A five-year-old girl with long messy pink hair and red ribbons tied around her horns could be seen doing advanced algebra while lying on her bed. This was Kaede.

'Nearly finished…', Kaede thought with a small smile, she was not the biggest fan of math in her past life, it cost her an entire year of college but here it felt almost like a game. 

It was her idea to do that, well at the start when she was barely two years old and was bored to death she asked to learn things. 

This rapidly escalated as she showed progressively more of her intelligence, but still never forgot she was a child and that there were things she should not magically know or understand. 

This was not new for her parents that she was a 'genius', her Mom was the most euphoric and enthusiastic about this of the pair. Making her not go to kindergarten, which Kaede was infinitely grateful for. In fact, she was homeschooled. 

It will save her from many inconveniences such as physically going to school, stupid people, and bullying, because of many different reasons, one being her horns, even if they could be hidden behind a haircut with two buns, they would at some point be discovered. 

And going to school was something she was happy to not do, besides the fact that it would be rather pointless to her. A waste of time and money. And even potentially dangerous, was it paranoia? Yes, but a healthy dose of paranoia never hurt.

Another thing why she was putting so much effort so young was to be better, smarter. The first years of life play a fundamental role in the brain development of a child and as such their future.

Essentially she was with the idea of using research and experience she read about in her past life of parents, scientists in particular who intellectually nurtured their children from a young age to make geniuses of them. Often with dubious morals, such as how the child genius Williams Jame Sidis was made, or at least partially made.

The purpose was to stimulate her brain and increase the already exceptional level of neuronal connection of a child. Mind you she was no neurologist or expert on how the brain works, she knew way more than the average but that was it.

But it worked, slowly and surely but it did and it was a euphoric feeling to actively be able to tell the difference from one year to another. In the first place she felt that her memories in this life were somewhat 'better', so doing what she did was only beneficial.

And if it did not have any real impact on the structure of her brain and its influence on her intelligence in the end she would have ended up smarter and with more knowledge either way.

This was without the obvious of how the fuck she didn't become brain with the mind of a 29 years old male in the undeveloped brain of a baby.

And how it impacted her development. Sadly besides putting it on soul and esoteric stuff nothing much could be said. Maybe it was even the reason why she looked like an albino girl with pink hair and horns, who knows?

But the fact that she could somewhat think coherently in the last few months of when she was in the womb even if it was more of an acid dream was mind-boggling enough. 

Anyway, she discovered that she was in the world of Tokyo Ghoul or one scarcely similar to this one. Not the worst world she could have ended up in, but in any case, it was bad news. And it wouldn't be fun if it weren't the case wouldn't it?

She knew that ghouls were not inherently monsters the same way humans weren't either, even if everything even her parents told her that.

But saying ghouls were not more dangerous to humans than any other species besides humans themselves and mosquitoes, of course, would be lying. Prey defending themselves is natural.

The possibility of ending up as some ghoul dinner was very real. Frankly, man-eating humanoids capable of hiding within any human society in plain sight were simply put, terrifying.

Coexistence between the two species was quite literally the silliest thing imaginable if it were to be put on something greater than a small group. She remembered from somewhere it was how the manga ended.

Humans can't even support the presence of one another if they have a slight difference in beliefs, ideas, or melanin concentration in their skin. Or they start conflict for a plethora of other reasons some justifiable and some not.

So another entire sapient species just as varied? Even worse when said species can exclusively feed on human flesh, prey on them, but can also drink coffee for some reason.

As far as she knew she seemed pretty human. Yet the possibility of her being not truly human was still on her mind, she remarked that she never got any disease but this could be put to her lack of interaction with the outside, and she healed fast, nothing exceptional but for example, a paper cut would disappear in less than a minute.

This she didn't let anybody know, but otherwise, she didn't feel like she had any powers or anything that much special about her besides the unique appearance that she somewhat grew accustomed to.

Stretching her body Kaede walked out of her room, moving down the corridor she arrived in the kitchen to see her Dad, Taori, preparing dinner. 

'Oh! So it's curry today. Nice.', she thought, it was one of her favorite meals, not that she was a picky eater, the only thing she truly hated was coffee in all of its shapes and form.

One morning she saw her Mom drink some and asked to taste, a different body different taste was what Kaede thought. And what she got was a trip to animation such as her allergic response. 

"Oh, Kaede, would you mind bringing me the onion? Three or four please.", her Dad asked with a gentle smile on his face. His life couldn't be any better, a loving wife with a genius daughter and the comfort of an apartment not far from CCG headquarters.

Taori worked as a cook in a restaurant not even 2 minutes away from the CCG headquarters.

"Kay Dad!", she responded and did as instructed, she came back not even 30 seconds later with a bag containing four onions. As per usual she walked on the stool that put her at a height to help.

Peeling off the outer layer of skin and giving the onions to her Dad for him to cut them and hide how it made him cry, Kaede smiled, as daunting as the future would be, the present moment was relaxing. And she knew that moments as casual as they are, are important.