I promise there is a story down there and you can just scroll down to it if you want.
Major disclaimer: Characters, plot, dialogue, setting, pretty much the whole shebang belong to Gosho. I am in no way claiming a right to, or profiting from this. This was created and posted with the intention of commenting and theorizing about the original work.
Author's note: This was made as a follow up to the Shared Past Gosho was Hinting At so if you like it please consider hopping on over there to check out an account of events leading to this point.
More importantly:
So on the file cover of file: 242 A White World we see the concrete wall behind Sherry to either side. We know from a manga panel in the previous chapter that Gin fired more than one shot at that time. We can also see exactly one forward blood splatter of the first shot that hit her shoulder on the wall behind. Also pictured are two roundish cracks in the concrete to either side of her that are more low to the ground. They don't have a blood splatter or a corresponding wound on Sherry as at the time of the cover she is pictured to have only the first shoulder wound. The bullet holes are also nowhere near the forward splatter indicating that the other shots fired at that time were not just a little too high to hit her shoulder. At other times in the manga Gin is shown to have impeccable aim and experience with guns, and at such a close range it is almost impossible to imagine he could have missed so badly to either side of her. If that's where the bullet holes were, with everything we have been led to believe about Gin's skill thus far, that's where he was aiming.
On the other hand, they could have been warning shots so she stayed where so was, though that would be kind of wasteful and pointless considering she was already injured, exhausted, and cornered. Plus, other reasons make for a far more interesting theory.
Bullets in Concrete: a Retelling of A White World
Gin pressed himself against the roof access door, listening. Its metal surface was like ice, and the chill seeped through the several layers of cloth to his shoulder.
"What are you doing?" Vodka asked.
He motioned to silence his partner, and cracked the door open. He could hear panting and the vague whisper of a woman's voice. Sherry.
"-the strength to run away." The last part of what she'd been saying carried over to where he'd wedged the door the rest of the way open. She was alone, the partner in her conversation was nowhere to be seen.
It was Sherry who had taken the initiative to riffle through his car earlier that day, and Sherry who had come to an event where the Organization was performing a hit. And yet she spoke of running away.
Sherry dragged herself a short distance through the snow away from the chimney, where she'd climbed out onto the roof, and used the roof's retaining wall to prop herself up. Gin and Vodka had been silent, and her exhaustion and panting left her still unaware of them.
He pulled his gun and centered his sight on the traitor. His orders were to kill her immediately, as were the orders for all traitors to the Organization. His aim strayed down from the back of her head to her shoulder.
He fired three shots in quick succession. His first shot grazed the top of her shoulder, drawing blood.
"I was dying to see you, Sherry." He announced theatrically.
She turned back to face him in shock, slamming her shoulder into the nearby retaining wall to maintain balance. She was backed up into a corner of the roof, utterly trapped. On the wall behind her was the forward splatter from the first shot. The two shots after he had aimed low and off several feet to either side.
"Isn't it pretty, white snow floating amidst dark night, letting blood color it all a crimson red." Gin continued as she huffed out heavy breaths. She was clutching her shoulder where the bullet had grazed her, and a thin stream of blood ran down her arm. Her expression was scrunched behind a pair of glasses that looked so unnatural on her face. "Even if you wear glasses and put on a janitor's uniform you still can't escape death. This is a suited execution ground for a traitor. Don't you think?"
It was at this point that he suspected Sherry started to realize something. Only one of those shots had hit her, the other bullets would be lodged into the cement wall behind her. She had never known Gin to miss his mark, certainly not at such a close range.
She smiled, and proceeded to buy herself time. "How did you know I would come out of the chimney?"
"Your hair. I found a strand of your reddish brown hair by the fireplace. Didn't you know that we entered the wine cellar where Bisik kept you? I heard you, your heavy breathing inside that fireplace. At first I wanted to kill you there. But since I had a hard time finding you, I decided to let you die more beautifully."
What he had just said was in exact opposition to something he had said to her before. Gin thought that traitors were the worst kind of people, to make a mockery of loyalty. They didn't deserve to live a second longer than he could possibly eliminate them. An efficient death was what suited them, a bullet to head that would ensure death.
"Ah," She adopted a smirk and a way of speaking he had become very familiar with during his time with her. Had she figured it out? "Then maybe I should thank you, for waiting for me in the cold breeze." That was one of those things, wasn't it? Waiting in the cold was something a lover would do.
"Humph, say what you want while you still can. After you escaped from that gas chamber you marked yourself as a traitor. And it is our way to hunt traitors, and kill them on sight." This was a sincere warning. If he had another opportunity at a cornered and defenseless Sherry his failure to kill her could not be so easily explained. Even now he wasn't sure if she could get away from this alive. Still he hesitated to kill her, his shots remaining far from fatal. Where was that man she had been talking to?
It had been too long since he last fired at her. Even Vodka would notice she only had one wound soon. He fired off several more. One to the flesh of each arm, another grazed her thigh, and still another drew a line of blood across her cheek. For every shot he landed he made sure a bullet missed its mark, falling into the snow or lodging into the cement wall behind her.
She collapsed into the carpet of snow. It was still white beneath her, as only small trails of blood seeped into the snow around her.
"Gin, she is still breathing." Vodka said ever astute from where he stood back behind Gin. She was more heaving deep gasps than merely breathing. He hadn't fired at any internal organs, and so she wasn't choking up blood. Vodka hadn't fired anything in the exchange. The eleven out of fifteen rounds Gin's beretta held that he had fired probably seemed like more than enough. That was exactly as he had intended it.
"Don't worry," he dispelled his partner's concern, at the same time aiming to reaffirm the warning he'd just given Sherry. He was death to her, if she had to hate him for her to stay away so be it. He could only delay her death so long when she made herself such an easy target. "We'll soon send her on a trip to see her dead sister."
Gin had every intention to keep monologuing until the man she'd been talking to before came with help. Where was he? If fate forced his hand this was the death he would wish for her, to die elegantly. A final show of the romanticism she mocked and adored in equal parts.
As if on cue Gin felt a prick on the back of his neck. "A needle?" He felt the immediate rush of sedative to his bloodstream and lurched over onto a knee.
"Ah! Gin?" Vodka moved toward him in concern.
A man's voice shouted from behind them. "Go Ai! Go in the chimney."
Vodka quickly turned back toward the door, and fired off several shots at the voice. Gin watched through the haze as Sherry crawled back over the lip of the chimney. He still had four remaining rounds, but made no move to fire at her. Vodka noticed her movement.
"Don't let that woman escape." Vodka shouted, though Gin was still slouched forward from the needle. Vodka fired at her back, and she collapsed forward into the chimney.
"Gin, Gin what should I do?" Vodka was in near panic.
Whatever had been in that needle, it didn't feel like poison. More like a sleeping draught. He made a split second decision and moved to press the barrel of his gun to his arm. The adrenaline from being shot would work against the sleeping cure. He fired.
...
Gin had gone down to the wine cellar where the chimney let out to find the room set a blaze. Though it was not Sherry he intended to find there; he suspected the man who'd shot him with the needle would help her escape. Why he hadn't called the police already at the event from the public assassination as he had expected him to do was beyond him.
Gin had another execution order he'd been assigned to. The member performing the hit at that place had gotten his face caught on film committing the crime. Gin found him frantically searching the burning room for someone, likely Sherry.
Gin put the barrel of his gun to the man's head, as was his habit when executing people. The man ended up trying to barter for his life, even claiming to have knowledge of Sherry's location.
Gin didn't believe this, and even if he had- No, he didn't want to find her did he? He was death to her, and despite what he'd believed before he was still hesitant in ending her. She would get away and he would not go looking after her. It would be futile to look now besides. She and that man would be long gone. Certainly that's what he would tell the others.