Once upon a time, a lonely black-haired boy met a hungry green-haired girl. The little boy was quite surprised when he found that the little girl couldn't read, and the little girl was equally astonished when she found out that the little boy couldn't fight. Time passes, and ten years down the line, the now not so little children find that there is still so much wrong with the world, and it begs to wonder if there is such a thing as a 'happily ever after'?

A small boy was alone, with his book, in a park that he found on the outskirts of the 20th Ward. It hadn't been used in a while, if the rust on the swings were any indication. But that was okay. If the park hadn't been used, then it meant that people didn't come here often and the black-haired boy liked it when he wasn't around people all the time. No people meant no talking, which meant more time for reading, and the little black-haired boy liked to read, because it meant that he didn't have to think about real life, or his life, at all, which was a nice break.

Another reason why he liked that no people where here was due to the fact that it meant less questions asked about himself and why he wasn't at home, because it wasn't due to the fact that he was avoiding his mother, and how he knew how to read such complicated kanji at his young age. But being alone meant feeling lonely, and feeling lonely was a horrible feeling to feel when you knew that there wasn't anyone to fill that hole that loneliness made, something that kept growing and growing and growing until you wanted to cry about it to someone but you can't because you're lonely and to want someone meant that you were being selfish for you want to spend their free time with you when they could be doing something way more important than listening to you crying, and being selfish meant that mother-

Best get back to reading.

The small child tried his best to keep reading, at least, because it was the time when the sun wasn't fully down but the street lights weren't up which meant that it was very hard to see the characters on this page which meant that he would have to go home soon, but mother was there and he didn't really want to see mother at that moment in-

What was that? The youth turned his head towards the source of the noise, in this case, a broken twig. Behind him, hiding behind the metal sheet of the slide was a little green-haired girl, who looked only slightly older then himself. Now, he had seen many different types of hair colour on many different types of people, due to the fact that he was born and raised in Tokyo, but never before had he seen green hair on a girl who couldn't be more than two years older than him, making this a first.

"BAKA!'' The black-haired child's eyes widen at the remark made by the ever so slightly older female, but what surprised him the most was that one of her eyes were completely black except for the iris, which was a deep red. Now the boy was far from stupid, for he had read somewhere that only ghouls had that sort of eyes, but it was strange that the girl in front of him only had one, for he had read that ghouls were supposed to have two.

"You were supposed to stay there so I could kill you so I could eat you!" The young boy frowned. He didn't like the idea of being eaten, the main reason for that was due to the fact that being eaten was a normal and boring death, there wasn't anything cool or original about being eaten by a ghoul, for it was a common death these days. Being eaten would also mean that he would be leaving his best friend by himself, and his friend always said that rabbits died of loneliness.

This confused the black-haired child, for he was pretty sure that his friend was defiantly not a rabbit, but he just went with it. Leaving his friend meant that his friend would die too, of sadness because he wasn't really a rabbit. He wasn't sure what his mother would feel, because dying by a ghoul meant that he wasn't being selfish by living when he could help someone else live when he died.

However, the boy thought you could be selfish when it came to die, even if it was just a little. If it was too much, then his mother would notice, and she would happily sort it out for him.

"I don't want to be eaten, for that's a very boring way to die. Why don't you find someone else who wouldn't mind dying?" He replied to the small green-haired girl, returning to his book. A nearby street lamp had turned on, and the sun was almost down, making it easier to see what the author wrote.

Unknown to the younger child, for he had now turned his back to the slide, the small female ghoul frowned. She had never been to 20th ward, for she usually stayed in the underground 24th ward that most humans, don't know about. When someone is about to be eaten, they screamed and cried and fought and tried to get away. But this human was different. He didn't scream or cry or fight or try to run. He just sat there, said he didn't want to be eaten and carried on looking at the object in front of him. Were all humans in this area like this? She didn't think so, but now she couldn't be too sure. This was the first time being above ground on her own, hunting on her own, and it was also the first time her prey had even said something that wasn't screaming or cried with tears that were filled of pain, fear and regret. What did the boy mean when he said that being eaten was a boring was to die?

"What?"

The girl blinked, taken out of her thoughts. Did she say something? The boy had turned around again, the object on his lap disregarded by him, looking straight at her. It was weird, she decided, for in her whole life, she didn't think anyone had looked her in the eyes when they saw that one of them was different. He was a strange human, she decided, just as she was a strange ghoul.

"Well, you said that being eaten was a very boring way to die. What do you mean by that?" The female asked, a puzzled expression etched onto her face. The boy didn't know what to say to that. It sounds weird now that someone else had pointed that out. But he might as well explain it, for it might, but very unlikely, stop the ghoul from eating him. He turned the swing around, forgetting about the book on his lap, letting it slide to the ground.

"Well, lots of people get eaten by ghouls and if you were to eat me then I would just be another victim, joining the thousands upon thousands that have already been eaten by ghouls. However, if I died, for example, saving someone from a burning building, I would be dying in an interesting way because not many people die like that so some people would remember me." The boy explained. The girl blinked at him, her eyes were now both the same colour. The boy thought that maybe that was a good thing, but it truly showed how many ghouls there where in the everyday life that humans lived. It sounds like a good horror book that someone should write.

"You're weird." The girl muttered under her breath. Her eyes glanced over at the object that was once on the boys lap, but now it was on the ground. It was a plain black cover, with some strange white symbols on the front as if someone had drew onto it. Being the curious ghoul that she was, she decided to ask about it. "What's that?" she questioned, pointing to it and slowly coming out from behind the slide. The boy looked at the fallen book, and picked it up, dusting off the dirt from the cover. He looked towards the green-haired girl, confused.

"You've never seen a book before?" he replied as he watch the girl slowly come towards him, stopping about a metre in front of him. She shook her head, and looked closer at the book. In the inside where lots of the strange drawings again, but instead of white on black, it was black on white.

"Well," the little boy explained, "a book is filled with written words that tell a story. Sometimes the story is true and sometimes the story isn't." The young girl's eyes widened at the concept, then frowned.

"You have to read?" she asked. The boy nodded, then called her over to have a closer look at the story. The girl quickly went to his side and looked over his shoulder to see where he was pointing, his finger just underneath the drawing '不幸'.

"You see, when these two kanji, that's the name of these characters, are put together, it could mean a whole variety of things. It ranges from unhappiness and sadness to misfortune, death and grief to accident and depression, so it really depends on the context that the kanji is used in. However, when the kanji is separate, the first kanji means 'not' and the second means fortune or luck." There was a moment of silence when the female ghoul took in when the human had just said. Then she broke the silence.

"Teach me." The boy looked up at the girl in confusion, so the green-haired ghoul elaborated. "I want you to teach me how to read. In return I promise not to eat you, ever, and maybe I can teach you something too," she paused for a moment, "but I will eat you if you report me to the CCG." The black-haired male looked thoughtful for a moment, then agreed with her deal. It would be an excuse for not being at home, but he was really being selfish by not wanting to be lonely anymore, wasn't he? In contrast, if he said that he was coming here to teach her how to read, it wasn't really being selfish, was it?

"We can meet here every Saturday if you want?" he asked, and the girl quickly agreed. The boy looked around, noticing the sun had fully set and it was time to go home, for there wasn't any need to worry his mother any more than she already did.

"I've got to go home now," he said, looking at the girl before realising something. "Hang on, before I go, what's your name? Mine's Kaneki, Kaneki Ken."

"You can call me Eto."