One Page of Fame

by reminiscent-afterthought

The tragic genius, the tragic actress, the tragic policeman and the tragic detective in the shadows... It's too bad they all end in tragedy, isn't it? But there's still the writer, and their tale is eternal.

3. Soichiro

One Page of Fame
3: Soichiro

He's the tragic chief of police that went down in a blaze of glory, or that's what they all assume it is until the secret true ending comes out and the farce is revealed. His death isn't a blaze of glory after all but a smoking cigarette bud crushed underfoot and forgotten about like all other cigarette buds except the ones that set fires and this one doesn't set a fire. It doesn't quench one either.

There's a spectacle when the truth comes out and there's the final scene but this tragic chief of police is barely a passing mention in it. He's a leaf that's already blown off the tree, a refuse that's been left to rot and melted into the asphalt until it's a stain and barely that and he was a bright glowing man before: solid and good and isn't that the kind of man we want to live forever? Instead, his model is in mind and out of sight and that's splattered in heart attacks and gunshots and betrayal and blood and who will recall his legacy amidst it all? He's a man who lived for something but died for nothing, the tragic chief of police whose ascension and fall were both pawn sacrifices and forgotten in the larger scheme of the bored –

But at least he got a burial and a tombstone, which is more than some of those other pawns.