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The cigarette was laying forgotten in the ashtray, something unusual for Shion Karanomori. The analyst was looking intently at her computer screen with an amused grin on her red lips, so focused and absorbed in her task that she didn’t hear Yayoi Kunizuka enter the room.
— What are you up to?
Shion was startled to hear an unexpected voice.
— Nothing new, actually – She responded with an enigmatic smile.
Yayoi raised a brow, inquisitively.
— Just deleting records and leaving no trace. Although this time I’m having more fun than usual – she added, while she took the last few drags on her cigarette.
The dark-haired woman approached the analyst and wrapped her around from behind, in the shadow of an embrace. Shion rested her head on Yayoi’s shoulder for a moment, acknowledging her gesture, and then both focused on the screen.
Shion’s hands were travelling at full speed across the keyboard. Every now and then, Akane’s ID floated above several entries of the MWPSB database, indicating that she had downloaded files she was no longer allowed to access. Yayoi watched while Shion deleted thoroughly each record of the former inspector’s activity. When she was done, Shion looked at Yayoi from the corner of her eyes.
— Oi, do you want to see what has caught Akane-chan’s attention? – said the analyst with a mischievous expression.
Kunizuka looked closely at the screen. It showed reports of old cases. “What is so funny about that?”, she thought. There was nothing unusual about the files. Except, maybe… She looked at the dates of creation. The most recent downloads were voicemails and videos from the CID, recorded between years 2104 and 2110 and, the last one, around the time of the specimen case.
The enforcer opened her eyes in realization, and she immediately played one of the audio files files to confirm her supposition. A second later, a familiar voice filled the room through the speakers: it was Kougami’s.
Yayoi found herself smiling slightly, feeling a mixture of empathy and compassion towards Akane Tsunemori. She understood her at a deep level, since their situations were similar. In less than a week, the enforcer would probably regain her freedom. And she remembered how it feels to be free to love anyone, even to choose… And then, at the end of the day, to be fond of someone deemed unworthy by Sybil... It had happened with Rina, and now she was about to lose Shion too. Just because of a shade of pastel pink and a value below 100.
Kunizuka was still standing behind her partner, unable to speak. But she caressed the blonde hair, her fingers gently stroking the scalp and then travelling to the tips of the perfect waves. Her hands said what her words couldn’t.
Shion paused Kougami’s speech and slowly turned to her, with the softest gaze in her heavy-lidded eyes. She was reading Yayoi like an open book.
— What if we make up for the time we will be apart?
***
The room lacked windows. The walls were rough, made of concrete and unpainted. The metallic door was thick and heavy, with a small opening at the eye level, jealously guarded by bars. That was the only reminder of a reality beyond that prison.
Akane was sitting in the middle of the cell, stoic, reading one file after another on her laptop. She had her yellow striped mug next to her, filling the room with coffee scent. Her hazelnut eyes were travelling quickly from side to side of the screen. Sometimes she would listen to audio data or watch video recordings with evidences or reports on several cases. And then, she would take notes with the same unwavering determination.
The rhythmic clicking on the keyboard was echoing in the small room until, at some point, the sound ceased abruptly. Her shoulders tensed, her spine bent a bit, but her eyes remained locked at the point where there had been a play button a few seconds ago.
A twenty-year-old Kougami was monopolizing the screen. His deep voice announced the case code and other formalities required by the MWPSB for recording AV data. Then, he moved, apparently returning to his seat during a meeting. He was trying hard to include everybody in the conversation and listen to every point of view. He said “please”, and “thank you”. This is how he was back then, in his days as an inspector.
The video ended and Akane switched to the next file. The spiky-haired man appeared before her eyes once again. She watched the entire tape. And then another, and another, until she forgot what she was initially looking for. Her mind was numb and restless at the same time. All her senses were focused on the screen, gathering as much information as possible about Kougami’s past as an inspector.
She liked the person she was seeing: polite, kind, attentive… But something was off. He seemed somehow empty. He seemed to understand the cases theoretically but not intuitively, as if something was blinding or blocking him. Undoubtedly, that Kougami was eager to solve the mysteries, but he also looked detached in some way…
“Why?”
Yes, he was younger. But that was not enough to explain that.
Akane played another video, although she should be doing something else. She sighed. It couldn’t be helped when it came to Kougami. They’d been strongly influenced by each other since they first met, and her attachment to him never waned, despite of everything. He had been her subordinate and her colleague, someone with whom she would share her doubts and insights, someone worth trusting. But he also became her worry, and her long gone… Whatever. She didn’t dare to put a label to their dynamics, since she would have to admit to herself more than she was willing to.
The ex-inspector shook her head and patted her cheeks to stop that train of thought. But it did not prevent her from looking again at the screen. This time, however, she felt an unsettling sensation arising in her belly. It wasn’t entirely bad, it just felt like she was missing the last piece of a puzzle just because she had sat right on top of it.
“Oh, God.”
Her mind went blank, except for just one thought. An idea she found both poetic and cruel at the same time. She slowly closed the video player and went back to the list of files.
She filtered the reports by date and searched for the specimen case. Available data was extremely scarce. Surely Sibyl knew how to handle the present and the future by concealing the past. What a surprise.
“Please one video after the incident, just one video just after that…”
Bingo.
There was a minor case around the time of Sasayama’s death, a mother that had given psychotropic drugs to her 10-year-old boy to keep his unstable hue clear. The case was assigned to CID Division 1 back then, and one of the reports included a videotape. Akane held her breath as she opened the file.
Kougami appeared on the screen again. His voice was rougher, his eyes held huge dark circles, his eyebrows were slightly furrowed all the time, and the mess of his hair was more evident, if that was even possible. Although his shirt was completely buttoned up and his tie laid perfectly knotted on his chest, this man was undoubtedly, unmistakably Kougami now.
His almost exceedingly considerate attitude towards his colleagues was replaced by an aloof demeanor. The look in his eyes was sharp. He asked the correct questions and received the answers he needed. All his audience was focused on him. He was fast. His wit, unleashed. And when his eyes fell for a moment on the remarkably empty chair at his side – presumably Sasayama’s seat – he looked ready for anything…
Akane’s shoulders relaxed as she let herself sink into her seat. Sadness and understanding invaded her senses, as the uncomfortable pressure she was feeling on her chest rapidly spread to her throat. Her lower eyelids got wet, but she didn’t allow herself to cry. She smiled instead, surrendering to the evidence. There was no point in hiding her own emotions from herself anymore. Feelings are relatively easy to mask when they are diffuse and they lack shape or direction, but it was far from being Akane’s case.
She sat there for a while, just breathing and existing in the correctional facility. She felt grateful somehow. Maybe it was one of her usual old-fashioned thoughts, but she was deeply convinced that good could thrive in bad circumstances. And Akane wondered if she would have fallen so intensely for Kougami if he hadn’t experienced the loss of a close friend. Or another situation that would make him question every atom in this planet.
His insights on human nature, his ability to dig deeper and deeper, the way everything mattered to him (although he always tried to look distant), the intensity in his steel eyes… Those things are only achievable trough experience.
Akane stretched her arms in her seat. She sighed, and smiled and drew her hands to her warm face. “Oh god, Akane”. She patted her cheeks to come back to reality and try not to behave like a teenager with a crush on a pop idol. “You are a grown up woman. A 28-year-old woman”.
But since the smile wasn’t going anywhere any time soon, she grabbed her mug and took a sip of her coffee.
“Ugh”.
She discarded the drink, putting the cup back on her desk. What seemed a few instants ago, the mug was spreading a wonderful aroma. Now it only contained a dark, bitter and cold liquid. How long had she been analyzing Kougami?
Akane stood up and walked over to the bookshelf in the corner of the room. She distractedly let her fingers run through the spines of the books, the ones she had inherited or rather borrowed from Kougami at his departure. One title caught her attention. It was an old copy of Ortega and Gasset’s Meditations on Quixote, a rare translation to Japanese.
— “I am myself and my circumstance” – she whispered, quoting the author. Those words had never sunk so deeply into her.
The little woman grabbed the book and held it close to her heart. Then she wrote a quick message to Shion to let her know she wouldn’t do more research that day, so the analyst could delete the ex-inspector’s activity in the PSB database.
She turned off the computer and began to immerse herself in reading.