A/N: I'm not ready for episode 22. im so not fucking ready omfg

Warning: spoilers up until episode 21.

sandcastles and salt waters: twenty truths about ginoza nobuchika

i. when he was four years old and fearless in the way only children can be, nobuchika sneaked into his father's study while the latter was asleep on his desk, a puddle of drool spreading across a stack of overdue paperwork. the place was in its usual chaotic state, the worn wooden floorboards covered in a maze of cardboard boxes piled like a game of jenga, and empty coffee mugs lied scattered about, crusted in a dried brown substance.

by some kind of miracle, he managed to dig through the mess until he found, to his surprise, a book he could actually read - a picture book.

that day, nobuchika discovered the sea.

ii. ginoza nobuchika, freshly minted inspection officer at the public safety bureau, turned twenty years old yesterday.

he has never seen the sea.

iii. the first time he speaks to kougami, he has to swallow around the lump clogging his throat and spends around fifteen minutes - the entirety of their conversation - cleaning his glasses.

he begrudgingly accepts the man's innate brilliance as a detective and he comes to respect kougami's knife-sharp mind during their operations together. his partner possesses an innovative spirit which he believes their department desperately needs and unfortunately lacks. although kougami acts much too familiar and comfortable around the enforcers, nobuchika tells himself it's nothing a little harsh reality can't correct.

iv. one day he rounds a corner after a summons to the chief's office and stops short when he catches the sight of masaoka with an arm around kougami's shoulders and the rare smile on his partner's preternaturally stoic face.

"kou-chan," nobuchika hears the enforcer say, and he backpedals until he reaches the staircase that nobody uses, except perhaps ghosts, and he's put at least ten floors in between them.

his heart pounds an erratic drumbeat against his ribcage, and jealousy is ugly, ugly and ugly and that's all he's amounted to, and it's never going to be enough, is it?

v. contrary to popular belief, nobuchika doesn't hate his father. he hates the very thing his father loves - loved more than he could ever love his son, anyways.

vi. "a little harsh realiity" turns out to be the death of an enforcer kougami really shouldn't have cared so much about. sasayama - loud, brash, vulgar and just so easy to dislike.

yet kougami liked him enough to forsake his career as an investigator and leave nobuchika behind, knee-deep in these colder waters, the stark colorless sand a sad deception that would have devastated him a decade and a half ago.

nobuchika tries, but he never finds it in himself to forgive kougami.

vii. the cold doesn't feel as bad after he sheds whatever's left of his warmth.

viii. it doesn't help to ward off the loneliness, though.

ix. karanomori offers to sleep with him, once, after a particularly gruesome operation that involved much disobedience from the new enforcer on his team and at least twice the property damage they were allowed to do. he stumbles into the lab, glasses skewed and one hand already reaching up to loosen the tie like a noose around the strained veins in his neck, and stifles a curse when he stubs his toe on the couch.

"you really look like you need a lay."

he is about to snap, what is the point of wearing a labcoat if you're going to wear a skimpy low-cut dress underneath it, when the sentence registers, and he gapes as karanomori lights up a new cigarette and goes on with her business.

"i could assist you, of course," she grins, cheshire and dangerous, "but i have all this paperwork to sort through because your new pet dog doesn't know the virtues of 'everything in moderation'."

"i thought you only liked women," is all he finds to retaliate without appearing dumber than a goldfish, although he sounds nowhere as intelligent as he wishes to be.

"boss, with that face o' yours," says the blonde as she reaches up to pinch his cheek, "who cares what's in your trousers."

she catches his smile before he can shake it off and accomplishes the nigh impossible feat of overlooking the opportunity to spout her trademark obtuse commentary.

"it's not your fault," she adds, like an afterthought, and he doesn't manage to figure out what she's referring to - the property damage, kougami's defection, perhaps masao -

he doesn't dwell too long on it and eventually forgets her ambiguous words.

x. ginoza nobuchika has the highest ratio of closed cases in the entire department despite his young age and relatively little amount of experience.

the one case he didn't close, he doesn't talk about.

xi. kougami will always be a better detective than him. nobuchika might have cared, if he still had the heart to.

xii. when he was eight years old, nobuchika begged his father to take a few days off of work so they could go on a family outing to the beach. a week later, his father was a latent criminal and too busy signing divorce papers to look him in the eye. his mother received full custody of their child, of course, and nobuchika didn't expect to see his father again. he felt no obligation to muster the energy to miss someone who was barely around.

yet fate plays the cruelest tricks and a weekend after his graduation from the academy, nobuchika is assigned to section 1 of the public safety bureau. an enforcer named masaoka tomomi greets him and offers him a tour of the place.

he politely refuses.

xiii. the systematic closure of all the country's borders meant that japan had effectively become isolated from the rest of the world. it also meant the shoreline was a view he could admire only in brochures or simulations, now.

xiv. his father lost his arm on the job - the job nobuchika has always despised, with every fiber of his ten-year-old being and every night he tucks himself into bed after the house serves him supper.

sometimes, when he's feeling especially spiteful, he wants to tell masaoka that a limb isn't the only thing he lost whilst blinded by his thirst for justice.

xv. inspector tsunemori proves to be stronger than she looks - and he sets his hopes on her, unwittingly.

it's selfish of him, because he of all people should know what it feels like to disappoint and be disappointed.

he should know better than to sustain trivial feelings like hope.

xvi. nobuchika doesn't understand what kind of life kagari lived, but he knows nobody deserves to die that way.

xvii. he failed.

he failed to stop kougami - again. again, left in the dust, brushed off like a minor detail, a cumbersome obstruction -

and that man, that man had helped him escape, hadn't trusted nobuchika enough to at least warn him in advance.

and shinya was, once more, throwing himself into the fray, all alone, and doesn't he know that wading into deeper water without a lifeline is dangerous, how easy it is to be swept away by the current and the waves?

nobuchika wishes he mattered enough for someone, anyone, to stick around because of him.

xviii. it's the same argument, well-worn on his palate, and the words feel scripted, his heart like a loaded gun,

will i ever be enough for you?

and he hears the old man's voice,

"stop!"

and pain

pain

just pain

xix. "it's not your fault."

what? what wasn't his fault? he was the one who wasn't strong enough to prevent kougami from becoming a latent criminal, he wasn't strong enough to stop makishima, wasn't strong enough to keep kagari alive, wasn't strong enough to keep tsunemori from dirtying her hands, wasn't strong enough. wasn't enough.

"shinya didn't leave because he doesn't care about you, boss. he left because he does."

you're still taking a different path than we are. i think that's for the best, from the bottom of my heart.

xx. ginoza nobuchika is twenty-eight years old, a senior inspection officer at the public safety bureau, with an immaculate track record for excellent service and a closed-case rate of -

but none of that matters.

none of that matters because for the first time in over a decade, his father's palm settles against his cheek, and he is four years old and the sea has never felt this cold, never felt this cold against the warmth that slips from his face, the warmth that leaves the man he never treated like a father, the man who deserved so much more than life gave him -

nobuchika loves his father, hates his father's profession, and hates himself for being blind to the one thing his father tried his entire life to make him: not enough, but

"you are my son, after all."

happy.

i. when his son was four years old and brave and naive the way only children can be, tomomi sat him down at the desk he was, under normal circumstances, strictly forbidden to touch, and told him, nobuchika's hair between his fingers a warmth he could never live without and his incredulous smile the most beautiful thing in the world:

"i'm sure you'll make a wonderful detective."