Walking towards the street, the sound of a car engine and an icy wind caused Yashiro to turn her head to the side, then look ahead again. The black vehicle had stopped near her, and out of it stepped a tall, short brown-haired man who approached her with the hint of a smile.

"Thanks for coming," she spoke in Korean.

Choe Gu-sung laughed while opening the car door for her, "You really got to work in that accent."

Yashiro smiled, pulling her hands out of the pockets of her black hooded jacket, and got into the car. Soon they were driving down streets without scanners. Choe leaned an elbow on the door while slowly moving the steering wheel with one hand. The sky was dark, with no stars.

"Are you still tracking the flow of data collected by the cymatic scans?" she asked.

"I am."

"Will you double check the Ministry of Welfare's Nona Tower for me?"

Choe turned his head towards her for a moment, "You have a clue that the Sibyl System servers are housed in that building?"

"I'll let you find out."

"Well, well, someone has a secret Santa, a source? When you're ready to share, I'd love to hear."

Choe's smirk faded as he looked at her serious countenance, eyes narrowed as if she were trying to solve a complex puzzle.

"I figured out a pattern. Studying old unsolved cases in which the subjects were declared unknown, I realized that regardless of the number or nature of the crimes they committed, there were no reports of crime coefficients, and after they were caught by the PSB, the procedure carried out was to transfer them to the Ministry of Welfare. Some escaped before they arrived, others were disposed of afterwards. You must be guessing who I'm referring to. One of them was Touma Kouzaburou. Even if there are slight variations in each story, it's suspicious no matter how you look at it, since all those men disappeared and never committed crimes in society again. Whatever they do with them, must be of great importance to the Sibyl System. Enough to keep it secret by imprisoning those who were part of those cases, and banning them from ever working at the PSB again. I know it's too spread out and random to be organized—"

"But you don't believe that. You're onto something."

Yashiro blinked a couple of times, leaning back against the car seat and softening her then clenched fist. She took a deep breath.

"If I were them, that's exactly how I'd do it. I'd spread it out making it look random. I'd get rid of anyone who asked too many questions. However, doesn't centralization pose a security risk? One that someone can exploit. I want to believe they would be careless on purpose."

"Keeping it secret must be worth the risk. I can't wait to find out... the true nature of the Sibyl System. Yashiro, I'm going to look into this."

"Please do. It might be very important to us."

"You're one hell of a detective. You know, when I first met you, one of my first thoughts was that despite being so young, you were too serious, like you've been missing out on something on purpose. I was wrong. You're not like him."

Yashiro chuckled, "Who?"

"Makishima," Choe glanced at her with curiosity. "You're just not as conceited as he is."

Surveying the skyscrapers, Yashiro raised an eyebrow and her smile faded.

"I am conceited, if you want to put that term. I don't make comparisons. I never think of myself in relation to anyone else. I don't measure myself as part of anything."

"You're the most egotistical and kindest woman I ever met. And that doesn't make any sense," sighed Choe.

"Maybe the concepts don't mean what people have been taught to think they mean. My first thought was that you were like a hacker from a story I read as a child, maybe one of Gibson's," a deep chuckle escaped his closed mouth, making her look at him with the same calm, unperturbed expression, which made him broaden a smile. "I also thought you'd be like the other men he worked with, but then I realized I was wrong. You're not afraid of disappointing him. You're not worried that one day he'll get rid of you. You know he won't and you don't even care if he ever does. He was right to have you by his side. He has the ability to find talent in others and nurture it."

Choe frowned, looking at the street ahead.

"That's what's strange about him. When I look at him, I feel that if there was a man I would entrust my life to, it's him."

She gasped and widened her eyes for a moment, looking at him intently, "Are you saying that you like him?"

"I'm just saying I didn't know what it meant to like a man until I met him," he shrugged his shoulders.

"Choe, you've fallen for him."

He burst out laughing, "Does that frighten you?"

"I fear he will drag you into something you can't control. And I feel that I ought to warn you against him, but I can't—because I'm certain of nothing about him, not even whether he's the greatest man or the most vicious, irresponsible waste of a human being I ever imagined possible."

"I'm certain of nothing about him—except that I like him. The strange thing is what he does make me feel."

"What?"

"Hope," Choe exchanged a glance with her. "I don't know why but I look at people and they don't know who they are. They don't know what they're doing. They would ask my opinion on whether they should study medicine, engineering, or go into music."

"The first mistake is to ask someone else."

"Yeah, right? I don't understand how they stand it. How can they stand not knowing, asking someone else for advice and letting them decide for them? It's a sick society. What I like about you is that you're indifferent and don't conceive of some standard of comparison, some relationship between your work and the success of others. You're polite, but completely indifferent. Normally people would advise them to choose the career that best suits their abilities so that they learn more, and they would accept that. You would advise them not about a particular choice, but about making it for themselves without seeking to please others. Makishima and you are not like them. That terrible nonsense that surrounds us, I only lose it in his presence and yours."

"Look at you, getting all mushy," she smirked and raised her eyebrows.

"You're tough," he gave her a tired look.

Arriving on the outskirts of the city, Choe parked the car in a port area of the abandoned district. With hardly any residents, the area's exterior holograms were disabled and she could see the stars in the sky, due to the lack of light from the old buildings. Choe zipped up his blue jacket to his collar, over a purple shirt, as soon as a gust of cold wind caught them. After a minute, they saw Makishima Shougo talking with two people, but they stood in front of a railing watching the sea in the distance.

"Okay, I'll bite. What is it?" Choe's voice was deep and soft at the same time.

"Nothing."

"There's something you're dealing with that's clearly bothering you."

"There isn't."

"I don't mind you lying to me or anyone else, but at least be honest with yourself."

Yashiro turned her head towards him for a moment.

"I'm falling down a path. It's dark and taking me to places I don't want to go. I try to go back, but I don't know how. I always described it as a black hole. Slowly falling into it, I still see life and beauty and a desire to get my life back. As I sink further, it becomes darker and things slip away, just beyond my grasp. I still have my hand out wanting to return, but I keep falling and soon it becomes so dark, sometimes the desire leaves me and I find myself not wanting to return. I've never gotten to the point that the black hole completely consumes me."

Choe opened his yellow and red eyes.

"Beneath the ocean's blackness lies an ecosystem that has learned to thrive without sunlight or warmth. It's a world full of organisms with unique adaptations to such a challenging environment. Some fishes were lost living in complete darkness, until they adapted. With survival, they eventually lost their pigmentation, becoming hideous. I was born into a dark path, but I can recognize light when I see it. And every once in a while, I stop and stare, basking in its warmth for a moment before moving on in the dark. That's my life. Don't make it yours, Yashiro."

After a few seconds, he walked away.

"A place where there is no darkness, where Sibyl can't reach?"

The tall white-haired figure stood implacably and completely calm, reflected by the distant blue light of the skyscrapers that illuminated his white shirt, purple tie and both his vest and beige pants.

"Yes, we have been planning to escape overseas for years. The problem is transportation. If you take a secure route, you might risk being arrested. You can slip past the psycho pass security system, but in order to evade Sibyl's eyes, you need to bypass any surveillance throughout the city. We thought there were only boats for leisure and that it was too risky to travel by sea… until now."

The long black-haired woman who had spoken must have been in her fifties, but it was not only her height and good looks that made her seem young, but the certainty and calmness in her words. She wore a gray coat that came to her knees over a black sweater, dark gray pants and matching moccasins. The husband, standing next to her, was Makishima's height but broader shouldered, with brown and gray hair, a barely grown beard and glasses on his face. He had a brown blazer over a green sweater, beige pants and dark dress shoes.

"In the past, I heard of a man who helped people flee the country. I thought it was a rumor. But I was wrong. It is you. Makishima Shougo."

"In the flesh," he slightly shook his head. "What makes you leave the country, sir?"

"In my case, I cannot share my profession with men who claim that intellect does not exist, and I cannot teach in a world where widespread disinterest has suspended consciousness. When a man chooses to shirk the effort and responsibility of seeking knowledge and of judging, he is renouncing thought and ego, declaring himself incapable of existence and incompetent to deal with the facts of reality. To the extent that a man ceases in his responsibility to think, he is at the mercy of any outside force acting upon him, and by such renunciation, that person becomes the social determinist view of man: an empty mold waiting to be filled, a will-less robot waiting to be used by others.

"A strong sense of personal identity is the product of independent thinking and the possession of an integrated set of values. But when there is no independent thought left and people follow a set of values predefined and dictated for them, because they accept that someone or something must choose for their own good, from what to study to whom to marry and have children, you know that society is doomed.

"The mind is one's judge of values and one's guide of action. A concession to the irrational invalidates one's consciousness and fakes reality. The pursue of knowledge through faith only destroys the mind, and the acceptance of a mystical invention annihilates existence and eventually consciousness. I learned from a student of mine, who made me realize that it was I who had made it all possible. When you accept those who deny the existence of thought as fellow thinkers in the same or a different university, when you allow them to manipulate the prestige of history and philosophy, without declaring the nature of their aims, they achieve the destruction of the mind.

"May they and those who entrust them with the minds of their children have exactly what they demand: a world of intellectuals without intellect and thinkers who proclaim they cannot think. I will give it to them. I will let them see the absolute reality of their non-absolute world, but I will no longer be there to be the one to pay the price for their contradictions. The man who lacks a firm sense of personal identity feels alienated, but I will no longer be the scapegoat for his actions."

"Kanno Yamato was a name I would have always hated to see disappear from the public sphere. Recently, I read an article which referred to you as one of those classics that nobody studies anymore, except in histories of philosophy, and as the last of the great advocates of reason," Makishima closed his eyes, then opened them again raising his head to the sky behind them. There was a smile and a pure expression of peace in his face. "There is only one fundamental right: a man's right to his own life, which means the freedom to take the actions required by the nature of a rational being for the support, the furtherance, the fulfillment and the enjoyment of his own life. Such is the meaning of the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

"Thus, for every individual, a right is the moral sanction of his freedom to act on his own judgment, for his own goals, and by his own voluntary, uncoerced choice. The right to the pursuit of happiness means man's right to live for himself, to choose what constitutes his own private, personal, individual happiness and to work for its achievement. It means that man cannot be forced to devote his life to the happiness of other men, and that the collective cannot decide what is to be the purpose of a man's existence nor prescribe his choice of happiness.

"Nevertheless, above men stands an immense and absolute power taking upon itself alone to watch over their fate. It would be like a parent, if it did not keep them in perpetual childhood. The Sibyl System labors as the sole agent and the only arbiter of that happiness providing for their security, foreseeing and suppling their necessities, facilitating their pleasures, and managing their principal concerns: what remains, but to spare them all the care of thinking and all the trouble of living?

"It has successfully taken each member of society fashioning him at will with a network of complicated rules, through which the most original individuals cannot penetrate to rise above the crowd. Although free will has not yet been completely shattered, but bent and guided, men are seldom forced by it to act, but are constantly restrained from acting. Alexis de Tocqueville said it in the nineteenth century. Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd," Makishima looked at the woman, realizing that both were smiling, recognition drawn on their faces. "And you, madam? What is the root that inevitably drives you to accompany this man into the depths of the unknown, to seek your own happiness?"

Kanno draped an arm over her shoulders.

"I am a writer. The kind of writer who would not be allowed to be published here. I believe that when one deals with words, one deals with the mind. For decades now, the government has been entering the sphere of ideas by prescribing in matters having to do with intellectual content. When that happens, it means the death of a free society in all aspects of human life. You may wrongly think that we are abandoning our professions and ambitions, but neither of us has or ever will. This world has."

Makishima watched them with his eyes relaxed and focused with kind attention, as if he was unaware of the world around him other than those two people in front of him.

"This is undoubtedly a sad and hopeless day, but I applaud your decision and wish you happiness wherever you will go."

Suddenly, they heard someone whistle. It was coming from a boat nearby the docks, where a small-eyed man was waiting for them with green pants and blue jacket.

"It is time. After you pass the Kill Zone, there will be a ship that is headed to Southeast Asia. From there, the rest is up to you," Makishima accompanied them to the docks.

As the man loaded a backpack onto the boat, the wife stared at Choe Gu-sung, who was standing at the bow, watching the calm sea and the reflection of the lights of the distant huge skyscrapers on the water, with his hands in his pants pockets and his head slightly raised.

"You can trust him. I guarantee that he is very skilled at what he does," Makishima lowered his head to assure her in a soft voice, and when her husband came back, he looked at him and then at his wife, who stood beside him in farewell. "Above all, this was a beautiful moment, for I got the chance to meet you. Someday, once you settle down, I would like to ask you about the happiness you chose for yourself."

"You too can always come and see it for yourself," Kanno smiled.

The white-haired man chuckled, "I will take that as my reward for this then. Until we meet again."

Makishima's pale figure did not move, even though for some reason he could feel his heart beating against his chest, as he watched them walk away on the docks. As seconds passed, his smile slowly faded, the corners of his mouth drew downward and his golden eyes closed a bit, with long strands of white hair waving softly over his forehead. Footsteps echoed in the night as they boarded a white motorboat and greeted Choe Gu-sung, striking up conversation.

It was time for him to turn around and walk away, but soon he found himself walking towards them, like a bug blindly following the light, and even though he clicked his tongue with a frown, he gracefully slid over a metal railing dropping two meters below, in front of other small abandoned boats, to rush towards the white motorboat. The professor peered out on the deck of the ship with a barely visible smile. When Makishima finally stopped in front of the motorboat with hitching breath, his lips slightly parted and his eyes wider than before, he did not know why he had the impression that he was being waited for. And he was utterly oblivious to the fact he could almost fall into the water.

"May I ask you something before you go? The student you mentioned—can you remember his name?" Makishima blurted out.

"She is the one who helped us get in touch with you in the first place…" his voice was drowned out as the engine started up, emitting a loud sound, and the boat began to move slightly, small waves forming in the water. "The place we are going has space for more people, but she refused the offer."

As the motorboat picked up speed and the engine made a deeper but steady noise than before, beginning to pull away, Makishima took a few steps to the side.

"Proud of the way your student turned out?"

"More than I ever hoped to be," the professor raised his voice, walking towards the back of the boat. "I am proud of her every action, of her every goal, and of every value she's chosen. And that, Makishima-kun, is my full answer," the sound of his last name was pronounced in the tone of a father. "Her name is Takahashi Yashiro."

The man gave him one last smile as the white motorboat sped away, and the pale figure that had stopped short on the dock, with wide-open golden eyes, slowly disappeared from his sight. However, he stood there pondering for a while. He thought that blood families carry an obligation, which goes against the values of Yashiro and himself, who prefer choice. People choose and create their own families, which are more important than blood ties themselves. Families are chosen as a product of shared values. Such was the lesson that this man had taught him with simple words.

Her face was what Makishima would have killed to see. A face that showed no pain or fear. Her mouth expressed pride and took pride in that, and the angular planes of her cheeks made him think of arrogance, of tension, of contempt, even cruelty, but the face lacked those qualities, for it had an expression of serene determination and certainty, of an innocence that would neither seek forgiveness nor grant it. Her face had nothing to hide and nothing to run from. It had no fear of being seen or of seeing.

The first thing he caught about her was the intensity of her silver eyes, it seemed as if her ability to see was the most precious thing to her, and her eyes gave value to herself and to the world, to her for her ability and willingness to see, and to the world for being worthy of being seen. What she had always hated and rejected was the conformist view of human destiny: that men should be drawn to the unattainable shinning ahead, doomed always to aspire, but not achieve. As she watched the sea, he knew that her life and values could not make her accept that, for she had never found beauty in longing for the impossible and was willing to find the possible, which she never considered beyond her reach.

He thought that this was the natural state of human beings: an upright posture, an intransigent mind and a lively step ready to travel unlimited paths. What do human beings live for? Do they not live only and exclusively for themselves? For a truth higher than any other, a reason for living, a cause? Is it not always this? Do they not live for themselves? Some men die for their ideals, but is not that ideal theirs? Every honest man lives for himself, and those who do not live thus, are either not honest, or are not men. Man was born alone, as an end in himself. There is no law, no book, no party directive that can eliminate from men the ability and will to say a simple word: I.

They can try. It has been tried. But let us observe what comes out of it, what is allowed to succeed. Stalin's Soviet Union, Mao's People's Republic of China, Kim Dynasty's North Korea, Castro's Cuba, Hitler's Nazi Germany and so many other dictatorships in Central Europe, Eastern Europe, Central Asia, Southeast Asia and elsewhere. Deny the best of man and that is all that is left. Freedom is not given away, it is earned. In this world, there is no place for the mind and no place for man. The entities that populate it are inanimate robots destined to perform prescribed actions in a gigantic machine, robots deprived of choice, judgment, values, convictions and self-esteem.

They enjoy goods as tenants, without a sense of ownership, and never give a thought to how they might be improved. Divorced from their own interests, when their security and that of their children is compromised, they do not seek to avert the danger themselves but cross their arms and wait for the nation to come to their aid. They sacrifice their own free will to submit, but as soon as force is removed, they are glad to defy the law. The nation has reached a point where it must either change its laws or perish, for in such a place one can no longer finds citizens but subjects. Makishima felt he was in the presence of a being who was pure consciousness, although he had never been so conscious of a woman.

"This area contains the least number of frigates, and one of them is not a latent criminal, so they're going to be fine. Why are you doing this?"

Makishima kept his distance behind her. They were standing on one of the roofs of the abandoned steel factories from where they could see the docks and the city.

"For the same reason you do. Because it's the right thing to do," she responded with ease, eyes set on the skyscrapers.

"You didn't tell me," he frowned.

"I was curious what you would do."

His expression softened until Makishima let out a brief chuckle, turning his head to one side and curving a corner of his mouth, "Always the maverick."

"I didn't just come here to test you and watch over them," Yashiro blurted out.

"I will accept any topic as long as I have you here," he uttered in the tone of a polite joke, but his face was serious, which made her blink and frown for a second. "What did you want to talk about?"

"There's this case I'm working on… a man whose apparent goal is none other than… chaos. He's gotten people to do his bidding. But his profile… doesn't fit."

Makishima closed his eyes and shook his head gently, "You won't find him until you learn to look at this differently."

"And how you suggest I should look at this?"

"Like a criminal," he tilted his head. "May come easier than you think."

"He's using the protests against the Public Safety Bureau for something bigger… whatever he's planning… some sort of attack?" Yashiro shook her head with a hand gesture.

"You're thinking like an inspector. Inspectors are so objective. Obligated to protocols," he got closer with a frown, looking at her. "You're dealing with depraved minds, and you won't ever catch devils with angels."

"He's not the devil. He's just a man."

"Then make it personal. What does he desperately want before he dies? And how does it figure into his plot?"

"He's a latent criminal. Not able to return to society. Which makes him dangerous. The psychiatrist made his already sick mind worse. He wants revenge."

"Ah, revenge," Makishima clicked his tongue. "It's a disease that eats away at your soul. It ends too quickly, never satisfies enough."

"No. He was lost long before he met him," Yashiro frowned, pausing, until her eyes widened. "Uchida could get away with it and he couldn't. That' s why he betrayed him and set him up. His life consists of going from hole to hole, looking over his shoulder. But the Sibyl System can't judge people like Uchida. His capture was futile. No one ever spoke of him again. From his ability to jump across rooftops, I guess it was one of his hobbies as a child. It gave him a chance to observe people and their homes."

"How did that make him feel?" his golden eyes sparkled.

"Angry. Even living a lie, people feel safe. They forget to turn the alarms on, leave windows open, patio doors. I don't want anyone to feel safe. Why should they have that luxury?"

Makishima slightly raised an eyebrow, looking at her with a barely visible smile.

"So, his interest in wandering and stalking gave way to a desire to elaborate methodical plans and possibly break into their homes? You think it was a precursor to more aggressive deviations in his adult life?"

"I'm just trying to understand the progression of his criminality."

"How intriguing. Tell me now, in your own words… how does his childhood relate to yours? How are his feelings different from the many and varied feelings that drive you? Your obsession with Sibyl? Are you sure, that way back… beyond your ability to truly remember… when you were seeing into homes and lives being led under the management of the Sibyl System… are you sure you didn't want to break into their homes and destroy the illusion of their fake world? If you didn't… you sure as hell wanted someone else to."

Yashiro barely turned her head to the side, looking into his eyes. They could hear the engine of a ship in the distance, slowly approaching in the night.

"Using Uchida's teachings, he moves against criminals who have not yet been judged by Sibyl…"

"I think that's called changing the subject," he smirked.

"But now it's different. He's adapting. His grudge against people and Sibyl may share the same root. He's after the criminals who are wrongly judged… those who…" her voice trailed off.

The white motorboat stopped, and Choe Gu-sung whistled raising a hand to get their attention. When Makishima turned his head towards the tall figure walking along the docks, Yashiro had already turned on her heels and was heading that way.

The quiet study, devoid of any holograms, had expensive Victorian-style furniture in perfect condition, such as two neat and tidy bookcases, and a gray male bust presiding over another piece of furniture. What caught her eye, however, was the man sitting with one leg over the other in a dark red upholstered wooden chair in front of the room's only desk. While his elbow rested on the armrest and his hand was clasped in front of his chest, the other arm rested at his side, dangling towards his body. Locks of long, white hair fell over his neck and chest, his head slightly bent to one side and his eyes narrowed, fixed on the surface of the desk.

Yashiro's footsteps as she entered the room made him lift his head, raising his eyebrows for a few seconds and blinking, until finally opening his eyes wider and sitting upright in his seat with a faint smile. For several seconds, as Yashiro turned her body to walk towards the shelves, she caught a glimpse of a tablet on the desk with an image of Hyper Oats and information about it. When the screen turned off due to inactivity, her eyes wandered to a closed book next to it and her body paused with an arched eyebrow.

"There was this question Spencer asked," Yashiro frowned, looking to the side. "If men use their liberty in such a way as to surrender their liberty, are they thereafter any the less slaves? What fundamentally distinguishes the slave is that he works under coercion to satisfy the desires of others. So far so good. But what about the exception of becoming a slave? What do you think about people who permanently relinquish, even willingly, their freedom?"

Makishima leaned forward resting his forearms on the desk, and clasping his hands together, eyes on the cover of the book.

"In most civilized countries, an agreement by which an individual would force himself to be sold into slavery would be null and void and not permitted. The reason for not intervening in the voluntary acts of a person is to be found in the respect and consideration of his freedom. His choice, being voluntary, proves that what he chooses is desirable. But then, by selling himself as a slave, an individual automatically renounces his freedom, abandons the only element that supports and endorses his being able to decide about himself.

"Can he be allowed to do that? And if so, who allows it, if not himself? Can I, as a person within society, allow another person to decide to give up his freedom in order to delegate it to someone else? John Stuart Mill said that this choice, although voluntary, destroys the basis on which he was allowed to freely dispose of his person. And not only will he cease to be free, but from that moment on, he will remain in a position that will no longer be to his liking, therefore, it will cease to be voluntary."

"I knew you would quote him. But who are we to say that the position in which that person has decided to be is no longer to his liking? What if he would like to be a slave?" Yashiro asked, standing in front of the sculpture.

"The principle of liberty dictates that in no case can one be free and then not be so. It's not freedom to be able to alienate one's own freedom. You can only agree to see it limited in one way or another."

"One learns to love chains," she brought her right hand close to the sculpture, barely grazing it, her gaze lost on its surface.

"It's interesting to reflect how people reach such a state of submission in a society... that they don't even think of destroying it. Only a rational being would say that rights cannot be conferred. If people in this city don't, then they are more akin to an ant than a human being," Makishima's voice became deeper, his eyes narrowed as he uttered those words, but as he looked back at her, his eyelids relaxed. "Bentham, far from being an absolutist like Hobbes, wrote in favor of popular government. He said that the sovereign people appoint their representatives and create the government, which in turn creates rights that it confers on the individuals who gave rise to it. Is he not asserting that certain individuals who want to satisfy their desires and possess the means and authority to do so, can appoint a government that declares the ways and conditions in which they must act to obtain what they want? It reads that way to me."

"Utilitarians teach that an action is moral if its result is to maximize pleasure among men. This theory holds that man's duty is to serve the greatest happiness of the greatest number. As to one's own happiness, Mill said that the individual must be disinterested and strictly impartial—he must remember that he is only one unit out of the millions of men affected by his actions. All honor to those who can abnegate for themselves the personal enjoyment of life, when by such renunciation they contribute worthily to increase the amount of happiness in the world. The greatest good for the greatest number is one of the most vicious slogans ever foisted. There is no way to interpret it benevolently, but a great many ways in which it can be used to justify the most vicious actions. What is the definition of the good in this slogan? Whatever is good for the greatest number. There were seventy million Germans in Germany and six hundred thousand Jews. The greatest number—the Germans—supported the Nazi government which told them that their greatest good would be served by exterminating the smaller number—the Jews—and grabbing their property. This was the horror achieved in practice by a vicious slogan accepted in theory. However, among all the readings censored today, these are still taught at university. Such is the moral code of our times."

Without separating his hands on the desk, Makishima let out a short laugh and pointed his index finger at her, "I knew you'd say that. If you'd quoted Mill or Bentham, I would've argued the same."

Yashiro shot him a look with a frown and slightly pursed lips, then turned back to the sculpture, resting a clenched fist on the piece of furniture. Makishima watched her with a serious expression for several seconds, until he rose from his seat, resting the fingers of one hand on the desk, looking at her with a faint smile.

"Do you know your only real guilt? With the greatest capacity for it, you've never learned to enjoy yourself. You've been willing to bear too much. Even now. Throughout your life you've helped many men of mind who were wrongly judged, asserting their right to their own life and happiness. But you've never declared yours. You've always condemned your existence, though a part of you holds a desire to justify it. This contradiction within you is the reason your life has been endured rather than lived."

Makishima had walked towards her, but Yashiro turned around, approaching the desk and standing in front of it, without looking directly at him.

"I don't think that suffering makes up for anything, but whatever I feel, I wish it were worse. If there's one thing I hate, it's to speak of my own suffering. That should be no one's concern but mine."

She said it sternly, without emotion, as an impersonal verdict upon herself, and plopped down in the chair, legs slightly apart. He smiled in amused sadness, and shook his head.

"I always refused to be born with that sin."

"What do you mean?"

Yashiro looked at him with narrowed eyes and a vacant expression for several seconds, until she lost it in the book on the desk in front of her. She was sitting casually, with her black jacket open and a simple gray shirt underneath, dark pants and ankle boots, while Makishima watched her with an implacable face that denoted confidence, with one hand in the pocket of his beige pants, and the other hanging at the side of his body.

"I have never felt guilty about my mind. I have never felt guilty for being a man. I accepted no undeserved guilt and was therefore free to earn and know my own worth. For as long as I can remember, I felt that I would kill the man who would claim that I exist by reason of his need. For years I have been watching men, looking for every flame rising in the crowd, to release them from their agony when I knew they had seen enough, latent criminals or not. In a world without free will... there are still those who renounce it, acting on their own. It's the natural response of whatever rationality may still remain in them... the same kind of protest as ours."

"What did you tell them to make them give up everything?"

"I told them they were right. I gave them the pride they didn't know they had. I gave them the words to identify it. Guilt is based on the acceptance of the code of justice that declares you guilty. Yashiro, the one great sin you have committed in your life, and for which you have been paying a high price by carrying its burden, and letting it grow over time, is to accept undeserved guilt just as they wanted and expected you to do. You have abided by their moral code. All your life you have been denounced, not for your faults, but for your virtues. You have been hated, not for your mistakes, but for your achievements. You have been despised for your character and your integrity. Have you ever stopped to ask them, by what right, by what standard?

"No, you have endured it all and remained silent. An even viler evil than murdering a man is to sell him suicide as an act of virtue. A viler evil than throwing a man on a bonfire is to demand that he throw himself on it, of his own free will, and that he also build the bonfire. In the democracy of ancient Athens, the symbol of this is the fate of Socrates, who was legally condemned to death because the majority did not like what he said, although he had not initiated any force or violated anyone's rights.

"A democracy, if one gives meaning to the terms, is a system of unlimited majoritarian rule. In short, it's a form of collectivism that denies individual rights: the majority can do whatever it wants without restraint. In principle, democratic government is all-powerful. The law by which they were judging him was based on the common good and held that there are no principles, that he had no rights and that they could sacrifice him any way they wanted for the sake of what they believed was their own good. But that is what any thief does. The only difference is that the thief doesn't ask you to approve his action, he doesn't expect any voluntary action or consent from his victims. He knows he is a criminal and that his procedure is illegal. He doesn't ask for help to disguise the nature of his actions.

"Socrates chose to die when he could evade justice. In the history of mankind, it has been men of mind who have permitted injustice. And it's they who must discover that it's their own will, which no one can force, that makes might possible. From mockery to firing squads... all of it has been imposed on those who took it upon themselves to look at the world through their own eyes. And it was those men who forged the weapons and built the prisons into which they were thrown. That was their glory and their guilt, to allow the rest to make them feel guilty for the glory of themselves, and to allow themselves to be punished on the altars of the brutes.

"Do you realize that the error, in essence, is the same? Denying reality has consequences. And the only despicable thought is refusing to think. Don't ignore your own desires, Yashiro. Don't sacrifice them. You abided by their code and while you always lived by your own, you never stated, acknowledged or defended it. You let them call you immoral and denigrate you as a human being over the years. Ask yourself why men cannot exist without a code of moral values, and what happens if they accept the wrong standard."

"You can't speak about the meaning of being a man when you're the one who betrayed it. So don't you dare lecture me on ethics. You don't have the strength to fight them. You chose the easiest and most vicious path. Deliberate destruction. I think you ought to be one of the vilest men I've ever met," she raised her voice, not quite a yell.

"I ought to be?" Makishima sat on the corner of the desk, one leg bent over the surface of it and the other resting on the floor, looking at her with a smirk. "So you don't think I am?"

"I can't quite make myself feel certain of that," she frowned and turned her head the other way, averting his gaze. "I wish…"

"Afraid to wish?" he raised an eyebrow.

Makishima looked her up and down for a moment, studying her figure illuminated by the desk lamp.

"Shall I tell you why you are drawn to me, even if you think you ought to damn me, even if you want to despise me? It's because I'm the first man who has given you what the whole world owes you, and what you should have demanded of all men before dealing with them."

"What?"

"That one priceless possession you had lost, that you had longed for, but didn't know you needed—a moral sanction."

Yashiro closed her eyes and pursed her lips, as she felt a slight headache and a shiver in her body.

"You're one of the most self-aware people I've ever met and yet... you hate yourself more than you hate society. You demand so much of yourself as if the world rested on your shoulders and it was your moral responsibility to maintain it. You're willing to put up with everything and accept the consequences. But there's a limit to how much you should put up with."

"I don't know my limit and I don't care. They're not going to stop me."

"Any man can be stopped."

"Is that so?"

"You should know. You're one of the last moral women left in the world."

"Moral? What on earth makes you think that?"

"Everything you've done so far has been under your own judgment with your purpose as the standard of value. That's your code, and you won't accept any other. But they can be broken. It's a matter of understanding man's motive power, his moral code. Once you get that, the man is yours. You pride yourself on setting no limit to your resistance, because you think you're doing the right thing. What if you're not? What if you're letting them make you a tool for the destruction of everything you respect and admire? Why not stand up for your own code of values among men? What have you submitted to at their hands? What have you been willing to put up with all these years, and for what reason?"

Yashiro opened her eyes and blinked a couple of times, the fleeting memory fading in the process.

"Man's motive power as his moral code…"

"Yes... exactly," Makishima's smile faded. "He said that too."

"Who?"

"Touma Kouzaburou."

Makishima wondered why he had the impression that this name had surprised her and that she answered an instant too late, "He said that to you?"

"We were talking about a totally different subject."

She got up, walking past the opposite side of the desk from the one he was at, and heading to the center of the room.

"Have you found the patient you were looking for?" he questioned, eyes fixed on the chair.

The question stopped her in front of the bookcase, leaving her silent for a moment.

"Yes, and I'm becoming more and more interested in this… psychiatric treatment. Being able to voluntarily cloud hues."

She heard the faint sound of a desk drawer opening and footsteps, but did not turn around.

"May I give you something before you leave?"

Yashiro frowned, still focused on the books, until she finally decided to turn around. Her eyes snapped open. Leaning against the desk with legs slight apart so he could face her, Makishima was holding a black pistol from its barrel, stretching his arm out slightly towards her. The look in his face hardened.

"I think this belongs to you. Take it. I am returning it as I found it," his voice was soft and firm all at once, but he neither gave orders nor received them.

Yashiro slowly walked up to him and took the gun. Suddenly, she saw red around a woman's head staining the living room floor. She felt the woman staring at her, panting over the pool of her own blood, and her chest tightened from holding her breath for too long at the image.

"You are a failure—your very existence is a mistake!"

"What have you done?"

Makishima watched her close her eyes tightly, then open them again, blinking a couple of times like someone with a sudden headache. Pointing the gun towards the ground even though it had several safeties, Yashiro felt the weight in her right hand, strangely detached, and checked the magazine and slide with precise but slow movements, realizing that they were not empty.

"Hidden agendas are only permissible when they suit you?" he raised an eyebrow. "I warned Touma Kouzaburou about killing the student's father but he wouldn't listen. And look where it got him. Every one of your actions resembles his. You would realize it if you weren't blinded by emotional whims. Don't let passion destroy you the same way it destroyed him. Don't let it become your sickness."

"How did you know I was going to that apartment?" Yashiro glared at him, curling her lip for a moment. "Choe gave me a list of patients, but you knew exactly who I'd choose… because you already knew him."

"Yes."

"Well, you don't need to worry about your friend. He's alive."

"Don't be absurd, Yashiro. I don't have friends."

He said it with complete assurance in a low, monotone voice, but Yashiro stared at him, raising her head slightly and sighing, until she turned away. Leaning against the desk with a serious and blank expression, Makishima watched her walk out of the luxurious study, until she disappeared from his sight.