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She didn’t mean to end up on the Enforcer’s floor, but she’d wandered there absentmindedly. As soon as she arrived, though, she broke into a run, flailing her arms and yelling “Inspector Akane! Stop what you’re doing!” at the drones shuffling in and out of his room.
Of course, she thought. Why wouldn’t they be cleaning out his rooms? It’s a surprise they waited this long in the first place.
The drones voice their confusion as she ordered them to put down the boxes and bags, but ultimately they couldn’t defy a human, and left without protest. Akane walked slowly into the room.
- One day ago -
Division One had been put on indefinite leave. With Gino in rehabilitation, Masaoka, Kagari and Kougami gone, they more than any other division needed time to regroup. Yayoi was working temporarily with Division Two, Chief Kasei deciding that they couldn’t spare any more manpower than needed. Not that they could afford to spare Akane, but her Hue was stuck a pale gray-blue since that day in the oat fields. Akane choked a bitter laugh back. It would be stuck on the color of his eyes.
---
She surveyed the room. All the Enforcer’s personal quarters had the same basic setup: an open-concept living-dining area bisected by a brick arch, with a small bedchamber off to the sides. There were no windows, though many chose to use Interior Holos to create the illusion of light. Not Kougami - his living space was spartan, rough-hewn concrete walls serving as the backing for suspending punching bags, a rack of barbells, and other exercise equipment. None of these had been disturbed by the drones. They were probably too heavy for their hydraulic piston limbs to lift. Akane smiled to herself. You’re stubborn even when you aren’t here, Kougami.
Doing a slow circuit around the room, she realized she was the only other person she’d ever seen in here. He wasn’t an especially private person, just a lone wolf, going about his routine as he pleased, never pausing to ask if anyone would like to join him. She’d met for dinner with Masaoka and Yayoi in Kagari’s room multiple times after a hard case, but Kougami battled his demons alone, probably talking with fists and knees to a punching bag. She wondered if he had an exercise routine, a circuit worked out in here. She’d only ever seen him spar the training android upstairs. A perfectionist, the rookie profiler in her commented. He didn’t want anyone to see the effort he was putting in, just the results. She smiled wryly.
She leaned against the back of an armchair, glancing over at the butts of cigarettes in the ashtray. She'd never forget the smell.
- One week ago -
“Why did you start smoking, Kougami-san?”
He exhales with a surprised cough that turns slowly to a low chuckle, leaning back into the armchair and throwing his head back with a wry smile. Akane puffs her cheeks out in indignation, not getting the joke. He flashes a wicked smile in reply, teeth gently clamping the cigarette in place, smoke escaping between the gaps as he continues his throaty laugh.
“Because, Inspector, I like to really feel myself getting more corrupted, rather than having a goddamn computer tell me that it’s so.”
His gaze pierces her, and it feels like a challenge. Something in her rises to accept, first coiling low and nervous in her belly; suddenly roiling out through her body. Like a pot with a lid, she's suddenly too much for herself, and she's bursting to be let free.
“Is feeling so important, Kougami-san?” she asks, almost too quiet to hear. Her pulse pounds a staccato rhythm in her chest, and for a second she’s nothing but a million tiny cells, each attuned to his presence. The embers in her voice take him by surprise, and before he can reply she rides the wave of that something in her, leaning in and plucking the cigarette from his slack-jawed, gaping mouth. She takes a long, slow drag of the cigarette; contemplates the sensation, the scorching feeling that marches down her throat, the damp of his lips on the filter, a slippery human signature, and the lid comes off. The pot boils over and so does she.
She looks him square in the eyes, taking another drag with a daring smile. “You’ll have to show me, then.” she says, pulling him up by the lapels and closing in on his lips.
She doesn’t remember if the cigarette ever finds its way to the ashtray.
---
Akane took the ashtray, emptying it and rinsing it in the sink. It leaves a circle of polished wood on the coffee table in its wake, edges defined by the layer of dust that settled over everything in his absence. Her breath becomes suddenly stuck in her throat, as something painful and thick in her tries to push its way out of her chest and tries to escape through her tear ducts. She refused to give it the chance to manifest and crossed quickly to the bedroom door.
Inside, despite its nominal function as a bed room, there’s no bed in sight. No rest for the wicked, he used to say. A faded leather couch is pushed up against one wall, making room for imposing gray filing cabinets along the other. A desk buttresses the third wall, scattered with stacks binders and pictures, leaving a haphazard outline of where their master used to sit in the dark of the night, turning the name ‘Makishima’ over and over in his head.
She ran her hands over his files idly, tracing the notes he left to himself in the margins with a finger. ‘Connected to M-Sig??’, ‘Follow-up with Gino’. A path through the woods he was determined to take alone. She’d followed him, but it didn’t make a difference in the end.
- One month ago -
He was struggling into a shirt after a round with the sparring android, willfully ignoring the rivulets of sweat rolling down his abdomen as he pushed the fabric lower. Her face heated unwillingly. Did he have to do this shirtless? She feels the heat spread to her ears. As always, he accepts her curious, tentative glances at his body without comment, but Akane felt anything but curious today. She did’t know when it happened, but something had changed, in her, and what had become a comfortable camaraderie was suddenly stifling and difficult. But that was her little secret. Nothing good could come of it.
Catching her stare, he shoots her his usual post-sparring greeting: “Is there something on my face, Inspector?”
“N-no”, she stammers out, flicking her gaze upwards to his eyes. “I was just wondering why you kept notes by hand. I wanted to look into what you’d researched on Makishima, but there wasn’t anything on the shared drive and well… your desk says it all?”
He broke into a laugh at at that, looking at her. “Do you know what makes us human, Inspector?”
The question takes her by surprise, startling her out of a nervous fixation with the floor at her feet, the heat finally dissipating from her cheeks. She purses her lips, thinking. “Our minds?”
He raises an eyebrow in response. “A common answer, but no. Ultimately, what makes us human is our bodies. Our DNA and RNA, our cellular structure, our skeletons. On paper, that’s all that separates us from any other animal. Technically, our mind is just a byproduct of our body's regular functions - eating, sleeping, breathing,” – he pauses, giving her a pointed look – “fucking.”
She attempts to keep her face impassive. She doesn't know if she succeeds.
He reaches for a towel on the sideboard and mops his brow. She backs up a step as he turns, continuing. “So really, all crimes of the mind are crimes of the body. They’re physical, even if Sybil tells you that a Crime Coefficient is a part of any persons’ Psycho Pass, because a person's Psycho Pass is their body, in essence. A physical crime should have a physical presence in the world. It’s more than just data. We all are.” he finishes, and she wonders whether he's talking about himself or not.
She leaves the training room at a well-measured pace, but her heart is marching to a different beat.
---
She calls the drones back after she leaves, a rumpled suit jacket and an ashtray cradled in her arms. She shuffles back to her car, taking the staircase down the tower to the parkade to avoid people. She carefully bundles the ashtray in the coat, sits in the driver’s wheel and plants her hands firmly on the wheels, putting her foot to the accelerator. I’m done with autopilots. I’ll get where I need to go with myself.
- One year ago -
She looks back at the Enforcer, and realizes he’s picking chunks of the victim off his shirt. If Akane hadn’t just thrown up minutes prior, she would’ve done so again.
It takes her a minute to parse what’s odd about the scene, as the other Enforcers climb back into the Police van.
“You don’t wear a Holo suit?” she asked, trying to avoid looking at the blood spatter on his clothes.
He pursed his lips in disgust. “No. Listen, kid.” he says, turning to face her, “They may call it ‘Lethal Eliminator’ mode, but what we’re doing here is killing people. That’s why we Enforcers are here to do it, so you clean little Inspectors don’t cloud your Psycho Passes. But these are people, they’re made of flesh and blood, just like you and me. You’ve got to feel it when they go. You’ve got to clean the blood off your clothes, to bring it all to an end for yourself. You’ve got to feel something, or you’re nothing but a dog.”
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