Chapter Text
Kaneki Ken is ten years old the first time he almost kills himself.
He’s read his father’s old medicine textbooks, the big ones with all the colorful diagrams of people peeled apart. He couldn’t figure out all the charts and lines and things, but he knew enough to understand what happened to his mother, just like he knew that the bruises on his wrist were his fault and that his mother was a good person.
Karoshi, death by overwork. A simple, dutiful death. A death that made Auntie angry because no one could help her pay her bills, a death that left him miles away from Hide’s house. A death that made Auntie hate him, because he was the parasite that killed his mother, her sister, and now he was killing her too.
And so he was in the bathroom, preparing.
Medicine cured parasites. Kaneki thought, powdery pills cupped in his chubby hands. He’d filled his toothbrush mug with water, just in case he couldn’t swallow them all at once, and even checked the bottle label to make sure it said “aspirin” instead of something useless, like fish oil.
He could do this. He didn’t know a lot, but he knew this kind of medicine killed pain. The ache in his chest whenever Auntie wouldn’t even look at him wasn’t exactly pain, but it felt bad. If he took the medicine, maybe the bad would go away. Medicine was supposed to do that, right? Make bad things go away?
Auntie sometimes said he was a bad thing. If he took the medicine, would he go away?
Did he want to go away?
Did it matter what he wanted?
He didn’t know. He didn’t know.
The pills go chalky in his palms.
His father was a doctor. Or--he wanted to be one. His mother told him that; she’d said he was always studying, studying, studying, office full of notes on bones and brains and all sorts of parts that made up the body, before things like money and grades and Ken, isn’t that a good name, made studying business a necessity instead of a carefree joke.
Your father always wanted to help people, his mother would say, on days when he’d been good and she’d had enough energy to love him. He couldn’t stand to see anyone suffering, you know? Always trying to do the right thing. That's why we had you.
Ten. He counts ten pills in his hands. Harder to count, now that they’re bleeding together in the summer heat, but Kaneki’s always been good with numbers.
Is ten enough? What about eleven, twelve, twenty? How many is enough to make this right? Is this what his parents would call right?
He doesn’t know. How could he? At this moment, Kaneki Ken doesn’t know anything. He can’t dare to claim otherwise, when only two months ago he thought all mothers stuck by their sons and all friendships last forever.
He’s an idiot, not a doctor. Can an idiot be trusted with medicine like this? What if he messes up? What if he’s not enough?
He doesn’t know. He doesn’t--he--
He can’t keep going like this. He doesn’t know how to stop. He can’t be sure this will work. He doesn’t know what else to do. He needs more information. He doesn’t have anyone else able, willing, wanting, to listen. He can turn the words over, the phrases over, rewrite the line as much as he can but it still doesn’t change how a yen coin only has two sides and he’s never bought anything in his life--
Eight pills now. Two dropped to the floor. A waste. Such a waste.
(Pick them up, or let them stay. Get back to it, or--or--)
And so Kaneki Ken stays, aspirin dissolving into his smooth, chubby hands and legs dangling from the closed toilet seat, and has the quietest panic attack of his life.
[...]
Eventually, Kaneki doesn’t take the medicine.
He doesn't know why, yet. He won't know for a long while yet, and he'll forget again and again before he truly understands. But he doesn't. Somehow, despite everything, he doesn't.
Instead, he washes his hands, puts the bottle away, and waits at the door for Auntie and Asaoka-kun to come home from grocery shopping.
He takes some of Auntie’s bags before she can yell at him. Puts them away while Asaoka-kun goes to his room to play games. Thinks. Runs over what he knows as he does.
And when it’s all finally done, Kaneki finds the closet that no one goes into, pries out his father’s medical textbook--one of the few things they could save after Kaa-san’s funeral--and reads.
I swear by Apollo the physician, and Asclepius, and Hygieia and Panacea and all the gods and goddesses as my witnesses, that, according to my ability and judgement, I will keep this Oath and this contract: I will use those medicines which will benefit my patients, and I will do no harm to them...
If he became a doctor, he could pay Auntie back for all the food he eats, or get Hide really good birthday presents, or even help lots of other people make bad feelings go away. If he became a doctor, he could take away other people’s pain. Mother always said it was better to be hurt than to hurt others, but doctors were different, weren’t they? They could take pain without feeling it. Without hurting anyone, including themselves.
Maybe, if he tried really, really hard, he’d finally make it up to the world for having to deal with him.
Kaneki grips the textbook harder, palms still a little sticky from the powder-mixed sweat he couldn’t wash away. He reads, and learns, and does not kill himself in his aunt’s bathroom because in the end going away didn’t fix anything, it just makes the ache stop, and he can fix this. He has to fix this. Mom taught him you’re supposed to clean up after yourself whenever you make a mess, so that’s what he’s gonna do.
He curls up in the closet and finds a reason to live.
So it goes for the next eight years.