Ginoza
Ginoza can feel her eyes. Even in the confines of her, five miles away from her.
As they had eaten and talked, Ginoza felt her eyes on him, piercing and earnest, and still laced with something like kindness and fear. He doesn't know where the fear stems from, and it makes him uneasy and restless. He can think of a couple of reasons for her to stare at him, the way she did and he doesn't want to dwell on them.
He stands on the doorstep for a little while, even after the small black car had driven away, his mind twisting questions to wrest answers from them. He feels alone at the moment, now that she is gone.
He understands how deep he has sunk into his loneliness, drawing himself away from the world, downing cheap liquor when it didn't seem to matter at all, just being away from everyone. And then she had come, and nudging him gently, had started the process of making a niche for herself. He also understands that it's not probably very different from her condition. They are in this situation at this moment, and he realizes that it both expands and contracts their perception. To which end and manner, he doesn't know.
She had needed to take him out today, and without his own knowledge, it seems that he had needed it as well.
It feels a little colorful to imagine what she thought of him, at the moment, to make cloud huts from the red that had bloomed over her cheeks when she had been caught staring . It's simple to go down that slippery slope, and Ginoza turns his mind away firmly.
He was bored. So he wanted her to stay.
Ginoza goes to sleep with Dime on his feet, and a sense of content that he hadn't felt in months.
When he wakes up, it's 5:00 a.m.
Ginoza ambles to his backyard, muscles still stiff and jammed from sleep. Doing a few stretches, he pushes himself into his usual routine of a hundred push-ups, then a hundred burpies, and then crunches, and finally as sweat is dripping down his back, cold in the dawn chill and his body is liquid fire, he flows into the ancient movements of Tai-chi. it's so effortless, and he feels his body taking over, and him entering the meditative state he had practiced to achieve since he was eleven years old.
He is submerged, coccooned into the depths of his mind. He feels red in his veins, cleansing and corroding, and blue flowers bloom all over his spine. He becomes the viper, catches the tail of the tiger and slivers of silver blossom.
He feels infinite.
Dimly aware that he is gushing from the liquid movements of Tai-Chi to the more powerful movements of Kung-fu, Ginoza curls on himself in the amniotic silence of his lizard-brain.
It is the only time when he is not rolling great hollows in the dark confines of his cranium, or trying to soothe the itch that makes him feel like he had stepped out of his skin for too long.
When he stops, it is morning, and the grass is slippery with dew. Birdsong is floating in the sun-warmed air, it's going to be another windy day. He lets his tired legs collapse under him, and sweat is dripping into his eyes, and it burns. Running a hand through his hair, it's soaked.
He lies for about half an hour, the sun warming his body and the sweat cooling in the breeze, feels the tickle of the grass on his bare back, the back of his hands and legs. The electric buzz of the saws of his mind gone, and he lies there, eyes closed, body relaxed, listening to the deep sound of no sound.
It's Monday, and Ginoza is bored out of his mind and it's only half-way through his shift.
Idle and frustrated, he leans his head back in the chair and stretches his neck. There is a crack.
There is Yayoi, and Shimotsuki here, today. Yayoi has her headphones on and a music sheet is fluttering in front of her, unaware of the covert glances that Shimotsuki shoots from behind her monitor.
Ginoza decides to count how many times she does that, just to pass time, and maybe tease Yayoi or Shion later.
After two hours of him keeping a sly gaze on the one-sided exchanges, he estimates it to be two glances a minute on an average. Poor Shimotsuki. She was headed into dangerous waters.
He grows tired at this too, and let's his mind drift.
And not too much to his surprise, it drifts to Akane Tsunemori.
She has a evening shift today, so she won't be coming until six o'clock in the evening, which means there are three hours left before he can get out of this bored doom.
It would have nice if she was here, now. They could have played chess or something. As far as he knows, Shimotsuki doesn't know how to play,(not that she would sully her pristine fingers by playing with a lowlife like him, he observes, slightly amused) and Yayoi was too engrossed in her music to play.
Lazily he reaches for his own headphones, and Schön Rosmarin fills his ears.
Three hours till Tsunemori comes and walks him home. The end result seems pleasant, so he tips his head back and closes his eyes, hoping the music would put him to a lull.
He falls into an uncomfortable nap. A tap on his shoulder wakes him. Akane's face is looming over him, and the interior of the office is lit up by the fluroscencent lights that emit from the lamps and the holo tablets.
"Hi, Ginoza-san." She says, and a breath of fresh jasmin, lemongrass and mint washes over him. She smells like freshness.
He rouses himself from the post-sleep lazy ache in his bones, rubs his eyes and smiles at her. "Hello, Inspector."
Her face falls, maybe because he still calls her Inspector, but he feels it would be unprofessional to call her Akane, especially in front of Shimotsuki.
"When are you leaving?" she asks him, watching his limbs bend and dispel the last traces of the nap. There is something acutely feline about the way he yawns and stretches, reminding her of a trim bobcat.
"If you are free to walk me back now, then now."
They look at each other, and Akane reads the thirst of a good conversation and open space in his eyes.
"Come on, Ginoza-san," Akane says, smiling slightly. "Pack up."
Wednesday day shifts gets over, and Ginoza yawns. It wasn't a very bad day. They had arrested a latent criminal lurking about in the plaza. The man's eyes had bulged with fear as the drones took him away. But since his crime coefficient was 110, and he had surrendered very easily, Ginoza suspected it was a temporary stress induced spike. The man probably will make a full recovery.
And yet, even as he had pointed his dominator at the shaking middle-aged man, Ginoza had experienced a strange feeling of total acceptance towards the latter. He understands the man, he had thought. He had felt connected to the man in those moment. As the man had been led away, Ginoza hadd felt his fear, almost tasted it off the air, and he himself had felt fear.
It is disturbing, the empathy he had experienced. It is even more disturbing to think that he had maybe psychoanalzed the man, and it had made him feel the way the man, and now his mind is full of nebulous thoughts about what it means to label someone a criminal, latent or not, even with no crime comitted.
He wants to shake and dissolve these things in his head away, because the only results are generally simmering resentment, and a throb in his left temple.
He needs to get away from all this.
Akane is clearing the days up, since her shift is over. Ginoza walks to her desk. She lifts her head, and they exchange customary smiles.
"Would you wait a moment, Ginoza-san?", she says, her eyes trained on the document she is typing up. "I am nearly done."
"Sure."
Ginoza feels strangely shy and oddly hesitant as he words out his next sentence. There is a small ribbon of shame colouring it as well. It feels like overstepping some unnamed boundary.
"So, it was a slow day," He says carefully, "Do you want to go out for a bite?"
Akane's face tries to hide the ripple of surprise. There is a small catch in her voice, when she says "Sure, why not", and Ginoza doesn't miss it.
They end up in fast-food joint. Ginoza watches Akane's face screw up in concentration as she tries to choose from the plethora of unhealthy oily food. He scrunches his nose up a little.
Ginoza's senses, especially smell and hearing, had always been quite keen. Right now, the smell of boiling fat and the loud cackle of voices grate on his tired nerves. When Akane had suggested the place, the reason he had agreed was because well, he didn't really know any other place. And since Akane would be paying and driving, he thought it was actually upto her to make the selection.
"Mmm," Akane hmm-es to herself, caught between ordering a cheeseburger combo with double fries and a double hamburger. It was mouthwatering. She wants to barge into the kitchen and eat up the chefs—which was exactly how hungry she is. There is a hunger-induced delicious ache in the back of her lower-jaw.
She finally chooses the cheeseburger, and licking her lips, turns to Ginoza, who is sitting quietly with the fingers of his hands interlaced.
"Hey, what are you ordering?", She asks as she looks over the menu card. "Aren't you hungry?"
"Is there tomato?", he sounds a little wistful and sort of exasperated, and there is laughter bubbling up Akane's stomach like champagne fizz at the utter ridiculousness of the request.
Once she laughs herself light-headed, face hidden by her hands, she emerges, red faced and shiny eyed.
Ginoza looks at her with disgruntled resignation, and asks her what's so funny.
"I can't believe you asked for tomatoes in a Fast-food joint," she chokes out, almost dissolving into another bout of mirth, "What's more funny is that you don't even get the joke, baka."
The word "idiot" carries a smatttering of pastel tenderness, and it embeds into the thin bones of his skull.
Even the coke and fries she orders for him seem almost bearable.