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It’s pitifully easy to get Keiji’s tokens.
Once he figured out that Miss Sara wasn’t budging on her own tokens, he decided it was better to shift his attention to her companion. Keiji Shinogi. Ever since the main game, Keiji’s eyes have been glued to him. Sou knows he’s trying to figure out why he says what he says, why he does what he does, but based on the mounting frustration everytime they make eye contact, he’s having a hard time figuring it out. It’s amusing.
He could never just ask Keiji for his tokens. The encounter in the ruined corridor told him that much. But he could use what little resources he has to obtain them in slightly shadier ways than what’s intended. It’s not like Ranger would care, though. He’d probably find it funny. So that’s what he does. He uses Kanna.
Kanna seems uncertain at first, but it’s not like she cares much for Keiji. If it were Sara he was asking her to get tokens from then he’s sure it would be a much harder task, maybe even impossible, but the friendly policeman isn’t all too good at endearing himself to anyone other than Miss Sara, so it would seem he’s in luck.
At first he tells her to just go ask for some-- a simple trade, then maybe he can weasel his way into more by poking around and hoping someone would do an under the table deal with her. Lord knows nobody would trade with him. They’d go right to Mr. Policeman, and he’d have his head for it.
This plan is swiftly stopped in its tracks when Kanna comes back empty handed. Apparently Keiji can say no to anyone and everyone, even sweet mourning little girls. Whatever he’s hiding, it must be important. That means there’s all the more reason to reveal it. Even if people don’t trust Sou, taking Miss Sara’s biggest supporter and overall thorn in his side out with him will make it all worth it.
So he tells Kanna just to steal them. Keiji hasn’t slept in days, he’s sure of that, and so with enough distraction and swift enough little hands, he’s certain that they can get fifty of his tokens. She agrees with shaking hands and budding tears in her eyes, and Sou crushes the part of him that feels bad about it. He killed Shin, so there’s no reason he should be popping back up again.
(Kanna reminds him of himself in ways that make him sick. The weak will always be pulled around by the strong. Logically, he guesses that makes him strong, though he’s not quite sure he believes it, still feeling like his limbs are being puppeteered-- like Hiyori’s sick little smile is all that’s driving him forward.)
She gets him after a particularly hard attraction. Sou watches from the chairs, disinterest colouring his features in a way he hopes looks genuine. She starts crying, playing up the waterworks, and Keiji looks almost frightened at being the only one even half equipped to help. He shoots Sou a million glances, halfway to a plea but never quite reaching it. Kanna hugs him, wailing into his chest about how scary everything is, and Sou watches as her hand sneaks to the pouch connected to his belt, pilfering tokens by the dozen and replacing them with the tokens Gin’s been giving out like free candy until it’s enough.
He never knew Kanna would be so good at this. It’s disturbingly real the way she cries. It reminds him of all the times she’d kept him up at night, sniffling and sobbing and rocking back and forth when she thought he’d fallen asleep. The mountain of pillows he’d put between them did nothing to hide her grief. And he stayed up through all of it, part of him wanting to reach out and help, and the other part feeling a world away.
Eventually she stops, Mr. Policeman’s uncertain hand on the top of her bucket as an awkward form of comfort.
“Feeling alright, Kanna?” He calls from the chair, trying hard to sound amused and not like her little act twisted him all up inside. Keiji narrows his eyes at him. There’s something playing on his tongue, he can see it. He just smiles at him. “Look at you, Mr. Policeman. Playing the babysitter.”
That makes Keiji scowl. It sends a bolt of something through his body, nestling in places he would rather not acknowledge. “Yep. Couldn't've done it without you… just sitting there. Doing nothing.”
He shrugs, pulling himself up from the chair. “Even I need a break sometimes. What, can’t handle shouldering the burden of another person’s grief? Only enough energy for poor little Miss Sara?”
Kanna runs to his side, hiding behind him. He can feel her shaking as she takes a hold of his jacket.
“Nothing of the sort. I’m happy to help, Kanna.” For a second, his face softens. “And if you ever need someone who isn’t just using you, then… I’m right here.”
Sou sneers at him, his hand flying back to shield Kanna. “Just get going, Keiji. Can’t you tell when you’re not wanted?”
Keiji searches Kanna’s eyes for a second. Obviously he doesn’t find what he’s looking for, because he shrugs, then walks off towards his room. They both listen as his footsteps grow further away. They don’t relax until his door shuts and the lock clicks.
He turns to look at her. She’s wiping the tears off her face, misery evident in her features. It’s not fake. He just went and made her relive all of her trauma so he could get the slightest one-up on Keiji. He’s truly pathetic. He’s awful. He’s a monster.
“Good job, Kanna.” He grins at her. “Very convincing performance. You may just be cut out for this kind of stuff after all.”
She looks away, ashamed. “Don’t say that, Sou. Kanna just wanted to help you… but it didn’t feel good.”
“I hope you know that he would kill you without a second thought.” Maybe it’s a little too harsh for now, but Sou knows it’s true. He places a hand on her shoulder. “He and Miss Sara are the same. They just take and take with no regard for people weaker than them. That’s why we have to become strong. That’s why you have to become strong. And these…” He holds out his hands, and she drops all fifty tokens into his palms. “...are a great beginning.”
Poor Kanna is silent for a moment. But then those big trusting eyes turn to him, resolve brewing. “You promise that this is going to help, right? This is going to help Sou?”
He takes a deep breath, tightening his fists and feeling the cold bite of the metal. “I promise, Kanna. This is going to help both of us.”
And that’s all she needs. Because, despite how much he tries to drive it home that he’s using her, she still trusts him.
--
He rushes to the prize exchange before Keiji can notice anything is off. Not like he will tonight, unless he makes a habit of counting and inspecting his tokens. He flashes a grin to the receptionist doll and gets nothing in response. This thing is so offputting in ways that the others aren’t, so uncanny and grounded.
“Made it just in time, huh?” He says breezily, as if he isn’t sweating bullets.
The doll almost looks annoyed. “The prize exchange was just about to close.”
He lets his shoulders fall as he scoops out all the tokens. Glittering in the faint light, he sees Keiji Shinogi’s stupid smirking face on them. Ugh.
“I’m here to buy something.” He lays them on the counter, the pile almost spilling off. “Keiji Shinogi’s personal information, to be more exact.”
The doll quirks a single eyebrow up. His beady eyes flit from token to Sou’s face. “...what an interesting request.”
He remains silent. Let the doll think about whatever it wants. It’s not like it matters. Even if the doll watched Kanna take the coins out of Keiji’s pouch, he’s not sure it would even care about it. It just has to do its job, right?
Finally, the doll acquiesces, his face smoothing. He uses his arm to slide the mass amount of tokens off the counter and into his register, and then turns to retrieve a little flash drive from behind Keiji’s portrait. He drops it in Sou’s waiting hand.
“Your prize. It can be viewed from the monitor room.”
He stares down at it. It’s so benign looking. Even if someone were to catch him with this on his person, they’d never know what it held on it. It almost frightens him. He thanks the doll and turns around to leave, feeling its eyes on him the entire time. He closes the door to the prize exchange and lets out a shiver he’d been holding in. Unsettling. He really tries not to let these things in here scare him, but it’s almost impossible when they’re so realistic.
Whatever. He’s got the information and that’s all that matters. Now he can learn everything the detective has been hiding. And then, when the time is right, he can bring poor Miss Sara here, and he can watch as the trust she’d had in him falls apart. He’s not stupid enough to think this will get him on her good side-- in fact, he doesn’t want that, but at the very least he can shake her foundation.
And Keiji… he’s not sure how he’ll react. Honestly, Sou isn’t too sure just what he’ll find, but he knows it’s got to be good with how adamantly Keiji was protecting his information. Couldn’t even give a token to Sara when it came down to it. How pathetic.
(If their roles were switched, Sou knows he wouldn’t give them to Kanna. He wouldn’t risk it. They’re similar in that way. It makes his skin crawl.)
He barricades the door and plugs the drive into the main console. It takes a second for it to boot up, but when it does he’s face to face with the AI of good ol’ Mr. Policeman. His bags somehow look even more pronounced when they’re digital. The AI blinks, as if it’s confused at being awake. Then his eyes settle on Sou, and he replaces questioning with a sharp smile.
“Well, didn’t expect to see you on the other side of the screen. Hi, Sou.”
Ah. Of course he knows Sou. Of course this couldn’t be as easy as he first thought it would.
“Why didn’t you expect this, Mr. Policeman?” He leans across the centre console, grinning into the screen.
“Well, not to state the obvious, but… you and I aren’t exactly friends.” He narrows his eyes at Sou. “Not sure why you’re the one talking to me, honestly. Based on how nobody else has talked to me, I’m guessing chatting with an AI isn’t all that easy. Maybe it’s a trust thing. So how’d you pull that off?”
Ah. So observant. How annoying. “Maybe Keiji just trusts me. Did you ever think of that?”
The AI laughs. Loudly. Explosively. It’s a laugh he’s never heard from Keiji before. Quite frankly, it’s a sound he never thought the man was capable of making. A genuine laugh. It leaves Sou speechless for a few seconds, staring as the pixels on the screen reconstitute themselves into a wry smile.
“That’s pretty funny, Sou. What did you do? Did you steal something from him?” He’s so flustered that he doesn’t even try to deny it. The AI snorts. “Yep. Caught red-handed. He’s gonna be real angry when he finds out, you know?”
He huffs at him and then looks away. “It won’t matter, not once you tell me what he’s been hiding from everyone. He can be angry all he wants, but he can do it alone.”
AI Keiji fixes him with an odd look that melts into a cocky grin. “What makes you think I’d tell you anything?”
His heart sinks. Suddenly, the monitor room seems so much smaller. Suddenly, his plans seem so much stupider. Of course the stupid AI has free will, won’t just bend to him and tell him all he wants to know. That would just be too easy. The kidnappers would never make such a careless mistake. Just like with Mishima’s AI, Keiji’s AI has probably been picked clean of anything even remotely useful-- and even if he did have anything useful, he wouldn’t tell anybody, and especially not Sou.
“Don’t look so sad. If you try hard enough you might get something out of me.”
His stomach twists in on itself, heavy and angry and sharp. This Keiji is so much lighter than the other one. Not happier, no, absolutely not-- seeing a happy Keiji Shinogi would probably mean the world was about to end-- he just... has less baggage. He somehow looks worse than the Keiji in real life, and yet he’s so much cockier, so much younger. This is what lifting two and a half years off your psyche does to you? Makes you a whole new person?
He’s suddenly glad for the barrier that’s between them. The console, the screen. A wall. The AI watches him as he sits down, making sure never to let the monitor out of his sight as he does. He leaves a healthy amount of space between them. He’s tucked behind the console so that, if someone somehow found a way in, it wouldn’t be instantly obvious he’s there.
“You scared?” The AI asks. “Not like I can do much from here, you know.”
Of course there isn’t. But it’s like I’m stuck in a cage of my own creation with a lion, and one of us has got to bite at some point, and I’m frightened it’s going to be you. So, yes, I’m scared, but I’m scared all the time, so does it really matter?
Instead of saying any of that, Sou looks towards the destroyed monitor. “Why would I be scared, Mr. Policeman? After all, you’re just an image on a screen, and I happen to be pretty good at destroying screens.”
He watches as the AI thinks this through. From the way his eyebrows knit, he’s almost certain the threat rings true to him. The fear of death…
“Guess so.”
They lapse into silence. Sou would be able to kill this AI, he thinks. If ‘killing’ is even really a thing that applies to it. He knows that these things fear death; but that fear doesn’t really mean anything in the grand scheme of things, does it? It’s just coded into them. It’s not real. It wasn’t real when his own AI started up and begged for his life, and it wouldn’t be real when this one begged for its life. So killing him would be okay. In fact, it might be his only option.
The AI levels him with an unimpressed glance after a while. “You gonna ask me anything or just sit there looking at me?”
He takes his beanie off and runs his hands through his hair. Then, because it didn’t feel right enough the first time, he puts it back on and does it again. He’s not sure what angle to approach this at. Maybe he should just try being direct. He’s not sure if he’s got a time limit, and he honestly doesn’t want to find out.
“What are you hiding from all of us?” He asks the AI, and almost immediately regrets it. What a stupid question. But he’s gotta start somewhere.
“There’s that cute thinking face… that’s a funny question, Sou. Try another one.”
He wants to scream. Instead of doing that, he tries to think. What’s a question that even Keiji would answer? A question that would give him enough dirt on him to break Sara’s trust? It’s already shaky as it stands, so what would completely dislodge it? Or better yet, what would lead to this information he needs? His mind wanders back to his first trial, back to those papers, back to ex-detective. Aha.
“When did you leave the force, Keiji?”
A more acceptable question than the last one, but it carries a lot of weight.
“Few years ago, for sure. Wasn’t a huge thing. Sometimes career paths just aren’t for you, you know?”
A conversation from behind bars comes to his mind, but Sou doesn’t show his hand quite yet.
“So you got fired?”
A strain to his smile-- an unpleasant memory unearthed. ”Your belief in me is sweet, Sou.”
“Wow,” Sou drawls. “You know, you’re much worse at dodging questions than the real Keiji. You look like you got suckerpunched.”
His sour face dissipates. “Can’t always be on guard.”
“You do seem more relaxed than the Keiji I know.” He leans in and inspects the AI. Looks worse, sure, but his shoulders are looser. His face is sickly pale and his eyes are more bloodshot. His hair is messed up. There’s an air of tiredness to him that is wholly different from the tiredness to the Keiji he knows. A thought pops up into his mind, and once it’s there he can’t possibly ignore it. “Are you hungover?”
It’s a question he expects him to avoid, but the AI just sighs. “Sure feels like it.”
“They coded a hangover into your AI…” His mouth parts in fascination. “There’s no reason for that. I mean, they’d only do that if you were hungover the entire time they were studying you…” He stops and stares at the AI, who is dragging a hand down his face. The exhaustion starts to show. He starts looking a little more like the Keiji he knows.
“Yep. Logically I know I kicked the habit-- I mean, I’ve got the memories of it, but it’s like my body hasn’t caught up.” He lets out a breath. It’s almost pure static through the speakers. “Feels like shit.”
Huh. Add it to the short list of things he knows about Keiji. Alcoholic (or, recovered alcoholic, he supposes) makes a lot of sense for him. Sou’s struggled with that, too. Lost himself under the guise of finding himself, tried to drown what he thought was just sorrow but was really just operantly conditioned fear that he never dismantled. Maybe it’s the same with Keiji.
It’s cold in here, although the fans whirring against his back heat up his core. He wonders if the AI can feel it the same way he can feel like he drank too much last night.
That’s ridiculous. It’s just an AI. And Keiji is just Keiji. And he’s an enemy, so it doesn’t matter what he or his stupid AI feels, because in the end they’re both going to die.
“Do you think you’d be able to feel it when you die?” He asks in lieu of another, more important question.
And the AI thinks, as much as an AI can think.
“...guess I’d rather not figure it out.”
“Of course. I hope so too, Mr. Policeman. Would hate to see you broken.”
The threat hangs like an executioner’s axe, the AI trying not to show fear as it glints in the light.
He finally feels like he’s wrestled some of the power back in the situation, and so maybe now the AI will be more susceptible to his questioning-- as if it’s a game, a give and take, a pull and push, and not just Sou’s miserable attempt at intimidation. There are a million burning questions on his tongue but none of them seem good enough, because he realizes now that he doesn’t just want knowledge for the sake of knowledge-- no, he wants knowledge that will hurt Keiji.
He picks at the lint on his scarf, imagines he’s doing it in that faux bored way Hiyori used to. “So a cop shoots someone and gets fired… must just be a regular Tuesday, right? Though, the fired part is what confuses me.”
“Can’t have a liability in the force. If you’re weak and unreliable then you’re out. I’m sure you knew that, though.”
“That’s funny, Keiji. See, I don’t think you got fired. I think you quit. But why would someone like you leave over something like that? That’s not like you.”
“As if you know me.”
“I know more than you think,” Sou says. “I know you didn’t just shoot someone. You killed them. But who was it, Keiji? Who’d you kill that turned your life upside down?” He says it so breezily, but the dread that falls over the AI’s face lets him know that this is serious.
He’d overheard a few things when those bars had blocked him from everyone and the game of Russian Roulette had begun. He’d stuck around for long enough, glued to the wall between red and blue doors, just listening to what they were saying.
It was a lot of arguing at first. Honestly, he was mostly just listening to try and find something to use against Sara, but then Keiji had revealed that he’d shot and killed someone in his line of work, and well… maybe it hadn’t been useful at the time, but it certainly was now. Pointing a gun at someone makes your head go all weird? Poor Mr. Policeman, how ever will you do your job now? Oh wait. Not like it matters.
The AI works his jaw up and down, as if trying to say something-- but no sound is coming out. A sparking, sharp, morbid fascination blitzes at the base of his skull.
“Must have been someone important…” He continues. “Sure, it’s traumatic to kill a random civilian, but I can’t imagine that’s something a cop isn’t used to.” A noise as if he’s been punched. He opens his eyes and sees that the AI is breathing heavily. “What? Do you disagree? Thought you could change the system or whatever? Thought maybe because it was you shooting the bullets that they wouldn’t kill-- that they'd do some good. But, no, it just ended up with you killing someone you cared about.”
The AI doesn’t respond. Distantly, the thought that Sou doesn’t register Keiji as being able to care about someone begins to dissipate, floating into the ether never to be seen again-- and for now he doesn’t notice it, but soon he will.
“So… that’s it. That’s your big secret.” He wants to laugh about it, because it all seems so small right now. “You lie because you’re a murderer? Because you use people until they’re dead? You can hate yourself as much as you want, Keiji, but just know that it can’t change who you really are.”
The AI finally talks again, voice raspy through the speaker. “This fun for you?”
Sou’s lips curl around a million different sentiments, all of them in contradiction to the last. He finds that he doesn’t know the answer. He wishes he did, wishes that this could be simple, that Sou didn’t have to feel like a quarter of himself right now.
It’s not like it matters if this is fun, because in reality this is just business, and Sou is in the business of destroying an enemy right now. So how exactly will he destroy him?
It’s not like this is information some people don’t already know, so if he spins it just right then maybe he can open everyone else's eyes to how dangerous Keiji can be. After all, Keiji’s been lying this entire time. What else has he lied about? What else will he lie about? Or maybe he can get more out of him now that he’s backed into a corner, pull every last secret out of his mouth until there’s nothing left inside, until Keiji Shinogi is finally revealed to him in a way that makes sense.
AI Keiji’s voice snaps him out of his thoughts. It’s steady now. Thoughtful. Deliberate.
“You know what, Sou? I know you, too.”
Baited, and of course he bites-- Sou is starving after all. “Do you?”
“I know you, and I think I hate you,” the AI says easily. “It takes a lot for me to hate a person. But you… you’re selfish. You’re weak. You treat people like they’re beneath you, but you know that in reality there’s nobody beneath you, and when other people realize it is when you drop your act. When you show everyone what you really are.”
His eye is twitching. He tries to smile through it. “And what’s that, Keiji?”
“A coward. You use people because you’re too weak on your own. You lie because if you didn’t then you’d die.” A flash of recognition across his face. A wicked twist to his mouth. “You and I aren’t too unalike.”
Oh, god. He lurches, and suddenly Sou is trying to find purchase in whatever he can, the floor reeling in front of him. That can’t be true.
“We’re nothing alike. What happened to your superiority complex, huh, Keiji? Don’t you think you’re better than me?”
“You said it earlier, Sou. I hate myself. Just like you do.”
“You lie with such confidence, Keiji.”
“Takes a liar to know a liar, Sou.”
A twitch in his mask. “Maybe you hate yourself, but that doesn’t mean I do, and it doesn’t mean we have anything in common. We’re different, Keiji. I could never be like you.”
“You don’t get it,” says the AI, as if there’s anything to get. “You think I’m out to hurt you, don’t you? You think that of everyone. But what you think is really just your own feelings coming back to bite you. Everything you say to me is just what you think of yourself. Pretty pathetic.”
With startling genuinity, he says, “I’m just trying to survive, Keiji.”
Smile. Shrug. Strike. “Maybe some people just aren’t meant to survive.”
It’s like something twists inside of him. He’s familiar with this feeling, the coiling of his insides, the shuddering of his heart; he is being attacked. No longer Shin Tsukimi, yet still the noose of a 0.0% ties itself around his throat-- maybe he thought he removed it, but the reality can only be that he tightened it, and he keeps tightening it, further, further, further, until he can’t breathe anymore.
The whir of the fans against his back. Hot, suffocating air. Heartbeat in his ears. A smile on the AI’s face, because he knows that Sou has dug his own grave, knows that everything that could possibly apply to him also applies to Sou, and because of this he knows they’re going down together-- and Sou knows it too, and Sou doesn’t know what to do about it, and all he really can know is that he needs to get out of this room right now.
He stumbles up onto his feet, sways. The AI is a distant thought. The world is a distant thought. Survival is all he has now.
“You get what you were looking for? Happy with yourself?”
Slowly turns to the AI. Each infuriating pixel that makes up his face is stretched into smug victory; as if this was a battle, and rather than admit a humiliating defeat and leave with his life, Sou had preferred to be cut again and again and again, dealing with it in the name of his sick twisted pride. And it gave Keiji satisfaction.
“You must be scared to die, too,” he says, voice low. Fist clenched. “I saw it. I saw it in your eyes. You’re scared.”
Is this him projecting again? No, it can’t be, because the way the AI’s eyes widen pixel by pixel for a split second is enough to tell him that he’s right. It’s nothing like the real Keiji, it’s just strings of numbers and code made to look like him, a facsimile of the real thing-- just as infuriating, just as handsome, just as cruel. It’s not just as alive, but it’s just as killable.
When Sou killed the Shin AI, he hadn’t expected it to cry. Turned on at the exact right moment, as if someone had been watching, had been waiting for this moment; it was another test of his, and those crocodile tears were his judgement, and the screen shattering was his sin, and the empty feeling afterwards was his purgatory, his reality, and 0.0% had meant nothing and everything in that moment. It was nothing like him. It wore his face and it smiled his smile and it cried his tears, but it wasn’t him, and because of that he had no issue killing it.
Does he have an issue killing this one? He doesn’t have an answer to that.
“You’re gonna kill me,” the AI laughs out, with not even a hint of disbelief. “You can’t stand someone calling you on your bullshit, and now you’re gonna kill me. Or… what? You killing me because you can’t do it to the real me? You know he’d have you dead twice over before you could even touch him. You can’t touch him, Sou. You can’t touch me.”
So cocky in a way that the real Keiji doesn’t dare to be. There are no stray wooden boards he can use to do it, no big chunks of metal, no rocks, no frying pans, no knives. Sou can’t be bothered to look for anything. He steps closer. Closer. Closer. Until he can touch the screen. And he does, his hand flat against the cold monitor, the static gathering at his fingertips, distorting the sweat that has gathered on the AI’s face.
“Don’t--” is what the AI says before Sou rears his fist back and punches the screen. It doesn’t even crack.
The AI tries to say something through gritted teeth, and Sou thinks it sounds like a plea for his life, but then he does it again. And again. And again. And again and again and again and again, until he can pretend that it’s the real Keiji he’s pummeling, until he can pretend that the blood isn’t his, until he can pretend that glass shards are teeth, that simulated fear is real, that he’s finally free, finally safe, finally okay. He’s going to be okay.
Somewhere in the middle of it all he stops. Somewhere in the middle of it all he collapses onto the ground, right into a pile of glass that he, in the moment, doesn’t realize is from him. He cradles his fist to his chest and barely notices the way his bones are out of place, barely notices the way that the monitor had started sparking as he plunged his hand in and out in and out in and out in. And out. And was released. And then finally had rested.
He’s there for a long while. He’s there until he pulls himself back together. And when he finally does, his hand throbbing and bleeding and mangled, he turns to the monitor as if to get the last word in, and realizes that the mess of wires and glass and blood where once had been Keiji Shinogi is entirely his fault. In that moment he is scared of himself. Scared of what he’s capable of. Scared of what he’s done, what he will continue to do. He backs out of the room, hitting the console, then the wall, then the door, and then he is sprinting to his bedroom.
“Woah there.” The voice comes before the impact, but the impact is what alerts him to the fact that there is somebody in his way, and it is too late for him to dodge. He runs facefirst into Keiji Shinogi. Hands steady his shoulders, his shaking shoulders, and right him out of dizziness, right him out of fear. “What happened to you?”
“Nothing,” he answers, quickly, unconvincingly, still seeing an AI and not a man. “There’s nothing. Nothing happened. I’m fine.”
Keiji assesses him, looking like he’d love to be anywhere else. “...you’re bleeding.”
“Your intuition is unmatched.”
“What happened?”
“Why would I tell you that?”
“...right. You should go and see Safalin.”
“In the morning.”
A sigh. “Let me see it then.”
“No.”
“So you’re just gonna go bleed all over yourself?”
“Exactly.”
“Just let me look.”
“Ask nicer, Keiji.”
“I’m not asking, Sou.” Intensity melts away into that fake smile. “Just let your friendly policeman take care of it, alright? Can’t have you moping more than you already do. Plus, Kanna would be upset to see you like this.”
It’s true. He hates it.
“Tending to my wounds doesn’t make you a policeman, Keiji.” He offers up his hand, places it into the jaw of the beast like he’d done in the monitor room. “It just makes you stupid.”
“Two things can be true at the same time.” He takes his hand gingerly, gently, as if it’ll break more than it already has in his grip. He can tell by the flaring of the stress lines that whatever is going on with his hand is bad, bad enough to warrant more care than Keiji is willing to give right now-- or ever. Still, Keiji doesn’t relent nor does he complain, dragging him to the medical office.
The night is a spell, Sou thinks, and it compels people to become their worst selves. For Keiji this means pretending to be someone he isn’t. Unfortunately for Sou, it means much the same.
Sou half expected him to leave him to tend to his wounds by himself, but Keiji seems intent on doing it right in a way he knows Sou would never, as if his health is something that matters. As if he doesn’t want him dead. Would it change if he found out he killed him?
Glass is removed, cuts are disinfected, burns are slathered, and the whole hand is wrapped and stabilized as much as it possibly can be, and throughout it all Sou is thinking of nothing more than Keiji’s face-- both this Keiji, wrapped in concentration and something unnameable, and the AI Keiji, who showed a glimpse of true fear in his last moments until Sou had punched it inward again and again and again until it was no more.
The quiet gives Sou ample time to study Keiji’s face, to compare the differences between AI and person. Disturbingly, he finds very little. He can almost imagine caving in this Keiji’s face with his fist, and the thought of it does little to thrill him-- rather it frightens him, and he finds himself clenching and unclenching his broken hand so much that Keiji becomes annoyed. He stops upon first request, and there is a weird feeling between them both as a result.
The quiet allows for a lot of things.
A wicked sentiment rises in his throat, gets stuck behind his adams apple: I know what you did. In fact, he knows a lot more about Keiji than anyone here, he thinks, and all it took was a broken hand and an infinitely repeatable scheme. No matter how advantageous it may be to unstick this information, Sou nevertheless finds that he can’t. Or maybe he won’t, undone by both fear and awe alike.
The end is signalled by Keiji placing his hand onto his lap and stretching. The way each individual vertebrae in his spine cracks as he pulls himself up is enough to remind Sou that his whole entire body hurts. He repeats Keiji’s motions wordlessly, and he stares at him. He pays special attention to his neck. He finds he doesn’t want his hands around it nearly as much as he did before all of this. He finds that this is weakness. But he’s always been weak.
He looks at his hand and the careful way in which it was bandaged. Keiji cut no corners. He laughs, but there is no humour in it.
It’s not like Keiji Shinogi cares much for him. He knows this. It’s not like Keiji Shinogi cares much for anyone. He cares about himself first and foremost, and if other people happen to be useful to keeping himself alive then he pretends to care about them, too. Sou knows people like this. And yet, still, Keiji attended to him, wasted his time on him, wrapped his wounds and said nothing of it-- and in almost a second Sou realizes that everything he’d thought about Keiji Shinogi must have been wrong, and he chokes on his words, chokes on the humour in them as if it’s vomit rising up in his throat.
“Feels almost like you cared about me for a second there, Keiji.” He lets it hang. Chokes out something akin to a laugh, the pain moving his disbelief into hysteria. “Better watch out. Can’t let anyone else know you have feelings.”
A look, as if Sou had brought something out of him that should never have been brought out, but especially not for him.
They’re so close that, if Sou were to lean forward, he might be able to put his good hand on Keiji’s face. It wouldn’t swim underneath his fingers like the AI had. It would be real.
“You got anything else to say to me?” Keiji asks, not moving away. “Anything nice?”
A thanks is probably what he’s looking for. Instead, Sou zeroes in on the pouch of tokens attached to his belt, and lets the pain spur him into smiling. Something nice.
“Maybe you should check your tokens sometime soon, Mr. Policeman.”
And with that, he turns around and leaves, noting with mirth the way he can hear tokens spilling out onto the table almost as soon as he’s in the hall. He swears he hears a curse, but once the doors are closed and Keiji is out of his sight and Sou out of his, he starts running to his room, a primal fear driving him away from him-- away from his wrath, sure, but also away from his gentleness. Away from him.
The next day he makes sure to beg Safalin at the crack of dawn for her to heal his hand. She doesn’t take much convincing, spraying it with a strange serum and letting time do the rest. It’s like nothing ever happened, save for a single cut on his knuckle that refuses to heal.
When everyone else wakes up they eventually find the monitor broken, all blood and glass and exposed wires. And as he stands with the rest of the participants, each of them pointing uncertain fingers, he can feel Keiji’s eyes on the side of his head. He can almost imagine they pierce deeper, right to his heart, where it flips and seizes out of a mix of emotions: pride, fear, amusement, guilt.
And, as if he actually can see that, Keiji doesn’t say anything, laughing and shrugging and vowing to complete a full investigation on his own time. The way Sara looks at him when he says that, narrowed eyes and pursed lips, tells Sou that, in the end, he got what he wanted. Miss Sara doubts the integrity of her poor policeman; his destroyed monitor and chipper attitude and single bead of sweat rolling down his neck is just too much for her to handle, and now she is suspicious of him, of his motives, of his past, and the only bandaid to it is his uninjured hand. In this way his plan succeeded.
In other ways, it failed. It failed because Keiji still stares at him. It failed because the stare is so different from the AI, different from the Keiji before, and in those differences Sou finds something that he thinks he could begin to enjoy. It failed because he killed him once, and he doesn’t think he can do it again, because he found out that Keiji is capable of caring, and he’s not sure what that means for him or any of the others here.
Without a word, he leaves the monitor room. And Keiji doesn’t follow him. In fact, nobody follows him. And Sou is alone.