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The sparring drone seizes him by the wrist first, and then, failing to maintain a durable grip, clenches its metal-plated fist around the collar of his gi. Holding his stance, Ginoza grapples it right back, twisting his own soldered hand to produce a screech that makes him flinch, his grasp weakening for just a second. That infinitesimal opening is all the drone needs to wrap an arm around his torso and flip him, his left side hitting the mat first before he remembers to roll and kick out at the drone from underneath so that it topples as well.
On his back, panting, he sees two bare feet stepping onto the mat, a pair of slender ankles approaching him. An outstretched hand, a look almost motherly in its brow-crinkled concern. Incongruous, he thinks, considering how much younger she is.
“You’ve been in here every night this week, Ginoza-san. I’m beginning to think that you’re determined to overstrain yourself.”
He sits up, turning down her hand with the air of one pretending to not have noticed it though she doesn’t seem at all offended, and with a grimace, he begins to shuck the tape off his fingers.
“The only reason you know I’ve been in here every night is because you’re here too, Tsunemori. An Enforcer should be concerned about his Inspector overworking herself, not the other way around.”
Rising to his feet and moving to upright the drone, he asks, “Are you waiting for the mat? I’ll clear out in just a moment.”
Akane grins at him. “Judo’s not really my style, but thank you.” Her eyes travel down his arm to his hand and widen with worry once more upon spotting the ruddy swelling along his fingers, the torn skin revealing underlayers of raw tissue around his index knuckle.
“The tape can’t prevent everything,” he tells her quietly, detecting the focus of her gaze. “It’s fine though. I can still type up my reports at my usual pace.”
Ignoring his attempt to divert her attention through humor, Akane frowns and begins to backtrack off the mat. “Please don’t regard yourself with so little care, Ginoza-san. Stay put for a moment? I’ll be right back.”
Puzzled, he watches her leave the room, only to return in a rush with a small, translucently blue pouch dangling from her fingers. Kneeling beside him, Akane asks for his hand and granted his flustered permission, she presses the icepack gingerly across his joints, glancing up at his expression before applying a little more pressure.
Staring down at how both of her hands wrap around his, Ginoza remembers that he used to disdain physical exertion of the combative nature. Scarcely three months ago, he had little need to roughen his hands beyond tightening a rigid hold around the Enforcers’ leashes and occasionally pulling the final trigger on the prey they cornered. Back then, his infrequent visits to this floor had tended to leave a sour taste in his mouth upon seeing his father or Sasayama showing Kou a new throw.
Except all three are gone now.
Surrounded by heavy muteness in Division 1’s office, Ginoza had found himself glancing across the room, past the emptied workspaces, unable to overlook how the two young Inspectors, both still relatively new to the field, lacked for protectors as the bureau scrambled to restaff its ranks. A week after he’d come back from rehabilitation, he’d started heading for the gym after his shifts, and more and more often, he encountered Akane at the doorway or in the corridors right outside.
He still isn’t too fond of the sparring drones, but perhaps, he considers, more icepacks would...improve the situation.
“Tsunemori, you don’t have to waste your time here by holding this for me. I can deal with it on my own.”
“I’m sure you can,” Akane murmurs, but her hands remain, one flattened on top of the icepack and the other meeting his hand palm for palm. “But don’t be so quick in discounting yourself as my priority either.”
Her eyes catch his. “After all, I gotta make sure you can type up all those reports, don’t I?”
Obligingly, she releases his hand with a wry little smile, and his hands are cold, but his face feels warm.
No longer is he the one summoned to Kasei’s office, but even under two layers of sleeve, trails of gooseflesh still creep along his right arm at the memory of standing in the Chief’s sterile domain, the atmosphere rendered even more frigid by the woman’s unblinking stare. On the days Tsunemori and Shimotuski are called to meet with the Chief, the younger Inspector tends to come back sooner, arms crossed and freckled nose scrunched in a state of less than pleased pensiveness. Akane does not look any bit more satisfied at having their superior’s ear for a protracted period.
Ginoza watches her stride back into the office, the steely fix of her mouth sealed from uttering her familiar sunny greetings. Instead, her eyes are lowered and distant, her small but staunch fists clenched at her sides. She takes her seat at her workstation, but for several long, ticking moments, Akane just frowns at the darkened monitor, chin resting on her folded hands and the weariness in her frame becoming ever more apparent. He wonders if his meetings with the Chief used to leave his visage so similarly troubled.
Half past noon, the office begins to vacate as the others take their lunch, and with his report finished, he glances over at Akane, still grimacing at her computer screen.
“Did you know,” Ginoza says, words cutting through the silence. “That I used to schedule impromptu conversations with my therapist right after talks with the Chief?”
It doesn’t quite garner a laugh from her, but Akane flashes him a strained smile. “Yeah? Maybe I should start doing that too.”
“Was she in a better or worse mood than usual?”
“Neither. I don’t really think she has moods. She has agendas, and she enjoys seeing what kind of mood her words can cast over you.” Closing her eyes, Akane rubs briefly at her temples before cupping her hands to receive her shuddering exhale. “Every time I step into that room, I look down at the floor, and the carpet makes me imagine that I’m treading in blood.”
Standing, he goes over to give her a physical copy of his report, and his hand stalls in the air as he peers at the slope of her shoulder. Instinctively, as if beckoned by how wrong that dispirited bearing appears on her, a gesture of comfort comes to mind, one that he’d seen his father and Kou carry out naturally. Well, sort of anyway in the latter’s case.
Lifting his warmer hand, the one still consisting of flesh and blood, Ginoza places it gently on the pad of her shoulder, careful to not graze the skin of her neck. Akane stiffens, and he isn’t sure if his surging doubts about the action are triggered by his own heartbeat or the slight tremor in her form. She doesn’t turn to look back at him, but her own hand reaches up, her fingers inching hesitantly up the lapel of her blazer to intersect with his.
He forgets which one of them pulls away first.
The first time he has Akane in his arms, she is a near-feral thing, and for once, Ginoza does not restrain the force of his left arm with regards to her. Her hands fight against the constrainment of his, her body bucking to lash out and wreak pain equal to that delivered in the small black box Kuwashima handed to her.
Had his screams in front of Masaoka’s corpse rivaled the roar of fire like hers? Dimly, Ginoza remembers a feeling akin to earth caving in beneath him, and miserably, even then, his voice had felt too buried to vent his despair.
One thought reigns in his mind as he latches onto Akane and pulls her back: He must not let go. He could not hold Shinya back from leaving. He could not save his father. But this determination bordering on childish delusion consumes him suddenly, the thought that as long as he has Akane physically in his arms, she will not lose herself amidst the agendas and machinations of those with darker intentions.
She will not lose herself, and he will not lose her.
This is what loops through his mind as the fire burns on.
At Aoi’s funeral, Ginoza is one of the last to approach the family in mourning, three bowed figures in ceremonial black standing closer than anyone else to the white-shrouded casket. Upon his nearing, Akane drags her gaze away from the memorial picture of the deceased to look up at him, and Ginoza halts his path at a respectful distance, silently struck by how the Inspector’s features bear a stronger resemblance to her grandmother’s than her parents’.
“Thank you for coming,” she tells him softly, and Ginoza follows her lead as they move out of the hearing range of other guests.
In a corner of the cemetery, barren of people and greenery with the onset of December chill, Akane says abruptly, “You were right about Tougane. That he was not to be trusted. I should’ve heeded your warnings more.”
A grimace briefly hardens the set of Ginoza’s mouth at the memory of that other Enforcer who’d trailed Akane like a shadow menace for months. Sighing, he searches for more neutral ground instead and replies, “Tougane wasn’t always wrong. Enforcers should trust the Inspector. And I should’ve believed you about not vandalizing your own bedroom walls.”
Ceasing her steps by the base of a willow tree, Akane runs her gloved fingertips across the bark as if she were still tracing and chasing the ghost of WC.
“I guess we could both benefit from improvement,” she muses. “In trusting each other.” She peers around the curve of the trunk, and Ginoza recalls another wintry season like this one, back when they had more often bickered with each other to the point of frenzy rather than seeking accord.
"Believing in each other,” he agrees, and her hand falls away from the bark to squeeze around his.
In her bathing suit, poised at the edge of the pool, Akane looked as if she would be a natural swimmer, but then she dunks into the water, feet kicking too hard and arms flailing for the flutter board, and Ginoza realizes that she truly can’t swim.
At least she’s got a solid kick, he assesses, considering how much water she’s sent flaring into his face.
“Sorry,” she gasps, one arm grabbing onto the tiled edge of the pool even though her other arm is already clutching the kickboard.
Well, it’s not like he can judge anyone else’s swimming skills right now, considering that he too is attached to the pool’s perimeter as he tries to recalibrate his body’s gravitational pull with the added weight of his prosthetic.
“Remember when I first joined?” Akane asks, her face tilted up to the artificially displayed sky and her limbs calming in their intent on creating tidal waves. “And Kagari tried to hold a party here for me?”
“Yes, but I don’t seem to recall you actually stepping a foot into this pool,” he answers, heedful to the pause in her voice after saying Kagari’s name. I don’t want to forget them, she’d told him. I don’t want to walk through these halls and pretend like they never existed.
“I dangled my foot in a few times, but yeah, you’re right. I was too embarrassed. Especially after...the big impression I made on the team that first night on the job. I didn’t want any of you to think that they were babysitting a kid who can’t even swim.”
Her fingers curl, tightening on the stone lip. “I can’t hang onto the edge forever though.”
Releasing a deep exhale, Akane pushes off from the wall, letting go of the board simultaneously, and her arms flit with diminished splashes as she manages to keep her chin above the water. Ginoza can’t help but smile as he observes her pulsating motions, her pink swimming cap making her look like one of the jellyfish she’s so fond of.
“Are you laughing at me, senpai?” Akane demands with mock outrage, temporarily confident enough in her bobbing that she sends a small slap of water his way.
“Hardly. I’m cringing in fear from my student who would abuse her crippled trainer even out here.”
Akane’s smile falters, and he’s cursing himself for how often his words etch apprehension into her face when she pushes the kickboard at him.
“Here, you take one end, and I’ll take the other.” It’s not even real sunshine pouring down on their heads, but Akane’s eyes glimmer brightly, gold flecks amidst the amber conveying a playful challenge. “Two brilliant detectives like us should be able to figure out something as simple as swimming, right?”
Sighing, Ginoza reaches out to anchor the other end of the board, his larger frame destabilizing it into chaotic rocking at first, but then Akane hoists her upper body up to counterbalance, her lean arms straining to keep their float from capsizing. Water beads along her skin, dripping down as she struggles with the uncooperative plank, and Ginoza’s about to just return to his former perch along the wall when she acquits herself of the buoy altogether, testing out her paddling like a newborn, gangly-limbed creature. As if orbiting on a skewed axis, she wades half-revolutions around him, one hand sporadically extending to clasp onto the board again to boost her floating.
Without looking, her fingers glide past the panel at one point and land on the warmed skin of his shoulder.
“Ah, sorry!”
Hastily reactive, her hand darts for the foam surface of the board, pulling her inadvertently closer anyway.
Underneath the water, their legs tangle, briefly, skin sliding past skin.
“I think you’re getting the hang of it,” Ginoza tells her, his own center of balance suddenly off-kilter.
Confused, she looks on as he excuses himself and heaves his body out of the water.
He’s never going to be as fond of relaxing with drink in hand as his father was.
Shaking his head at Akane’s fifth emptied glass, Ginoza wonders if her tolerance for the stuff borders on inhuman. So much for all that scientific hullabaloo around body mass determining appropriate alcohol intake.
Around him, the walls of the karaoke bar seem to almost pulse with the music. Initially, this was supposed to be a much more exclusive party, only Inspectors invited to toast another division’s much-needed recruit. Then, Akane had brought up that inviting the Enforcers would mean not only a livelier celebration but Yayoi’s added presence, and Mika had affixed the suggestion with her agreement.
Across the table from him, Akane and Yayoi have their heads bowed over a tablet, scrolling through the list of sanctioned songs available for selection. Yayoi purses her lips at a substantial portion of the catalog, her disparaging comments about which bands are just indisputably, offensively bad sending the Inspector into occasional fits of palm-muffled laughter.
The music descends to a beat that seems to correspond with the throbbing in Ginoza’s head, and mercifully, Karanomori comes over, dragging Yayoi away to save their eardrums.
“You haven’t yet taken your turn at the microphone, Ginoza-san,” Akane remarks, her attention turning to focus on him. “I’ve never heard you sing.”
“Nor will you ever if I can help it.”
“Oh? You know, there’s a saying that singing to your plants will help them flourish and grow.”
“That sounds like absolute nonsense to me. I’m starting to think you might have had too much to drink after all.”
He’s the one slouching against the booth cushions though, his normally regulated posture forfeited as his knees slowly unfold from their right angles under the table. He feels like he’s taking up much more room than he’s supposed to, his long legs encroaching too much into her space. What jolts him into sitting upright again is the skimming contact with her raised ankle, the bone perceptible even through a layer of stocking, her crossed leg caught between his sliding, loosened limbs.
“And I’m starting to think you’re afraid of me, Ginoza-san.”
A tilt of teasing to her mouth, but a tone of uncertainty in her voice.
“No, not afraid,” he answers, surprising himself by how steady his voice is in expressing this.
The second time he has Akane in his arms, it lasts for about the length of half a song before they mutually decide that dancing is not for them.
“I could’ve sworn Kaori’s invitation said ‘traditional wedding’,” Akane insists as they escape to the balcony where far fewer eyes are upon them. “As in one without dancing.”
“Well, now you know why your friend was so insistent on you bringing a plus one,” Ginoza returns, personally relieved that he no longer has to concentrate his gaze on the ground to avoid treading on her tiny, silver-heeled feet.
The balcony doesn’t quite compare to the ones at headquarters, but already, he feels his shoulders relaxing, his words flowing more naturally. In the open air, the two of them had always communicated more easily. Resting her elbows on the polished stone balustrade, Akane is awash in moon-softened illumination which nevertheless does not conceal the shadows under her eyes. Ginoza would hazard that she’s slept as little as he has upon returning from the embroilment in Shambala.
“Thank you for coming.”
“It’s no problem. I’m...happy to see that you’re still on close terms with your friend.” His right hand clenches, knuckles still discolored with bruising imprint. “More than ever, I think it’s important to celebrate with the friends we can retain.”
Her perceptive eyes do not fail to notice the motion. “So you punched him yourself after all?”
“Yes, he deserved it.”
“I didn’t say he didn’t. I tried to thrash him a little myself. ” Akane’s mouth curls, as if trying to arrange itself into a smile. A parody of a smile. “Do you think we’ll ever see Kougami-san again?”
A chasm exists between what Ginoza would like for the future to hold and what he thinks is likely. “I can’t see any farther into the future than you, Tsunemori. But it’s like I said, when the hound is freed of the leash, its nature is to roam far, not to come back and settle.”
“Settle,” Akane repeats, running her tongue over the word as if it were foreign. “My parents keep asking if I’m going to settle down anytime soon, but I look around at my friends getting married, and I just grow more and more certain that marriage isn’t for me.”
Her eyes are distant in their rumination but far from dreamy in reverie. “Especially after Shambala. There’s more needed to be done now than ever.”
It makes sense, of course, to Ginoza who once felt very much the same. Hadn’t he voiced the same excuses to his therapist when he was an Inspector? That relationships were troublesome and pressed so many demands on time and most dauntingly, presented incredible risks to one’s hue.
He looks over at her though, the successor who made him feel some semblance of hope for this profession even as it consumed him, and says instead, “Refraining from marriage does not preclude you from love.”
And Akane’s eyes are all for him as she answers, “You’re right. It doesn’t.”
“Hold still,” Akane chides him, lining up a stick of pastel to the slant of his cheek in her visual field and squinting at the juxtaposition. “I want to find the right shade for your eyes.”
They unearthed the pastels from his father’s remaining possessions, many of the pigments ground into stubs and others barely used, neatly arranged in their grooved rows inside the boxes by Masaoka’s easel. Scattered among Ginoza’s boyhood memories are recollections of his father sketching lightly on canvas with oil pastel and charcoal first before applying layers of paint and sometimes creating just pastel works on their own. Masaoka had given him a formal lesson a handful of times in sketching, back when Ginoza had still been willing to learn.
The bureau’s therapists had vetted and approved his taking up of his father’s supplies as a suitable hobby, offering their usual platitudes about how yes, it might, just might help in improving his hue.
As an Enforcer, Masaoka had been resigned to producing still-lifes, the accessibility of other subjects barred off. Originally, Ginoza expected that his own work would be very much limited to the same compositional range of mostly inanimate objects. Shrubs and flowers potted in pleasing arrangements around his quarters. Perhaps an occasional sketch of Dime in sleepier moments. And then, two days ago, Akane caught sight of one of his sketches, tucked and temporarily forgotten between sheaves of work papers, an instance of rare disorganization on Ginoza’s part. Blithely, she offered to fill in for a living model in exchange for his agreement to pose as well.
Surprise, of the delighted kind, danced in her eyes when he accepted her offer.
Legs dangling on a stool a few feet away from him, Akane has her hand distracted again by Dime’s nuzzling snout, and Ginoza can’t quite see her drawing board from his angle, but he snorts softly at her admonishment to hold still.
“I’m nearly certain that you don’t have a face drawn yet.”
“Of course I do. It’s just very...impressionistic.” Her keen, studying gaze shifts between his face and the paper again. “I can’t believe you used to dislike how your eyes looked.”
His eyelids lower under her scrutiny. “I think there will always be parts of myself that take me a long time to accept." He makes a self-deprecating smile at his left hand. “To no longer find repulsive.”
Sliding off the stool, Akane crosses the scant distance between her easel and him. Slowly, each pause requesting permission in the interval, her hand extends forward. Ginoza feels her fingertips skating across his forehead, brushing away the ink strokes of his bangs and delivering a tingle down the bridge of his nose. Even halfway between standing and sitting as he is on his own chair, his questioning gaze doesn’t quite meet hers at eye-level, her contemplation lining up more with the shelf of his shoulder.
“I’d rather you see yourself as I see you,” she tells him, the words tasting of confession. Akane leans closer, as if to kiss him, but then she brings her mouth to the bare stripe of skin at his shoulder blade, the division between his undershirt and the socket where the metal of his left arm begins.
And this gentle press of lips is a kiss too.
His ribcage feels too compressed to contain the rising staccato rhythm within it as he remembers how he once feared to touch her with the hand he regarded as too cold. Less than human. This time though, he lifts his prosthetic of alloy and wire to rest on her shoulder, and finding the touch to be no less intimate, he moves his hand up to the base of her throat, drawn by how the skin dips there, concave with the underlying play of breath. Ginoza’s hand cups the delicate incline of her jaw, and Akane’s cheek, rounded already with her smile, curves into his touch, the only confirmation he needs as he bends to kiss her.
What is love but a way to say I want you here with me, but I want you to want it too?