returned home from an abandoned church in which their common opponent, Shuu Tsukiyama, was left to the mercy of fate. Many, many things that had occured earlier that night now required long and thorough consideration: her current life priorities were on the verge of abolition, and the attitude towards those whom she thought she saw right through threatened to irrevocably change. And yet, for some strange reason, the girl's consciousness wouldn't stop bugging her with another thought, one completely distracted from these considerations.       Somewhere inside of her there was a very small piece of Ken Kaneki.       Touka did not notice the exact moment her own palm inadvertently dived under the fabric of a crumpled T-shirt and pressed tightly against the skin of her stomach. Although the vile Gourmet had already been defeated and Nishiki's beloved had been saved from his clutches, that ill-fated piece, which played a decisive role in the now concluded battle, was still aimlessly imprisoned somewhere in the empty labyrinth of her insides. She was no longer in need of its aid, but, taking into account the amount of time that had already passed, what could have really been done at that point, anyway?.. A tiny speck of her close friend, that insignificant chunk of still, for the most part, human meat, continued to warm her from the inside with its strength-filling, satiating heat and a pleasant feeling of fullness, no matter how deeply it seeped into the depths of her gut.       "I think I'm beginning to understand you, Tsukiyama..." not without a great shame, admitted elder Kirishima to herself. "And as a result, it seems, I less and less understand myself."       Left alone after a grueling, deadly combat, she could finally act as sentimental and effeminate as she had always secretly wanted to. Without taking her hand out from under the T-shirt, Touka closed her eyes, wishing this feeling would last forever. "...would be sad, if I died. Kaneki... inside of me, for real..." these were the words frozen on her lips, as she descended into Morpheus' arms.       When she opened her eyes again, the walls of her room had already been painted with the color of the effulgent sunrise. Touka realized that she had spent the rest of the night in half-asleep oblivion without even taking the ragged clothes off her body. Just as she started to undress, the girl suddenly remembered that she had also not been in the shower since she came home. And so, leaving a trail of discarded clothes on the floor, the seventeen-year-old trudged through her apartment towards the bathroom. When already in a step distance from it, she pulled the socks off her feet and stepped through the doorway, at last, completely naked.       Stepping over the edge of the tub with her bare foot, she suddenly felt a ticklish shiver in the vicinity of her coccyx — exactly where rabbits usually have a tail sticking out in the likeness of a fur pompom. Frozen in such an indecisive position, Touka turned back and mistrustfully gazed in the direction of the toilet, which had its lid lowered down on the seat. Looking closely, one could notice how thick was the layer of dust that covered not only its entire structure, but also the flush button, as well as the edges of the lowered lid, too.       "Another time, for sure," she decided, turning back and stepping over the bathtub edge with her other foot. A hitherto tangible echo of that yesterday warmth still hasn't left the hollows of her abdominal cavity. She wasn't keen on parting ways with it that easily.       About an hour later, the female ghoul, dressed in proper black and white uniform, which was embellished with a red girlish tie, was already on her way to a human school. She rarely succumbed to the means of public transport, but today's rather cheeky morning was one of those unfortunate times she would have to share an underground train car with a suffocating crowd of middle-aged men, the stuffy smell of which failed to cause her even a hint of appetite. A hastily drunk cup of morning espresso grumbled something right out of her belly, attracting the unwanted attention of other passengers. It must've disapproved of its company.       Any time Touka passed the door to the restroom on the second floor of "Anteiku" or walked along the corridor past the school bathroom, she continued her shirking, repeating the same thing to herself: "It's not like I won't be able to hold it in until I get home. I'm not exactly in a rush or anything, am I?" Upon returning home, however, she would spend the rest of her day behind the study table and simply take a shower, throwing the same mistrustful look in the direction of the toilet. "Not today," she always thought, "I'm too tired". This kept on day after day, for almost an entire week. At first, Touka refrained from having her usual coffee in the morning — not long after, in the evening, as well: its restless behavior interrupted her sound sleep like nothing else. All those thoughts and conclusions she arrived at earlier on the night of the Gourmet battle were gradually slipping away from her one after the other: Kaneki — a certain amount of him, at the very least — was displacing them. But over time, even the foreign warmth this fragment radiated inside of her hadn't much choice but to fade and dissolve: once a saturating hearth, soon it became noting more than an uncomfortable weight. The high school student had foresaw this happening sooner or later, and therefore one weekday evening she pulled all of her determination together and finally decided to act.       After taking her clothes off to the skin, she didn't rush to hop into the bath right away like she used to; instead, she came closer to the toilet, the instinctive call to use which she could no longer ignore. Benting forward, she gently took its dusty lid off the seat with her fingertips. The inside of its snow-white funnel hadn't changed much since the last time Touka saw it: that would be more than two weeks ago, back in early November, when she forced herself to eat a whole pot of Yoriko's home cooking. From that moment on, Touka didn't dare to take even one step in her toilet's proximity. Until today, that is...       She straightened up and turned around to face the mirror, which happened to be directly above the washbasin. It once again reminded her of her puny torso clearly being slimer than it should be, the black of her short, yet lush hair giving off a natural dark blue shine and the one eye that had always peaked out from under it having a slight hazel shade to its blue color. It did also remind her about a cute round mole, that which strongly resembled a droplet of indelible ink mother nature decided to sully one of her relatively modest breasts with. After landing her tightly complected, bunny-like butt on the very edge of the white rim, the girl habitually hugged her stomach with both hands and bent in half. Her rosy knees collided together, and the toes of her feet rose off the ice-cold floor. Touka's whole body was trembling fearfully in anticipation — and it had its own reasons to be doing so.       Regurgitating her daily intake of jam sandwich in the back of the school bathroom on time wasn't that much of a challenge for her, and if anything, the only place it could somehow trouble was her stomach. The first and last time she tried to force-feed herself with non-human-meat-and-potato stew, however, was unlikely forgotten by her damaged digestive tract even to this day — it was not a day her toilet could easily forget as well...       But in the end, it took restlessly worried Touka more than a moment to realize that the soft plop underneath her had already wafted by her ears.       The meagre surplus left her body with such effortless ease, so smoothly and unhindered its departure did conclude that an unwitting blush took over the entirety of her face. It made its way with little haste, yet still avoided stubborn pauses, it wasn't announcing its exit with tactless sounds nor did it slow down halfway to hesitantly pull itself back in: everything turned out to be as natural and impeccable as the process being described ever could be. This time it felt like her iliac muscles, previously familiar with many struggles, didn't even have the time to tense up, and the relief she experienced because of that a moment later was simply ineffable. She herself would not hesitate even to call it nostalgic.       Sitting herself deeper into the rim of the seat, the girl spread her thighs apart and glanced at the very bottom of the funnel underneath her. Through her head rushed the memories of those distant carefree days she and her brother would fall asleep with their bellies full every night of their lives. Back then, it wasn't nessecary for her to poison and weaken her body with human food in order to blend in, for her to go out of her way to simply be able to eat just like everyone else. Their father's guardianship deprived them of the need to worry, whether it would be about their irrepressible, yet vulnerable childhood metabolism or anything else at all. Those distant carefree days belonged to the time when nothing seemed easier to Touka than using the bathroom...       She couldn't believe there was a tear running down her cheek at the moment. If someone who she knew saw her like that right now, she would kill them on the spot without any hesitation. Well, with a single exception, probably... After all, this whole blissful riddle had one obvious answer.       "Kaneki," revealed Touka, looking back up. "The spot where I bit him... It must've healed by now."       Wiping her nose, she jumped off the toilet seat to her feet almost as briskly as a rabbit, her mood being that much elated. However, when finally pressing the flush button after such a long time, Touka felt something besides relief. Not the usual emptiness, which may had roamed inside her for weeks from one hunt to another before — this time, it might have been nothing less than an actual void. It seemed so that she had just deprived herself of something precious, something that would be in need of a worthy replacement. The space that had just been left vacant inside of her longed to be filled again and as soon as possible, too.       The girl wasn't sure how to feel about that, as of then. Once in the shower, moreover, she had already caught herself on another thought. An excessively cunning one.       Touka came out of the bathroom, and, wearing nothing else save for a baggy T-shirt and a fresh pair of underwear, immediately headed to the living room. Having picked up a folding cell phone from the sofa, she, out of concern for little Hinami who happened to be soundly sleeping in the room, went out onto the balcony, and dialed Yoriko's number.       "...Curry? Sounds just great! Yeah. See you at school tomorrow."       Having hanged up, she lowered the hand holding the mobile phone, and folded it in half.       "Curry..." she repeated. The late November wind kept blowing up the skirts of her loose clothing, revealing a view of her black lace panties to the indifferent street below. "I wonder, how does it actually taste?"       As always, the only guess she could make was how disgusting and inedible it would seem to her.       "Guess I'll have to ask Kaneki," Touka impatiently bit her lip and crossed her bare legs with one another, "if he hasn't yet forgotten himself."       The hungry rumbling of her stomach seemed to sing along with the howls of the wind.