Ginoza wonders what character from what book he is.
Is it tragic really, he wonders. And he makes lists in his mind.
One arm less, Father less, demoted to enforcer, apartment seized, savings frozen.
Cybernetic arm, less stress of psycho-pass rising, Dime still here.
These are the variables.
He sometimes wonders why his psycho-pass never stabilized. There are more than enough reasons, but at the end of the day he does believe that Sybil system is required in this eustressed society of today.
He wonders about a lot of things.
What is the true measure of crime, he thinks, is it the intent to commit it? Or is it the consequence of a violent action? Is it also not related to the ability to commit the crime?
As his time as inspector, he remembers many cases where they had neutralized people when they hadn't even planned to commit a crime, much less commit one, due to a variation of reasons. Taking him as an example, he does not intend to really commit a crime.
What are we doing? He wonders
Questions he had buried deep down, rise up now and then, just like his psycho-pass.
He wonders if he should calibrate the rise against the thoughts.
He wonders and wonders as the earth lurches around the sun, and stars set and rise.
It's a windy, sunny day.
There are birds clucking, and children play in Tokyo, in parks, and theme parks and holo-holes, and there is an atmosphere of general cheer all around. The sun is not too hot, not too weak, and there are fluffy clouds in the periwinkle blue sky.
The mood inside the blue-lit room of their division is not as glum as usual. The enforcers might want to account that to the absence of Mika Shimotsuki rather than the weather, but the relaxed mood has allowed Hinakawa to plug in his extreme isolation headphones, and Tougane has disappeared off to train some more with the newly issued assault Dominators. Yayoi and Shion are lost in some obscure corner if the lab.
Ginoza watches Akane lying on her back, with her virtual gear over her eyes. She was probably trailing around in some commufield. He wonders what commufield she walks in now, since they had effectively screwed up Talisman's domain. Well, after the real one got flushed down the toilet in pieces. The blame is not really theirs.
Thinking back, those times seem one thousand years ago.
Ginoza wondered what would've his father's reaction to his demotion.
He doesn't ponder over it, much.
The ghosts of the past rest better if they are left undisturbed.
Ginoza doesn't sleep well.
Waking up in the middle of the night, from a dream that is full of red and silver, his mind is torn with the ghostly pains curling all over non-present left arm. He closes his eyes and tucks the cybernetic arm against his arm as his body remembers the agony of the limb being crushed. His heart races as fast as it can, running from the dreamscape he was trapped in, seconds later.
The pain subsides a few minute later. The uneasiness in the pit of his stomach makes it roil. He is bathed in cold sweat, and he can feel it dripping down his back. He takes off his t-shirt, and throws it on the floor, and switches on the small white lamp beside his bed.
He feels like puking, but he decides not to. The dream makes his skin, his pillow, his room smell like smoke and blood. Ginoza's tongue is coated with metal as he bites the inside of his cheek raw.
After a while, when his stomach has settled a bit, he turns off the light. The apartment is bathed in the cool light coming from the neon lights inside the complex, and mutes all hues to blue and gray. His refrigerator glimmers dully as he opens it, taking out the one-liter bottle of cheap whiskey.
When he stops, he had gone through almost half the bottle. He feels woozy. It's okay, he tells himself. Makishima is dead, and he is here.
His father is dead too. He knows he is drunk, and he feels sad and pathetic. He laughs to himself, because he refuses to cry and it sounds a bit like weeping, and he lies down on the floor, and curls up on himself. He wants to feel like a child again.
You are loosing this war, he whispers, sinking slowly into the green depths of alcohol-fueled sleep.
On a Friday night, he returns home so tired and done-for, his hands shake as he pets Dime.
He had been working at the Division HQ almost ceaselessly, since Monday, since this case had come in and hadn't slept for nearly four days. It had been a murder spree among the homeless and a crafty killer who avoided the scanners by staying indoors unless it was absolutely necessary for him to go out, or it was time to kill. The case had taken them this long, mostly because of the perpetrator's complete disconnection to the people he was targeting, being a internet celebrity and the almost complete lack of evidence.
Ginoza had had flashbacks throughout the week, and he had been hyper-aware of the fact that he was slipping into Kougami's skin. And he has even more aware of the fact of Akane's eyes on him.
She had been looking at him, glancing at him more often than usual as he paced around jumpily, unable to eat, unable to sleep and barely alive on water and choc-protein bars, angrily fending off Shimotsuki. Ginoza's manner even had set off Tougane, who had taken to hanging out in the archival room for the next of the week. It had been mostly him and Akane, and he could feel her eyes on him and now and then, and it had sent him off in bursts of nervous energy.
He had been unbalanced, and unsettled, the world tipping between his teeth, until on Thursday, which dawned gray and cold, the pieces of evidence and his hypotheses had resolved into a cohesive theory.
After that, they had gone to hunt, and Ginoza had led, feeling beastly and uncontrolled.
On Friday evening, as the team celebrated the week's hard work, Ginoza, feeling as if he had overdosed on exhaustion, slipped into the room where they had their workstations, and had sat down, wanting to document the case,( he hadn't let go of his filing habit), when he heard the patter of feet.
Too tired to react, he had waited till Akane was standing next to his desk and looked at her clear chocolate eyes with his red-rimmed ones.
She patted his hand with her own. "You can do it later." She said. "Please go home and rest, and eat. Take it off till Monday."
"It's not as bad as it looks."
"Go home, Ginoza-san. Get some sleep and rest. I will drop in later, maybe on Saturday."
The unexpectedness of her offer made him leave slowly, nodding. The ghost of her touch lingered on the back of her palm. It was the first intentional and unwarranted physical contact he had had in a month maybe.
Back home, he looks at himself at the bathroom mirror. His eyes are sunken, ringed with purple lines, and he can see the blue veins of his cheeks and throat.
He nearly falls asleep in the shower.
As he gets into bed, Dime at his side, Ginoza is overwhelmed with a hollow feeling of loneliness as he falls asleep, the back of his flesh hand tingling.