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There were a lot of differences between them.
Rize Kamishiro's laughter was obviously feminine, high pitched, sheer amusement, smugness and superiority emanating from every loud intake of breath between each giggle.
Yamori laughed like a maniac – a raucous, brutal and insane laugh full of euphoria and excitement, leaving no room for any unnecessary breaths.
And finally, of course, him. His laughter was nothing pretty or delightful – it was a desperate, screeching sound, like a stuck phonograph record, a kind of ironic outpouring of such incredible pain that it could do nothing but laugh because there was nothing else left.
The discordant, chaotic cacophony of three different laughs had become the only sound in the whole wide world. It clicked in his ears and coiled in his brain with the energy and ferocity of a centipede, each strike of one of those tiny feet tearing apart any remaining thought.
His mind was a blur, full of images and confused sounds, filled with faces that didn't make sense and memories that didn't belong together, so when he tried to collect them he understood none of them, only felt as if he had cut his fingers on their sharp edges.
He watched the drops of blood bloom from his skin, the unfurling blossoms of beautiful, red flowers whose tiny petals reminded him of the legs of some dead insect.
He shook the flowers from his fingers and watched them land with ease on Rize's hair. Ghoul sat right at his feet, toying with the fingers of some dead body and giggled, when she felt the flower in her hair. She reached for it, her mouth pouting in an almost childlike expression, before crushing the flower between her fingers and turning her head to Kaneki, eyes glowing a thick black with red pupils.
Rize stopped laughing.
That left Yamori and the other Kaneki, the one who was nowhere to be seen, but the real Kaneki could still hear him.
He looked around at the sea of corpses, at the limbs sticking up in the air almost like flags on mountaintops, at the individual waves of hair and heads, and at the whole bloody mess blending together, stretching across the horizon.
The corpses were moving. It wasn't a steady or even conscious movement, it almost seemed like the ripples of a lake washing up on the shore. Bloody foam washed over Rize's fingertips with a soft sniff as Kaneki stepped over the bodies around her and dove between them.
He had no idea why. He needed to silence the two.
He heard another voice somewhere else. He didn't understand it, but it seemed familiar. Calm, steady, almost cheerful.
Kaneki pushed the corpses away from him as he waded through them to find Yamori, forcing him to shut up because his persistent laughter wouldn't stop. Bloated, bloodied bodies clung to him, their glassy, empty eyes following him with every move he made, their fingers brushing against him in a last ghostly longing to of touch, the tips of their hair tickling his skin, and soon their blood was everywhere, including under his black fingernails, which he dug into the greasy, icy bodies again and again to push them apart so he could continue.
If it weren't for Yamori's laughter, it would certainly have been a very unnaturally quiet journey. This way Kaneki didn't even hear the blood splashing as he made his way through the corpses.
Why were there so many of them?
So many bodies, so many dead, so much death, so much... Where are they?
Where are they?
Hh?
Click. Click. Click.
Black, white, black, white. Regularly spaced squares, like a chessboard, the shiny floor reflecting only the blackness above his head. There was no sign of the bodies, or Rize whom he had left behind.
Yamori didn't stop laughing though, in fact his laughter only seemed to intensify.
Kaneki stepped lightly across the checkered floor into the darkness, the chains that pressed against his ankles clanking and scraping the skin from his flesh with each step.
Other than the black and white squares beneath his feet, he was unable to see anything else through the thick darkness, so he just kept walking, Yamori's laughter leading him almost like a moth to the light, with that hideous, iron clanking.
Suddenly his leg gave out from under him and he could barely keep his balance. Looking down, he realized that the black and white floor was covered with a thick layer of fresh, sticky blood in almost beautiful patterns. The spatters and smears created bizarre images on the floor, creating their own stories with them.
Kaneki continued on, and the laughter and chains were joined by the sticky sound of his feet slapping against the bloody floor. At some point, even severed finger parts appeared among the puddles of blood, resembling tiny ships wading through the red ocean in a fierce naval battle.
The fingers grew in number and suddenly there were so many that they almost covered both the blood and the floor. And then a massive, ghoulish silhouette emerged from the darkness, crouched in a perfect circle made only of twisted fingers. The ghoul's head was thrown back, and even through the large, white mask that covered his entire face, his loud, maniacal laughter pierced through the shadows and echoed everywhere.
Kaneki walked over to him, accompanied by the clinking of chains and the soft snapping of severed fingers of arms and legs. He crossed the circle of fingers and stood right in front of Yamori, who didn't even stop to look at him – the only purpose of his existence became the endless laughter of intoxication at the pain and suffering, in a swamp of slimy blood, slick fingers and sticky darkness.
It was almost like a monster from a fairy tale, hidden in its horrific lair, waiting for any fool to attempt to set foot in its territory.
Kaneki squatted down and touched the shackles that wrapped around his legs and bit into his skin. He clenched one of them in his fist and pulled hard on it, the shackle breaking so easily under his force that it could even be considered a mere silk ribbon.
He straightened, fingers still curled into a fist, and stood facing Yamori, who paid him no attention.
Kaneki leaned in close, close enough to feel the ghoul's body tremble at his fit of laughter, and brought his face close to his ear. It was almost unbearable to be so close to Yamori, the insistent, deranged sound that escaped from beneath his white mask louder than any thought and stronger than any awareness of reality, but it didn't matter at the moment.
Kaneki reached out, spreading his fingers and pointing the large, red-headed centipede directly at Yamori's ear.
The agile, predatory creature granted his request almost enthusiastically, dozens of tiny feet clinging to Yamori's shoulder before it straightened up and lightly touched its antennae to the inside of Yamori's ear, then, faster than Kaneki could register, slipped right in.
Silence followed.
Kaneki straightened, stepped away from the finally silent ghoul, stepped out of his finger circle, and headed for his latest target.
After the quieter, more desperate laughter that had been drowned out by the voices of the other two ghouls up to this point.
He had left the fingers, Yamori, and the blood behind him, and now walked across the checkered floor in almost complete silence, if it weren't for the faint giggle echoing in the darkness of his mind.
Somewhere in the background he listened to another voice. Maybe even the running of something that resembled water.
He wasn't sure. He didn't know, it was too distant, too vague, too unimportant and too quiet compared to the other Kaneki.
Suddenly there was a ceiling. A dirty, rounded ceiling, pipes coated the entire length of dark concrete, thick, dark liquid flowing lazily through the center of the space, droplets of congealed moisture clinging to the walls and stones.
Kaneki didn't stop, treading the cold, wet floor, not bothering to consider whether the convoluted maze of sewer passages was leading him in any particular direction. He had to get somewhere sooner or later, didn't he? He couldn't walk forever, nothing lasted forever, everything eventually ceased to exist, so there was no point in worrying if he would remain trapped in the labyrinth of pipes and damp walls.
Turn, turn, left, left, left, right, right, left, right. It was a confused movement, full of the same places and the same sounds but it didn't matter. He had to go somewhere.
Unless he was locked in a circle - an endless, ever-repeating circle.
If that was the case, he had to reach the center eventually.
That was the Centipede. A white-haired ghoul, crouched by the ground, arms wrapped around his chest, around a nasty, deep wound that had torn off a good chunk of his flesh and wasn't healing.
Kaneki stared at him wordlessly, and took a step back when Centipede registered his presence and lifted his head sharply, revealing a grotesque mask with a strange sort of beak and a blank, white eye.
It was then that Kaneki realized that the broken, lilting laughter he'd been listening to all the way through the sewers was actually shaky sobs and pleas. He didn't know how he had managed to mistake such a thing, but in the end, there didn't seem to be any particularly big difference in the two sounds.
Laughter could be as much an expression of suffering and pain as tears were of happiness and joy.
"Make it stop," Centipede grunted. "Stop it, please. Please, please, please, please..."
His words turned into an unintelligible knot of mutterings, pleas, and sobs as his hands fiercely went into his hair and pulled hard.
Kaneki wanted him to shut up. He wanted to silence him as he had done with Rize and as he had done with Yamori, but he didn't know what to offer the Centipede to stop the shrill crying.
He watched the outline of the white-haired ghoul on the dirt floor, blood oozing thickly from a literal hole in his body, watched the kagune that shot out of his back and twisted in the air, flailing and swinging at enemies who weren't there.
Cries turned to screams, pleas to simple sounds of despair.
He had no idea what to do. What to give him.
The water from the canal began to rise, brushing against Kaneki's legs and soon drenching his knees as well. The Centipede disappeared under the water, his kagune slowly sinking to the surface, and then it too disappeared, leaving Kaneki alone, in silence.
Silence?
There was no silence. Never here.
Suddenly he was hungry. Everything was so much heavier now, so much more indistinct, there was something wrong in his head, there were so many things, voices, sounds, images, smells.
The scent, the taste.
Oh, the hunger. He needed meat. He needed to live, he needed to do something, where were the others?
"Hey Kaneki."
He knew that voice.
And it wasn't in his head.
Ghoul turned to face the human.