“What is this?” Kaneki looks at the dusty shoebox in Hirako’s hands. It’s 3 am, and Hirako has suddenly shown up in his room to greet him with “there’s no emergency, so don’t get up.” 

“Something he always wanted to show you.” Hirako still can’t bring himself to say his name. “It concerns your father.”

Kaneki stills. “Who?”

Hirako hands it to him without another word.

Kaneki’s palms ooze sweat as he slides off the lid.  

The first object is a photo. A young Arima, smiling and easy to recognize, with someone who looks just like Kaneki, except for his blue hair.

Blue, the same color as Arima’s. 

Their arms wrap around each other. They smile with an ease Kaneki’s never witnessed in Arima. And now he never will.

“His name was really Arima, too. He was another garden kid,” Hirako said. 

“That can’t be.” Kaneki stills. “Furuta said I was no one.”

“You were to Furuta. Not to Rize. She smelled the Washuu on you. And, Kaneki, did you really never wonder how you managed to survive a procedure so may failed?” Hirako holds up a paper. 

A birth certificate. Arima Haise. “This was your father’s true name.”

Kaneki blinks back tears. “No.”

And yet he digs into the box. Some are photos. Some notes, back and forth between the father he never knew and this father figure who was apparently so much more. All meticulously dated. 

And, finally, Kaneki finds the date he’s looking for. 

Mom had died. It was from the state. 

Asking Arima to adopt him.

In Arima’s chicken scratch handwriting, there’s three words printed. I’m sorry, Ken.

Kaneki looks at Hirako. Tears run down his cheeks. “Why?”

“To protect you.” Hirako shrugged. “That backfired.”

“I don’t believe that,” Kaneki bursts out. Ire flashes in his belly. Arima could have – could have prevented all of this!

Hirako swallows. “If I had to guess, he was too ashamed of what he was – too ashamed that he had never seized the freedom your father had – too afraid of failing to agree.”

Kaneki chokes back a sob. “He could have saved me. He could have – we could have spent so much longer together. I could have learned so much more.”

“Truth hurts,” Hirako agrees, placing a hand on Kaneki’s shoulder. He lets the kid sob. 

Somewhere, he imagines Arima is sobbing, too.