Chapter 4
Dime keeps his head out of the window, throughout the car ride, and occasionally barks at passing cars.
Akane chats nonchalantly with Ginoza, filling up the silence in the car. He is sitting on her right, looking at her and listening. His face is unreadable, he has become so much more closed since his demotion—Akane thinks, and his seawater eyes hooded.
She tells him about the day-to-day things. She tells him about the heavy load of paperwork and playfully apologizes to him for burdening him so much paperwork when he was holding the office. There is a small flash of purple and green in his eyes.
She tells about the troubles she has with Mika and making her understand the finer points of law enforcement and judgment regarding a dominator—in general the purpose of human being being involved in a system which can be completely manned by drones operating under the Sybil's eyes—something that shouldn't be that hard to teach the junior inspector, yet turns out to be quite a tedious a job.
Her memories drift back to the days of the past—when she had been working alongside a inspector in denial, rather than one who was complacent with the System—both almost to the point of bigotry.
Ginoza smiles, his narrow lips curving without much humor.
"how is your hand?", she asks him carefully.
"Quite fine."
She nods.
Inside she wants to ask him so much, not just about Kougami, but also about small personal things. How are his plants? What does he every night? Does he remember the good times he had with her dad, now that he is gone? She wants to know, What images do you have set for your holo-tablet wallpapers? Favorite ice cream flavor? What do you do to get over your anger?
She wants to know if he believes in God.
Her rib cage and spine aches with the dead weight of them.
She wants to be angry with him, now—as she had wanted to, in the past four months—for turning away from her, for his silence, for being unable to talk to him about the past. But in the end, all she can feel is sadness, as his sorrow paints her soul with blue fingers, sitting together in the small car.
The dog-restaurant looks elegant and expensive. She knows Ginoza doesn't have any money—he is paid by the right to walk in the streets. It's only once, Akane tells herself, she can treat herself once.
The insides are decorated tastefully in the latest art decor styles. There was soft tinkle of instrumental music, something she couldn't recognize. They are shown to a secluded niche, dimly lit with ocher and chrome shades, and Dime is given a comfortable cushion to seat on.
They sit face-to-face, obscured and distorted by the subtle play of light on shadows.
She is so tired of pretending to be okay and smiling and laughing and caring and only crying when she is alone on her bathroom floor. She is tired of trying to smile for other people when she can barely breathe for herself. She feels bruised and angry at all of them—Kougami, Kagari, Masaoka, and now the man who sat opposite to her, clothed in apparent indifference.
Tell me what you feel, She closes her eyes. I feel so alone in this, tell me you are there too. Tell me I'm not alone.
"How are you doing?", he asks suddenly, and she opens her eyes.
"I'm okay," she tells him, like the fool she is. "I'm here. What about you?"
"I'm fine," He replies, fingers drumming on the edge of the light.
They are silent, the lying assurances hanging between them. It is only broken by the serving bot as it arrives with food. Dime yelps with delight.
"You work too hard." he tells her abruptly, spearing a piece of food with his fork.
She smiles wanly. "Mika is too young, and I don't really have any other engagements." Spooning some lemon rice into her mouth, she looks at him. "And besides, it wasn't me who worked myself to the ground last week on the Katanagi case, Ginoza-san."
He snorts. "Well, that's the only reason I'm still here, and we are talking."
Akane dips her head.
"I know." She says.
He shifts, restless. He has grown so much more restless, Akane thinks. It has worked the opposite way for them. For her, reading lengthy reports at a stretch is no longer an issue, no longer a dreaded thing. She wonders what that might mean.
"You really have no other engagements?", He cocks his head, his glass-green eyes oddly speculative, and a little puzzled.
"Why do you ask?"
"You are only 21 years old." he shrugs. "You should be seeing people."
His tone is so patronizing, coming from someone tittering on the brink of his twenty-fifth year, Akane can't help a giggle.
He looks more puzzled.
"I really don't have any other engagements, believe me." Akane clarifies to him. "Also, I haven't seen you for quite a long time."
"You wanted to see me?"
Akane feels she's walking on a knife-edge. She can give him this piece of information, let him know she cared, and run the risk of walled out completely, knowing Ginoza. Or she could turn back now. She could lie.
She could let him be and walk away, like Kougami had done to her. She was crossing some sort of an invisible barrier, and Akane hoped it was worth it, all of it, in the end.
She leans forward, on her elbows, and looks him squarely in the eye.
"I worry about you, Ginoza-san." She tells Ginoza, "I worry about what is happening to you. I have lost my team once," She swallows, "I don't want to lose it again."
Ginoza looks unreadable. His face looks lost in the shadows, and now that is all out, Akane tiredly lets her eyes fall to his wrist, the one that is on the table. His skin is alabaster pale, and the lattice work of blue and green veins just under his skin makes her feel tender. She wants to touch his long, thin fingers.
"Thank you, Akane." He sounds genuinely grateful. She looks up, and encounters the blankness in his face, and something in his eyes. Then he surprises her by saying: "But you should be taking more care of yourself than worrying about me. I will be fine. You—I don't know."
"Why do you say so?", Akane asks him, feeling a little self-conscious. She was fatigued, but was it so blatantly written on her face? She hoped not. More worrying was if Ginoza could read her like an open book or not.
"I don't know how you feel about Kougami's uncalled for departure."
Akane feels shock shooting up her jugular in a burst of cold awareness.
They are there, in that moment of truth and it wasn't worth nothing. In front of her, Ginoza's eyes look at her like he is trying decipher an unknown script.
"I don't know how you are doing, Akane." He breathes, heavily, and raises one hand to rake through his unruly hair. There are shadows in his eyes, in ways they weren't there before. Or maybe she never had looked closely enough. Now, as the world is skating away from underneath her toes, and she is filled something like loss and gratitude, she can't look away.
"I miss him." She manages. She can't tell him how much, or when, or why, because if she starts talking, she might fall apart. It is just not Shinya Kougami. It is Kagari's face, Masaoka's smile, her own innocence, and it is also him. She misses all of that, the ghosts of the past.
"Do you miss him?"
Ginoza's eyes unfocus for a while, and his eyes seem like murky emeralds. "Sometimes."
"Masaoka?", She feels so timid, so scared—the moment is a singular one, and she doesn't want it to end.
Ginoza looks at her with eyes that are hunted and haunted, and she knows, he dreams too.
"Sometimes." He repeats, his voice heavy and dark.
Akane keeps her hand on his flesh hand. He lets her keep it for a few seconds, and then flips his hand and catches her small palm, in his larger one. Pressing it for a second, he lets go.
Akane offers him a watery smile, and he nods in return.