Chapter One

Midnight Blue

As Inspector Akane Tsunemori limped her way through the dark back to the lights of the main building of the hyper oats generating facility, wiping away the rest of her tears, a far off childhood memory occurred to her. When she'd been little, her parents had still had a few physical pieces of art on display in their little house, in addition to the environment holo software they'd had installed. One afternoon, Akane had been left alone and had broken one of the vases by accident. With tears in her eyes, fully admitting her guilt, she'd picked up every single piece just as her parents had asked. Once their entire home was furnished with environment holo, such things weren't a problem anymore.

It had been a while since Akane had had to pick up the pieces alone like this.

She supposed she could have waited. She'd had half a mind to just stay sunk on the ground in the paralysis of her shock. But something had told her that she had no reason to wait. He wouldn't be coming back. How could he, when he'd broken the law, and his promise to her, and taken the life of Shogo Makishima with the sound of that gun going off?

Kogami.

So it was all up to her now. And as usual, she had her work cut out for her, as far as gathering up who was left. The best she could go on at the moment was follow the drips of blood from their prey, now dead at the hands of Shinya Kogami. Shortly after the world had shattered with the sound of that gun, she'd tended to picking herself up first and foremost, and then she turned away, turned back towards the hyper oats facility. She stumbled only once, her head pounding, and when she felt her temple, her fingertips came away with blood. That would have to be looked after too, at some point.

But with it being so dark, she'd have to use the UV light on her communicator to spot the telltale blood trail, as she clutched the Dominator she'd been carrying in her other hand. In many ways, the talking gun was no more than an extension of her arm.

She followed that trail in the dark from the loading dock, doing away with everything else running in her mind and concentrating on just finding Ginoza, Masaoka, and Kunizuka. That was at least an action she could take that would move her forward.

And then she heard the wailing. It had the same feel to it as the scream she'd let out watching Makishima slice Yuki's throat. That sent a painful anxiety rising up in her stomach, and she quickened her pace.

Back deep within the dark warehouse, all the lights had been brought up, probably thanks to Kunizuka and the emergency power. All around the plant hummed with having resumed hyper oats production, no one else in Japan being the wiser that the whole operation had nearly been destroyed in a single stroke.

Kunizuka herself was standing with the most dumbstruck expression that Akane had seen on her face since she'd first met her, her hands somehow covered in blood, her white shirt under her black jacket soaked with it. And just a few feet away were two crumpled figures on the floor. One was a bloody mess that took Akane a moment to recognize as Mr. Masaoka once she made out the old lined face and the hair. He had a peaceful look on his face, and it coldly hit her how immediately she picked up on the fact that he was most certainly dead.

Painful sadness settled inside Akane's heart, like a slow knife blade. She had grown quite fond of the old man, respecting his gentle and wise advice quite as much as she'd respected Kogami's more blunt variety. He had reminded her of those gumshoe detectives in those old black and white movies you could still find copies of floating around the Net if you looked hard enough and in the right places.

Meanwhile, the other figure could only be Ginoza, but the only way Akane figured that out initially was by the process of elimination, and by his inspector's jacket. Otherwise, he was completely unrecognizable as an utterly distraught young man screaming with shaking sobs and clutching Masaoka's jacket with one hand while his entire other arm hung limp and bloodied and sticking out at a very wrong angle at his side, as though it'd been crushed by something huge and heavy. Wrapped around it appeared to be a necktie being used as a makeshift tourniquet, and it was then that Akane noticed Kunizuka was missing her tie, which would better explain the blood on her hands.

Akane could almost see it: Kunizuka probably had to struggle with Ginoza, and he probably uncharacteristically tried to fight her off, possibly shouting at her (given his current state of distress), while she would have firmly said, "Inspector! If nothing's done, you're going to bleed to death!" in that cool, firm, sober, slightly husky voice of hers.

Adding to Akane's perplexity was why it appeared to be the loss of Masaoka—which was sad enough in and of itself—that had made cool and collected Mr. Ginoza crack like this. Moreover, Kinizuka's shocked response to this.

Unless Masaoka had actually meant something to Ginoza, and that was part of why nobody ever brought up the fact that it seemed that there had been some bad blood between them, something she had picked up on during the Drone Case.

And then she recalled a conversation she and Masaoka had had a while back, and it clicked.

"Oh God." Akane had thought it without realizing she'd said it aloud.

Kunizuka actually jumped as though startled. "Inspector."

Their eyes met, soberly, and the two of them nodded, their attitudes towards each other echoing the conversation they'd had earlier, where Kunizuka had declared that she had come to respect Akane such that she felt sure she could put her life in her hands as one of her Enforcers, that she would be an Inspector who would captain her team with extreme care and loyalty.

Then Kunizuka's communicator went off, and she answered.

"Right." She turned to Akane. "That's the med evac I called in for Inspector Ginoza." Her eyes touched briefly on Akane's head wound and the general state of her. "You'll need some attention too."

"Thank you, Kunizuka. Could you go and bring them in?" Akane pinched the bridge of her nose with her free hand. "I can at least watch him." She inclined her head towards the prostrate Ginoza without opening her eyes.

"Of course."

Akane heard her leave the warehouse with the clipped sound of her footsteps.

Ginoza cried, if possible, even harder, heaving deep chest chokes as tears streamed down his face.

Akane opened her eyes and surveyed the scene of grief with piercing compassion.

Oh Mr. Masaoka...

And then Ginoza lifted up his head and looked at her, and his expression was far too sad for words. Their gazes held for a moment—Akane's pitying, Ginoza's desperate and lost, blood trickling out the side of his mouth as he coughed it up—and then he turned his face away, as though ashamed Akane was seeing him this way.

Which made sense. He was always so proud, and to a fault without realizing it. At least that's what Akane sadly thought.

Mr. Ginoza...

God, she'd tried so hard to warn them in time. But Makishima had gotten to them first.

Out of respect, Akane looked away, switching off her UV light on her watch. As she did, she again considered the Dominator in her other hand. Mere hours ago, she had been conversing with the Sybil System itself through it, the Dominator acting as a mouthpiece beyond announcing Crime Coefficients and validating users.

Its silence now frustrated her, though she reasonably knew it couldn't very well start talking freely in front of other people, lest it risk revealing its disturbing secret. On top of that, an entity like the Sibyl System would have nothing to say on the matter at hand, something that to Akane bordered on the cold, calculating indifference that formed the basis of Sibyl's approach to everything...all those pickled brains of the "criminally asymptomatic" floating in jars of fluid.

Maybe that was why she was so frustrated and angry with it in the first place. This so-called perfect system couldn't judge a man who held a blade to a crying woman's throat...or who slaughtered another man who had always tried to live with pride and honor in his work even as a Latent Criminal and Enforcer.

For a moment her anger threatened to get the better of her, but something about the way Ginoza's choked crying echoed nearby immediately snapped her out of it.

And that voice that always spoke up and pulled her from the brink said, this time in a voice that sounded a bit like Kogami's:

Remember, you have to be stronger than that.

So Akane found her calm again.

And then Ginoza's cries subsided and he became very quiet. Eerily so, in fact.

"Hey...Akane...?"

His voice was a frighteningly soft and weak croak. No less he had to be in some state of delirium from the blood loss, being that this was only the second time he'd addressed her by her first name. The first time, she vaguely recalled, was when he'd been trying to snap her out of the shock she'd been reeling in from reliving Yuki's death in order to do a memory scoop so they could finally get a clear picture of Makishima's face. Now Akane found him smiling of all things, but it was bitter and mirthless and ironic and as weak as his voice. Even as he spoke though he kept his eyes on the man who could only be that father that he had now lost twice and forever.

"You need to...check my hue," he said on a kind of resigned and pained sigh. "I have to know..." Finally he looked up at her, and there was a bleak, lackluster glaze over his eyes that gave Akane a sudden sinking feeling. "I have to know...if it really is...too late...for me..."

And then his eyes fell closed as he teetered sideways and fell on Mr. Masaoka's still chest in a faint.

"Mr. Ginoza!" Akane dropped to her knees beside him. And then all of a sudden she just couldn't help it. Her voice cracked and she started crying like a child who had skinned her knee. It was all she could do for her senior inspector, so broken in more ways than one. And the pounding in her head only got worse, as blood started to trickle into her eyes and mix with the tears. She even thought for one wild moment about checking Ginoza's hue, like he'd asked, but something inside her didn't want to know, as if she already knew she might find his Crime Coefficient well above 100.

Instead, she wanted to believe that after rest and recovery, he'd be able to bring down his Crime Coefficient. He was so dedicated to it, surely he'd be strong enough to bring it back down even it had already spiked so high.

"Hang in there, Mr. Ginoza," she murmured urgently, and already she was able to gulp back her tears and turn things into steely determination. "I won't let you fall too."

When Kunizuka arrived with the team equipped with medical drones, Akane's tears were spent, and she turned away again, leaving Ginoza in the hands of the med evac team and their drones.

She only wobbled once more on her legs as she got up, and for the present just allowed the relief of being able to momentarily rest her thoughts and allow herself to be looked after by someone other than herself. Well, something, anyway, as her injuries weren't nearly as critical and could be left to the care of a First Aid drone. Actually, she preferred this set-up to a real person, just so she could finish gathering the pieces of herself. But once she'd been fitted with a bandage to stop the bleeding and her other injuries had been seen to, she reassumed her poise in the holding compartment of the med evac's craft preparing to lift off and take them all back to Tokyo.

Kunizuka took a seat across from her. "Kogami isn't coming back, is he?"

Akane met her remaining Enforcer's gaze and sighed. "No. He's not. But at the very least, we won't have to worry about Shogo Makishima anymore."

"I see," said Kunizuka sadly, understanding. "Then…what's our next move, Inspector?"

Akane actually managed a smile, if a tired one. "Division One's taking a week's vacation, as far as I'm concerned." Her head smarted and she briefly touched her bandage, as if to reassure herself that it hadn't started bleeding again.

At this pronouncement, Kunizuka managed a tired smile too. "That sounds like a good deal, Inspector."

Akane couldn't have agreed more, though she couldn't help but go over and over in her head the way Ginoza had looked at her so sadly as he'd told her she'd had to check his hue. In truth, there was no doubt that the med evac team was already doing a check on his hue, given the state of things. It was normal procedure. People who were traumatized in any way had to have a hue check, to see how much their Crime Coefficient had been affected by the undue stress. The drone that had patched her up had done a scan on her as part of giving her on-the-scene medical attention.

But of course, as usual, her hue was no more than a pale teal. If she checked it again, it would probably already be back down to powder blue, or maybe even alice blue. Even so, she tapped her index finger on her knee as the transport shuddered and started to lift off into the air.

The real next move was something she'd have to take care of herself. Once they got back to Tokyo, the first thing she was going to do was have another chat with Sibyl.

How is it my hue isn't anywhere close to something so dark as mahogany red?

Akane couldn't fathom it, given how hot with anger she was inside. In fact, she was so angry that for a moment she thought her heart might explode.

Yet, she was nearly crystal clear as usual. Indeed, as predicted, a light and healthy shade of alice blue.

She wasn't by any means frustrated by this, not really. She had bigger things to be frustrated with, like the conversation she'd had with Sibyl, which in her opinion had to be about the smuggest entity on the planet. Akane had never been a fan of smug people, though at the same time she didn't have a problem with sticking it to someone when the situation called for it.

Regardless, she was already in a state of purposeful calm when she returned to the MWPSB to see how Ginoza was faring in the medical quarters. When she arrived, she found out that Ginoza was in the OR getting his ruined arm sawed off and fitted with a mechanical artificial one like his father's had been. Kunizuka had taken up a kind of sentinel post outside the OR, in addition to Division One's analyst Shion Kuronomori, and a patrolling drone.

It was Kuranamori who spotted her first as she and Kunizuka were talking. "Akane."

For whatever reason, Shion had no problem addressing everyone in Division One by their first name, save for Ginoza (who'd probably given her a dirty look when she'd first tried). Akane had never really minded. There was something almost…fairy godmother-ish about their sultry little "goddess of information", with her fire engine red dress underneath her lab coat and spiked high heels that Akane couldn't dream of wearing herself. Nevertheless, Akane found the analyst-cum-latent-criminal's presence comforting in that way, always feeling like she could talk about pretty much anything with her.

"Inspector, shouldn't you be at home?" Kunizuka raised an eyebrow and folded her arms.

"Like I could go home," Akane admitted. It was strange how her brain and body were so tired, and yet she couldn't imagine pausing for even a breath. Besides, how could she, when she still had a report to write up, recounting everything, every painful detail? "How's Ginoza doing in there?"

"They're still operating on him," said Shion, taking out a pack of her cigarettes from the inside breast pocket of her lab coat. For the first time, Akane noticed they were the Spinel brand, the same brand Kogami would smoke. For a moment she experienced a pang at the thought.

"Did they say how long?" she asked, trying to keep the focus of the conversation on Ginoza to steer her thoughts away from Kogami.

Shion pulled out a cigarette with her teeth. "Well, we haven't heard any screaming yet, so they haven't gotten to the part where they connect the new arm," she said as she tucked the rest of her cigarettes back in her pocket and then fished for her lighter.

Akane shuddered inwardly. From what she remembered from the brief courses she was given on basic medicine and surgery as part of training for the field, anyone getting artificial cybernetic limbs had to be conscious during the procedure to make sure the nerves connected properly. It had to do with observing the patient's physical reaction to it, that unconscious it was difficult to detect whether the connection had been successful such that they would be able to see the impulses passing from the living nerves to the cybernetic ones in the new limb. Afterwards, extreme stress treatment was usually administered to account for the more-than-likely spike in one's Crime Coefficient from undergoing such pain.

Probably what they'd done is resupplied Ginoza's blood right on the transport back to Tokyo. More than likely he'd have been put under anesthesia while they removed the arm, perhaps briefly bringing him to consciousness beforehand to make him aware of his condition, and receive medical consent to have the arm removed and replaced with a mechanical one. Then they'd have to wake him up again to put on the new arm and monitor those nerve connections and make sure they lined up correctly.

The click of Shion's lighter jerked Akane out of her reverie. Yet the second she'd lit her cigarette, the nearby drone sensed the smoke and gave her a painful zap in her thigh.

"Ouch!" Shion turned angrily on the drone. "Hey, bug off!" she snapped.

"Smoking is hazardous to your health," the drone rattled off in its overly cheerful female voice. "It is also hazardous to the health of those around you. Smoking in a medical zone is strictly prohibited. We advise you refrain from smoking, please."

Kunizuka chuckled dryly. "The bot has a point, Shion." She lifted her lashes in a rather knowing and very intimate kind of way, as though she were being devilishly playful.

"Damn the bot," Shion growled, and very decisively stamped her cigarette out on the drone's sensor.

"Please refrain from vandalizing this unit," the drone commanded.

Shion sighed and withdrew the cigarette, flicking it in a nearby disposal unit, and even doing the drone the courtesy of brushing off the hot ash she'd gotten on it.

For a moment Akane felt a more gentle peace wash over her. Something about the carefree way Shion and the Enforcers always expressed themselves in their own way had been something she'd actually rather enjoyed from day one. Despite how high their Crime Coefficients were, she could never say that they were anything like highly stressed. Certainly not in the same mindset as those banging their heads against a white wall in the Isolation Facility.

But the air was split by the sound of an almost inhuman shriek coming from inside the OR. Yet something in the nature of its rawness gave away that that it was Ginoza screaming like that. Over and over, he cried out like the repeated stabbing of a knife blade, long and agonizing. Akane, Kunizuka, and Shion all fell into sober silence.

They all seemed to be of the same mind, that if they stepped away for even a moment, it would be like they were betraying their fellow in arms. More than that, but it hurt Akane to imagine how distraught Masaoka might've been (even if he wouldn't outwardly show it) to hear such howls of pain coming from his son.

Despite this though, it still felt like the sad presence of Tomomi Masaoka hung over the three of them as Ginoza carried on shrieking.

For that matter, how horrible it would be if Shinya Kogami were able to hear those shrieks too.

After receiving clearance with her authority as an Inspector from the building office, Akane managed to obtain access to Ginoza's apartment. The moment she cracked open the door, she was welcomed with the whining whimpering barks of a dog.

Dime.

"Dime?" Akane looked up at Kinuzuka from her computer's monitor holo, her eyeballs throbbing over the painstaking job she was doing writing up this report.

"You're the only one who can leave the MWPSB to see he's fed," Kunizuka explained. And then she gave Akane one of her rare smiles. "It's his dog."

"Mr. Ginoza…has a dog?"

"Yeah. A Siberian husky. Actually, it's kind of adorable, naming him for his little hobby of collecting coins." Kunizuka's tone was searing with the sort of dry teasing pertaining to the subject that clearly she'd never been able to express to Ginoza himself. Moreover, it was likely that she'd learned all this personal info not from Ginoza, but from Kogami, perhaps in passing. Perhaps it had been Ginoza's old friend's way of trying to humanize the man for the benefit of the rest of the Enforcers in Division One.

"Hm. Well that would explain his avatar, anyway." Akane couldn't help but being a little amused herself. "Okay. I'll be sure to stop by on my way home tonight."

Kunizuka gave a little two-fingered salute. "Thanks, Inspector."

Stepping across the threshold, Akane shut the door behind her and did a quick examination of the sparse main room of the apartment. Naturally it was neat as a pin, and felt sterilely clean, to say the least. She even wondered if Ginoza ever actually did any experimentation with environment holo, and suspected that he probably didn't, and instead preferred it this clinically lacking in personality or substance.

The desperate, yipping barks started up again.

Akane followed them, rounding the corner into the kitchen where she found a very perky, tail-wagging, white and tan Siberian husky pacing back and forth in a pen in the corner.

Dime barked at the sight of her, the way his mouth hung open and his tongue lolled out as he panted making him seem like he had a huge smile on his face.

And why shouldn't he? Someone had finally come to feed him. It wasn't his master, unfortunately, but at least it was someone.

"Hey, boy," Akane fawned, reaching out a hand. After the dog gave her a sniff and then barked, wagging his tail in approval, she gave his ears a scratch before locating the dog food and pouring some into his bowl.

The husky barked again and dug into the kibble rather greedily, the poor thing.

Akane knelt nearby and watched him, unable to help a smile on her face. Yet as she watched this happy dog that belonged to Ginoza, eating as if nothing was wrong, her eyes suddenly welled up, and before she knew it…she was crying, crying like she did at Yuki's funeral, like she did when she hit Makishima with one of his helmet's and was on the edge of bashing his head in with it until it killed him, like she did when she was left alone to look after Ginoza while Kunizuka went to meet the med evac.

"Damn it." She wiped at her eyes with the insides of her wrists, and she could almost hear old Masaoka telling her in that voice of gruff gentility, "Now, now, little missy. There's no need to start cryin' over me."

But Dime paused in gobbling down his food and snapped his head up, as if sensing her sorrow. He then padded over and nudged his nose through the pen he was kept in, his cold wet nose seeking her, reaching out by taking hold of her sleeve in his teeth, tugging at her, as if to let her know, "Hey, it's okay. You can talk to me about it. I'll listen."

Akane looked up with her teary eyes and managed a watery laugh, giving the dog another scratch behind the ears. "I can see why Ginoza keeps you," she muttered, and then she wondered if there hadn't been a few times where Ginoza had been alone like this with Dime, and he hadn't started getting choked up, and Dime hadn't done the same thing for him that he was doing for her now.

It wouldn't surprise her, given how quickly the husky had reacted to her tears.

He gave her that doggy grin as she petted him, and before she knew it she was leaning over and putting her arms around the dog's neck, hugging his quivering and soft warmth as close as she could.

"You're a good boy, aren't you? You'll keep an eye on Gino, won't you?" Alone this way, and off the record, Akane felt it natural somehow to use Kogami's nickname for his dear friend. Because really, she wasn't just crying for Masaoka, but for Ginoza and Kogami too.

Dime barked, and Akane laughed again.

"I'll take that as a promise then."

It felt like forever since Akane had last been home in her apartment. She'd had her head bandage changed before finally leaving her completed report at the MWPSB, and came in through her front door in the wee hours of the morning, that time in the night when everything felt dreamlike, whether awake or asleep.

For a moment her hand hovered over activating her holo system after she locked the door. But then she realized she had no desire to hear Candy's perky AI voice gushing in her ear. So she left the interior of her apartment as a blank slate and made a beeline for the shower. Letting the hot, steaming water run over her body, she felt that she could at least safely say that she had collected all of the pieces that had fallen and could toss them out.

As she stepped out however, she found two pieces still glittering on the floor in her mind's eye. And she was hesitant to pick them up. She was afraid too, and could only watch their shimmering sharpness in a paralyzing awe.

Wrapped in a towel, she collapsed on her sofa and leaned her head back, staring up into the dark void of the ceiling. Everything inside her felt so heavy, and she thought how nice it would be to just melt into the cushions beneath her. She might as well have, as those two remaining pieces whirled in her mind.

Where was Kogami now, right at this very moment? He obviously had evaded capture. Perhaps he'd managed to escape Japan entirely. Not an easy feat, but then, Kogami never let anything like something difficult stop him. What kind of detective would he have been otherwise?

And then there was Ginoza. What was going to happen to him? Was he going to hang in there? Would she be able to make any kind of difference in his fate, or would it matter very little if she tried?

She exhaled and pinched the bridge of her nose with one hand, like she'd done when she'd asked Kunizuka to meet the med evac.

Then she got up and moved into her bedroom to slip into a negligee in preparation to crawl at last into her bed. But on her way to slide in between the sheets, she paused at her closet where she had her Inspector's jacket hung up and dug into one of the pockets.

She puzzled once again for a moment over the memento of sorts that Kogami appeared to have left her with for some reason. She almost wanted to think that it was a promise that he might come back for them, but on the other hand, considering the price that was on his head—the Sibyl System now would elminate him on sight seeing as how Akane's efforts to keep him from killing Makishima had failed, the System had made that much clear—it would be risking a lot to come back just for these.

Even it was for his preferred brand of Spinel cigarettes.

Akane gripped the pack hard in her fist, finding some temporary satisfaction in crushing it against her fingers and hearing the crinkle of the wrapping. As if it made up for what was squeezing her heart right now.

When Akane received news that Ginoza had come out of the coma they'd put him in to help him recover from the ordeal of the operation as part of the post-op stress treatment, she came as soon as she could, having asked that she deliver his father's ashes to him herself. She liked to think that Ginoza would prefer it were someone like her, rather than someone he didn't know. Something like this deserved all the warmth of humanity it could manage.

Upon her arrival in the medical quarters of the MWPSB, she was confronted by one of the doctors on staff who had overseen the operation and was now overseeing the post-op recovery.

"Ah, Inspector." The doctor shook her hand. "I'm Doctor Kobayashi."

"How's he doing?" she asked.

"How thoughtful a junior inspector you are," Kobayashi complimented, not missing the box urn with Masaoka's ashes she carried reverently in her hands. "Well, he's alive anyway. But we're having some difficulty bringing his Crime Coefficient down. Strictly speaking, it's far too close to the danger zone for my comfort, but it's still too early to judge his response to the stress treatment. We're cautious of course, but we do also allow a grace period in these situations, excepting of course if his number does exceed 100. I'm afraid there's zero tolerance there. Rules are rules, after all." She smiled.

Akane bit her lip. "Well, what is his Crime Coefficient?"

Kobayashi looked left and then right, referred to her tablet, and then whispered, "I'm afraid it's 99, Inspector."

Akane swallowed. Maybe…maybe I shouldn't bring him his father's ashes right now.

On the other hand, what good would it do postponing the inevitable? He already knew his father was dead. That was why his Coefficient was so high in the first place.

But then a nurse came out from the room they were keeping Ginoza in and brightened into a smile when she saw Akane.

"Are you Inspector Tsunemori?" she asked.

"I am," Akane affirmed.

"Excellent, Mr. Ginoza did express a hope that you might come visit him." The nurse's eyes caught the urn in Akane's hands. "And you brought Mr. Masaoka's ashes?" She seemed to be doing her best not to suddenly sound disturbed.

Akane blinked before answering. The bit about Ginoza doing something like hoping she would visit him threw her off a little. "Um...yeah."

"I see." The nurse leaned forward and spoke in an undertone. "Well, that's very kind of you. But do try to be discreet about it. We're trying to bring his Crime Coefficient down, you know."

"Yes, I'm aware." For some reason, the nurse's mentioning this to her irked Akane just a little, even though she herself had just been thinking of reconsidering delivering the ashes. "I appreciate the concern," she went on, clearing her throat, "but, as harsh it is to say it, he's going to have to deal with it sooner or later."

And she wanted to believe that Ginoza would come out stronger for this.

"Well just be careful," the nurse pressed again, sounding all the more anxious, piquing Akane's irritation.

Like she of all people didn't understand the risks involved in all this.

"Nurse Maki, if you please," said Dr. Kobayashi in a tone that was clearly gentle admonishment. "Let's leave the inspector to her visit, shall we?"

It was then Akane found she at least preferred Kobayashi over Nurse Maki.

"Very well, doctor." Nurse Maki inclined her head, as did Dr. Kobayashi, and the two of them stepped aside to let Akane pass.

And after all that, Akane entered Ginoza's room bearing Masaoka's ashes anyway. Oh well. No turning back.

Unlike Kogami, who would often read books containing rich explorations of deep philosophy, like Heart of Darkness, or In Search of Lost Time, Ginoza, while he strictly preferred non-fiction, kept to very clinical, straightforward topics like law and history. Just the same, Ginoza was still something of a mirror of his friend in the way Akane found him sitting up in bed with a book in hands (though he seemed to prefer the e-book format to the paper-and-glue that Kogami had had a fondness for). Akane felt only a flicker of pain at the familiarity of the scene, but she managed to let it pass her by without incident and forced a smile, even as her senior inspector looked up at her from his reading at the sound of her arrival and gave her the old hardened look with which she'd first encountered him what felt like so long ago.

"Inspector." He nodded curtly in greeting and set aside his e-book tablet.

Akane wanted to ask something like, "How are you feeling?" but the words got stuck in her throat. Finally she managed, "Sir," and approached the bed with Masaoka's ashes in her hands.

Ginoza's cold gaze flicked down to the box in her hands and something intense flashed in them. "Are those…?" His voice trembled, just ever so slightly.

"Yes," Akane admitted regretfully. "But…I thought maybe…you'd rather it wasn't…some stranger delivering them to you."

Her senior inspector stared at the box of ashes a moment longer as though they were something about to bite him, and then he looked at her, and she could see he was considering her choice of words. And then the corner of his mouth twitched…and he actually smiled, just a little, if grimly. Even so, there was the faintest hint of warmth to it, and that was more than Akane had ever seen on his face before.

Akane took a cue from that and gave a cautious smile herself. "Well, that's a relief."

Ginoza blinked at her, actually surprised by her. "What is?"

"I was starting to think you were a robot this whole time," Akane teased, though she kept her tone careful.

Still, it was nice to see Ginoza give her another smile rather than a stern frown. In fact, this smile seemed warmer than the last. Genuinely amused, even. "I assure you, cybernetics doesn't appeal all that much to me."

It was only then that Akane really noticed the new arm, and as if they had both been avoiding it up until this point, they both glanced at it. How had Akane not even noticed how well it already served to hold up his tablet while he'd been reading?

Was it because it didn't seem all that out-of-place on him, somehow? Like how some people were naturally photogenic, maybe people like Ginoza and his father made the look of cybernetics "work".

Yet any idiot could see that it wasn't an issue of aesthetics. It was the context of the arm itself. It would always serve a reminder to Ginoza how his father had died. Akane bit her lip, pushing back that flaring memory of a distraught Ginoza broken and bleeding on the ground.

And then she found what she felt was the right response and managed a smile again, though it was her turn to be melancholy about it, as she finally set the urn down on the bedside table. The urn itself had been made of polished rosewood, the rich color of the whiskey Masaoka had always liked to drink—it had been left to Akane to pick it out, since Ginoza had been unable.

Ginoza's eyes flicked from his new arm to the urn, and he noted the design and the material from which it had been made, and Akane gently relayed to him how she'd come to be given the task of choosing the make of the urn.

He furrowed his brow, but somehow he still managed a smile, albeit a sober one. "It's nice, perfect. I'm glad that at least his final resting place was made into something so comforting. God knows I was kind of afraid it wouldn't be…given his…status." He looked up at his junior inspector. "Thank you."

Akane put a hand on her hip and raised an eyebrow. "This is something of a big step for you, Mr. Ginoza," she teased again, unable to help herself. "I've never seen you let your hair down like this. If you're not planning on making this a thing when you get back to work, you should warn me now so I don't get disappointed later."

Ginoza stared at her again, as though he couldn't quite believe her, and then he gave an outright cough of laughter—the kind of laugh that was genuine in the gut but dusty from ill-use. "Man, where you get your balls, I'll never know. Since we're actually having a talk like this, I guess it's finally time I told you how much I scared off my former junior inspector. After working under me for four months, he gunned for a transfer in administration and never looked back once he got it. And you were the one who filled his vacancy."

Now it was Akane's turn to stare, and then she scowled at him before she could stop herself. "Good to know you decided to use the same scare tactics with me even with such a fantastic failure as scaring off a junior inspector," she admonished, but Ginoza just gave another cough of laughter. Maybe he was finding it strangely refreshing to be on the receiving end of vituperation between them for once. She considered adding the remark that she'd hit him if he weren't in a hospital bed, but refrained, feeling perhaps he'd been punished more than enough.

She sighed. "Well, anyway, we're all wishing you a good recovery. But don't push yourself. Take all the time you need."

Some of the light that had arisen fresh in Ginoza's eyes dimmed, and his smile became sober again. "Yes, I have my Crime Coefficient to work on, after all."

At this, Akane couldn't help softening with encouragement. "Hey, it'll be fine. I have faith. You're too stubborn to let your number spike too high." She didn't ask if he knew that his number was 99 at the moment, and he didn't ask whether she knew either.

She inclined her head. "Well, I'd better be going. I've put Division One on a bit of a break, but we're all getting back to it on Monday."

This time, when Ginoza looked at her, his smile held no trace of melancholy. In fact, she'd daresay it was a proud one. "Well done, Inspector. You've rallied what's left of us rather well, small as we are at the moment."

"Well…I had to."

"Even so. You deserve a lot more credit than I've given you."

"Thank you, sir. I sincerely appreciate it." Akane turned to go.

"I think I speak for Kogami too…when I say that I'm…proud of you," Ginoza suddenly piped up, sounding uncharacteristically sheepish. Or maybe it was just the discomfort of mentioning Kogami, but at least it saved Akane the trouble of asking whether he knew about the Enforcer's desertion.

Without turning around, Akane said, "Thank you, again…Mr. Ginoza." She paused at the door and then flashed her superior a grin, as if eager to bring levity back to the mood. "Oh, and don't worry about Dime. I went around and fed him and took him for a walk yesterday."

"Dime?" Ginoza blinked and then gave her another smile that was sincerely grateful. Relieved even. "Ah. Thank you. I was…getting worried about him."

And out of the corner of Akane's eye, she thought she saw the little number indicating Ginoza's Crime Coefficient drop from 99 to 98.6.