#or slightly below rules but at least strong internal consistency

[ivanaskye]

Ok hot take but there’s a lot of like…. conflict and animosity between hard fantasy (“magic has rules”) and soft fantasy (“fuck rules!”) authors and readers but uh…..

For some reason, I several times have seen soft fantasy types be like, “this is the ONLY valid way to write fantasy, fantasy has been RUINED by hard fantasy ppl”

And I have not seen the opposite? Which doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist but like. What is going on here.

Am I just looking in the wrong places? Is that what masculine coded reddit is yelling about while feminine coded tumblr and to a lesser extent twitter is like ONLY SOFT FANTASY CAN EVER BE GOOD ??????

#the split between Masc Coded sff and Fem Coded sff is uh #a whole trip and wild ride #and I Don’t Like It TM!!!! #my tastes ftr run hard but not exclusively #also I consider some things ‘harder’ than most ppl do #like the rules can be REALLY WEIRD and still be rules #or slightly below rules but at least strong internal consistency #I think there’s a lot of internal consistency in tolkien for instance!!!

[uncheckedtomfoolery]

Writing in isolation

I’ve long held Strong Opinions about bashing words together into agreeable combinations, and some conversations I’ve had elsewhere in the past week or so have brought it closer to my thoughts, so here I am typing up a big rant. Hopefully, it’ll be of use to someone, or at least entertaining. Alternatively, it’ll annoy someone, in which case I recommend skipping as soon as I start bugging you. As usual, the rest is below the why-is-this-on-my-dashboard line I have on all my long posts.

So, here’s the thing. Throughout my time as a writer, and even before then, writing has been presented to me as a solitary pursuit. You lock yourself up with your keyboard or typewriter or whatever, and eventually a story comes out. Like anything you can do alone and indoors, it’s often dressed up as a hermit’s pursuit, and I’ve met a great many people who even glorify being a total recluse. 

The opinion seems to be that anything and everything is a distraction, that practice at writing is all that you need as an author, and that there’s a sort of purity to discarding everything else. I would imagine this probably also appeals to people who would really rather pursue exactly that sort of purity, because they don’t care for all those other things anyway.

The trouble is, writing is not actually a solitary activity.

Don’t get me wrong, distractions exist. Ever since I got a laptop, I’ve purposely avoided installing more on it than I absolutely have to (except work stuff, basically) so I can write on that and have nothing to sidetrack me. Conflating most non-writing activities with ‘but what if I spent five hours faffing about on the internet?’, however, seems a little dishonest. That’s not the same as calling people dishonest, mind you; we do so much of this stuff without thinking about it.

Before I continue, I would like to acknowledge that I fit cleanly into the sort of group I’m talking about. I like people, but I also like no people. I like it a lot and occasionally I will perform the social equivalent of a tortoise retreating into its shell, to be tempted into the wider world only with reverent offerings of lettuce. What I mean to say is: Dear hermits and recluses and other adamantly solitary writers, I am saying this as one of you.

The trouble with writing is that it’s not just about writing. It is only in small part about writing. It is - and I want to clarify that I refer to fiction for the purposes of this post - much more of a holistic activity than it tends to get credit for. Let me explain.

As a whole, I view writing as comprised of four parts, though if I thought about this for longer, I suspect I would come up with more. One part is linguistics, that is to say, your command over the language you are using. I don’t even mean how many big words you know. I mean your knowledge of its grammar, the breadth of your vocabulary, your deftness with any turns of phrase you create. It covers everything from knowing the right word (I mean right, not fancy; I like my purple prose, but leaving people running for a dictionary isn’t necessarily good!), to skill with wordplay (that’s what we call puns when they’re classy), to being able to twist the rules of conventional grammar to instead serve the narrative; Hemingway’s war on the common comma jumps to mind here. Language is brick and mortar, albeit more flexible. What can you build with it? What shapes can you get it to take for you?

The second is- let’s call it creative license. Your vision, your ability to bring new ideas forward, your general imagination. In many ways, it’s the raw material that the other parts cluster around. Don’t have something all-new popping into your head all the time? ...Well, first of all, that’s surprising, because every creative type that I know complains about having more ideas than they’ve got time or effort for. Secondly, that’s fine; you can weld together pieces of things you see around you, until the result is not even slightly recognisable as any of its component parts. Originality!

The third, I’ll refer to as media. This one’s a bit broad. It can cover knowing what’s been done, knowing narrative structure, a bag of narrative tricks you’ve picked up over the years because you’ve seen others do it. Writing as a craft is a big part of this, with a small portion relegated to linguistics. A big chunk of this is the lessons learned either from, say, writing classes and the like, or from your own experiences in trying to pen a story. Even then, it’s not just about how much you’ve written. Consuming media is actually quite important to the aspiring writer, whatever your medium. Read, watch, play, whatever; every creator has something unusual or some interesting scrap of an idea. Hoard it all, and deploy it as you need. Learn from them. Be inspired. Few things jog me into a creative mood as well as the products of someone else’s imagination. If your chosen medium is fanfiction, this is of course doubly true, but it really does apply to everyone.

The fourth and (I’d assume) least comfortable one is knowledge and experience. Everything you know about life, about people, about all sorts of fields of knowledge that might come up in your story, and the things in your life that have shaped you into who you are. 

That fourth point is really the crux of what I’m trying to say, here.

When you write, you create a world. Whether that’s a fantastical world, or the galaxy you set your space opera in, or a neighbourhood in 1890s Tokyo, or whatever else: For this purpose, it’s a world. A world must function, it must be believable to some degree. It must be compelling. It must breathe. A setting is functional when all the holes have been plugged and immediate questions can be answered, as a friend of mine has said before, while a setting is alive when it creates its own questions irrelevant to the plot, which can in turn be answered anyway.

When you write, you create characters. People. Whoever or whatever they are, they follow much the same criteria as crafting a world in the last paragraph. Don’t take “they’re not human” as an excuse, either! Everything still obeys some logic, there is some internal consistency, some set of rules that ought to be followed for everything to make sense in the mind of the reader.

More optionally, when you write anything, it’s nice to be right. When dealing with people, groups, places and history that really exist, you avoid being terribly insensitive; when dealing with specialist knowledge, you avoid upsetting the people who know these things and will point out all your errors (for now).

Here’s the thing, though. Where does all this come from? You learn about worlds from being in the world. You learn about people from people. I know, I know, it seems obvious. Still, being out there, observation over time, and keeping up with the state of the world will teach you a great deal. I don’t just mean ‘follow the news’, I mean observation of how things work and what the world is like, I mean realising you don’t know the first thing about some parts of the world, and setting out to learn more. That sort of thing.

People? Well, I’m afraid there’s nothing for it, you’ve got to talk to them. Interact with them. Live in the middle of nowhere, or can’t handle the old face to face much? Not to worry, I’m not much different. Through a screen will do just fine, but interact all the same. This is doubly important, because as it happens, your audience is people too! Funny how that works. The better you know people, the more you will know what works on them in a story, too.

As an aside, some writers work very well when they can employ someone else as a sounding board to bounce ideas off. Some don’t. Some do, like me, but enjoy secrecy and surprises too much to take advantage of that. That’s more something on the side, really.

Have you ever read a story, and been bothered by the author not doing their research? Have you found the way the setting of their story works wildly unbelievable? Have you ever boggled at a page, wondering if they have ever met or spoken to a real person (or even more commonly, a real person who isn’t exactly like them)? Because the answer is usually not, and it really, really shows, in all sorts of painful ways. This is what we’re trying to avoid!

I’m not saying you need to be a social butterfly and globetrotter with fistfuls of PhDs. I’m saying we need to acknowledge the gaps in our experience and work on enriching it, or learning what we’re missing. People are out there. The world is out there. If you don’t know much about a place or a thing, the internet is full of wonderful resources to tell you more, and there are actual communities of experts at your beck and call who will answer questions on the internet for, as far as I can tell, fun. We’re in a golden age of amateur armchair research, here.

Writing is not a solitary pursuit, and it does not stand alone, but many people believe it does, or that it should, and the consequences can be seen even in some fairly well-established authors. This is something all of us hermit writers can stand to work on, not just in service to our work, but because it’s just good practice in general.

Because without knowledge and experience, without knowing the first thing about the world around us or how people work, we only have the rest. We can even be very good at it. We can make a beautifully structured, wonderfully original and masterfully phrased story.

But many parts of it will still feel terribly, painfully fake, and I think we can do better than that.

If you read this far: Soapbox-y or not, this is not me coming down from my stratospheric high horse to tell the internet how things work. I welcome commentary if anyone has their own thoughts to share. Goodness knows I’ve been wrong more often than not.

#Writing #Long post #Rant warning

[momobage]

Band Yarouze Review: It’s a battle of the bands!... and I love a fish man

Band Yarouze (バンドやろうぜ！) is a Japanese card collecting rhythm game made by Aniplex and Sony Music. The goal of the game is to collect cards through gachas and events by playing various songs performed by the four main bands: BLAST, OSIRIS, Fairy4pril, and Cure2tron. Unlike the other games, the player’s character isn’t really in the story; you are more like a bystander or “god-like” being who just observes and sometimes speaks to the members. Therefore, all you do is play the songs and unlock cards, events, characters, and band stories. 

I started playing Band Yarouze around March 2016 because the same friend who recommended Ensemble Stars wanted me to suffer more… I’m not even kidding. Even though I like rhythm games, I wasn’t too interested in playing this one at the time. A few characters caught my eye, but not enough to invest into the game. However right now, it is my second favourite game and brings me just as much suffering as Ensemble Stars does. 

Main gameplay: 5/5 ♥♥♥♥♥

The gameplay for Band Yarouze is extremely simple: tap, hold, hold-slide, and swipe (left and right) notes when they slide down towards the bottom of the screen. The notes follow the beat of the song, so it’s easy once you understand the flow. Rhythm games are very popular in Japan, but each of the mechanics are slightly different. I think out of the ones I have tried, Band Yarouze is the most forgiving. For example, some other rhythm games need hold and release notes at a specific time or they won’t count. This makes it difficult to play songs  with a full combo, especially if you’re on expert mode with a max note speed. However, in Band Yarouze, if you press a hold note a little longer than indicated, it won’t penalize you unless you miss the next note.

Another interesting point of the game is the event function. Almost all Japanese games have some type of event aspect. In typical games like Ensemble Stars, during the event time you play through and complete lives to gain points and rank up to collect event cards. But in Band Yarouze, you complete the song to gain points and objects (like keys, buns or chips) to either collect points, rank, or exchange items for event cards.

For example, during an event called, “Stand by Me GIGS: Nice Dream, Journey Mood,” (photo above) you try to collect points and rank up to get special cards and items such as stones and gacha tickets. You can also win steamed buns after clearing the event song and use them to play the time-limited event songs. However, in the current event, “Advent of the Quattro Virtuoso GIGS: Dante of the Purgatory,” (photo below) you go through the story challenges and play special lives. If you clear the Live, you win chips and exchange them for limited Super Rare (SR) and Rare (R) level cards. I find collecting points and ranking events easier and more fun than just exchanging items, even though it is easier and less stressful. I like that Band Yarouze changes the rules and mechanics for events because it keeps the game interesting. Even if you play the same song repeatedly, it is still challenging to collect or complete the event. I kind of wish other games would also change their event rules from time to time.

(Left: unbroken card, Right: Broken card. P.S. This is a boy, all of Cure2tron are crossdressing boys)

Unfortunately, Band Yarouze is only available via the Japanese app store and Google play store. As I mentioned in the Ensemble Stars post, you can download a separate Android Game Platform or create a Japanese iTunes account to access these games. There aren’t too many tutorials for Band Yarouze but gyrotalon from Reddit made a basic English guide to the game. This helped me understand the navigational system and how to BREAK and level up cards. You can also check out Banyaro English Tumblr and Banyaro English Twitter for translated event announcements, basic character information, and replies to questions from other Band Yarouze players.  

As always, it is free to play and has in-game currency called “medals.” I didn’t use to care about the gacha in this game before since it is kind of expensive (it costs 500 medals for a ten card pull). However, one of my favourite characters got a pretty card and it all went downhill from there. So far, I’ve spent a bit more than $350 on Band Yarouze, which I’m not even surprised. Honestly, since the past few events have been featuring my favourite band or characters, I’m surprised the number isn’t much higher. I spent a lot a few weeks ago, trying to get a SR of Shin. He came home after four or five 10-character rolls… but at least he came home… unlike a certain someone [Cough Koga Cough].

Overall, Band Yarouze is really fun and addictive. Even if you aren’t good at playing music games, you can still have fun trying to beat your score. You also probably don’t need to buy medals unless you want a certain card, but the game gives you many rewards along the way. I’d recommend this game to any beginners who don’t have much experience playing rhythm games. The songs are well composed, the characters are quite unique, and the game is easy to play.

Characters: 4/5 ♥♥♥♥♡

When I started playing Band Yarouze, there weren’t any characters that immediately caught my eye. My friend pointed out some characters that were my type and sadly, I completely agreed and my obsession began. Each band includes one vocalist, guitarist, bassist, and drummer. They each also all play a different type of rock music adapted with modern Japanese elements: BLAST is classic/aggressive rock, OSIRIS is emotional/punk rock, Fairly4pril is alternative/indie rock, and Cure2tron is electronic/pop rock. I have members I like within each band but OSIRIS is by far my absolute favourite.

Their music and appearances are cool and edgy but their lyrics and sound are still so expressive. I love all their songs! My top three are “Darkness,” “Voice,” and “Heavenly Breeze.” Although there is only one vocalist, I love each member’s voice for its unique sound and way of speaking.

(My favourite Kyo cards. He is a beautiful angel with a beautiful voice who should never feel alone.)

Takara Kyo (Kobayashi Masanori) has a quiet but strong voice. His shy personality easily shows through his looks and attitude. But when he performs, it is breathtaking. Especially in “Heavenly Breeze,” Kobayashi’s vocal range and consistent control create a passionate and memorable performance. I’m sure I have cried listening to him sing; it was just so beautiful. Kyo struggles with his thoughts and problems internally but can relieve his stress through his singing. I can’t wait to hear more songs from him that are absolutely ethereal. 

(My favourite Ray cards. He is a silly and stubborn dork who should always dream big.)

Ray Cephart (Hanae Natsuki) has a confident and silvery voice. His voice reflects his energetic and playful side, as well as his serious and bossy side. Ray’s overall tone is quite high but leaves a ringing that isn’t necessarily bad. Although, within OSIRIS, I like his voice the least I still find him very charming and sweet. He may act like an idiot sometimes but it’s because he is a big dreamer who wants OSIRIS to become the best band in the world.

(My favourite Makoto cards. He is a strict realist who should continue to follow what he believes is right.)

Kurusu Makoto (Uchida Yuuma) uses a lower and quiet stern voice compared to Kyo and Ray. As an active medical student, his personality is always serious and blunt which easily reflects in his voice. He has this mix of sexual attractiveness and mysteriousness in the way his sentences flow. It’s hard to describe but I’d want to hear his voice if was a tutor explaining math I don’t understand. Even though he can be cold and harsh, he still dedicates himself to practice bass and help the other members of OSIRIS realistically achieve their goals.

(My favourite Shin cards. He is a mature, fish-loving old man who should always smile and help others.)

Finally, Koganei Shin (Umehara Yuuchirou) has a low and husky voice. I’m simply in love with everything about him. His voice is so calming and reassuring, it makes me smile easily. I really wish he had a singing part since he voices Hasumi Keito from Ensemble Stars and other popular idol characters from different games. He has a beautiful singing voice! Let my drummer boy sing! [Internally weeping]. 

As the leader of OSIRIS, Shin’s reliable personality easily reflects in his voice but so does his silliness and extreme love for fish, especially Hachibiki Sashimi (he works at his parent’s fish shop). Though I hope he always helps cheer people up, either with his music or simply his personality. I must say out of all my favourite characters from the mobile games I’ve reviewed so far, realistically, Shin is the closest to my idea type. He is handsome, cool, friendly, reliable, strong, smart, and responsible; what’s not to like? I know he’s only a 2D character and will never really exist, but if he did, I think I would just cry forever.

Story: 3/5 ♥♥♥♡♡

The main story in Band Yarouze is about the characters’ struggles and difficulties about debuting as a band. There are sometimes choices during a character’s story, but whatever you choose does not really change the outcome. There is no additional gain if you answer “correctly” except to see the characters’ different reactions. Event stories are usually really weird. Sometimes they have impossible storylines like the band members turn into eggs on Easter, or they get transported to the Underworld on Halloween. It could never happen, even in the game’s universe, but it kind of happens anyway and fans still love it. Sadly, there are very few English translations of the story. Even Banyaro English Tumblr doesn’t have full translations of every chapter, only the prologues and some event chapters. I think the game is either not popular enough to have full translations or the game doesn’t have a large international fandom: both are likely. I’ll wait for the day someone translates them all so I can enjoy my silly boys being silly.

Overall: 4/5 ♥♥♥♥♡

Band Yarouze is an amazingly fun, simple and addicting game for anyone to begin playing. The songs are catchy, the artwork is beautiful, the characters are unique, and the story is wild. I don’t completely regret spending money on this game. But I think would be little kinder to my wallet if OSIRIS and Shin were not involved. I would recommend this game to beginners who like great quality music and art. This would be your best option to learn how rhythm games work differently than puzzle, RPG, or other card collecting games. It can teach you to appreciate music and help you diversify in the types of games and music you may play or listen to. I think it will also make you feel like a music genius even if you’re musically challenged like me!

#band yarouze #banyaro #osiris #shin koganei #kyo takara #ray cephart #makoto kurusu #rhythm #mobage #momobage #review

[gastricpierrot]

Title: Flowers of Eden

Series: Tokyo Ghoul

Pairing: HideKane

Rating: T

Summary: They were children born of a mixed set of parents: one human, one ghoul. Raised and trained in the Sunlit Garden, they possessed strength that far surpassed that of normal people, as well as a lifespan that's significantly shorter. Vibrant flowers that bloomed quick and wilted even quicker, if you must.

And among them were a certain half-ghoul and his half-human best friend; one who wanted freedom, and one who wanted to spark a revolution.

[Based on the Sunlit Garden HCs i posted really long ago]

Warning: contains slightly heavy themes 

[Next Chapter]

Also available on AO3 

His earliest memory of them involves a certain incident with strawberry milk.

They were four then? Five? He doesn’t quite remember. He’s never been much good at judging time and it’s not like being cooped up within a walled and gated compound helps a lot. At any rate, it doesn’t matter. Back  to his narration.

Nagachika Hideyoshi is raised in an orphanage dubbed as the Sunlit Garden. No one’s really able to answer him why it’s called that for years. Had it been named on a whim? Maybe the director was feeling poetic? Or is it simply named based on the spot in the place which gets the most sun during the day and that’s the garden? Hide could spend hours and hours coming up with conspiracy theories for that itself, but not even his best friend is willing to humour him on that for that long, so he grudgingly doesn’t.

Speaking of best friend, Hide should introduce his. His best friend is a guy by the name of Kaneki Ken; a shy, quiet kid who sometimes offers the sweetest, most earnest smiles he’s ever seen. They’re the same age, as are the rest of the kids in their dormitory. Hide has always found it strange; how systematic the difference in ages between the orphans of each dormitory are. Hide and Kaneki are ten now. The dorm above them houses kids exactly three years older, and the one above them are another three years older. The ones below them are younger by two years. Those in Hide’s age group are the second youngest thus far. Those older than eighteen had left and never came back, with a few exceptions.

Anyway, strawberry milk. Right.

Strawberry milk was a luxury in the Garden. Their everyday meals always only consisted of stuff that’s supposed to make them grow up strong and healthy, and even though Hide has to admit they don’t taste too bad, it got bland real fast with them rotating between five to six variations a week. Sometimes when their tutors and trainers were feeling generous, they would reward their achievements with snacks like chips or chocolate or—in a rare case once—cup noodles. Still, strawberry milk was arguably the most popular, and it’s not because it’s something that doesn’t begin with ‘c’. Just thinking about it makes Hide want to find out who’s idea it was to let them try strawberry milk so he could shake hands with them for making such a great life decision.

It all started one unannounced morning. They were all standing in line for breakfast according to dorms, their teeth cleaned and hair brushed and clothes straightened. There were around thirty of them in total, all displaying varying intensities of drowsiness depending on the amount of discipline and fear they had towards the person in charge of overseeing them for the morning. Hide had been smack in the middle of the queue then, so he hadn’t been able to process the turn of events right away when whispers suddenly erupted around him and orphans began jostling one another and pointing to the front. One shush was all it took to quiet them down, however, and Hide was forced to wait minutes after excruciating minutes in bursting curiosity before he’s finally at the front, a rectangular packet about the size of his hand thrust towards him in a silent prompt for him to take it.

And Hide had taken it. And he’d walked off to a corner, clutching it to his chest like he’s just been handed some kind of priceless treasure. “Strawberry milk,” he read off the label once he’s huddled against the wall, his cheeks flushed with a sort of excitement he can’t quite explain even until now. Perhaps new, unusual things tend to bring this sort of effect when you’re brought up the way he was.

Hide had just finished inspecting the cute pink print on the packet and attempted to read all the small numbers and words when he heard a cry. His attention snapped up, instantly focusing on a boy at the table not too far away from him who’d started to sob pitifully. There’s a patch of pink liquid on the spot on the table before him.

Now it’s the events that transpired after this that struck Hide as odd only much, much later. The child next to the boy who was apparently the culprit for spilling his milk spent around half a minute begging him to quiet down, their own face pale as paper. Then as Hide watched on, one of their caretakers stepped into the scene, and literally dragged the then also weeping child away and into the corridors where his voice died into an eerie, abrupt silence once the door closed.

Everyone acted as though nothing happened, as though one of their own hadn’t just been taken to some kind of disciplining that might make him return a different person. But well, it was almost everyone, anyways. There was the victim of the incident, trying his best to stifle his sniffles and dry his eyes before he too, was taken away. That’s the thing about the Garden: tears and mistakes weren’t exactly highly tolerated, and the rule only gets stricter and stricter as they grow older. Which was why Hide (and a majority of the other kids, really) had gradually learnt to stick to himself most of the time. You can’t exactly seriously mess up and be sad when you’re alone.

And then there was the boy Hide knew as Kaneki Ken just a bit later, his first and closest friend for years and years to come. Kaneki had never stood out to Hide until then; they went through the same classes, the same training regimens and the same processes of being pricked by needles once a week. He was just like them; a child born under special circumstances and nothing more.

Or at least that’s what Hide thought so at first.

Kaneki had been the only person to approach the crying boy once their caretakers had their back turned, whispering words Hide could not make out before pressing his unopened packet of milk into his hands and hurrying off. Perhaps it’s this act of unexpected boldness on Kaneki’s part that caught his attention. Perhaps it’s the fact that he was actually willing to give up something as great and rare and awesome as strawberry milk for the sake of cheering up another person that earned his respect. Hide still can’t really be sure. All he’s certain of is that the next thing he knew, he was getting on his feet to catch up to the other boy and offering to share his packet of milk with him in honour of his sacrifice.

They… just kinda stuck together after that, he supposes. They began sitting together during classes and meals and hung out with each other during whatever free time they had. Hide’s pretty sure he might even have tried persuading either his or Kaneki’s roommate for a switch so they could spend more time with each other if they weren’t monitored so tightly. Then again, they were given the privilege for an optional shuffle every new year, so Hide had his chance soon enough. It took them exactly four months to have their names form a pair. Nagachika and Kaneki. Wherever one was, the other would usually be there too.

Fast forward several years to the future where Hide is now. He exhales a slow breath as he does his stretches, his muscles burning slightly as he strains on them. Combat training is something the Garden kids are all thrown into the moment they reach six years old, the age Hide had discovered where other children outside their orphanage would usually begin attending ‘elementary school’. They were made to run daily even before that, whether on treadmills or around the orphanage compound within the walls. It didn’t take long for him to realize that that’d been the earliest form of physical training they’d partaken in, and it took even less time for him to begin secretly loathing the regimen set for them. He’s seen his peers do everything they can to maintain their composure until they’re out of sight before collapsing into an exhausted heap or even throwing up from the harshness of the activities they had to go through. Hide himself had had to skip meals too many times already because he’d pushed his body to the point where the littlest movement made his head spin and stomach churn and all he wanted was to lie down forever.

Hide takes his position at the centre of the gym section they’re occupying for the day once he’s done warming up, pushing his thoughts away to focus. They’re sparring today as part of their training, and Hide’s opponent is one of the older orphans. He silently assesses the guy as he waits for him to get ready; noting his dominant hand, the slight favour he puts to his left foot, his sturdy stature that probably grants him a firm sense of balance. He isn’t someone who’s going to be easily toppled, but hey, Hide did earn the title of being one of the best among his group by achieving near-impossible stuff. He’s got a reputation to keep.

With that motivational thought, Hide launches himself into battle; using a minute on being defensive to have a better idea of how the other boy moves so he can plan a proper comeback. Still, he could tell that the guy’s being wary as well and that he’s holding back from showing him anything more than the basics. Hide almost heaves an internal sigh. Experience sure is an unfair advantage.

He takes a sharp breath, and abruptly switches to offense. He uses his opponent’s second of hesitation to press him hard, always aiming for the few vulnerable spots he’s managed to pick out so far. The other boy blocks his attacks well, but Hide subtly notices how he’s often barely quick enough to match his speed. Hide’s breathing doesn’t even falter when he feints a strike towards his chest, his other hand going straight for his throat the moment he sees him moving to block and—

And then Hide’s falling face first towards the ground, hardly even registering the impact across his entire body—and particularly, face—past his stupefied incomprehension. Wait. What. What the heck happened? He tries to recall the flow of events that’d taken place as he slowly pushes himself off the ground, blinking the spots from his eyes. One second he was going for the finishing move, one second he was so certain that it’s his victory once again. And then…

His left leg seems to hurt more than the rest of his body and ah, it makes sense now. The guy tripped him. He saw his chance when Hide was too focused on winning that he’d let his guard down and tripped him to the ground. He used the very same move Hide had considered using on him.

“You okay?”

The older boy enters Hide’s field of vision when he looks up, his hand outstretched. Hide runs his own hand over his face, wincing involuntarily when he touches his nose and feels a jab of pain through his entire head. His fingers touch sticky wetness when they brush below his nostrils.

“I don’t think anything’s broken, so I guess?” Hide grimaces before accepting his help and getting on his feet. “I should probably do something about this, though,” he adds, gesturing to the blood now running down his face in a steady stream. The older boy only nods, making no further comments and turning to go on his way. Hide tilts his head upwards, and tries his best to navigate towards the infirmary. He really hopes that fall hadn’t broken his nose. It’d be a huge bother if it did, ugh.

“Hide, are you alright? You fell pretty hard back there.”

Hide stops in his tracks when he hears the voice, soon peering down upon a familiar head of tidy, black hair. You’d think he’d be more embarrassed about his absolute defeat, but he’s rather proud to say his record definitely had more losses than wins so far. And Kaneki has bore witness to at least ninety percent of those losses, so it’s not exactly something that impresses him anymore at this point.

“I think my pride took an even harder fall back there, to be honest,” Hide jokes, cringing slightly when he tastes blood in his mouth. “But I’ll be fine, Kaneki, don’t worry about it.” A short pause. “Wait, when’s your turn?”

“It’s already over,” is all Kaneki says. He circles his fingers loosely around Hide’s arm, and starts leading him towards his destination. With his head tilted, Hide can’t see his expression.

“How did it go..?” Hide asks, almost tentatively. Not that he doesn’t already know how it went.

“It was barely a competition,” Kaneki answers, his tone matter-of-fact and void of any frustration. He just sounds tired. So, so tired.

Hide’s tempted to risk a waterfall of blood down his face to look at him properly, but he’s saved from doing that when he realizes they’ve reached the infirmary. Kaneki insists for him to lie down while he gets him a wet cloth and some ice for his nose, and Hide doesn’t argue. His head has actually started spinning from his fall and weird position for the past two minutes and he’s worried he might actually get vertigo if he doesn’t lie down a bit. So much for a tough Garden kid, hah.

“Does it hurt again?”

It’s Hide who poses the question once they’ve both settled down, his voice quiet. He finally gets to see Kaneki properly, and  he reaches to loosely tangle his fingers with his. Kaneki’s eyes are averted, his free hand fiddling his chin slightly.

“It’s not so bad this time,” Kaneki says with a reassuring smile, and Hide would have believed him too if he hadn’t known him so well that he’s picked up his habits and quirks over the years.

Kaneki’s… different from the rest of them. “Special” is the word the guys in lab coats would always tell them. They’re officially registered as ‘orphans’, but they’re taught the moment they could understand the meaning of words about who and what they really are. Children who are not really human. Children who have a parent, either their father or mother, who can’t eat anything but human meat to survive.

They’re called “ghouls”, these cannibalistic beings. And they’re often reminded that they’re the baddest guys around, the main threat to the human population. However, what makes less and less sense as Hide grows older is why they, children of ghouls, exist when ghouls are supposed to be hated and hunted down to extinction before they wipe out the human population. Aren’t they kind of contradicting their own aims by raising the young of a species they’re supposed to eliminate?

The children of the Garden are all “half-breeds”, born from a human-ghoul pair of anonymous parents with the help of science. They do not possess the main characteristics of ghouls; the superhuman regenerating abilities, the flaring red irises and darkened eye-whites which are also known as “kakugan”, and the special organ to store and manifest RC cells into appendages that could be shaped at the will of a ghoul, known as the “kakuhou” and “kagune” respectively. As such, they’re allowed to keep the title of being “humans”, but only half so. They’re an in-between existence. Half-humans.

Well, at least most of them who actually manage to live past the exiting the womb or whatever machine used to cultivate them are. The fact that they have the chance to utter their first cry as a newborn is rare enough. But there’s a case that’s even rarer, that’s only occurred a grand total of two times ever since the Garden was founded approximately thirty years ago.

Half-breed children born with the characteristics of a ghoul, yet retain the ability to gain nutrients from human food—half-ghouls. Perhaps in a genetic sense, they can be said to have the better deal; a more balanced mix of both species. Realistically, it could very well be a curse. After all, why would the other half-ghoul—a girl some years older than them—have done everything she did to escape the Garden walls just a few years back? Surely, something must’ve motivated her to do so. Surely, there’s something she couldn’t have been able to stand in here that finally pushed her to leave the confines of their “orphanage”.

It doesn’t take long for Hide to gain a suspicion over what that “something” is, being so close to Kaneki. That’s right, Kaneki’s the second half-ghoul to ever exist in the Garden, and currently the only one left.

“Kaneki,” Hide says, catching his companion’s gaze and silently willing him to not look away. “It’s just me you’re with. You don’t have to lie, you know.”

For a moment, Kaneki seems like he’s about to make another denial. Then slowly, he nods without a word, letting his shoulders slump further with the tiredness he’s been holding back. Hide feels something in his heart darken with a deep, seething rage and loathing. Being the only rare existence left, Kaneki’s called to the labs more frequently than the rest of them; going through procedures that more often than not leave him exhausted and in pain all over. Sometimes it’s so bad that Kaneki can barely push himself out of bed in the mornings, whimpering at any movement that sends jolts of pain across his body. Hide can only imagine how much he’s enduring, to actually fail in masking the agony he’s in when he’s gotten so good at it over the years.

“Stay here with me a little longer?” Hide suggests, giving Kaneki’s fingers a slight squeeze. Kaneki graces him with a lopsided, but grateful smile.

“Is your nosebleed that bad?” he asks even though Hide’s pretty sure he knows the blood flow has long since stopped. That’s the thing about being a half-human; their bodies might not recover from injuries as immediately as a ghouls, but they still recover pretty darn fast.

“Bad enough for me to have to lie down longer than I have to,” Hide says, wiggling his eyebrows in mischief. His smile widens when Kaneki lets out a small laugh.

“They won’t let you slack off for long,” he warns, but makes no more moves to leave than Hide. He exhales a long breath, leaning forward to lean his head onto the mattress in a rather awkward position. Hide tries to scoot over so he can join him, but Kaneki dismisses him with the reason that at least like this he’ll be able to react before they get caught. Hide, sadly, can’t argue. The Garden isn’t too sympathetic towards those who miss training.

But looking at it another way, isn’t what they’re doing quite counterproductive? Hide’s mind wanders as it always does when he’s physically idle. What’s the point of pushing them so hard every single day to the extent that most of them are breaking apart by the end of it—and then strain them with another brutal training menu the next day when they barely have the strength to get out of bed? Even if they are bound to be great fighters, to be the strongest weapons mankind has ever had against ghouls—is there a need for all this?

…Even if they’re just tools, is there a need to treat them like this?

xXx

Kaneki always looks forward to Arima’s visits.

He always manages to bring an array of random things with him whenever he drops by; candies, smooth stones, leaves they’ve never seen before, toys no one really knows how to play. And just recently, books. Books that are never allowed in the Garden; ones about freedom, justice, deceit. Books on revolutions.

Arima Kishou is eight years older than Kaneki, and the youngest ever to have left the Garden for the outside world. Kaneki has never bothered to ask the older boy directly because he doesn’t think it matters anyway, but he’s heard that Arima left when he’s barely sixteen. He’d even skipped the year the children from the Garden would usually spend in the CCG’s academy, being assigned into field work straight out. Kaneki isn’t surprised. He doesn’t need rumours to know that Arima’s the strongest half-human to date, and that he’s on the way to being the strongest ghoul investigator of their time. The fact that their trainers always attempt to motivate/threaten them using his name should be enough to prove it.

Kaneki has mixed feelings towards Arima. He respects him, that’s for sure. Admires, even. He’s awed by him, always taken aback by the small acts of gentleness he sometimes displays. He’s grateful for the books he’s smuggled in for him, all of them stashed away from sight under his bed and read almost to pieces. Strongest investigator or not, Kaneki knows Arima doesn’t completely live up to the expectations of how someone with such prestige should be. Though his range of expressions isn’t all that wide, he has a slight, but kind smile. He has a surprisingly rebellious streak, often sneaking in items with him as gifts to the other children during his visits despite being aware of the strict restrictions imposed upon matters they are allowed to be expose to. He’s sometimes comically awkward. The younger kids adore him.

And perhaps it’s because Kaneki has seen these sides of him that he also somehow feels pity for him whenever he sees him now. The increasing number of white strands in his hair are stark against his original dark blue. The look in his eyes has grown even more faraway, and though it’s not obvious, Hide has pointed out how he seems to carrier a heavier, more tired air around him now. It’s as though something’s constantly weighing him down lately, Hide had observed.

“How is work like out there..?”

The question is asked tentatively, with Kaneki half hoping that Arima will just brush him off. He’s never dared and wanted to know until then—he wonders what made him suddenly blurt that out. He averts his gaze when Arima’s eyes flicker towards him from the novel he’s reading, unable to maintain eye contact. Arima’s silent for a long while, as though quietly contemplating what he should say and how he should say them. Two seconds in and Kaneki’s already regretting some life choices. He stares at the cover of Arima’s book as he waits, scarcely even daring to breathe for some reason. He’s reading one of Franz Kafka’s works today, he muses half-heartedly to himself.

“I—“

Arima’s finally about to say something when he’s interrupted by Hide walking into their conversation. Kaneki can’t decide whether to feel miffed or disappointed or relieved. Maybe it’s for the best that he remains ignorant for now?

“What are you guys talking about?” Hide asks as he shifts on his spot to cross his legs, his eyebrows raised in curiosity. Kaneki’s attention is drawn to the multiple bruises that decorate his bared skin, all already fading despite Hide gaining them just the day before.

“Ken’s just asking me how work’s like,” Arima replies evenly, and Kaneki flinches. Is he really going to tell them?

“It’s probably tough as hell, isn’t it?” Hide says almost offhandedly, balancing his elbow on the side of his knee and resting his chin on his palm. That’s what it would seem like on the surface, but Kaneki manages to detect the thoughtful undertone in his voice. That’s just how Hide is, no matter what kind of image of himself he usually tries to project in front of others. He’s always thinking, questioning, analysing.

It’s dangerous, to have such strong independent thoughts in the Garden. That’s why Hide chooses to mask them with his everyday façade—it wouldn’t end well for him if he raises suspicion upon himself for having enough self will to resist the Garden’s ideals. Even Kaneki is aware of this much.

“Well, it’s certainly not easy,” Arima responds, but offering no further elaboration. Kaneki finally exhales the breath he’s been holding. It was a stupid idea for him to have asked about this in the first place—not to mention a rather insensitive one. Arima-san’s here for a break and here he is, making him think of the burdens he has to carry.

He notices how close Hide is to blurting more questions, and quickly scrambles for a different topic of conversation. “B-By the way, Arima-san!”

Arima regards him, head tilted slightly to the side. Kaneki’s cheeks burn. His voice had came out squeakier than he’d intended. That doesn’t matter.

“I just finished reading the anthology you gave me the other day a-and,” Kaneki swallows, his sudden boldness making him stumble over his words, “I’d love to talk to you about them, if that’s okay.”

Arima’s quiet for a moment. “Was it Hakushuu’s The Seal and the Cloud?”

“Yes.” Kaneki’s heart beats just a little faster with excitement. He’s always loved reading, loved how words alone are able to bring him to an entirely new world besides giving him a fuzzy feeling in his chest and at times even taking his breath away with their beauty and the plot’s intensity and making him forget about the almost constant ache that plagues his body. It’s a passion that sparked within him since they were made to read some literary works in class, and it’s only been growing ever since Arima smuggled in more books and a dictionary into the Garden.

Huh. Now that he thinks of it, how did he find out about his love for books? Was it simply some good guessing on his part? Maybe it’s a coincidence? Or did he hear about it from someone?

“I thought Ode to an Old Ainu was pretty interesting,” Arima says and oh gosh it really is happening they’re going to talk about books now. Kaneki takes in a breath, ready to blabber on about how much he agrees that the poem is great and how one may interpret it so, so many ways and how much of a literary genius Hakushuu truly is when Hide decides to heave a deep, loud sigh. Ah, he’s never been a fan of Kaneki’s boring stuff written by pretentious old people, he’d always say. Kaneki nods apologetically when he catches his eyes, but Hide only shakes his head subtly, encouraging him to go on.

Still, Kaneki feels bad for leaving him out of the conversation like this. Hide remains without comment, only bringing his knees to his chest and leaning forward to use them as a makeshift pillow before closing his eyes—perhaps intending to reassure him further that it’s okay for him to just do his thing, he’ll be there if he needs him. Very reluctantly, Kaneki lets himself indulge.

He talks with Arima about Hakushuu for what seems to be hours and hours; relentlessly exchanging insights and theories and opinions. And as silent as he is on every other day, Arima turns out to be a great conversational partner when it comes to talking about books; having an excellent memory and sharp observational skills to notice details even Kaneki sometimes missed out. It’s easy to forget about Arima’s rising status as a ghoul investigator and see him as just another orphan from the Garden when they’re like this. Kaneki hopes it’s the same for Arima as well, that he can just be himself without bearing the weight of a genius right then where none of his talents in combat matters. If anyone deserves this little bit of peace, it’s him.

“It’s different,” Arima comments at one point, so out of the blue that Kaneki fails to follow. “The world described in his poems and the world outside right now,” Arima adds shortly, absently watching his own finger as he draws circles  on the floor by his foot, “they’re very different.”

“In what way?” Kaneki shifts, longing to stretch his stiff legs but worried that he might seem rude to do so when there’s already not much space between them to begin with. From the corner of his eye, he notices that Hide’s awake now, listening to them in silence.

“It’s—“ Arima’s cut off by a call of his name from one of the instructors. Their tone was wholly professional and lacking a certain warmth—the default voice used for most of them, really, but Kaneki can’t help but feel it’s even more so in Arima’s case. Maybe it’s just him thinking too deep into things, he doesn’t know. Also, would people please stop interrupting the poor guy already, geez.

Arima moves to get on his feet without a word, the two younger boys soon following suit. Arima’s expression remains unchanged, but Kaneki seems to hear a tinge of wistfulness in his tone when he bids them farewell.

“Thank you so much for today, Arima-san,” Kaneki manages to tell him before he could walk off, bending forward in a slight bow. He catches a glimpse of one of his rare, small smiles when he straightens. “See you soon.”

He doesn’t get to watch him go; Hide’s tugging his hand to remind him about the next class they have to attend before he has the chance.

xXx

Their days eventually begin passing in a new sort of monotone.

Their physical training gets replaced by weapons training immediately after they turn thirteen, each of them assigned a type of weapon to master based on past assessments of them before they’re allowed to choose their second choices. Hide’s advantages lean towards his speed and wit for ending battles quickly, so he’s made to train with short weapons for easy manoeuvrability and quick, precise strikes. Kaneki, who excels in learning new moves and techniques by simply observing and generally an all rounder with a sturdy core as long as his pain isn’t too prominent, is assigned to handle standard length weapons like swords.

Hide has to admit though: training with weapons is much more interesting than what they were used to. Perhaps it’s because he’s suffered way too many losses during his hand-to-hand combat days and sees better chances in something that can properly end a battle with a nudge of wood against certain spots of a body. Perhaps he’s attracted to the rush of adrenaline that comes with the sudden spike of urgency knowing a defeat in training would might mean death if it were a real fight. Perhaps he’s just happy to take it as a sign of him growing up and growing stronger.

He has to grow up and grow stronger.

Kaneki’s uniqueness as a half-ghoul has gotten even more distinct recently. He now receives a special menu during meal times—and by ‘special’ Hide means an extra bowl of gooey red stuff that reeks of iron but apparently smells just like chicken soup to Kaneki. He’s starting to train with his kagune as well besides mastering how to swing a weapon effectively. All on top of the increasingly painful and draining procedures he has to go through.

Kaneki practices using his kagune alone during the hours where the others are free to do as they like, not just because he’s the only one with a kagune, but also because he hates standing out in front of people. Hide always keeps him company, that’s for certain. He’d sit at the sides of the practice hall and watch as Kaneki performs a succession of moves with the blood-coloured appendages that sprout from his lower back; simple ones at first, but he’s using them as if he’s been using them all his life in no time. Sometimes Hide finds goosebumps rising over his skin at the sight of Kaneki’s deft movements that incorporate using his kagune with seemingly so little effort. So this is how a ghoul fights.

Hide has been having a bad feeling since he woke up the day the incident happens. Kaneki hadn’t returned to their room at all the night before—his bed remained untouched even after Hide snapped awake from the drowse he’d eventually nodded off into as he waited. It’s not the first time something like this has happened; Hide’s been caught sneaking out to the labs way past curfew to check on him so many times that he’s been punished to solitary confinement twice already. He’d keep doing it anyway if Kaneki hadn’t personally assured him that he’ll be alright and asked for him to stop getting himself in trouble and just wait for him because he’ll surely come back sooner or later. Hide doesn’t like it any more than he likes the idea of being locked in a room with nothing but white walls and a small corner for him to do his business for hours and hours without food or entertainment, but for Kaneki, he’d decided, he’ll listen to him.

Still, the nagging feeling in his gut only intensifies further when it’s past lunch time and Kaneki still hasn’t made an appearance. He’s missed an entire morning of lessons; they usually wouldn’t let him do that even when the painkillers no longer make a difference. Hide’s also suspicious of how he’s suddenly more engaged than normal, being almost constantly targeted by their tutors to either answer questions or read passages or carry materials from one class to another. The Garden is a small institution—there’s no one who shouldn’t have, to the very least, heard of the inseparable Nagachika and Kaneki. With the behavioural record he holds, he’s not surprised that he’s the one they’re wary of if anything’s happened to Kaneki.

The fact that he’s more and more certain they’re trying to distract him does little to lessen his apprehension. Maybe he should risk enduring another day in confinement and look for Kaneki to check on him and beat up anyone who’s trying to—

“Nagachika!”

Hide’s jerked out of his thoughts by the sharp call of his name. He abruptly registers the sting in his palms; his fingers uncurling with effort. He glances towards the owner of the voice, a girl his age.

“Didn’t you hear? We need to go to the labs now,” she says, tugging his arm to urge him to hurry. Hide blinks, almost stumbling over his feet when he moves.

“Why so sudden?” Hide asks, though possibilities are already beginning to cloud his thoughts, backed by the bits and pieces of information Kaneki has been able to tell him along with those he’s picked up himself during the few times he’s stumbled upon careless conversations. The girl shrugs, eyes set ahead and pace hastened to catch up with the rest of the group that’s already ahead of them.

“Don’t know. They didn’t care to elaborate.”

Hide says nothing to that, instead holding his breath as he moves to join his peers. His teeth dig into the flesh of his lower lip until they draw blood. His intuition has never really been wrong all these while. This sudden visit to the labs—he’s sure it’s connected to Kaneki’s sudden absence that day somehow. Dread settles in the pit of his stomach like a layer of tar; dense, toxic. What have they done to him? What are they still doing to him?

Hide doesn’t make the turn into the usual room where he’d get his arm pricked every Saturday, his steps speeding up as he walks straight ahead despite the calls of question and warnings for him to go back. Kaneki wouldn’t be in this corridor, but Hide knows how to get to where he should be without even thinking now. He slips into the emergency stairway and climbs up, his bare feet making no sounds at all against the cement floor. He shortly emerges in an annoyingly bright hallway lined with doors and large one-way glass windows along the walls. It’s quiet—eerily so. A calm before a storm.

Hide heads forward, all thoughts of being caught forgotten and replaced only by a numb sort of static. He goes to the room at the very end of the corridor, and stops. Looks through the window.

And stares.

And stares.

The scene before him is like a muted nightmare, only perhaps much, much worse. Kaneki’s strapped on his belly onto an operating table, his limbs straining against their constraints as he thrashes about. His face, turned to one side for him to breathe, bears an expression of excruciating pain; his mouth open in screams that are silent to Hide’s ears, his dark hair sticking to the sides of his sweat-drenched face. The skin where he—impossibly, given the raw strength he owns—is tied down is chaffed raw and bleeding. And on his lower back...

The rush of air that suddenly enters Hide’s lungs almost chokes him. He could only watch on in complete stupefaction as Kaneki’s kagune furled and unfurled in spasmodic movements into ever-changing forms, lashing at nothing and everything. It’s eating him, is the only thought that Hide’s mind seems to be able to piece together. He doesn’t know how it’s possible or why it’s happening but Kaneki’s kagune is going out of control and he’s in pain and he has to do something he can’t just stand there and—

Hide feels hands grabbing him and roughly yanking him back and away from the glass panel the exact moment he spots a researcher enter the scene, holding an item that unmistakably resembles a gun. Hide vaguely remembers struggling, words he can’t hear leaving his mouth in shouts, in desperation. They can’t hold him down, he has to see if Kaneki is alright! He has to go to him and he’ll fight anyone who dares get in his way and perhaps he goes too far at one point because the last thing he remembers before waking up from unconsciousness in a white-walled room is a sharp jab of pain piercing  his arm.

Being locked away has never bothered him as much as it does then. He’s utterly restless at first, unable to find the composure he normally holds on to so firmly. He paces, slams his fists against the door that stubbornly remains shut. Rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat. Then when he’s finally exhausted and starving, the thoughts come; those of helplessness and despair and frustration all mixed up in an overwhelming whirlwind. He’d only stood and watched as Kaneki suffered. He hadn’t been able to do a thing.

He’s never been able to do a single thing.

They couldn’t have shot Kaneki dead, Hide’s at least certain of that. He’s still got too many uses for them to be disposed of so early. The ammunition for that handgun was probably some kind of sedative, maybe even some concentrated form of the RC suppressants they learnt about in class.

Kaneki often warned him that he thinks too much (which, he begs to differ because he’s pretty sure he’s doing it to a decent, healthy extent) and perhaps it’s become obvious without him realizing despite his efforts trying not to let it show. After all, why else would it feel like they’re lengthening his isolation if it’s not to show him that he’s not the one in power here and that he can spend an eternity pondering over how he can help his closest friend in the world and still remain unable to change a thing?

The realization of having his weaknesses used against him gives Hide the resolution to refrain from showing any more signs of an external breakdown, but with his parched throat and hunger combined with his unfading concern towards Kaneki’s current wellbeing, it still feels like there’s a thorn stuck in his gut . Hide lies flat on his back on the cold, marble floor, his closed eyes doing little to block out the intense white lighting around him. He tries again and again and again to distract himself, to uncharacteristically stop thinking for just a second, a minute. He can’t show them he’s lost. He can’t show them he’s completely disobedient either; he can’t risk being monitored any more than he already is.

The plan taking root in his head would be harder to be put into motion otherwise.

xXx

Kaneki wakes to a badly aching head and an unusually numb body.

It’s dark. He doesn’t recognize the ceiling above him. He takes a breath, exhaling slowly. It’s... actually quite nice like this. He’s forgotten how it is to not feel like his muscles are constantly being roasted over a slow flame.

His memories begin creeping back in patches. The metal capsule that’s filled with some sort of liquid, the mask over his face, the contraptions that fit over his lower back for ‘harvesting’ purposes. The pain. The iron cuffs cutting into his wrist and ankles, the syringe of greenish chemical injected into his bloodstream. The feeling of his kagune tearing into his flesh. More pain. Much, much more pain.

He begins to wonder if the numbness right then is actually artificially induced or if it’s just his body being utterly exhausted from the amount of pain it had to endure. Either way, he’s not looking forward to when it all wears off.

Kaneki’s attention flickers to the place where he’d spotted a shadow move. He closes his eyes once more, hoping that the person will leave him be if they see him still asleep. It’s strange, though. He doesn’t remember the researchers’ footsteps being this silent; their shoes usually make sure they can be heard through an entire empty hallway.

“Kaneki.”

Kaneki’s heart skips a beat, his eyelids snapping open to see Hide standing over him, the shadowed expression of worry on his face matching the tone of his voice. Seeing him awake, Hide breaks into a smile of relief, and Kaneki feels a sting in his chest. He wants to apologize, wants to reach out and take his hand and assure him that he’s okay and that he doesn’t need to look like he’s almost lost him because he hasn’t, not this time as well—but he can barely move a finger, let alone do anything beyond that level.

“Hide.” His voice comes out hoarse from his dry throat. In response, Hide disappears from view, reappearing half a minute later to dribble some water between his lips. Kaneki swallows gratefully, the squeeze in his heart growing in intensity at the care and gentleness in the way Hide treats him. What has he done to deserve someone like him?

“Better?” Hide asks once he’s presumably ran out of water to feed him, reaching to brush some strands of his hair away from his eyes. Kaneki nods, the ache in his head gradually fading to something more tolerable.

“What happened to you?”

It’s Kaneki who makes the inquiry, noting Hide’s hunched shoulders and generally haggard appearance. Even in the scarce lightning Kaneki could see how his hair is more tousled that it usually is and how he seems like he hasn’t slept in days. Wait. How long has he been unconscious, then?

“Nothing new,” Hide dismisses casually, and it’s enough for Kaneki to make a guess. He’s gotten himself punished again for his sake despite all those times he’d told him to lay low, hasn’t he? A lump forms in the base of Kaneki’s throat. If Hide’s caught being here now, he might be locked up and starved and who knows what additional forms of discipline they might come up for him next and no, Hide can’t stay. No matter how much he wants him to stay, Hide can’t because Kaneki doesn’t think he can bear the thought of him finally being broken by the cruelty of the Garden because of him. They can do whatever they want with him until his body rots away, but not Hide, please.

Please.

“Kaneki?” Alarm tinges Hide’s voice. “Hey, what’s wrong? Does it hurt anywhere or—“

“Please leave, Hide,” Kaneki pleads, shakily. His palms and back feel damp. “I’ll be okay in a while, so please leave before they find out you’re here.”

“After all that trouble I took just to get here? No way,” Hide scoffs, earning himself an incredulous stare from Kaneki.

“But—“ he begins, but Hide interrupts by pressing a finger to his lips, effectively shushing him.

“I have permission this time,” he simply tells him, in a way that Kaneki is unable to decide if that’s really the truth. Hide doesn’t give him room to argue, however, by proceeding to make himself comfortable at the end of his cot. Gradually, reluctantly, Kaneki lets himself relax. It’s not like Hide would leave even if he keeps protesting—stubbornness is one of the qualities they both share, after all. But still...

“They’ve really done it this time, huh?”

The words are muttered in a muse, not directed to anyone in particular. Hide’s face, now turned away from Kaneki, is fully hidden by the shadows. There’s a ring to his voice that Kaneki hasn’t heard before.

“I think they’ve finally found a way to harvest my kakuhou,” Kaneki says, remembering the voices that swarmed around him while he was in that capsule. The procedures he’d gone through over the years were mostly about trying to extract enough bits of his kakuhou to be transferred to another person. It’s a different and more intricate process than obtaining one to make a quinque, he’s figured long ago. There have always been complications, perhaps due to the fact that he’s a natural-born half-ghoul. Something’s always bound to get in the way of a breakthrough; as if his body is consciously refusing to cooperate with the hands that persistently violate it over the years.

It’s no longer a secret why the researchers are so fixated on Kaneki’s kagune. All half-humans born in the Garden are fated to a short lifespan. Many are prone to prematurely contacting conditions an average person would not suffer from until later in life. Strong and inhuman as they are physically, they’re also ironically fragile. Disposable. Flowers that bloom quickly and wilt even quicker.

And Kaneki’s kagune has been found to hold the key to fixing that.

“Yeah, they told us that yesterday,” Hide says, in the same unreadable tone as before. He’s silent for a few seconds before he speaks again. “Say, Kaneki?”

“Hmm?”

A slightly longer pause, a moment of hesitation. Then, “on second thought, it’s nothing.” He perks up and turns to face him right after, his mood taking a sudden drastic shift. “Come to think of it, I should mention that they brought us some pudding just now. I’ve already saved some for you, by the way.”

Kaneki sees the slight jerk of his head to the side, indicating the top corner of the room where there’s a surveillance camera mounted on the wall. They can’t talk about it here, he interprets. He wonders what exactly does he want to tell him.

“I hope I’ll be back before it goes bad, though,” Kaneki plays along with hardly a falter, laughing sheepishly. Hide leans a little forward.

“It should be fine; the weather’s still cool anyways,” he says, and despite his earlier solemnity, he’s starting to revert back to his everyday self. “Also! Did you know that I finally beat that Furuta guy this morning?”

“I just woke up about fifteen minutes ago, in case you’ve forgotten,” Kaneki reminds him with another small laugh, amused by his childish excitement. “But isn’t he the one who always uses dirty tricks and never gets reprimanded?”

“For the record, he’s still cheating and they’re still letting him,” Hide says drily, huffing a tired sigh. “Apparently their reason is that there’s no such thing as fairness when it comes to survival or something? I had to kill him like, four times before the referee finally acknowledged my win. Talk about playing favourites, sheesh.”

“Did he try to stab your eyes again this time?” Kaneki tries to keep his tone light, but something churns deep down in his core as the words leave his mouth. He remembers now. Furuta’s known for having no qualms in causing bodily damage to others even when it’s just training, as well as being the pet of almost everyone in charge. Kaneki’s seen firsthand how differently he’s treated compared to the rest of them; the most obvious being how he alone is allowed to use unfair and harmful means when sparring while anyone else would be subjected to punishment in the form of thicker needles or reduced food portions.

“Nearly shoved his fingers up my nostrils, too,” Hide affirms, absently rubbing his nose at the memory, “and he even tried to kick me in the nads again, can you believe the guy? And I’m the one who’s supposed to be famous for getting in trouble!”

“He didn’t seriously kick you, did he?” Kaneki worriedly glances towards Hide’s pelvis. He feels a smile tugging at the corners of his lips when he looks back up and sees the triumphant grin plastered across his companion’s features.

“Speed has always been my thing, so no. But I did kick his in the end.” Hide makes a fist and scrunches up his face. “Ah, the sweet, sweet taste of revenge!”

Kaneki can only imagine his sense of accomplishment. Furuta has gotten in the way of Hide’s winning streak too many times; his sparring matches with him would never end until Hide’s the one on the ground. It doesn’t help that he too, is highly skilled when it comes to combat and it’s difficult enough to score a victory against him the first time. Kaneki has long lost count of the times Hide would rant about Furuta’s shitty smirk and pretentious words of apologies when they’re back in the privacy of their room and ready to settle down for bed. And if Hide isn’t exaggerating—which he tends to at times—it must’ve been quite a long match, to have to score five kills against him before they were stopped.

“I get the feeling he’ll probably try to pay you back in other ways, though,” Kaneki tells him, to which Hide only makes an indifferent gesture with his hand.

“I’d like to see him try,” he says carelessly. At that, Kaneki shoots him a frown. He doesn’t know Furuta through and through, but he knows enough to expect him to be the kind to hold grudges. Hide should as well; his intuition is miles better than Kaneki’s, after all.

“I can take care of myself, Kaneki, don’t worry about it,” Hide promises, not exactly doing much to ease his worries. Seeing his unfading glower, Hide reaches to gently poke at the furrow on his brow. “Come on, man, don’t look at me like that!”

Kaneki complies by switching to a more judgemental look, failing to restrain the laugh bubbling up his throat when Hide playfully demands to be respected after coming this far. Kaneki has never been able to understand how Hide’s always able to break tension with so much ease. He seems to always know what he needs to do to lift Kaneki’s mood, no matter what happened.

“I’d like to go back to join everyone again soon,” Kaneki says, almost wistfully. Even if it could be just for a couple of days, it gets lonely real fast. Hide’s hands find his and squeezes encouragingly.

“I’m sure you would,” he says, with so much confidence that Kaneki finds himself believing him. “But I’ll try to drop by as often as I can if you have to stay longer. Even if I do have to do it illegally,” he mumbles the last part.

Kaneki’s protest is immediate. “Hide!”

“Joking, joking!” Hide holds up his hands in surrender. “I’ll only do it illegally if I can’t get permission, okay?”

“That’s not assuring at all and you know it,” Kaneki points out. Hide merely shrugs, showing no signs of being bothered by the idea of receiving punishment. If there’s one thing Kaneki really fears about him, it’s his foolish selflessness when it comes to him. Don’t get him wrong; Kaneki would willingly give up even his life for him if the need ever arises, but Hide’s loyalty is almost at a whole new level. No matter how close they are, no matter how much Kaneki means to him, he shouldn’t have to go to such lengths for him. It just…doesn’t seem right. It doesn’t seem healthy.

“I’m serious, Hide,” Kaneki says, catching his gaze and holding it firm. “Promise me you won’t do anything stupid just to come see me?”

He stares him down until Hide finally heaves a weary sigh, reaching to scratch the back of his neck in a rather sheepish manner.

“I can’t say no if you give me that look now, can I?” he murmurs in defeat, and bit by bit, Kaneki smiles once more.

xXx

As it turns out, Kaneki gets sent back to the rest of the children the day after the next.

And for the first time in a long while, he returns hardly feeling any perpetual pain across his body. Was his regeneration abilities pushed to the point that it even got rid of the ache it hasn’t been able to for the past ten years? Or maybe it has something to do with the packet of clear chemical he didn’t recognize that was hooked to his arm not long after Hide left from his visit? He guesses it’s probably the latter. There’s no way his body would be able to make such a drastic change by itself so abruptly.

It feels great, being able to move as he likes without having to wince every five seconds. Kaneki finds himself working through his training with more enthusiasm than he ever had; defeating his opponents with an ease he doesn’t know he had until he’s staring down at them, his breathing barely off rhythm and his muscles tingling with adrenaline. It’s a new feeling, to realize he’s been this strong all along and that the only thing holding him back was the constant soreness he’s newly freed from. How much further could he go like this? How much more room for improvement does he have when he’s already this good now? Such thoughts drive him to try harder even with his already obvious advantage, tempting to test his limits, to do things that never seemed possible for him all this while when they really had been. To fight, to win.

Kaneki’s jarred from his daze-like state by the sound of bones breaking and a howl of pain.

He stares at the girl sprawled on the ground in front of him in growing horror. What has he done? Her right leg is twisted in a strange angle, her knee red and swelling angrily. He takes a step back, his heart pounding in his chest. Oh, god, what has he done?

“I’m—“ His words stop in his throat before he can voice them, unable to even utter an apology. For that one moment, he’d been drunk on his own power. That’s what happened. He got carried away the instant the only restraint he knows was eliminated, carelessly wielding his own strength until someone is hurt.

Despite himself, Kaneki silently thanks no one in particular that his opponent hadn’t been Hide.

He knows his best friend is watching; the commotion he’s causing is quite hard to miss. But Kaneki doesn’t turn to look, instead only able to stare at the injured girl while standing so still he hardly dares to breathe as he awaits verdict from the instructor. He doesn’t dare find out how Hide’s looking at him then; if his eyes are wide in terror or mouth twisted in disgust or eyebrows drawn together in disappointment. Disciplinary punishment is something he can handle. Hide distancing himself from him because of something he did—because of something he most likely is—is not.

He watches numbly as the girl is carried away in a stretcher, the buzzing in his ears making it difficult for him to tell if someone’s talking to him. He looks up when he feels a sharp pat on his shoulder, but the person who’s done it has already disappeared. Huh? His confusion gives him the courage to glance around him, trying to make sense of what’s happening. Everyone else pays him no attention, scattered across the gym in small groups and each of them returning to their own devices. Had Kaneki been given any instructions in specific that he didn’t hear? It almost seems so.

…what’s he to do then?

“Kaneki.”

Upon hearing the call of his name, Kaneki tenses. He keeps his gaze stubbornly averted from Hide even when the other boy leans close to catch his eyes, completely ignoring all notions of personal space. He doesn’t want to see, doesn’t want to see.

“You’re excused from the rest of the session, you know,” Hide tells him once he’s finally decided that Kaneki’s obstinate in not facing him, crossing his arm over his chest. Absently, Kaneki nods.

“Okay.”

A pause. “Hey, Kaneki?”

“Hm?”

“Are you, by any chance—“ Hide leans in once more, just a little—“feeling bad over what you just did?”

Kaneki’s breath hitches. “I just—“ he tries, stopping to purse his lips in search of a way to describe the hollow, uncomfortable sensation in his belly. “I don’t really know what I’m feeling, to be honest. I… I just know I didn’t like it; hurting her like that.”

A lapse of silence from Hide. A slight sink of Kaneki’s heart. Does he not believe him? Has the way he’s acted earlier given him the reason to doubt him now?

“It’s not your fault, Kaneki,” Hide says at last, appalling Kaneki with the absurdity of his statement. What is he even saying? It remains an undeniable fact that Kaneki had been responsible for the injury causing the girl so much pain that even years and years of discipline isn’t enough to stop her from crying out. That extent of agony is something Kaneki’s only too familiar with; it’s not something he’d feel pleasant upon inflicting on someone else who hasn’t done him any wrong.

“She tried to kick you but you caught her leg,” Hide further explains when Kaneki doesn’t respond, as though being aware of the haze of concentration that clouded his mind during the deed. “She tried to twist herself free. You held on.” He then frowns. “Well. I guess it’d be more accurate to say you’re not entirely at fault in that case but the point is—“ he trails off with a huff, his expression seemingly deflating by each second of stretched wordlessness. He eventually notices Kaneki looking at him funny and works to amend his façade at once, waving his hands elaborately.

“S-Sorry! I lost my train of thought back there,” he says, his sheepish smile not quite convincing. Still, Kaneki doesn’t push for more explanations; he’s more than happy to leave the discussion there.  

“I think… I’ll just go back to our room for now,” Kaneki says, gesturing for Hide to stop before he could offer to go with him. “You still have to train, don’t you?”

“Will you be okay?” Hide asks instead of answering, eyebrows drawn together in concern. Hesitating a split second, Kaneki nods. “Alright then. I’ll join you once I’m done here.”

Kaneki doesn’t feel Hide’s gaze leave him until the door closes behind him.

xXx

Kaneki’s pain doesn’t return and it scares him.

Hide doesn’t need to hear the words from Kaneki himself to tell. It’s obvious enough in his body language, his actions. His hesitance to spar, his tentativeness to touch even Hide. The constant furrow of concern across his brow.

The disappearance of Kaneki’s pain should, by all rights, be something to be celebrated. It’s only logical; it’s been the source of his suffering for so long, after all. It doesn’t make sense for the loss of it to torment him as much. Everyone tells Kaneki that it’s fine even if he doesn’t hold back, that it’s actually more beneficial to the others because it’ll give them an idea of what calibre of strength a ghoul possesses. The other Garden kids don’t particularly seem to mind bearing some injuries if that’s what it takes to learn and even actively encourage Kaneki to stop looking down at them and fight them seriously. The issue lies mainly on Kaneki himself. It’s simply not his nature to be aggressive.

But, as always, the Garden isn’t a place where one’s unaggressive nature is taken into consideration. It’s either Kaneki sucks it up, or he’s spending even more time in the labs trapped in a capsule and have his kakuhou harvested. And as much as he hates harming others, Kaneki hates the labs even more.

He’s never given a choice. It’s always choosing between the devil or the sea for Kaneki, and Hide has always loathed everyone who made it so. He’s always loathed not being able to make a difference, not being able to help give Kaneki a third and possibly better option.

But maybe—just maybe, if everything goes well, he can finally take his first step in changing that soon.

It’s been painstaking, working on the wild plan that’d suddenly sprung up in his mind during his solitary confinement the other day to where he is now. Hide can never relax; no one must know what he’s up to. The maps, the schedules, the secret discussions with Arima who agreed to help them because he too, sees the wrongness of the Garden and wishes for change even though he claims it’s long past since there’s hope left for himself—Hide can’t let anyone find out about them. Even a slight suspicion is too dangerous. He’s betting on the CCG’s firm belief that the children from the Garden can only depend solely on the institution for food, finance and shelter. As long as they think no one would act up as long as they still need a place to call home, no matter how unbearable it is, Hide’s confident that things are still in his favour.

The only challenge now is to find the proper timing.

Hide’s new coat feels too heavy on his shoulders; he wonders how Arima seems to still be able to move so fluidly while wearing his. Hide, Kaneki and another girl from their batch are currently assigned to join Arima’s squad for a small mission for “exposure”—that is, to start helping them get used to actual fighting instead of just the usual sparring. Hide’s excited for exactly three things: 1) only children who’s deemed to have a certain level of skill are allowed to participate in actual missions, which means Hide’s gotten strong enough to qualify, 2) he’ll get to see Arima Kishou on the battlefield for the first time and he’s always been curious to see for himself how crazy strong the older boy is, and 3) they’re going outside.

The first and last are the most important. Being strong enough means he can do his best to help Kaneki fight his share of opponents if it ever comes to it. Going outside means he’ll have a better idea of how certain places would look like so he can use them to his best advantage when it matters. Hide can’t let chances like this go to waste.

“Stop.”

Arima’s voice is soft, but his command firm. Hide halts in his tracks, his thumb poised above the knob of his briefcase. The air around them is still, the silence broken only by the sound of water dripping from a pipe nearby. Hide glances around, swallowing in nervous anticipation. How many ghouls are there? Are they surrounded? He takes a breath, feels a slight bristle in the atmosphere—

And the entire squad suddenly bursts into a flurry of movement; with Arima whipping out his Quinque and parrying a kagune aiming for him in one smooth motion, Hide leaping to the side to narrowly avoid a shower of ukaku projectiles, and the rest of them lunging straight into action to engage their enemies. Everything happens at such a rapid pace that Hide doesn’t have time to think. There are around twelve ghouls facing their squad of five. While Arima can probably handle all twelve of them by himself, Hide’s pretty sure he and his original squad member have been ordered to hold back to give the three younger ones a chance and only intervene when it’s absolutely necessary. So either way, Hide has to fight.

It’s very different, fighting in a battlefield for real and training in the gym back in the Garden. There’s always been a subconscious assurance that a mistake during training will only mean a few bruises, a broken streak, a motivation to work harder next time. Now Hide has to constantly remind himself that if he blunders now, there might not be a next time. That can’t do. He still has goals to achieve, plans to carry out. A best friend he desperately wants to give a better life to. Not having a next time is not an option.

It’s still unnerving, though. Ghouls look exactly like humans, and no matter how hard Hide tries to convince himself that they’re different, they’re monsters, he can’t. Not once, not completely. Not when the only difference between them and his own best friend is the fact that Kaneki can eat human food. But not killing the ones he’s facing now would mean showing hesitation, and Hide doesn’t know if it would be so easily overlooked. He’s already drawn enough attention to himself; any more than this and his plan might be jeopardized.

It’s… alright. Hide doesn’t owe them anything.

But they’ve never done anything to personally antagonize him as well, have they?  

Hide dodges the hand reaching to choke him, ducking in close to the ghoul. Then before it—he? She?—could react, he swings his arm in a wide arc, gritting his teeth at the resistance that meets his blade when it cuts through flesh and bone. Blood stains his hands, splatters against his face in warm, dense droplets. The smell of iron fills his nostrils when he takes a sharp breath, but just as he realizes he’s missed the ghoul’s throat, he’s pushed back in a single forceful kick that crushes the air from his lungs.

He stumbles back coughing, regaining his bearings just in time to tighten his grip on his Quinque and deflect a kagune aiming for his middle. It shouldn’t be this difficult, Hide can’t help thinking as he once again throws himself into combat, trying and trying to find the opening that simply refuses to reveal itself. He’s sparred with almost everyone in the Garden—he should be used to exposing weak spots by now. He usually is during training. But he can’t seem to do the same when it matters? Like now? Is it because there’s too vast of a difference between the experiences of a ghoul who’s fought to live for all their lives and his own? Had he been unconsciously underestimating them all this while?

He can hear him panting from his exhaustion and pain. Yes, the ghoul’s a “him”. The ghoul’s mask had slipped away from his face when the butt of Hide’s dagger caught its edge earlier, revealing the face of a boy not much older than himself, by the looks of it. As Hide works to defend, he notices the ghoul’s movements slowing down. He’s tiring. And with the way he uses his kagune sparingly, it must’ve been a while since he fed.

Yet he’s still fighting tooth and nail against him. Now that he’s seen his face, he can’t let him leave alive.

Hide would very much prefer to leave alive.

Their fight eventually comes to an almost abrupt end, as all fights do. One bad step back and the ghoul slips, giving Hide the chance to lunge forward and drive his Quinque through his heart. He hears him mutter something before he falls unmoving on the ground, and it’s only when he reaches down to retrieve his dagger that he realizes what he’d said. What he’d called him.

Monster.

In each other’s eyes, they’re both monsters.

“-gachika, look out!”

Hide turns just in time to see a kagune pierce through the ghoul aiming to strike him from behind. Kaneki walks up to him as he works to remember how to breathe, and gradually, it dawns him why something seems to feel off. It’s the silence. The mission’s complete. They’ve eradicated their targets.

“Hide, are you okay?” Kaneki asks, bending to offer him a hand. The calmness in his voice almost sounds cold, detached. Hearing it gives Hide a strange sensation in his gut.

“Yeah.”

As it turns out, however, Kaneki’s hand is trembling every bit as much as his own.

…

It’s different.

Ken finally begins understanding Arima’s words from before. Many of his books speak of wars, of gray judgements, of monsters—but to read about them and to experience them himself isn’t the same. Ghouls are monsters, it’s been drilled into their minds the moment they can understand words. Their existence itself is a mistake. They have to be killed for the survival of the human race.

But…they’re also so human in so many aspects, Kaneki slowly comes to realize with dread. The missions he’s taken part in showed him how even ghouls care for their friends, mourn over deaths of those they hold close. Even ghouls have the ability to give up their own lives for the sake of their children’s.

Sure, there are a number of them who choose to be aggressive by actively killing humans and wrecking havoc. Sure, there are those who cause so much damage and death in their wake that it’s only right for them to be stopped. But there are many times when it dawns Kaneki that they, the CCG, are also killing those who are simply trying to survive. Those who take the lives of others because that’s the only way they could thrive. Those whose actions are judged as “wrong” even though there’s not much difference from  those of humans simply because what they consume aren’t animal meat.

Is this really the right thing to do? Kaneki can’t tell anymore. And even if it isn’t, does he have a choice? The whole purpose of his existence is to fight ghouls; it’s been determined the moment he’s born. Would he have anything else besides that?

“Have you ever thought about running away?”                                                  

Hide whispers the words close to his ear, his wariness towards being heard ingrained into his being by now. Kaneki almost suspects it being another one of Hide’s conspiracy talks that they initiate every other night, but something’s different. There’s a certain conviction in his voice now that scares him as much as it captivates him. It sounds more like an invitation rather than the start of a discussion that’ll lead to nothing in the end.

“Have you?” he whispers in return when Hide leans back to face him properly, studying the warm brown eyes he’s become so familiar with. Hide’s gaze remains firm when he answers.

“Yes.”

Somehow, Kaneki already expected he would have. It’s Hide, after all. His best friend who thinks too much to be safe in a place like the Sunlit Garden.

“Is it even possible?” With how their entire lives depend so heavily on the place? Without the Garden, where would they stay for shelter? How would they find money for food and clothes? How will they be able to keep hiding from being hunted down? Hide sure makes it sound so simple.

“It is.” He also sounds so certain, confident. “Someone has done it before, and we can do it again.”

“It won’t be easy,” Kaneki warns, “they’re sure to have tightened their security by now and—“

“I know, Kaneki,” Hide assures, reaching to take his hand in his. “Trust me, I know. That’s why it took me so long.”

Kaneki frowns, confused. “What do you mean?”

“If you’re tired of being treated like a test subject,” Hide explains, never once flickering his eyes away, “if you’re tired of killing ghouls for no reason other than it being an order, or even if you’re tired of being caged in here under this annoying surveillance—we can run away. Just the two of us. I’ve just finished planning everything out. If you want to leave, our soonest chance is when we join Arima-san on a mission next month.”

“And if I want to stay?”

He promptly feels stupid to even have asked.

“Then I’m not going anywhere as well.”

“This is too sudden, Hide. I—“ Kaneki shifts to hug his elbows—“I don’t know. We don’t have anything outside the Garden.”

“Hey, we’ll still have each other,” Hide reminds him with a small laugh. “And Arima-san, too. He’ll be helping us if we decide to leave.”

And at that, Kaneki stares at him. “Arima-san? As in the Arima-san?”

“Unless there’s another Arima-san you happen to know.” Hide smiles wryly, though he’s quick to turn serious once more. “I guess this is one of the only ways he thinks he has left to rebel. He might not act and look like it, but even he…”

He doesn’t finish, but Kaneki understands. Of all of them, Arima is probably the one who’s the most shackled down by the CCG. He was already their strongest weapon by the time he’s about their age, and gained himself the title of a Death God by his twenties. It’s obvious how much the CCG relies on him, how much possibly unwanted responsibilities he has to carry. It’s no surprise that even someone as seemingly detached and distant as him would yearn for freedom.

I no longer have the chance, but I can help give you yours, seems to be the message Arima’s trying to tell them. But does Kaneki deserve it? Is there anything he can do as a token of gratitude for Arima risking so much for their sakes?

“I need some time to think about it.” Kaneki takes a deep breath. “I’ll let you know when I’ve decided, Hide.”

Is there anything he can do at all in return?

xXx

When Hide hears his name in the list of those compatible to receive Kaneki’s kakuhou, the only clear thought he has is thank god Kaneki isn’t there to know.

He mustn’t know. Otherwise he would stubbornly refuse to leave.

Hide’s not even the most compatible one; he’s smack in the middle of the list. So even if he does stay for the implantation, there’s still a fifty-fifty chance that it’ll fail and he’ll get eaten alive by the kagune. Hide himself isn’t sure he’s willing to take the risk. He’d rather live the few years he still has the way he wants and in relative happiness with his most important person than to place his bets on a do-or-die surgery.

They can’t stay for the implantations. Hide’s certain that once that phase of the Garden’s project begins, their chances to escape will drop to a barest minimum. Not only will they be more heavily monitored, Kaneki will be too exhausted. Hide’s plan heavily relies on them going on missions outside; they’ll face a huge setback if that’s taken from them.

But it’s been a week and Kaneki still hasn’t decided. Hide doesn’t understand. Should it really be that difficult to choose between leaving a prison-like institution that treats your body like some kind of organic resource and staying for the basic needs that they can no doubt be able to provide for themselves somehow anyway? Don’t get him wrong, Hide’s fully aware of the risks they’ll have to face if they escape. He’s aware that the CCG will hunt them down to the ends of the earth before they’re able to spread word about what they’re actually doing behind the scenes. He’s aware that once Kaneki leaves the Garden’s protection he’ll be vulnerable to being executed just like any other ghoul. He’s aware that if he doesn’t receive Kaneki’s kagune, he’ll die before he can reach thirty years old.

Yet he’s willing to risk it all because if Kaneki stays, he too, might die before he reaches thirty. Or even his twenties, with the strain those experiments are putting on his body. Hide doesn’t want that. He wants Kaneki to live and see things and meet people and do all the things they’re not allowed to do if they remain in the Garden. He wants to show him that beyond the walls that surround them, there’s a life worth struggling for.

He just hopes he’ll let him.

“Have you decided?”

Hide has come to realize over time that sometimes, he has no choice but to be pushy when it comes to handling Kaneki in certain situations. He gets the feeling that Kaneki will only stay wavering if he doesn’t say a thing.

He sees him hesitating even now.

“I… I still don’t know, Hide,” Kaneki tells him, eyes averted in remorse. “I’m sorry.”

Hide falls silent for a moment, studying his companion’s face. “What’s bothering you?”

Kaneki tenses the slightest. “It’s—“

“Do you think you don’t… deserve this chance to escape?” Hide ventures, and with the way Kaneki pales, he knows he’s guessed right. The effort it takes him not to breathe a sigh is almost comical. “And why would you think so?”

“Because there’s nothing I can think of doing that’ll honour everyone’s efforts in helping me get out,” Kaneki says, his words rushed and voice tight with frustration. “Because I don’t even know what I can do for Arima-san’s sake even though he’s putting himself in such a dangerous situation for us.”

“Kaneki, that’s not tru—“

“How can you be so sure, Hide?” Kaneki interrupts, and it’s as he watches him slowly lose his composure that it finally dawns Hide. Kaneki has been thinking. He’s been thinking about it for so long and still hasn’t found an answer and the stress has only been building up more and more. “Or you’re not and you don’t even care because all that matters to you is your own freedom?”

Wait. Whoa. Hide does a mental rewind. Did Kaneki actually just say that? Did he actually just accuse him of something? The mellow, passive Kaneki he knows since he was a kid? That’s a first. Hide’s grown up pretty thick-skinned if he may say so himself, but Kaneki’s words sting him more than anything’s ever had in a long time. Maybe it’s because deep down, he finds it unfair that Kaneki’s mad at him when the primary reason for this entire plan of his was Kaneki himself in the first place. Maybe it’s because he feels painfully underappreciated despite having gotten to this point.

Maybe it’s because Kaneki’s accusation hit home.

It seems to slowly dawn Kaneki; what he’s just said and done. “Hide, I’m s—“

“Don’t,” Hide speaks before he can finish. He inhales sharply; this isn’t the time to be feeling offended. “Don’t apologize. You’re right. I want to leave this place so bad that I can barely even bring myself to care what happens to the people who might be affected if I do that.” He huffs a breath, raking his fingers through his hair. “I should be the one to be sorry, Kaneki. I’m sorry if you feel like I’m being too forceful.”

At that, Kaneki only purses his lips, not saying a word. Hide keeps going anyway.

“Tell me truthfully, Kaneki,” he says, leaning a little forward to try meeting his eyes. “Whether you deserve it or not aside, what do you really want? Do you want to run away with me?”

And he waits. He waits until his best friend finally looks at him and nods like it’s the hardest thing in the world to admit.

Then slowly, Hide smiles.

“I’m not sure if you realized, Kaneki,” he begins, “but Arima-san isn’t expecting to gain anything much by helping us to begin with. No offense, but I’m sure his expectations for us aren’t all that high—there’s only so much we can do by ourselves, after all. It’s like you said: we don’t have anything outside the Garden, not even an identity. We’re too insignificant to bring any obvious changes, and I’m sure Arima-san knows that better than anyone.” He holds Kaneki’s gaze steadily. “Yet he’s chosen to help us. Do you know why?”

“Because I’m the only half-ghoul in the Garden,” Kaneki mutters in a way that implies he still hasn’t figured out anything beyond that. Hide nods.

“Because without you, the experiments and the Garden project will be interrupted,” he explains, “and they will be halted indefinitely until they’re able to breed and raise another natural-born half-ghoul—which, may never happen again. Ever.”

“But doesn’t that just mean they’ll keep doing whatever they’re doing anyway?” Kaneki argues, “even if they can’t breed half-ghouls they’ll still be able to breed half-humans as disposable weapons. There’s nothing to stop them.”

“A small step is still a step, Kaneki,” Hide says patiently. “Sometimes we have to accept that small steps are all we can take. Some responsibilities are just not ours to bear.” He lets out a breath, and adds in a quieter voice, “Sometimes there’s nothing else we can do but to turn away.”

“And if I don’t want to turn away?”

Hide studies his companion’s face; noting the set of his lips, the determination in his eyes. It’s not like him to want to be this involved in sparking changes—he wonders what’s going on in his mind. He can’t exactly decide if that’s a good thing, either. If all the attention he’s going to potentially bring upon himself by doing so would ultimately lead to more trouble for him in the future.

“Then I’ll do everything in my power to make sure you know you’re not alone in whatever it is that you want to do,” Hide swears, holding Kaneki’s gaze firmly. “I promise.”

Kaneki falls silent once more, contemplating. A minute passes, three. Then his expression hardens with resolve, and Hide knows he’s finally come to a decision.

“Alright. How are we going to leave?”

xXx

Ever since the first runaway incident, it’s been virtually impossible to sneak out of the Sunlit Garden’s walls once more.

That’s why Hide’s plan doesn’t involve sneaking out. It instead takes advantage of their periodic assignments to Arima’s Squad Zero in missions, bypassing the tight security of the institution. They’ll slip off during the heat of the battle and into the network of sewers underground where it’ll be the most dangerous, but also the safest way to avoid being found. Arima’s given Hide a copy of the sewer maps (he has them because he’s apparently also often sent to deal with ghouls underground), and both Hide and Kaneki have memorized the routes they’re to take. Though whether or not it’ll make a difference when it comes to the real thing, Kaneki doesn’t know. It’s a dense, dense maze down there.

The most immediate problem at the moment, though, is the fact that a certain Furuta Nimura is included in this mission as well. Of all people and times. To say they’re wary of him might be an understatement. There’s no way at all he should even have the slightest idea about their escape, but Kaneki’s still worried. Furuta seems like the kind of person who has a knack for ruining things without trying and finds enjoyment in doing just that.

Kaneki guesses they’ll just have to deal with him if the situation calls for it.

“Hey, hey, Nagachika-kun?”

Kaneki could almost hear the sigh Hide immediately suppresses when Furuta trots next to him with a slightly mischievous bounce in his step. He seems to be the only person so far who’s unaffected by the usual grave atmosphere of ghoul exterminations; being able to retain this playful, apathetic air around himself despite being on the way to yet another potentially bloody battle. Kaneki finds it unnerving—no wonder Furuta’s the Garden’s favourite. He’s the perfect fighting machine.

“What?” Hide sounds like he’s trying very hard to resist ignoring him. Given how much he hates his guts, Kaneki’s impressed that he didn’t shut him up flat out. He doesn’t like the way Furuta glances at him with that little smirk on his face, though.

“You’re scheduled to receive Kaneki-kun’s kakuhou in two weeks, right?” Furuta asks, almost too loudly. Kaneki’s breath promptly stops in his throat. “Aren’t you excited?”

Kaneki knows about the kakuhou implantations that are supposed to take place a little after they return from this mission. He’s been informed of at least that much and he also knows why it’s so crucial for them to leave before that. But… Hide being one of the candidates compatible to receive his kakuhou? Why didn’t he tell him anything? If the operation succeeds his lifespan can be lengthened and he won’t need to die and—

Ah. He abruptly realizes the exact reason why Hide hasn’t said a thing to him.

“Not at all,” Hide replies coolly without looking Kaneki’s way even once. “There’s only a fifty percent chance of success for me, and knowing there’s a one in two chances that I might die doesn’t exactly sound appealing.”

“Aww, don’t be so negative!” Furuta says without sounding a bit reassuring. “I’m sure Kaneki-kun’s kagune will like you since you’re both so close!”

Hide mutters something Kaneki isn’t able to hear under his breath the exact moment Arima orders them to quiet down. Kaneki’s heart hammers against his chest, his mind spins from the new information. If they stay, Hide might have the chance to live longer. A fifty percent success rate is still better than none at all. Hide won’t have to die early and leave him alone.

Kaneki starts when Hide brushes his fingers across his arm, shooting him a look that tells him not to think about it. Kaneki returns it with a frown, to which Hide then responds with a subtle shake of his head. I’m not taking the risk for that operation, he seems to insist, the look in his gaze pleading for him to understand. Kaneki doesn’t. Surely they’ll find another opportunity to escape in the future? Once Hide gives up this one chance to receive Kaneki’s kakuhou, there will be none left. Kaneki doesn’t understand. He doesn’t understand at all.

He doesn’t even have the time to try understanding Hide’s reasoning behind his decision.

Fights with rogue ghouls are always abrupt, intense. All it takes is one attack to disrupt the balance, one person to make the first move, and whatever that follows will be almost impossible to keep track of. Kaneki’s engaged in combat before he knows it, his body instinctively moving to lure his opponent further away from the rest of the squad as Hide planned despite his newfound hesitation. Hide has given him the freedom to choose whether or not he wants to run away with him; isn’t it only right that he gives him his in return? Even when this case involves Hide choosing to live a shorter life?

Kaneki’s so distracted he nearly gets impaled in the gut; managing to dodge with just a graze on his right rib. He tries to retaliate, but his movements feel unusually sluggish. What’s he supposed to do? Will he disregard Hide’s resolution to rather die early than let the Garden go on doing whatever they want with the children’s bodies? Will he put everyone’s efforts thus far to waste for his own selfish wish of not wanting his closest and dearest friend to leave him behind a few years in the future?

It feels like that one time again, where every part of his body was numbed of feeling. Except even his mind feels numb now. He can’t think, can’t think. They’ve come this far. He can’t—

“Don’t look down on me, brat!”

This time, Kaneki snaps into attention a second too late. Pain flares up in his hands, his Quinque knocked from his grip in a blow he no doubt could’ve avoided had his thoughts been calmer. The ghoul he’s facing then attempts to take advantage of his second of surprised daze and lack of weapon, charging  right towards him with his kagune poised to attack.

Hide intersects him before he reaches Kaneki, pushing him back with a firm kick. For a reason Kaneki can’t explain, the sight of him causes something in him to finally crumble, and the panic he’s been unconsciously holding back comes flooding forth.

He can’t breathe, can’t breathe.

“Kaneki, we have to—“ Hide doesn’t finish his sentence, trailing off the moment he turns and sees the state Kaneki’s in. “Kaneki…?”

He doesn’t get to ask him what’s wrong, being forced to defend against the ghoul now thirsting for his blood. As Hide leads the ghoul a bit away, the strength seems to suddenly leave Kaneki’s legs, and he falls to his knees.

“Hide, I...” he gasps, his voice shaky. His chest hurts, his head spins. “I-If we leave, you can’t—“

Air doesn’t seem to be entering his lungs. Spots dance in his vision. He’s scared. The noises of combat around him sound too loud, too overwhelming. This is bad. Not now, please. He can’t break down, can’t break down, can’t break do—

“Kaneki!” Hide enters his field of vision with a firm call of his name, a splatter of blood across his jaw and neck. It’s not his, it doesn’t smell like his. He reaches out, but seems to hesitate in touching him at the last minute. “Listen, it’s going to be okay. I’m here.”

With an absurd amount of effort, Kaneki swallows, nodding haltingly. He gradually registers the sting in his scalp where his fingers tug harshly on his hair. Tentatively, Hide rests his hands on his shoulders.

“Take it slow, Kaneki. Yeah, just like that. One breath at a time.” He times a deep inhale along with him, guiding him in a slow exhale. “It’s alright. I’m not leaving you. Don’t let Furuta throw you off; I’ll be okay.”

Which part of dying at a young age does Hide find ‘okay’ is beyond Kaneki’s ability to fathom. Still, he’s slowly calming down again. The tone of Hide’s voice and his reassuring presence is helping.

“They couldn’t find any flaws in my genetic makeup that’ll lead to any conditions, you know,” Hide explains further while keeping a close eye on him. Kaneki struggles to process his words. Is that the truth or is he just making something up to put him at ease? “It’ll be fine, Kaneki. I’m not leaving you anytime soon, I promise.” Hide glances around, frowning. “I wish we can take a little more time for you to recover, but we have to hurry.” He turns to face him once more. “I’m really sorry, Kaneki. I know I shouldn’t rush you in this but…”

“Oh my, what’s the haste, Nagachika-kun? Can’t you see your dear Kaneki-kun’s not exactly in the best shape at the moment?”

Furuta definitely has a knack for ruining things. Kaneki hears Hide take a sharp, self-controlling breath.

“He’ll be in worse shape if you keep staying there and running your mouth, Furuta,” Hide retorts drily as he stands up. His cutting words don’t faze the other boy the slightest.

“Hey, I was just worried because I didn’t see the two of you around,” Furuta says with mocking concern in his voice, swaying his body comically. “So I volunteered to look for you guys! Fancy me finding you both so far away from the rest of the group! What may you be up to, hmm? Oh, what may you be up to?”

“Go back to the squad and tell Arima-san we’re fine; we’ll return as soon as Kaneki recovers,” Hide says, his composure giving nothing away. He’s doing a great job sounding authoritative despite the pinch they’re currently in.

Furuta simply smiles indulgently. “And if I don’t want to because I’m too worried about my precious friends from the Garden?”

“Please, as if you’re ever worried about anyone besides yourself,” Hide scoffs, his hands clenching into fists at his sides. Though Kaneki’s breathing has finally evened out by now, his heart is still beating fast and his muscles tense. He can’t see Hide’s expression from his position, but he knows he’s thinking, weighing their options.

“I won’t tell anyone, if that’s what bothering you,” Furuta assures suddenly with a dismissive wave of his hand. At this point, Kaneki won’t even be surprised if he’s seriously on to them about their plans to run off. His timing alone gives out enough suspicions.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Hide deadpans. Furuta clucks at him in disapproval, waggling a finger.

“Hideyoshi, Hideyoshi,” he shakes his head in exaggerated disappointment. “Don’t you think it’s obvious enough that the two of you are going t—“

He stops just in time to dodge the dagger Hide abruptly flings towards him. Then just as he’s opening his mouth to make yet another one of his annoying remarks, Hide picks up Kaneki’s Quinque from the ground by his feet and runs him through in such a smooth, rapid and precise transition that Kaneki’s muddled brain only registers what’s happened after Hide grabs his hand and pulls him along into a run.

This is it. There’s no going back.

Kaneki doesn’t see anyone following them even as they scramble down the porthole Hide has singled out beforehand and into the darkness. They don’t risk the seconds to even catch their breath, forging on by torchlight before their eyes could adjust to the lack of light. Despite how firmly Hide holds his hand, he’s unable to mask the tremor in his touch. Kaneki returns his tight grip as he steps into Hide’s pace, using his free hand to brush the tears staining his cheeks.

The thought of having to let go of him permanently some time in the near future truly, truly terrifies him.

#hidekane #kaneki ken #nagachika hideyoshi #tokyo ghoul #sunlit garden AU #i'll babble in the tags of the second chapter brb- #fanfiction

[toomanysinks]

Measuring and benchmarking the four vital signs of SaaS

Rory O’Driscoll Contributor

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Rory O’Driscoll is a partner at Scale Venture Partners.

More posts by this contributor

Understanding the Mendoza Line for SaaS growth

Tech Valuations In 2016: The End Of The Line For Sloppy Growth

SaaS metrics should be to a management team what patient vital signs are to an emergency room doctor: a simple set of universally understood numbers that allow a doctor to quickly know how ill a patient is and what needs fixing first.

Heart rate, blood pressure, respiratory rate and temperature are the big four vital signs in the ER. Everyone knows what they are, what they mean, and what good and bad looks like. When a patient is wheeled in, the doctor does not start by asking the EMT, “How exactly are we defining heart rate?” This shared understanding allows for rapid evaluation, then fast, focused action.

Not so much in SaaS, where discussions about definitions are all you hear. There are too many metrics, too many things to measure and too many useful but incompatible ways to measure them. This results in a loss of clarity, comprehension, and — most importantly — comparability across different companies.

At Scale we’ve spent the last 20 years evaluating investments in SaaS and other subscription companies. We have built an internal shared belief of what the Four Vital Signs of SaaS are, and how exactly to measure them. We have opted for simplicity over complexity in selecting these metrics. This has allowed us to benchmark accurately across companies and to know what a realistic version of “good” looks like.

Scale recently launched Scale Studio, an open-to-anyone tool that gives cloud and SaaS companies performance benchmarks based on these vital signs and 20 years of data across more than 300 companies.

The four vital signs of SaaS

The vital signs of SaaS are Revenue Growth, Sales Efficiency, Revenue Churn and Cash Burn. Almost everything that matters about the financial performance of a SaaS business is captured in these four metrics.

Revenue Growth matters because growth is the central purpose of a startup, and thus for an investor the most important driver of if value can be created at all. We have found that at each stage of a company’s development there is a minimum required level of growth below which a startup will struggle to attract venture capital. We’ve analyzed this Mendoza Line for SaaS growth previously on TechCrunch.

Sales Efficiency matters because software at scale is all about distribution, and thus the relationship between dollars invested in sales and marketing and dollars back via revenue is the key determinant of how much value is created per dollar invested. In a perfect world I would call this Distribution Efficiency, because calling it Sales Efficiency tends wrongly to narrow the focus on this metric to just sales, but that ship has sailed.

Revenue Churn matters because as growth slows the impact of churn escalates and provides an upper bound on how big a company can become. More fundamentally, high churn is just the financial evidence of a product that is not delivering value to customers. Products that do not deliver value cannot build value for their investors, which is why my former board colleague at Box, Mamoon Hamid, is right in saying that every company needs a non-financial north star.

And of course, Cash Burn matters because, well, duh — try running a company without it.

Measuring and benchmarking the four vital signs of SaaS

Vital Sign No. 1: Revenue Growth

There are multiple ways to measure revenue and thus Revenue Growth. ARR-based metrics are more forward-looking, but GAAP revenue tends to be calculated more accurately and is thus more comparable across companies. It typically lags ARR by about a quarter, and for simplicity we have not excluded services revenue. The simplest measure of Revenue Growth is the quarterly GAAP revenue run rate compared to the same quarter GAAP revenue one year ago (or a year from now for a forward-growth estimate). We also measure revenue growth using the ARR Growth Rate and a forward-looking measure of ARR growth that we call iCAGR.

We benchmark Revenue Growth by looking at companies at a comparable revenue run rate because revenue growth rates decline fairly predictably as absolute revenue scale increases (as is clear in the chart below). This means that the top quartile Revenue Growth rate of 123 percent at a $20 million revenue run rate would represent bottom quartile growth at a $2 million revenue run rate.

The chart and table below show, for various revenue run rates, which revenue growth rates represent top, median and bottom quartile performance. The Scale Studio data set has 300+ public and private SaaS companies, some of which have become public, many of which have not and most of which have raised at least some venture capital.

Using this table, a team can quickly benchmark their company’s performance. For example, a company that grew last year 80 percent from $11 million to $20 million is growing at just above 50th percentile growth for SaaS companies at that stage, which is 78 percent. We can also generate a separate table showing the same data on a forward-revenue basis, to allow a company to answer the related question: If I am at a $20 million run rate now, and I grow next year at 50 percent, how will I be doing relative to other SaaS companies?

It is also interesting to see that the data here broadly agrees with a separate calculation we did recently around the Mendoza Line for SaaS growth that tracks at or just above the bottom quartile of growth rate. The Mendoza Line was derived by math; this table was generated from real data — it is good to see both estimates roughly agree.

Another way to look at the same data is to think about the revenue trajectory over time, or “how many years to $100 million.”  The graph and table below show for a consistent top, median or bottom quartile company (at the cutoff points) how long it takes to grow from $1 million to $100 million. A company that grows consistently, just at the top quartile cutoff growth rate, takes six years to get to a $100 million run rate, a median performer takes eight years and a bottom quartile performer does not yet get there in 10 years. This is a calculation with all sorts of survivorship bias problems, because the slow growth companies tend to get acquired and not make it all the way to $100 million, but the analysis is roughly right.

This data also matches well to various rules of thumb. An example is the T2D3 (triple-triple-double-double-double) rule, which is also shown in the table above. T2D3 matches top quartile performance for the first four years and becomes just a little aspirational in year five. If you fail to double from year four to year five and only grow at 90 percent, we would still be glad to talk to you! (The data also roughly matches the Bessemer State of the Cloud Report, which shows an estimate of times to $100 million for best-in-class companies).

Vital Sign No. 2: Sales Efficiency

Sales Efficiency metrics (and again the reminder to think of this more broadly as Distribution Efficiency!) measure the relationship between dollars in (spent on Sales & Marketing) and dollars out (in the form of new revenue). For a recurring revenue business, by far the most intuitive way to measure this concept is by dividing the Gross or Net New ARR for the quarter by the fully loaded Sales & Marketing spend for the same quarter. The Gross SE metric measures the effectiveness of the company in generating new ARR, and the Net SE metric measures the overall effectiveness of the business in both generating and retaining revenue.

We love the simplicity of this calculation and its direct actionability. It can be explained in 30 seconds at a Sales Kick-Off meeting in a way that no other measure can. “We gave you this money, you gave us this ARR.” We are not a fan of putting lags in this method (comparing this quarter’s Net New ARR with last quarter’s S&M spend). There is some logic to the idea that there is lag between spend and results, but once you start to adjust, you end up with all sorts of special pleading. Keep it simple.

For a vital signs diagnosis, we prefer this metric to the complexity of the LTV/CAC calculation. An LTV to CAC works really well for consumer businesses and for B2B businesses that have fairly consistent deal size and low net churn. A former Scale portfolio company, HubSpot, did a brilliant job of orienting their business around this metric. However, for enterprise businesses with highly variable deal sizes and strong positive net cohort growth over time, the calculation becomes arbitrary. The underlying idea is real, namely that enterprise customers can have lower Gross SE but higher ultimate value as the cohorts grow, but trying to track and explain quarterly fluctuations is hard.

Another complexity we choose to avoid is using Gross Margin instead of Revenue. It is of course more correct to use Gross Margin, but especially at the early stages of a SaaS company, Gross Margin fluctuates based on fixed cost recovery issues that significantly distort the calculation.

The problem with an ARR-based Sales Efficiency metric is it doesn’t allow easy comparison across companies. ARR is not reported by public companies and private company ARR numbers are often suspect. Our workaround was to slightly tweak the calculation for Net SE, replacing the numerator (Net New ARR) with the intra-quarter difference in GAAP revenue multiplied by 4 (annualized). We call this formula using GAAP instead of ARR the Magic Number and it should be equal to Net Sales Efficiency with a one quarter lag (to allow ARR to convert to GAAP).

As a rule of thumb: When you’re talking to your team and want to keep it simple, talk Gross and Net Sales Efficiency; when you want to do benchmarking against other companies, use Magic Number.

The benchmarking results here are very different. Unlike Revenue Growth, which clearly declines as absolute revenue increases, we have found Sales Efficiency to be fairly consistent across the entire SaaS universe. The median Magic Number for our data set is between .8x and .7x, and the range from top quartile to bottom quartile is between .5x and 1.5x. This matches the public company data set where the median is .7x today.

Payback (on a revenue not a gross margin basis) is simply the inverse of this number, which implies that the average SaaS company is earning back in revenue what it spends in sales and marketing in one divided by .7 years — 17 months — with a top/bottom quartile range of eight months to two years.

We have also observed something that does not come in this table, which is that Sales Efficiency tends to be persistent over time for a given company, especially after $10 million. A good go-to-market model at a $10 million run rate tends to still be a good model at $100 million. And bad sales efficiency at $10 million is hard to change later.

The high top-quartile Magic Number for the $1 million revenue run rate represents an anomaly early on, as often founders are doing the selling themselves (and probably not allocating their costs to Sales & Marketing!). Pretty quickly top quartile Magic Number falls to 1.4x and then to 1.0x at scale.

Vital Sign No. 3: Revenue Churn

The simplest way to measure Gross and Net Churn is by taking Churned ARR (Gross) and Churned less Upsell ARR (Net) and dividing it by opening ARR for the period, usually a quarter. In the tables below, we show Gross Churn by quarter and annualized.

We acknowledge that this metric is a horrible oversimplification. For the Sales Efficiency calculation above, the simple method is also, we believe, the best method, but for the churn calculation this simplification comes at a significant cost in terms of being able to diagnosis underlying issues. At high growth rates especially, this measure understates actual churn. However, the vital signs framework calls for simplicity to allow consistent, relevant benchmarking across companies. If this simple benchmarking exercise exposes a churn problem, then a deeper dive using retention analysis and a cohort analysis is an absolutely required next step.

The data above shows Darwinian selection at work. Early on some companies have huge churn but they have to either improve or die. At a $20 million revenue run rate, even bottom quartile companies have annualized Gross Churn hovering around -22 percent.

Vital Sign No. 4: Cash Burn / Operating Income

Internally, we measure cash burn by looking at free cash flow for a quarter (operating cash flow less capex) and compare it to cash on the balance sheet to calculate a cash out date. For confidentiality reasons, we do not ask for cash balances in Scale Studio. A reasonable proxy for cash burn is Operating Income, and the chart and table below show Operating Income as a percent of Revenue at different revenue run rates.

To illustrate what this metric means, at a $20 million revenue run rate the median company in the data set is losing 63 percent of revenue, $12.7 million dollars, or colloquially “burning $1 million a month.” In Scale Studio you can also further benchmark total operating expenses one level down, across each of Gross Margin, Sales/Marketing, R&D and G&A.

The most important point to make about this metric is that in a recurring revenue business, operating income, or “burn,” however calculated is not a measure of efficiency. Instead it is a measure of how aggressively a company is investing. A high operating loss coupled with a high growth rate and high sales efficiency is an aggressive but probably sensible strategy provided of course the company has access to capital. A high burn, low growth company is a disaster in the making.

Exactly how much burn for exactly how much growth will be the subject for another post, but any comment that tries to link burn rate to value creation, without taking growth rate into account, is simply wrong. Many of the most successful SaaS companies were in the bottom quartile on this metric at $100 million in run rate revenue, but were also in the top quartile on revenue growth. Worth highlighting again is the proviso regarding access to capital. If the cash runs, out even the best business dies.

The very best companies are those such as Veeva and Atlassian where a high Sales Efficiency allowed them to simultaneously be top quartile on growth, and top quartile on operating income profitability. It is no accident that companies with these characteristics get premium public valuations.

What are your company’s vital signs?

Getting started with Scale Studio is simple: you enter nine basic data points for each of your trailing eight quarters then generate a benchmark report. The benchmarks use a sample set consisting of companies at the same revenue stage as yours. This allows for much more accurate benchmarking, especially for Revenue Growth and Operating Income which, as we have said, are a direct function of revenue run rate. The benchmarks give you a sense of your performance that is clear, concise, and comparable. Your report might say something like:

“At your current revenue run rate of $5 million, your Y/Y Revenue Growth rate of 150 percent is in the second quartile for companies of your size, your Magic Number of 0.8 is in the second quartile, your Gross Churn of -1 percent is in the top quartile, and your Operating Income of -152 percent of revenue is in the second quartile.”

Vital signs don’t cure patients, doctors do. SaaS vital signs don’t fix companies, management teams do. But realistic benchmarking metrics do what ER vital signs do: pinpoint issues, provide actionable context and allow you to get to work.

Jeremy Kaufmann contributed to this article.

source https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/26/measuring-and-benchmarking-the-four-vital-signs-of-saas/

[fmservers]

Measuring and benchmarking the four vital signs of SaaS

Rory O’Driscoll Contributor

Share on Twitter

Rory O’Driscoll is a partner at Scale Venture Partners.

More posts by this contributor

Understanding the Mendoza Line for SaaS growth

Tech Valuations In 2016: The End Of The Line For Sloppy Growth

SaaS metrics should be to a management team what patient vital signs are to an emergency room doctor: a simple set of universally understood numbers that allow a doctor to quickly know how ill a patient is and what needs fixing first.

Heart rate, blood pressure, respiratory rate and temperature are the big four vital signs in the ER. Everyone knows what they are, what they mean, and what good and bad looks like. When a patient is wheeled in, the doctor does not start by asking the EMT, “How exactly are we defining heart rate?” This shared understanding allows for rapid evaluation, then fast, focused action.

Not so much in SaaS, where discussions about definitions are all you hear. There are too many metrics, too many things to measure and too many useful but incompatible ways to measure them. This results in a loss of clarity, comprehension, and — most importantly — comparability across different companies.

At Scale we’ve spent the last 20 years evaluating investments in SaaS and other subscription companies. We have built an internal shared belief of what the Four Vital Signs of SaaS are, and how exactly to measure them. We have opted for simplicity over complexity in selecting these metrics. This has allowed us to benchmark accurately across companies and to know what a realistic version of “good” looks like.

Scale recently launched Scale Studio, an open-to-anyone tool that gives cloud and SaaS companies performance benchmarks based on these vital signs and 20 years of data across more than 300 companies.

The four vital signs of SaaS

The vital signs of SaaS are Revenue Growth, Sales Efficiency, Revenue Churn and Cash Burn. Almost everything that matters about the financial performance of a SaaS business is captured in these four metrics.

Revenue Growth matters because growth is the central purpose of a startup, and thus for an investor the most important driver of if value can be created at all. We have found that at each stage of a company’s development there is a minimum required level of growth below which a startup will struggle to attract venture capital. We’ve analyzed this Mendoza Line for SaaS growth previously on TechCrunch.

Sales Efficiency matters because software at scale is all about distribution, and thus the relationship between dollars invested in sales and marketing and dollars back via revenue is the key determinant of how much value is created per dollar invested. In a perfect world I would call this Distribution Efficiency, because calling it Sales Efficiency tends wrongly to narrow the focus on this metric to just sales, but that ship has sailed.

Revenue Churn matters because as growth slows the impact of churn escalates and provides an upper bound on how big a company can become. More fundamentally, high churn is just the financial evidence of a product that is not delivering value to customers. Products that do not deliver value cannot build value for their investors, which is why my former board colleague at Box, Mamoon Hamid, is right in saying that every company needs a non-financial north star.

And of course, Cash Burn matters because, well, duh — try running a company without it.

Measuring and benchmarking the four vital signs of SaaS

Vital Sign No. 1: Revenue Growth

There are multiple ways to measure revenue and thus Revenue Growth. ARR-based metrics are more forward-looking, but GAAP revenue tends to be calculated more accurately and is thus more comparable across companies. It typically lags ARR by about a quarter, and for simplicity we have not excluded services revenue. The simplest measure of Revenue Growth is the quarterly GAAP revenue run rate compared to the same quarter GAAP revenue one year ago (or a year from now for a forward-growth estimate). We also measure revenue growth using the ARR Growth Rate and a forward-looking measure of ARR growth that we call iCAGR.

We benchmark Revenue Growth by looking at companies at a comparable revenue run rate because revenue growth rates decline fairly predictably as absolute revenue scale increases (as is clear in the chart below). This means that the top quartile Revenue Growth rate of 123 percent at a $20 million revenue run rate would represent bottom quartile growth at a $2 million revenue run rate.

The chart and table below show, for various revenue run rates, which revenue growth rates represent top, median and bottom quartile performance. The Scale Studio data set has 300+ public and private SaaS companies, some of which have become public, many of which have not and most of which have raised at least some venture capital.

Using this table, a team can quickly benchmark their company’s performance. For example, a company that grew last year 80 percent from $11 million to $20 million is growing at just above 50th percentile growth for SaaS companies at that stage, which is 78 percent. We can also generate a separate table showing the same data on a forward-revenue basis, to allow a company to answer the related question: If I am at a $20 million run rate now, and I grow next year at 50 percent, how will I be doing relative to other SaaS companies?

It is also interesting to see that the data here broadly agrees with a separate calculation we did recently around the Mendoza Line for SaaS growth that tracks at or just above the bottom quartile of growth rate. The Mendoza Line was derived by math; this table was generated from real data — it is good to see both estimates roughly agree.

Another way to look at the same data is to think about the revenue trajectory over time, or “how many years to $100 million.”  The graph and table below show for a consistent top, median or bottom quartile company (at the cutoff points) how long it takes to grow from $1 million to $100 million. A company that grows consistently, just at the top quartile cutoff growth rate, takes six years to get to a $100 million run rate, a median performer takes eight years and a bottom quartile performer does not yet get there in 10 years. This is a calculation with all sorts of survivorship bias problems, because the slow growth companies tend to get acquired and not make it all the way to $100 million, but the analysis is roughly right.

This data also matches well to various rules of thumb. An example is the T2D3 (triple-triple-double-double-double) rule, which is also shown in the table above. T2D3 matches top quartile performance for the first four years and becomes just a little aspirational in year five. If you fail to double from year four to year five and only grow at 90 percent, we would still be glad to talk to you! (The data also roughly matches the Bessemer State of the Cloud Report, which shows an estimate of times to $100 million for best-in-class companies).

Vital Sign No. 2: Sales Efficiency

Sales Efficiency metrics (and again the reminder to think of this more broadly as Distribution Efficiency!) measure the relationship between dollars in (spent on Sales & Marketing) and dollars out (in the form of new revenue). For a recurring revenue business, by far the most intuitive way to measure this concept is by dividing the Gross or Net New ARR for the quarter by the fully loaded Sales & Marketing spend for the same quarter. The Gross SE metric measures the effectiveness of the company in generating new ARR, and the Net SE metric measures the overall effectiveness of the business in both generating and retaining revenue.

We love the simplicity of this calculation and its direct actionability. It can be explained in 30 seconds at a Sales Kick-Off meeting in a way that no other measure can. “We gave you this money, you gave us this ARR.” We are not a fan of putting lags in this method (comparing this quarter’s Net New ARR with last quarter’s S&M spend). There is some logic to the idea that there is lag between spend and results, but once you start to adjust, you end up with all sorts of special pleading. Keep it simple.

For a vital signs diagnosis, we prefer this metric to the complexity of the LTV/CAC calculation. An LTV to CAC works really well for consumer businesses and for B2B businesses that have fairly consistent deal size and low net churn. A former Scale portfolio company, HubSpot, did a brilliant job of orienting their business around this metric. However, for enterprise businesses with highly variable deal sizes and strong positive net cohort growth over time, the calculation becomes arbitrary. The underlying idea is real, namely that enterprise customers can have lower Gross SE but higher ultimate value as the cohorts grow, but trying to track and explain quarterly fluctuations is hard.

Another complexity we choose to avoid is using Gross Margin instead of Revenue. It is of course more correct to use Gross Margin, but especially at the early stages of a SaaS company, Gross Margin fluctuates based on fixed cost recovery issues that significantly distort the calculation.

The problem with an ARR-based Sales Efficiency metric is it doesn’t allow easy comparison across companies. ARR is not reported by public companies and private company ARR numbers are often suspect. Our workaround was to slightly tweak the calculation for Net SE, replacing the numerator (Net New ARR) with the intra-quarter difference in GAAP revenue multiplied by 4 (annualized). We call this formula using GAAP instead of ARR the Magic Number and it should be equal to Net Sales Efficiency with a one quarter lag (to allow ARR to convert to GAAP).

As a rule of thumb: When you’re talking to your team and want to keep it simple, talk Gross and Net Sales Efficiency; when you want to do benchmarking against other companies, use Magic Number.

The benchmarking results here are very different. Unlike Revenue Growth, which clearly declines as absolute revenue increases, we have found Sales Efficiency to be fairly consistent across the entire SaaS universe. The median Magic Number for our data set is between .8x and .7x, and the range from top quartile to bottom quartile is between .5x and 1.5x. This matches the public company data set where the median is .7x today.

Payback (on a revenue not a gross margin basis) is simply the inverse of this number, which implies that the average SaaS company is earning back in revenue what it spends in sales and marketing in one divided by .7 years — 17 months — with a top/bottom quartile range of eight months to two years.

We have also observed something that does not come in this table, which is that Sales Efficiency tends to be persistent over time for a given company, especially after $10 million. A good go-to-market model at a $10 million run rate tends to still be a good model at $100 million. And bad sales efficiency at $10 million is hard to change later.

The high top-quartile Magic Number for the $1 million revenue run rate represents an anomaly early on, as often founders are doing the selling themselves (and probably not allocating their costs to Sales & Marketing!). Pretty quickly top quartile Magic Number falls to 1.4x and then to 1.0x at scale.

Vital Sign No. 3: Revenue Churn

The simplest way to measure Gross and Net Churn is by taking Churned ARR (Gross) and Churned less Upsell ARR (Net) and dividing it by opening ARR for the period, usually a quarter. In the tables below, we show Gross Churn by quarter and annualized.

We acknowledge that this metric is a horrible oversimplification. For the Sales Efficiency calculation above, the simple method is also, we believe, the best method, but for the churn calculation this simplification comes at a significant cost in terms of being able to diagnosis underlying issues. At high growth rates especially, this measure understates actual churn. However, the vital signs framework calls for simplicity to allow consistent, relevant benchmarking across companies. If this simple benchmarking exercise exposes a churn problem, then a deeper dive using retention analysis and a cohort analysis is an absolutely required next step.

The data above shows Darwinian selection at work. Early on some companies have huge churn but they have to either improve or die. At a $20 million revenue run rate, even bottom quartile companies have annualized Gross Churn hovering around -22 percent.

Vital Sign No. 4: Cash Burn / Operating Income

Internally, we measure cash burn by looking at free cash flow for a quarter (operating cash flow less capex) and compare it to cash on the balance sheet to calculate a cash out date. For confidentiality reasons, we do not ask for cash balances in Scale Studio. A reasonable proxy for cash burn is Operating Income, and the chart and table below show Operating Income as a percent of Revenue at different revenue run rates.

To illustrate what this metric means, at a $20 million revenue run rate the median company in the data set is losing 63 percent of revenue, $12.7 million dollars, or colloquially “burning $1 million a month.” In Scale Studio you can also further benchmark total operating expenses one level down, across each of Gross Margin, Sales/Marketing, R&D and G&A.

The most important point to make about this metric is that in a recurring revenue business, operating income, or “burn,” however calculated is not a measure of efficiency. Instead it is a measure of how aggressively a company is investing. A high operating loss coupled with a high growth rate and high sales efficiency is an aggressive but probably sensible strategy provided of course the company has access to capital. A high burn, low growth company is a disaster in the making.

Exactly how much burn for exactly how much growth will be the subject for another post, but any comment that tries to link burn rate to value creation, without taking growth rate into account, is simply wrong. Many of the most successful SaaS companies were in the bottom quartile on this metric at $100 million in run rate revenue, but were also in the top quartile on revenue growth. Worth highlighting again is the proviso regarding access to capital. If the cash runs, out even the best business dies.

The very best companies are those such as Veeva and Atlassian where a high Sales Efficiency allowed them to simultaneously be top quartile on growth, and top quartile on operating income profitability. It is no accident that companies with these characteristics get premium public valuations.

What are your company’s vital signs?

Getting started with Scale Studio is simple: you enter nine basic data points for each of your trailing eight quarters then generate a benchmark report. The benchmarks use a sample set consisting of companies at the same revenue stage as yours. This allows for much more accurate benchmarking, especially for Revenue Growth and Operating Income which, as we have said, are a direct function of revenue run rate. The benchmarks give you a sense of your performance that is clear, concise, and comparable. Your report might say something like:

“At your current revenue run rate of $5 million, your Y/Y Revenue Growth rate of 150 percent is in the second quartile for companies of your size, your Magic Number of 0.8 is in the second quartile, your Gross Churn of -1 percent is in the top quartile, and your Operating Income of -152 percent of revenue is in the second quartile.”

Vital signs don’t cure patients, doctors do. SaaS vital signs don’t fix companies, management teams do. But realistic benchmarking metrics do what ER vital signs do: pinpoint issues, provide actionable context and allow you to get to work.

Jeremy Kaufmann contributed to this article.

Via David Riggs https://techcrunch.com

#TechCrunch

[kj1966-blog]

https://www.bloomberg.com

Goldman Thinks This Fed Meeting May Not Be a Sleeper After All

Far from being a complete non-event, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. expects a slightly hawkish upgrade of language at the Federal Reserve meeting this week, slated to be Janet Yellen’s last.

“We expect the FOMC to issue a generally upbeat post-meeting statement that includes an upgrade to the balance of risks and a slightly hawkish rewording of the inflation assessment,” Goldman economists led by Jan Hatzius wrote in a note dated Saturday. “Taken together, we believe the tone of the statement will be consistent with a hike at the March meeting, barring a sharp weakening in economic conditions.”

Inflation remains below target, but measures of it have firmed recently and “we think many Committee members will view the core inflation rebound in recent months as additional evidence that last year’s shortfall largely reflected temporary, idiosyncratic factors,” the report said.

Goldman Thinks This Fed Meeting May Not Be a Sleeper After All

The economists also see the risks to the economic outlook changed to “balanced” from “roughly balanced.”

“In our view, the ‘roughly balanced’ verbiage in the December statement was already somewhat stale, particularly when viewed in the context of the minutes’ upbeat growth commentary and risk assessment,” they said. “Public remarks since that meeting bolster the case for an upgrade, and by our count, at least half of the Committee has recently referenced upside risks to growth.”

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  The 6 Things to Watch in This Week’s Fed Meeting

The Federal Open Market Committee meeting this week is likely to reinforce the baseline expectation of three hikes this year thanks to a more upbeat outlook for the U.S. and global economies, and somewhat diminished concern about “lowflation.”

Her last meeting.  Photographer: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg

Specifically:

Rather than be deterred by the headline miss on the first estimate of fourth-quarter gross domestic product growth reported Jan. 26, Fed officials are likely to welcome the data’s relatively strong internals, particularly those regarding investment and consumption. Indeed, the latest numbers will be seen as adding to a more general string of solid economic reports, both for the U.S. and for the rest of the world.

This synchronized pickup in global growth, along with increased comfort with the inflation dynamics, will solidify the previous baseline guidance of three 25-basis-points hikes in 2018, with the first likely to take place in March. The recent depreciation of the dollar also contributes to this outlook. Indeed, compared with last year, market and Fed expectations for the annual path of rate hikes are on track for a much earlier convergence.

Although some observers and market participants may also be tempted to alter the balance of risks to the upside — that is, to expect four rather than two hikes in the event the current baseline fails to materialize — the Fed will see the two-sided risks as balanced for now.

There is unlikely to be anything new or notable about the balance-sheet reduction plan. The previously announced timeline won’t be revised or even highlighted in any major way. Meanwhile, more general exploratory discussions about frameworks and targets are likely to proceed gradually, with the aim of ensuring continued effective baseline management and exploring contingencies, resilience and reactions in the event of unanticipated adverse shocks.

With a successful steady-as-it goes monetary policy in the U.S., more attention will need to be devoted to the economic and market impact, including on U.S. interest rates and other market valuations, of the actions likely to be taken this year by the Bank of Japan and the European Central Bank in response to better-than-anticipated developments in their economies. But Fed deliberations on these matters are unlikely to be publicized in any notable fashion.

Finally, this will be Chair Janet Yellen’s last FOMC meeting, and she is likely to receive lots of accolades from her colleagues. Working collaboratively and effectively with other Fed governors and regional presidents, she has engineered an ongoing “beautiful normalization” — that is, a gradual, cautious and sequential exit from years of unconventional monetary policies that have neither disrupted markets nor derailed growth. The new Fed chair, Jerome Powell, is well placed to build on and successfully extend this achievement.

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Liam Fox Says It’s ‘Foolish’ to Challenge Embattled May

Theresa May is fighting on multiple fronts as critics inside her governing Conservative Party threaten to upend her plans for Brexit and even her premiership.

But in a key intervention Liam Fox, an ardent supporter of Brexit and her international trade secretary, had a message for Tories thinking of calling for a no-confidence vote in May’s leadership: “They would be foolish to do anything to destabilise the government and the prime minister. Nothing will change the electoral arithmetic.” Tories only have a working majority in Parliament thanks to the Democratic Unionist Party.

Liam Fox Photographer: Luke MacGregor/Bloomberg

The government has been given the task of delivering Brexit and “the prime minister has shown the resilience” to do the job,” Fox said in an interview. “Ultimately we have to get an agreement that will please different wings of the Conservative Party but most importantly that is good for the country.”

May’s party is split over how to leave the European Union as time runs out for finalizing the U.K.’s policy. Opponents of retaining EU trade rules after a divorce want her to fire Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond, who they say is trying to deny them the clean, quick break they want.

Some Conservative lawmakers complain she’s failing to show leadership, amid media reports that they are poised to try to trigger a vote of no confidence in the prime minister. Even U.S. President Donald Trump offered a critical assessment of May’s handling of Brexit, saying in an interview broadcast at the weekend he’d have taken a “tougher stand” with the EU.

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When Russian Officials ‘Nightmare’ Your Business, You Can Lose Everything—Even Your Life

If a well-connected rival wants somebody’s law practice or tech startup, there’s a fair chance he can get it. Here’s the latest twist on these assaults.

Late last year, Moscow news media reported that an armed man had taken hostages at a candy factory in the city and killed a guard. The alleged shooter turned out to be a former owner of the factory, still fighting for control of it. He told Business FM before his arrest that he was resisting a raid staged by law enforcement agents to seize the business. In court, he said he had killed the guard in self-defence. He is now in remand prison, or pre-trial detention, pending the results of an investigation.

Ruslan Telkov outside the prison where he was detained for “violating the authors’ rights of leopards” by using their skin pattern in the furniture upholstery he manufactured. Photographer: Misha Friedman for Bloomberg

His claims struck a chord in Russia, where innumerable business owners, company managers, lawyers and other professionals have spent years in detention and lost their assets, their health or even their lives to a widespread culture of prosecutorial excess.

One spent a year in prison accused of stealing the intellectual property of leopards by using their skin pattern in the furniture upholstery he made; he lost $360,000, by his count, including his business. Another, a contractor named Andrey Kleshchin, was just released from a year’s confinement in his apartment, where he was banned from using the telephone or the internet.

“But the most unbearable thing is to watch my business, which I had built over the years, being destroyed,” Kleshchin wrote in response to questions passed to him by his lawyer.

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Workers say they warned Amtrak before deadly crash

By Scott Bronstein, Drew Griffin and Collette Richards, CNN Investigates

Updated 1922 GMT (0322 HKT) January 28, 2018

Portland, Oregon (CNN)In the days before Amtrak 501 careened off the tracks last month in a deadly crash, engineers and conductors warned their supervisors that they did not feel adequately trained on the new route, according to more than a dozen sources.

Several train cars flew off an overpass, landing on Interstate 5 in the December 18 accident near DuPont, Washington, which left three dead and more than 100 injured. At the time, Amtrak 501 was making its inaugural journey of a new Seattle-to-Portland run called the Point Defiance Bypass route.

  Workers say they warned Amtrak before deadly crash

  Engineers and conductors had safety concerns, citing rushed and “totally inadequate” training which left them feeling dangerously unprepared for the new route, according to multiple sources, including several directly involved in the training. Crew members traditionally train on new routes to familiarize themselves with the signs, terrain and other physical characteristics which vary from route to route.

Some training runs were performed at night, with as many as six or more crew members stuffed into cars with just three seats, which meant some trainees rode backwards, in the dark, the sources said. Engineers felt they did not get enough practice runs at the controls and could not properly see to familiarize themselves with the route.

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  NEWS SUMMARY. 29TH JAN 2018/KUALA LUMPUR TIME/UTC/GMT +8 hours: Goldman Thinks This Fed Meeting May Not Be a Sleeper After All. … The 6 Things to Watch in This Week’s Fed Meeting. … Liam Fox Says It’s ‘Foolish’ to Challenge Embattled May. … When Russian Officials ‘Nightmare’ Your Business, You Can Lose Everything—Even Your Life. … Workers say they warned Amtrak before deadly crash Goldman Thinks This Fed Meeting May Not Be a Sleeper After All Far from being a complete non-event, Goldman Sachs Group Inc.

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