"Yashiro... are you sure about this? This is going to be an advanced lesson," a mocking voice echoed throughout the classroom.
Touma Kouzaburou was sitting in his chair, legs spread wide apart, while Yashiro leaned on his desk with her back to him. Crossing his arms over his black vest, he tilted his head and smiled.
"I'm sure," she responded.
"The ability to control your psycho pass at will is pretty complex, and by doing so you are protected from anything and anyone. In order for it to work, you need to think of a memory—but not just any memory—a very powerful one. You and I come from nothing, but here we are. You know, I could've prevented my mother from taking pills, but I didn't. And after she died, I didn't lose any sleep over it. I still don't. There must be something you wouldn't admit to anybody, because you know you stepped out of line..."
Yashiro nodded, and he lifted his head to continue, "Remember that feeling. Allow it to fill you up, then lose yourself. Think like the Sibyl System. You are above the law. No—you are the law. You are the symphony, rather than the orchestrator."
Yashiro closed her eyes. The memory was almost vivid, but it was difficult for her to remember it completely from the beginning. There was blood on her hands, and she felt her heart pounding hard against her chest. Touma started checking on her psycho pass, but only after a minute, his eyes widened. Her crime coefficient dropped quite fast, but gradually in the end.
"Good," Touma raised his head to her. "You've reached zero. Here comes the worst part… hang on, concentrate on that feeling before you get it up to 50 again… slow down, control your emotions Yashiro. You're going up too fast—"
"I can't," she shook her head, opening her eyes and blinking a couple of times.
When she got up, Touma raised an eyebrow and handed her a glass of whisky. Yashiro looked down at him, realizing he had his own glass as well. He narrowed his eyes and smiled again, making his beauty mark below his left eye remarkably seen, which gave him a somewhat childlike expression.
"It's okay," he uttered in a casual voice. "I didn't expect you to do it the first time. What were you thinking? Which memory did you choose?"
"The night I killed my father," her voice was clear and loud.
Yashiro took a sip, as Touma nodded deeply, and they both walked towards the long window to look out over the empty, blurry courtyard of the academy.
"That's a good one… depending on your emotions. Did you feel guilty?"
Yashiro shook her head and frowned.
"You still hate yourself for your mother's death," Touma slightly widened his eyes, looking down at her. "When you turned yourself in to the PSB, you wanted to die."
Yashiro looked away and sighed. Her eyes began to sparkle, yet she held back tears. Then suddenly, Touma slipped his left arm around her shoulders and pulled her close in a warm embrace. Since he was taller, Yashiro had to rest her head on his chest, right between his black vest and red tie. She could feel his heartbeat against her ear.
"This isn't real. You're not real," she sighed.
Then Yashiro woke up all of a sudden. Her moist narrowed eyes fixed on the ceiling. The room was completely dark and silent but she could not fall asleep again. Finally, she stood up ready to start the day despite being four in the morning. Her movements were slower than usual, as that of a disoriented drunk woman. She could remember every part of the dream. The voice. The hug. Yashiro shuddered at the feeling and closed her eyes. Then she pondered the possibility of being able to control a crime coefficient through emotions, as the Touma in her dream suggested.
She shook her head opening her eyes again, and stared at the photograph hanging on the wall next to her bookcase, in which she was sitting on a couch with one leg over the other. Touma Kouzaburou was at the other end of the couch, with one elbow resting on the backrest and his legs apart. He had a relaxed and serene expression, and a small, not at all cocky smile covered his lips. Makishima Shougo on the other hand, was standing with a book behind them. That was the last day the three of them were together.
Back at the Public Safety Bureau, Yashiro seemed oblivious to the stares and the new face when she entered her division's office that morning. They saw she had huge dark circles under her eyes that she had not even bothered to hide with makeup, but no one asked her any questions. They just greeted her as usual. Aoyanagi did not make any comments either. Only when Yashiro was about to take her seat, she blinked a couple of times and looked at the man in front of her senior, who turned around as soon as her footsteps echoed in the office.
"Welcome back," Akiyama Daiki smiled, hands clasped in front of him.
His wavy black hair fell on either side of his face, and he gazed at her with narrowed eyes, it was a genuine relaxed expression.
"Inspector Takahashi," Aoyanagi scrutinized her with formal, almost menacing eyes. "I am pleased to see that you have completed your report on our last case. I was looking forward to hearing your conclusion from yourself—do you feel you made the right decision?"
Yashiro frowned for a moment, as if she were speaking in another language, until she finally widened her eyes and nodded in a clear, confident voice that did not match her oddly dark countenance, "Yes. Her crime coefficient was temporarily elevated because she was in shock. Her psycho pass is currently recovering with therapy."
"I was referring to whether you justify leaving an unconscious enforcer under your supervision, in order to rescue a hostage," she raised her head to the new inspector.
Kozuki stretched out on the seat and looked at them with widened eyes. Katashi was still focused on the screen in front of him, though his dark brown eyes were narrowed on the keyboard of his desk. His black hair was shorter than his brother's, without bangs, and was slightly shaved on the sides. It gave him a military look even though he was only five years older.
"Desperate times call for desperate measures," Yashiro responded with a thin smile. "You were coming to assist him. The case was not over yet because there was a hostage and the… rebels were on the run. So, I did what I thought was right by going after them."
"Daiki-san? Anything else?" Aoyanagi turned to him.
"No. She was doing her job as an inspector… and prevented the hostage from becoming a latent criminal. The case ended well."
Yashiro slightly widened her eyes, but just as Aoyanagi was about to say something else, her wristcom beeped and she enabled the audio. When Karanomori informed them that the autopsy was over, everyone went to the lab. As usual, the analyst was sitting in front of the desk typing something on the keyboard. One of the screens was updated with a three-dimensional image of a female human body, showing several red dots on the thorax.
"Same surgical precision as in the other victims," Karanomori observed, pushing the smoke out of her mouth in the shape of a ring.
"The first body was found inside a dumpster, right next to a bar. The latter was behind the Exoset club, in an alley. Causes of death also vary. The last victim had several broken ribs. There is no pattern," Aoyanagi shook her head and folded her arms.
Yashiro asked Karanomori to display the images of the locations where the bodies were found, to which she agreed and typed some instructions into the terminal, requiring only a few seconds to display the information, which docked on the screen after a brief minimalist transition. Yashiro and Daiki raised their heads in unison.
"He despises these women. He lets them die slowly," Yashiro uttered in a suddenly deep and bitter voice. "And he abandons them in those places—out of prying eyes."
"Insensitive psychopath," Kozuki frowned from behind.
"Let's keep objectivity out of this," Daiki rolled his eyes in a calm voice. "You have to think like a criminal. Make it personal. What would he desperately want before he died? And how is that related to the victims?"
"Maybe… they reminded him of someone," Yashiro continued looking down the desk. "What about her relatives?"
Karanomori shook her head and proceeded to browse the information, loading it onto the adjacent screen. The image of a man and two boys spanned the center, and she zoomed in on the three profiles to check their latest records obtained in their crime coefficients.
"Their psycho pass did not change much after the missing person's report—not even after her death," Yashiro blinked and frowned. "Those of the boys had dropped considerably. Until before their mother's disappearance the value had been too high for people of their age."
Yashiro studied their profiles for a while.
"Family members would be the main suspects, but they are all ordinary citizens whose hues have not changed much," Katashi agreed, crossing his arms over his black coat.
"If you want to hurt someone, you have to tailor your attack specifically to that person. Maybe the killer's methods and injuries say more about his victims," Kasei suggested.
"Have any of them been in the hospital recently?" Yashiro blurted out.
Karanomori frowned at the question and took a few seconds to react. The others shot her glances. For a moment there was only the purring of the computer cooling system and the air conditioning in the room.
"Let's see… oh, looks like it," she nodded, her voice hoarse from holding the cigarette between her lips. "Her children were hospitalized two years ago."
Yashiro's eyes sparkled and she asked quickly, "And the cause?"
"Broken collarbone… but that's not all. According to medical records, they were hospitalized more than once for different reasons."
Yashiro walked over and examined the file displayed on the screen. The broken ribs were what suddenly darkened her eyes.
"Let's see if the same thing happens with the other victims," she suggested.
Karanomori opened other tabs, but as the information popped up in them, her face paled and she looked up, slightly away from the desk with the cigarette drooping from her lips.
"Maybe we should not focus on the perp, but on the victims," Yashiro waved her left hand at the screens. "The boys were abused. If we analyze the autopsy, the injuries of their mother match. Same goes for the other women."
"Every fracture or injury that the children had, the killer did to their mother?" Katashi guessed, looking at her and opening his eyes wider.
"The husband would be the prime suspect," Aoyanagi nodded a few times, then frowned and turned to the other inspector. "But assuming this is the case, what about the other victims?"
"They gave him the motive," Yashiro replied in a mumble.
For a moment, all eyes were on the new inspector. Akiyama Daiki was the only one with a barely visible smile on his face.
"The suspect targets abusers," Katashi stated, exchanging a glance with Kozuki.
"The man we are looking for must know a lot about the victims. If he chose them because of their history of abuse, it means that he had direct contact with them or their relatives," Yashiro commented as she slowly walked around the screens.
"And given the injuries…" Daiki narrowed his brown eyes for a moment. "He must have surgical expertise."
"All of these family members went to a different hospital," Aoyanagi frowned.
"There is no link," Kozuki shook his head and stared at the floor.
Silence reigned in the lab once again, and everyone remained absorbed in their own thoughts trying to find a conclusion. However, it was Karanomori's expert fingers on the keyboard that destroyed the awkward pause.
"Hold on," the analyst commented, loading data onto the screens. "The substitute nurse… Endo Seiji. He was there every time the relative went to the hospital."
Kozuki gave the back of the couch a little slap with his palm and smiled.
"Please send us the address of the last hospital he worked at," Aoyanagi ordered as she turned to Yashiro with a brief smile. "Good job, Takahashi-san. You earned a break."
"I want to see this to the very end," she shook her head, almost pleading.
"This is not a chess game. You dived too deep into this case. It's time to get out."
"But—"
"I am not doubting your capabilities. What worries me is that you may adopt the hue of the perp and become a target for enforcement action," Aoyanagi cut her off, then pointed her index finger at the enforcer behind her. "Daiki-san, you stay here and make sure she does not dive again."
Akiyama Daiki made a military gesture, "Yes, sir."
Kozuki rolled his eyes, then the rest of her division left the room. For several minutes the lab remained in an almost funeral silence, with Yashiro staring at the screens in a sickly manner as she studied the killer's profile. He had very short brown hair with no bangs, and a beard barely visible on his chin. He was in his early fifties.
"What do you see?" Daiki asked.
Yashiro looked down the analyst, "His mother. Who is she?"
Karanomori opened a new profile and raised her head. She was an older woman in her seventies with long brown hair. Her eyes were the same color.
"Ikeda Sara. Retired dentist. She reminds me of…" Karanomori's voice trailed off.
"The victims," Daiki finished, turning to the inspector. "Same hair and eye color. She fits the profile."
"Why would he think of killing his own mother?" the analyst grimaced and lifted an eyebrow instantly.
"A part of him was never able to kill her," Yashiro observed in a lower voice, and slowly shook her head. "But if he finds out we have discovered his identity and that we are going after him…"
"He would have nothing to lose, so she would make his perfect victim," Daiki nodded and looked up the screen.
"Shion, where does she live?" Yashiro blurted out, her voice louder than before.
Karanomori sent her the address, and the inspector turned on her wristcom to check the information.
"Not far from here. Wait, what are you—"
"Inspector Aoyanagi," Yashiro enabled only audio on her wristcom. "We have reason to believe that the killer's mother is in grave danger and I am requesting—"
"Don't rush in," Aoyanagi cut her off. "This man is dangerous and we do not know if he has accomplices. Wait for the rest of us."
Yashiro nodded a couple of times, then turned the hologram off and headed for the exit.
"Where are you going?" Karanomori swiveled in her chair. "Aoyanagi-san said you should wait for the rest of your team."
Yashiro stopped behind the couch, and glanced at her with a smug smile.
"I can wait at the suspect's door," she shrugged her shoulders.
"Don't tell me you're going to ignore her orders and take a car without authorization…"
Daiki stood in front of her with his back to the exit, and suddenly his voice echoed in the entire lab, "Inspector, I can't let you go."
"Stop me then," Yashiro widened her eyes, staring back at him. They were the same height. "I take full responsibility. You are not the one disobeying any orders. I am. I left you behind once. You could have died that night, if it weren't for Aoyanagi-san. I hold no regrets. You have no moral responsibility for my actions."
Daiki took a step towards her, not at all intimidated by her piercing silver eyes and unwavering calm.
"You came to that decision yourself because you thought it was right. You put justice before duty… and that's something I've never seen before. Unlike the other inspectors, who treat me like a hound, with you I can work as a detective and feel like I'm actually helping people... without letting a gun judge instead of my own eyes. I wasn't going to stop you. I'm coming with you."