Konbini - Japanese Convenience Store

Freedom is funny: something said to be self-possessed yet able to be smothered within a second.

Kagari doesn't remember much about his parents. They lived in Taitō City. He spent time waiting in his father's autoshop with the air stifled by car paint and old boxy cars that highlighted the lack of wealth in his neighbourhood. His father spent most of his days under the cars complaining about changing UI's.

Once, he snuck off to the local park because there was this slide with a dragon's head that would tell him the weather and let her go down her body. Her cold scales were totally cool. By the time he'd slid a dozen times down that slide, resulting in frost hanging off his nostril, his father's panicked voice called for him. But when Kagari tried to tell him how cool it was they had to run back to the shop.

That night his mother had come home with a pinch between her eyes and a whole box of ice-cream. A street-sweeper came that night and she held Kagari closely, his father behind him, whispering how she loved him and for him to not sneak out again.

Kagari snuck out again. And again.

It was thrilling. He'd play tag with other kids in the park. He'd beg the women at the konbini for sweets using his mommy can we have another chocolate please eyes. Sometimes, he'd even venture as far as the trains and watch them speed towards the tall buildings to the south, towards his mother. And Kagari promised himself that someday he'd also grow big enough to go to Tokyo.

But one night his mother didn't return. His father had stuck his chopsticks straight into his rice at dinner and told Kagari that someone was here and for Kagari to stay quiet and do as I say. But Kagari was too curious and he never let a challenge stop him.

Kagari picked the lock with two of his mother's bobby pins and snuck out. But the policeman was watching and aimed a gun at him. His father's panicked voice was the last thing he heard before blacking out. If Kagari had known that'd be the last time he'd be in the shop maybe he wouldn't have picked the lock.

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Kagari wakes up in a dark room that doesn't change when he asks for the Taitō Station. The woman's face doesn't change when he uses his mommy can we have another chocolate please eyes nor does it change when he screams for his father and mother. She leaves him alone with his tantrum, the only sound being something heavy being thrown at the wall and a voice telling him to shut up.

And for 13 years his father never visited. His mother never hugged him and told him she loved him. Kagari learns to hate his existence and the curiosity he had. He envies the kid across the wall whose knocks of morse code eventually go silent as a result of trying to run away. Bangs fold over his face when Kagari dips his head and two small pins fall to the floor. At least they're free.

So Kagari becomes an Enforcer. Between waiting for nothing and hunting for others like him his choices are limited. But Kagari has never let anything stop him.

At 22 Kagari knows that life is just killing time until death. He laughs at Ginoza's orders but watches the Dominator with his two back eyes. Kunizuka and him may joke about having a grab at his joystick but he knows that she doesn't want a joystick, but rather Karanomori's tits. Doesn't mean she had to smack him so hard.

So he learns to escape into video games and manga. He imagines being able to turn invisible and walk through Tokyo without anyone batting him another eye. Or maybe he could sneak out to all the other kids like him at the Rehabilitation Facility and speak to them, as he wished someone had done with him. The system would never change but that didn't mean he couldn't try to make it better. Their lives as latent criminals didn't need to be isolating and useless.

Here he stands again, somewhere he's not supposed to be. Behind Kagari sits the ability to change the Sybil system and in front of him sits a Dominator at Destroy Decomposer and he knows this will not be a challenge he overcomes. Freedom is close; he can taste it.

The blast is done and over in 2 seconds. Kagari has seen it before.

The heat engulfs his body and he spots the ghost of his father, hands still weary from a day's work, but a smile woven into the wrinkles along his forehead. The smell of burning flesh stings as bad as car paint until there is nothing left to smell with.

Kagari's body vibrates from the energy of the Dominator and he wonders if this was what it was like to have a train beneath one's feet. Everything tingles and he can feel a cold engulfing him from the front. There's a cool female voice in his ear. She tells him to lean on her. She tells him she loves him.

In his last second he looks death head-on and greets him like an old friend.

So Kagari disappears, alone and forgotten. He dies thinking nobody loves him. But he also dies after accepting — choosing — his fate.

There are two bobby pins laid on his grave by Kunizuka and Shion, respectively. They don't cry and they don't tell anyone else about the tree overlooking Taitō Station. There is silence as they walk out hand and hand onto the train going south.

One is for the freedom he lost. The other is for the experiences he gained. But that's a story for another time.

A/N: Thank you for reading this story! I'm a new writer so I'd love to hear feedback about improving. Also I wrote this after only watching four episodes and learning that Kagari would die by ep 16 so I may be missing some of the details. This was inspired by a story on ao3:

Coping With Your Absence - psychopass ( /works/2653577/chapters/5928755)