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The difference between cog and dog comes down to one line: Slipped at the end of a letter, it reads “demotion;” but when delivered by a once-superior inferior, Ginoza hears “be motion.”
In the dark blue of dusk, fingers curled around his second cup of coffee, he wonders how he should reconcile such contradiction between sight and sound; he wonders how his heart -- or his strength of self, his emotional resolve; whatever’s lacking -- must match the sky, stretched and endless, above the city; and he watches the sun wander down, down, down and disappear into the ocean, where she belongs.
Once -- when shifts at the bureau were still slow and Division One dealt with skin, not plastic -- Kougami resurfaced from his reading to nudge Ginoza’s shoulder and say, “Ever study symbology, Gino?”
“Never,” Ginoza replied, minding his paperwork.
“Shame. In the mood for an education?”
“Keep it brief.”
Kougami smiled, lit a cigarette, and set his book to the side. “Hey, it’s not like you’ll pay me for it. Read much?”
“Else besides reports? No,” Ginoza said, one arm across his lap and the other on his desk, elbow far from impressionable documents.
“Well, in books -- like in cases, like in life -- when something crops up often enough, you can’t help noticing it. Maybe it’s a strange word, maybe it’s a particular weapon, maybe it’s a feeling: It stands out to us because we remember having come across it a few times before. From then onwards, whether we will it or we don’t, that something becomes a sort of focal point. Any time we’re in a new situation and it’s there, too, we use it to make sense of its context. Say some gentleman gives a rose to a woman in a novel: From previous experience with roses, we can infer that his intentions towards her are romantic. Same with stabbings: Certain blades suggest certain psychopathies, certain life chances, certain criminal styles. Emotions, too.”
Kougami paused for breath then, smirked. “You pout like that nine times out of ten that we talk, you know?”
“Nine times out of ten, you do most of the talking,” Ginoza deadpanned.
“And that’s the thing,” Kougami continued, taking a long drag. “You have to be careful with what you notice. Symbols set you up for bigger things. You don’t want all our conversations to bore you, right? So you can’t go into them thinking, ‘When is my charming, pleasantly talkative partner going to stop procrastinating from filing papers?’”
One corner of Ginoza’s mouth curved upward, just a bit. “Well?”
“Immediately,” Kougami assured him. “But there’s something I want you to pay attention to next time you’re brooding.”
As Ginoza downs the dregs of his coffee, he looks at the moon.
Feminized by most mythologies; victim and benefactor of its attachment to another planet; knowledgeable by slow, steady reflection; heralder of inborn and inevitable misfortune; incapable of shining on its own -- was the moon what Kougami had seen when Ginoza had changed his cactis’ soil, had lost sleep over a sickly Dime? When Sibyl had judged Ginoza fit for the future he had desired only to pluck his father, his mother, his subordinate, and his partner from the picture? When Ginoza was given proof of his suspicion that he, too, had always been -- and would always be, whatever color -- a cog in the machine and a dog to his master? By absence of choice, by his own incapability to make peace with the past and tolerate contradictions in his future? How would Ginoza’s life have unfolded if he’d had another brand of stubbornness, of naivety, of empathy -- if he had resembled the woman he respected?
If he’d had the discourtesy to ask?
Imagine:
Soft, steady footsteps coming to rest beside where Ginoza stands. Her hands are empty, her eyes look full of the glint and gleam of their city -- of feeling put to good use. Days ago, she held a letter to her chest here. Tonight, her fingers curl around the railing of one of the Bureau’s dozen balconies, and her words find an ear.
“What did you want to see me about, Ginoza-san?”
He catches himself mimicking her posture, clears his throat of all but the safest of questions:
“How are you feeling?”
“Better,” she answers honestly. “I spoke with Shion-san earlier today.”
“I’d forgotten what a difference answering that question makes with all the trouble we’ve had lately,” she continues; Ginoza watches her small smile in profile. “I’m grateful she reminded me.”
She meets his gaze. But Ginoza plays dumb, and concentrates on the glimmer in her eyes until he wrenches the words out of her.
“And you?” she says. “Are you alright?”
To no avail, as always.
“I wanted to thank you,” Ginoza begins, and wills himself to see dark blue in her pupils; anything to keep him looking -- he’s so awful at allowing himself any tenderness, so good at capitulating to old anger. “For your quick thinking the other day. You’ve... grown immensely in a very short span of time.”
Her eyes trail downwards to a crinkle in his suit -- the only shadow in a span of clinical, uniform color -- and when she speaks again, her voice is bare.
“Is this another goodbye?”
“.... My cruelty is more straightforward than Kougami’s, Inspector Tsunemori.”
The crinkle in Ginoza’s suit moves, grows to twice its size. Akane glances at the hand on her shoulder before inclining her head; he touches her as if she were porcelain, as if he were dangerous -- reality reversed.
“How,” he tries, “can you forgive him?”
She thinks. Ginoza chooses his words with the most care he can manage.
“He... betrayed us, Inspector. No -- more than that, he betrayed you. You risked your health and reputation to... create a space where he might find his revenge while fulfilling justice, and he refused it. Why....”
She holds up a hand, and Ginoza loosens his grip.
“I don’t think... I can fault him for something he can’t help,” Akane says. “In the same way that I could never... take a person’s life, Kougami-san must, when it comes to Makishima. The burden falls on me to do what I can to protect him from that, and while I couldn’t prevent his leaving, I -- ”
She exhales. Ginoza’s free hand clenches; his arm feels stiff.
“-- won’t let Kougami-san commit murder.”
She turns her attention from the ocean to Ginoza. “Will you help me?”
“Yes,” he says, without hesitation.
Just as Ginoza must return hurt with hatred, he reciprocates kindness with obedience.
“Ginoza-san! Stay with me, stay still, soon -- ”
He has sense enough to register what’s happened to him and where he’s going.
“ -- Shion-san, please send back-up to my coordinates. I’ve found Ginoza-san, he was -- ”
Within range of Kougami. Dominator to pistol. Head to helmet. Using your enemy’s advantage for your own protection was clever, was another thing it seemed they shared.
“Ginoza-san, I’m applying first-aid to your wound. I’m sorry we have no anesthetic -- ”
She holds his hand as he writhes and winces. Her grip is gentle, strong -- final. Where is his father? (Missing.) Where is his mother? (Beneath a bouquet of flowers.) Where is his subordinate? (Gone, and gone again, and going.) Where is his partner? (Here.)
He feels a hand brush aside his hair and opens his eyes.
“Don’t cry, Inspector.”
Did he say that? Did she?
“We’re not finished here yet.”
Is anyone speaking?
“This isn’t fair.”
His eyes dusk.
“You don’t deserve this.”
He clings to her hand. He has never before felt such a desire -- felt the imperative -- to live, to cease all movement forward and away for the sake of some future. Suddenly, Ginoza understands: Stillness is but one type of motion, motion a sort of stillness.
They are so consumed by their obsessions, negated by what propels them onwards to nowhere. He is no different.
Sirens wail in the distance; her determination locks his look with hers. He ignores pain and propriety; he feels his mouth open, and he hears himself say -- for sure, this time:
“But I have hope I’ll change, Tsunemori Akane.”