Chapter Two
Deep Indigo
Akane had another reason for giving Division One a week to recuperate. If she hadn't had this reason, she might not have gotten authorization to take Division One off-duty for that long, considering how fragile things still were from the Helmet Riots.
After all, it wasn't just Shinya Kogami's going AWOL and Tomomi Masaoka's death that they had to deal with in the fallout.
Akane tugged at the back of the chair at Shusei Kagari's desk and paused, feeling the anger stir inside her again, replaying over and over again that video clip on that phone that'd been recovered from the wreckage of the airborne transport that Makishima had forced to crash-land (which Akane had taken great pains to get a hold of from the moment Sibyl had personally informed her of Kagari's death and how he'd died).
She remembered the blood and guts of whoever Kagari had been with splattered on the floor, and then Kagari's last words:
"Just my luck, huh. This sucks."
Only for Akane's playing it to herself triggering a self-destruct mechanism that had been planted on it, forcing her to throw it against the wall of the Evidentiary Vault. But then…how he had died had to be kept a secret, of course. A Sibyl-enforced policy which pissed Akane off even more.
"Inspector?"
Kunizuka had come up behind Akane with an empty box.
"Great, thanks."
The two of them started the grim task of collecting the personal items from Kagari's desk, Kunizuka holding the box while Akane went through everything: his jar of candies, his little fake toy lizard that he had clipped to his computer monitor, his favorite handheld game player, a box full of gaming data cartridges, some spares of the hair barrettes he'd liked to use to keep his bangs out of his face, a collection of hardcopy DVDs, including Star Wars: the Clone Wars, and the first Transformers movie and its sequel, Dark of the Moon. Likely he only had digital copies of the rest.
There was even an e-book tablet, but a cursory flip through the titles loaded onto it out of curiosity revealed that he'd mostly downloaded volumes of really old Shounen Jump titles like JoJo's Bizarre Adventure.
Akane slid it into the box alongside the DVDs and the game cartridges.
"Where's this all going?" Kunizuka asked when they'd finished clearing out everything. "Did Kagari actually have family out there in the real world?"
Akane frowned at her. "You mean you don't know?"
Kunizuka shook her head. "Kagari didn't talk about personal stuff like that, and I'm not one to pry. We all knew how young he was when he got flagged and thrown in iso, but that's about it, and from previous case studies, most families who have a relative who gets thrown in that young tend to cut off ties with that person out of shame."
"I see." Akane should've guessed as much. "Well, the records say he has a father who's still alive. Masanori Kagari. So, that's where this is all going. If he doesn't want this stuff, then…well…guess it'll get pawned off like at an estate sale, or disposed of. But I did volunteer to deliver the box."
"Hm." Kunizuka seemed to think for a moment, and then said, "Well, let me know how it goes. With Kagari's dad I mean. I'll admit I'm curious."
Akane wondered sadly if Kunizuka's thoughts had drifted to her own family. "Sure. I'll let you know."
After she flipped the box flaps closed, Kunizuka handed her the roll of packing tape.
"Do you mind getting started on Masaoka's desk?" Akane asked her. "I can finish up here, there's just the stuff that can go in the trash that's left."
"Not at all." And Kunizuka went to get another box.
Akane stared after her, and then wistfully regarded all the things in the box she'd filled, all these things that might've been found in a teenager's bedroom, for how youthful Kagari's personality and attitude had been. She found herself thinking of the first time she'd met him, the way he'd grinned and crowed: "Wow! You said we were gettin' a rookie, but you didn't say she'd be so cute!"
And then the last thing he'd said as she and Kogami had let him take point down in the anechoic chambers below at Nona Tower, and Kogami had ordered him not to do anything reckless:
"Heh. I don't need you of all people to tell me that, Ko."
Thinking of Kogami then, she knew she couldn't forget either, that one night she'd hung out in Kagari's quarters, and she'd played on the pinball machine he'd had installed there while he cooked them up some "real food"…and she'd been asking him about Kogami's past…which made Kagari tease her with, "Are you in love?" which had made her laugh outright. Though even now, with everything so tangled up, she still wasn't sure in the first place why she had laughed in that moment.
Akane's eyes stung, her grief over Kagari mingling with what grief was still lodged in her heart like a shard of glass over Yuki's and Masaoka's deaths, and Kogami's disappearance. Then she swallowed everything back and taped the box shut.
As Akane drove up to the apartment building where Kagari's father lived, she found herself wondering if he even knew about his son being dead. She hadn't been informed that he had, which made her a little more nervous than she already was.
But she swallowed her nerves and stepped out of the car. As she hefted the box out of her back seat, she really hoped that at the very least Masanori Kagari would take this stuff just so she wouldn't have to feel like she'd lugged it all the way up to his apartment for nothing.
When she knocked three times with no answer, she started to think that the man wasn't at home and was just about to consider coming back later. Then the door clicked open and a man with greying hair stood in the doorway, and he looked so much like Kagari would have if he'd been able to grow older and hadn't dyed his hair red, that Akane couldn't speak for a second.
He had a lit cigarette in his mouth and a dazed expression in his slightly bloodshot eyes. The fact that the scent from that cigarette was reminiscent of Kogami's Spinels didn't help matters either.
"Um…hello," she greeted uncertainly. She shifted the box of Kagari's things in her arms. "I'm ah…I'm Inspector Akane Tsunemori with the MWPSB. I was ah…."
But then Masanori Kagari's eyes drifted down like falling snow onto the box in her arms, and recognition flitted across his face.
Then he regarded her with more clarity than he had a moment before. "I'm sorry. Yes, hello. I…. This is about Shusei, isn't it?"
"Ah, yes…." Akane's palms started to sweat, and she scraped her foot uncertainly on the concrete, like a nervous foal. "Um…these are his um…things."
Come on Akane, get it together.
In truth though, this was the first time she'd had to do something like this. Well, sort of. She'd been there when they'd visited Yuki's parents to tell them that their daughter had been murdered, but she'd been standing solemnly behind Ginoza then, while he'd done all the talking. It had all she'd been able to do to keep a stiff upper lip in the face of Yuki's mother's keening wails, and Yuki's father begging Ginoza to make it all untrue as he held his wife in his arms. She'd felt their cries beat against her in waves, shaking her down to her very bones.
Masanori though…he seemed to take this the way a ghost might.
"I see…" he said. "So…he's dead then…. Do I have it right?"
"Yes. You have it right."
"I see…."
And then Masanori Kagari appeared to have anchored himself fully in the present, but he also looked nothing but sad, right down to the cigarette tucked and smoldering in his mouth. Akane suddenly found herself completely on the edge of crying, and she had to work to hold it all back. This was just as bad as watching Yuki's parents lose it, if not worse.
Then Kagari's father said, "I always considered the possibility that this day would come, ever since he first became an Enforcer…but…."
Whatever he wanted to add to that though, it seemed he couldn't find the words. Unable to say anything else, he held his arms out for the box, and Akane, throat too tight to say anything else either, wordlessly and solemnly handed it to him. After he hefted it into his arms, he looked it over with another melancholy look before he managed a wistful smile for Akane.
At the very least, he was sincerely grateful to her.
Akane felt her insides grow taught, and she knew there was something she should be saying. That's right, she should be advising him to make sure he got his hue checked as soon as possible, and recommend that he not delay in seeking out grief counseling and therapy. From the look of things actually, it appeared that he involved himself very little in things like hue checks and managing his Psycho-Pass.
Maybe to him, Shusei Kagari had been dead since he'd been thrown in iso at the tender age of five, and he'd been mourning him long before now. Maybe that was why he was so reserved in his sadness about it now.
But then he caught sight of the pine box of his son's ashes in the box of his things.
Akane had picked that one out too. There had still been some sweetness clinging to the pine, and given Kagari's sweet tooth, she thought he might like a sweet-scented resting place.
And for a moment it looked like Kagari's father was about to break, his eyes wavering and fragile.
Yet, there was still something she knew she should tell him, but she couldn't make herself do it. Her throat felt like it was wrapped in a vise, tightening, tightening. She just couldn't tell him what he should do…she didn't feel like she could, that she had a right to. Like Kagari would tsk her for doing it, that he'd rather she just leave his dad alone.
Then Kagari Senior forced a smile.
"Thank you…for bringing these," he said.
"Yes, of course," said Akane, stiffly, and she managed a bow, which Masanori returned before withdrawing and sliding the door closed.
Once Akane made it back down to her car, she locked herself inside and buried her face in her arms, forehead pressed against the steering wheel as she sobbed like a child.
Chief Kasei surveyed Akane across her desk like a cat surveys a mouse it's toying with before devouring it. For being nothing more than a highly advanced cyborg unit currently housing the mind of the criminal Kozaburo Toma—though that could change at any time to a completely different mind, since, more largely speaking, Kasei was Sibyl's walking-talking mouthpiece—she certainly knew how to pull off the most infuriatingly smuggest of smug smiles.
But Sibyl, as a collective entity…liked Akane.
No, no. "Like" wasn't really the word for it.
At the very least, it found her sense of justice intriguing, in the way Akane supposed the criminally asymptomatic found anything intellectually interesting to be intriguing, regardless of morality. Like they'd been bored watching animals in a zoo, only to spot one off on its own, leagues ahead of the others in intelligence and ingenuity, though not quite up to the standard of the criminally asymptomatic. The kinds of minds that had no qualms about pitting other people against each other simply as a means to find out what would happen. That had been Shogo Makishima's playground, after all, though Akane had to give the man some credit: at least he hadn't had so much of a god complex that he'd felt compelled to accept Sibyl's offer to join the collective. A rogue among rogues.
Akane raised her chin, but didn't say a word, meeting Kasei's gaze unflinchingly. She even resisted the urge to clear her throat. She wasn't about to show something like impatience at a time like this. After all, this was the first time she'd been called to the Chief's office in this capacity, now that she was acting head of Division One.
However, Akane's anger with Sibyl would be forever rooted in her heart, no matter what events presented themselves in the future. And not just because of the debacle with Makishima.
It was Sibyl, using Kasei's cyborg transport body, that had made the decision to take Kagari's life—to point a Dominator at him and manipulate it so that it shifted to the "Destroy Decompose" function, just like it had tried to do with Ginoza's Dominator when it'd made him point it at Kogami, forcing it into "Elimination" mode. Thankfully Akane had thought quickly enough on her feet to feign innocently thinking that Ginoza's Dominator had been malfunctioning and had taken it upon herself to knock Kogami out with a "Paralyzer" to his thigh. She supposed that might've been the moment that she'd started to take up the reins while Ginoza started faltering. Either way, luckily it succeeded in saving Kogami's life, and saving Ginoza the burden of having to kill his best friend against his will.
In any case, though Sibyl had done an excellent job of disposing of Kagari's remains, leaving no trace, death by "Decompose" meant that Kagari's end had been a violent and bloody one (not that "Elimination" was any less, but "Decompose" was really meant more for inanimate objects, which added insult to injury where Kagari was concerned). No doubt that if Division One had managed to recover his remains, they wouldn't have known it was him, except maybe by the clothes, or maybe even the red hair if the barrettes were still intact.
As far as Akane was concerned, she wanted to make sure that every time she looked at or addressed the secretly Sibyl puppet that was "Chief Kasei", that she project that cold anger that nonetheless burned deep in her heart for what it had done to that kid.
Just as she was doing now. Collective entity or no, nothing more than a group of pickled brains in jars, she would never forgive it for that, even if she was still going to play along with its little games for the sake of fulfilling her duty as a barrier between safe order and dangerous chaos.
Kasei took her sweet time either way, before she decided she'd had enough of this battle of wills and went from sitting with her chin resting on her folded hands to leaning back in her chair with her fingers tented. "So, here you are: in Ginoza's place. How does it feel?"
Akane raised an eyebrow. "Honestly, I can't say I feel much of anything. Except maybe relief that Division One's still functioning."
"Oh, barely. My dear, you are functioning about as well as a three-legged dog that's lost two more legs. But, given that, I must say, you've pulled things together quite well given the circumstances. And in the meantime the system is working to pull together some fresh blood for you before you hemorrhage further. Unfortunately, while Enforcers are as common as they come and just as disposable—" (Akane ground her teeth, but nothing more, refusing to react to this obvious slight meant to be Sibyl's way of spitting in the face of Kagari's memory and be all the more smug about the way it had killed him) "—you'll have to act on your own as Inspector until such time we see how Ginoza fares recovering from his trauma. In which case, I'll have your Division act as a kind of support unit to the other Divisions while they continue to rebuild the city and regain and maintain order. Think of yourself as a crutch for now."
Akane curled her hands into fists at the almost mocking, sardonic tone with which Kasei referred to Ginoza. Clearly she had little faith that the man would recover a healthy hue.
What would you know about it?
Kasei raised her eyebrows at her. "Do you think you can handle flying solo until then?"
"Of course I can," said Akane at once. Truth be told, it was the best thing she could do for herself, focus on getting Division One back into ship-shape so that when Ginoza got back he might actually be outwardly impressed with her. More than that, but it might do all the more good for his own mental health, as much as it did for her, to help her forget all the reasons why Division One had four empty desk chairs.
"Good." Kasei reached over and picked up that Rubik's cube of hers and began fiddling with it, rotating blocks into different combinations. "Don't think I haven't made notes of your progress in the field. You proved you were capable of taking charge of Division One when things started to fall apart, but on the other hand…you let Shinya Kogami get away. Get away with murder no less." She raised her eyebrows again. A warning.
"Yes, I was aware," Akane replied frostily. And then, she gave a sardonic smile of her own. "Of course, perhaps getting away with murder just means that the act was justified. I'm sure that, like you would have done, Kogami weighed the safety of our society against the safety of one man like Makishima, and favored the good of the many over the good of the few."
"Be careful there," Kasei told her more directly, her voice edged with a sharp cut.
She certainly hadn't missed Akane throwing her insult to Kagari and the way he'd died right back in her face. Her expression was even of one who'd been hit and realized that her lip had been split. That she, one who was not used to bleeding, was actually bleeding all of a sudden.
"I realize that there were certain factors that fell out of your control," the Chief went on, "but even so…when we locate the fugitive Kogami, you know what has to happen. The System will pass its judgement. I trust you'll accept it, regardless of what it is."
"I'll point the Dominator myself," Akane told her with steely conviction. "I'll accept whatever judgement it passes on him. He's already accepted that fact on his own. Even knowing that, he still did what he did." She had half a mind to smirk at the way Kasei narrowed her eyes at the suggestion that Kogami had done what Sibyl should have done, given Makishima's crimes, but didn't, because of its inherent flaw.
So it went with any system meant to do what humans did by instinct, even if conversely human instinct was even more flawed in its biases. In its weaknesses.
It was why for example, decades ago, when self-driving cars were first emerging through commercial taxiing services, so many people were uncomfortable with the idea of a car making decisions for them. When driving, things could turn into a life-or-death situation in a split-second, depending on circumstances, and things like that…humans wanted more than ever to be in control, if only to give themselves some sense that they could make things turn out the way they wanted them to, rather than let what would be play out. After, humans had been born with instinct, like all other creatures on this planet, and instincts were one of nature's greatest survival tools.
That said, people did come around when the stats showed that in this case, the machinery of the self-driving cars had better senses about safe driving than people did, because while humans had instinct, they also had the desire to take risks, playing the gamble that by taking it they could come out on the other side fortunate, rather than unfortunate. So at a turn light that's seconds from turning red, a self-driving car would simply slow to a stop, while a human (so often in a hurry) would take the risk of beating the light before it turned red, which may or may not result in a collision.
Really, it was beginning to look like no system, living or non-living, could be without flaws. Flaws were just…something that always had to be there, for some reason. Maybe if only to make interesting the dice game that life seemed to resemble.
Kasei, for her part, seemed at least somewhat satisfied with Akane's apparent and sincere resolve. She gave Akane a curt nod and then dismissed her.
For Akane, it felt strange to be back on the streets of Tokyo, chasing down latent criminals that try to make a run for it and cornering them with her Dominator (which hadn't spoken to her in a one-on-one conversation format since the Makishima incident at the hyper oats facility). Mostly because she still had this sense she'd felt in the wake of Makishima's death and Kogamei's going AWOL that the world had to have ended there, that it couldn't still be functioning as if nothing happened, as if Tamomi Masaoka hadn't died and Nobuchika Ginoza hadn't lost an arm. When they'd returned to Tokyo from that incident, the whole city was still trying to rebuild itself from the Helmet Riots, large public buildings still full of people being treated for psycho-hazard, their facilities changed to resemble field hospitals, like in any of the war zones in other countries in the world you grew up hearing about.
Even so, Akane carried what she'd managed during that last encounter with Makishima over to the field and office work she did now, living up to that person that Kinuzuka had told her she could trust to put her life in her hands.
The stickiest thing, actually, was getting on with the other Divisions, all of them fully equipped as far as manpower went. Most of them were pretty lukewarm about the whole arrangement, with the understanding that using Division One as a supplemental crutch unit was only temporary, some sympathetic to their predicament, and some not so much.
Least of all Division Three. One of its Inspectors—Moe Suzuki—had no problem in voicing how much he thought Shinya Kogami had been a lousy, good-for-nothing rat who'd disgraced himself and what the MWPSB stood for. And that Nobuchika Ginoza might as well be too (it was already spreading about Ginoza's hue getting so dangerously clouded). Then he'd glanced Akane's way, but Akane simply returned the gesture with a stony look, refusing to acknowledge him any further than that.
Really, only Division Two appeared to be completely in Division One's corner, and Akane was in no doubt that that was due in large part to its Senior Inspector, Risa Aoyanagi, given the fact that Ginoza had been closer to her than most as a colleague.
On a day about two weeks after the Makishima hyper oats incident, Divisions One and Two had just finished coordinating with each other to bring in a group of people who were trying to skip out on getting their hues checked (the frequency of required checks had increased ten-fold, and would stay at that high number until the psycho-hazard was neutralized). As the individuals were being collected after they'd all been hit with "Paralyzer" on the Dominators, Aoyanagi approached Akane while her new Junior Inspector, Mizue Shisui, was getting the Enforcers back into their paddy wagon.
"Thanks again for the backup support. That was some good work out there, Tsunemori," she said. "You've gotten a good head on your shoulders for working under pressure. I can see now what Ginoza was talking about when he was praising your raw aptitude. You take to this really naturally."
Akane tried to force a smile, even though she really didn't feel like it. "Oh well…just doing my job." As soon as she said it, she felt incredibly lame and amateur, more like the rookie she'd started out as. But then she supposed Aoyanagi just made her feel that way, given the other's abundance of experience compared to what little she had under her belt.
"C'mon, don't look so modest." Aoyanagi gave her a wink. "I mean…when I say someone like Ginoza's praising you, it's not like he's…glowing with enthusiasm or anything…but he's definitely painted you in a positive light, even when apparently you were being stubborn."
"Ah-ha, well!" Akane cleared her throat. "I mean…we've had our disagreements now and then."
"That's not surprising, since he's just as stubborn." Then Aoyanagi turned a little more sober and lowered her voice. "How's he doing, by the way?"
"Physically he's healing just fine, but mentally he needs something major to turn things around," Akane admitted. "His Crime Coefficient was ninety-eight-point-six, last I saw him. Even though that was a drop down from a ninety-nine, it's not much of an improvement considering."
"Hm." Though there was a flicker of doubt in Aoyanagi's eyes, she gave Akane a rather sororal smile. "I see now where Ginoza gets envious of you. On the other hand, I can see what he meant when he said he could see how you keep your Psycho-Pass so clear, even in instances where it should've clouded way more than it does, if at all. Which might explain why you've managed so well coming into your own as an Inspector."
Akane frowned a little, maybe because of the way news of her incredibly nearly-uncloudable Psycho-Pass got around like the flu. But then she considered the idea of Ginoza and Aoyanagi in a room together, chatting about her, about work in general. They'd probably chatted about Kogami like this too (though ultimately less positively, for obvious reasons). And somehow, it just made sense to Akane that the two of them could get along. Like Aoyanagi was too tough a chick to be deterred by how prickly Ginoza got, so Ginoza stuck around.
Still, she felt Aoyanagi was giving her too much credit.
"I was just doing what I had to…" she said, thinking back to the first conversation she'd had with the Sibyl System, when it had revealed its true nature to her, when it had pointed out to her that Division One's success against Shogo Makishima was starting to depend heavily on her, with Kogami having absconded to hunt down and kill Makishima himself, Kagari KIA, and Ginoza already on the verge of a breakdown (his father dying was just the straw that broke the camel's back).
"Well, you didn't have a whole lot to work with, considering how crippled Division One had gotten," said Aoyanagi, bringing Akane back to herself. "But you didn't get squeamish about it either, from what I can tell. I pulled up that report you typed up for the Hyper Oats Facility Incident from the MWPSB database. Even through the cold, clinically professional tone, you came out looking pretty good. Not every Junior Inspector in your shoes could've managed what you did, not without cracking first at the very least. Although, maybe you did crack, but either way, where it counted, you were collected, even when things were going south. And ballsy," she added, with an impressed quirk to her mouth, "hitching a ride on the side of a moving truck just to blow out the front tire. In a pencil skirt too."
"Well now you're just making me sound like an action hero," said Akane, even laughing a little.
"Hey, you're allowed to every now and then, you're MWPSB, for crying out loud." Then Aoyanagi's smile turned a little more sympathetic. "Listen, don't let what Suzuki from Division Three's been saying about Kogami and Ginoza get to you either. Knowing Kogami, I guess it was only a matter of time before something like this happened, and well, Ginoza's always walked a dangerous edge, way before all this. The fact that he was so uptight is just because of the fact that he was always painfully aware of that, I think."
Akane's smile felt a little more fragile, but she persevered—because Aoyanagi looked just a little fragile herself. "It's fine. I'm not giving up on him." I'm not giving up on Kogami either.
"Well, you're a rare one, I'll give you that too." Aoyanagi turned at the sound of her Inspector Shisui calling to her. "Looks like we gotta pack it in."
"Looks like it," Akane agreed, and the two of them parted to slide into their respective cars.
"Sorry it took so long getting this to you."
Ginoza looked up from his e-reader, finding Akane standing in the doorway of his recovery room, carrying the box full of the things from his father's desk.
He frowned and shut off the reader, setting it aside as Akane came over and popped the box onto the seat of an empty chair in the corner.
"You could've just dropped that off at my apartment when you went to feed Dime," he said.
"I know, but I thought you could use some of your down time going through his things, picking out what you wanted to keep. That sort of thing." Akane gave him an encouraging smile.
Ginoza turned aside, as though he were ashamed of how grouchy he was being but couldn't help himself. "I've been catching up on my reading, can't you tell?"
"Well sure…but…I would think that even you could use a break."
Akane dragged the other empty chair next to the one she'd deposited the box of Masaoka's things on closer to the bed and dropped into it. She sort of perched on the edge of it, resting her elbows on her knees and propping her chin in her hands. Then she caught sight of his Crime Coefficient on display: 98.7.
She looked over at Ginoza and caught him glancing at her sidelong.
She sat up straighter in her chair, hunching a little in meek contrition as she laced her fingers together solemnly in her lap. She dropped her eyes and contemplated her thumbs instead before saying, "I'm sorry. I wasn't even thinking. Of course…you'd need every distraction you could get to get your Crime Coefficient down."
She reached out a hand towards the box, on the verge of getting up to take it back out of the room and go drop it off at Ginoza's apartment like she should've done.
"Wait."
Akane's head snapped up, and was surprised to see Ginoza managing a smile, even if it was wan.
"It's fine, don't worry about it," he told her. "I mean…." He did something very un-Ginoza-like and massaged the back of his neck in discomfiture. "I was trying to distract myself with reading so my number would go down…sort of working off that 'a watched pot never boils' theory…or what you do to get rid of hiccups…if you just ignore it and let yourself be and relax, you can look up and suddenly your Crime Coefficient's already improved. But…well…thoughts about…Dad…keep shoving into the forefront of my mind. So I guess there's no point in trying to block them." He chuckled mirthlessly. "I'll bet that's what started it all. I just kept pushing him away out of shame, when really I should've reached out to him for guidance from the start…then maybe I wouldn't have been so wracked with paranoia all the time. Still…even when I pushed him away, he still did whatever he could to guide me regardless. He never wanted me to end up like him. But…." Then his voice cracked, broke, and fell away, and he swallowed.
The 98.7 ticked up to 98.8.
"It's fine," Akane broke in hastily, holding up a hand. "You don't have to talk about it anymore, if you don't want to. I get it. I mean…there's still a chance while you're still under one-hundred."
"Ha! Barely."
"Still…."
Then Ginoza looked at her again, and something about him seemed more cheered, somehow. Just a little.
"Look at you. So optimistic." His compliment was sincere, soft with admiration. "You're really something, you know that?"
The way he looked at her, Akane felt something like a bird taking flight in her chest. And then it passed, and now she just felt tight everywhere.
She managed a laugh, though she knew it came out kind of awkward. "Jeez, Mr. Ginoza, I'm not sure you should keep being this nice to me. I might get too used it."
Ginoza raised his eyebrows at her. "Would that be a bad thing?"
"Well, you're usually such a…."
"A hard ass. I know. You can say it."
Akane stared at him, a sound still scraping from her throat while her jaw hung slack, but she couldn't seem to form words for a few seconds until she got over her shock and cleared her throat.
"Ah…ah-ha…well, when you put it like that…."
But then Ginoza snorted what sounded like a laugh, but it was so odd to hear it coming from him. Even so, hearing it, Akane couldn't help herself and snorted a laugh too.
"Come on, Mr. Ginoza…I'd never call anyone a hard ass, you know that."
"Hm. You've got me there. You're too good for words like that."
Then his Crime Coefficient on the display ticked back down to 98.5.
Akane got in late that night. Or maybe it was early in the morning. Either way, she couldn't even bring herself to switch on Candy—she really wasn't in the mood for a bubbly welcome from a household AI represented by a pink jellyfish.
The second Akane slid her shoes off, she hobbled over to her couch and collapsed onto it, laying sprawled out on her stomach the way she'd do in college when she'd just put herself through the ringer cramming for an exam. Yuki used to say that she was so good at not letting herself get worked up and anxious that she even made the act of cramming look enjoyable rather than cripplingly nerve-wracking.
Yuki...
Before she could stop it, that memory of Makishima slitting Yuki's throat as Yuki begged for her life flashed in Akane's mind. Even when she shut her eyes, it just replayed on a tormenting loop on the inside of her eyelids.
Yet even though she let herself cry, just for a second, before wiping her eyes and shaking it off, her Crime Coefficient didn't spike, even a little.
She pushed herself up into a sitting position and examined her hands. Why did this sense of self control come so easily to her? Was there something…wrong with her? Was she…more like…Makishima…criminally…asymptomatic…?
There wasn't any reason why all criminally asymptomatic people had to be like Maskishima, right? They didn't all have to be egotistical psychopaths, did they?
Ugh….
This was getting to be too much for her to process when she was this tired.
She tipped her head back and breathed in deep, then let her breath out slowly. When she opened her eyes, they landed on Kogami's pack of Spinels she'd fished out of her jacket pocket the other night. She'd left them on the end table beside the couch, tossed them there like she'd been trying to convince herself that they didn't mean anything to her, that they were just a pack of cigarettes and nothing more.
Now, on an impulsive thought, she swiped them off the end table and examined them in the gloom of her apartment. She increased the pressure of her fingers closed around the packaging, garnering a little satisfaction from the sound of the paper crinkling. As she did this, a small whiff of the scent of the tobacco inside was expelled and reached her nose. The moment she smelled it, something about it made Akane feel better than anything like a simple breathing exercise did.
She examined the pack again, holding it up in front of her face. And then, giving into vulnerability, she put it right up to her nose and breathed in the smell of unfiltered tobacco that had hung around Kogami all the time.
And somehow, it cleared her head even better, even as it quickened her heartbeat.
She withdrew the pack from her nose and examined it at eyelevel again, and was just toying with the idea of seeing what would happen if she lit one when her phone for personal calls went off. The display on the screen was flashing Kaori's avatar, a dancing tulip.
Akane flung the Spinels back on the end table and answered the call, bringing it up on holo speaker. "Hey Kaori. What's up? Everything okay?"
"Yeah. Everything's fine. Um…I was just calling to see if you had a day off anytime this week?"
"Yeah, I've got Thursday off."
Actually the whole of Division One had it off. It was just easier to give the entire Division the day when they were so small. They were supposed to be getting some new blood soon though so hopefully the whole day off thing would normalize after that.
With her hands free while the phone sat beside her on the couch projecting the holo of Kaori's avatar for the duration of the call, Akane was able to reach down with both hands and grip both of her feet, hoping she could work out some of the aches wedged in between the bone joints there. She had a feeling though that a long hot bath was the only thing that would really do the trick, even though all she had was a shower.
"Did you wanna do lunch then?" she asked.
"Yeah, sure. That sounds great." Though Kaori's voice made it sound like her heart wasn't entirely in it.
Akane didn't blame her. This would actually be the first girls' lunch they'd have since Yuki died. They both would be aware of it, even though they'd both fight so hard not to say anything.
She paused though, frowning at the dancing tulip floating over her phone. Then her brow relaxed, and she tried to make it clear in her voice that she was smiling. "Cool. Sounds like a plan. A breather'll be nice, even if it is just for lunch."
"Actually, I was just thinking of playing hooky from work that day, so maybe we could go shopping after?"
"What? You, play hooky?"
"I know! I'm terrible."
And then the two of them were snorting with giggles, and Akane savored this brief moment of refuge from the sorrows of her working life. It even felt, just briefly, liked it did before Yuki had died, before Akane had to take her bereavement and lock it away so it wouldn't interfere with her work, leaving Kaori on her own.
Akane knew that too, which only made her feel even guiltier, deep down.
Even so, her hue turned no darker than cerulean.
