Psycho Pass: Apology Of An Endgame

5

In the fitness room composed of different exercise machines, continuous knuckle and elbow strikes resounded against the punching bag. Kougami Shinya was dressed only in black pants, and the sweat from both his chest and face indicated the time and effort. When he was training, he could forget about everything, since he had to maintain his balance and coordination to perfectly match the blows.

Little by little they were increasing in intensity and above all, violence. He grimaced, suddenly imagining that the punching bag was a blurred and unrecognizable face, whose shape he created to give a reason to his then painful fists. A chill permeated his bones even though his entire body was bathed in sweat, and his chest swelled with air that rose to his throat, as if he were drowning without ever reaching death. Leaning forward, he gave a brutal kick in order to make the image disappear.

A few minutes later, when his body had stopped shaking like a dog in a storm, he went to drink water from a bottle he had taken out of the fridge in the same room, and poured almost all the liquid into his head as a female voice returned to his mind, along with her cold handsome face, "How can you be so sure that there are accomplices?"

It was Takahashi Yashiro. Instead of directly offering information about Touma Kouzaburou, she had shown interest in the possibility of accomplices. Slowly, he walked into a small room filled with cigarette smoke, and stood in front of a wall that would be almost completely empty, if it were not for a couple of photographs and notations like hieroglyphics pinned to its surface. Among them was the only blurred, unintelligible one taken of a suspect.

Kougami turned around and went to the white investigation board by the door, which was similar to what the old detectives used to have. He grabbed a black marker, and proceeded to add one more name. It was Takahashi Yashiro, which he attached with an arrow to that of Touma Kouzaburou and Kirino Touko. Stretching his black, soggy hair back with the fingertips of the other hand, he wrote a question mark between the two students. Then, he simply took out a pack of cigarettes and lit one, releasing a deep puff of smoke in front of him.

A figure of his own height was analyzing the clues behind him, but without ever giving an opinion about them. They were the clues that he himself had obtained before him. However, that day he spoke for the first time with a cigarette between his lips, "She knows you suspect her. You're digging into something you have no control over, just like I did. Be careful, Ko."

"I know. But I'm not alone. I have help. I'm sorry I took that away from you."

The buildings and skyscrapers rose on each side of the highway. Yashiro could not help but look at her rational world with her elbow rested on the door car, and her cheek in her closed hand, a smile dancing on her lips as if she were about to fall asleep. Thanks to the Sibyl System and a harsh policy of isolation, Japan succeeded in escaping global strife and became the only peaceful nation. But what was the cost? Had they left anything behind on their path to perfection?

"In order to rid man of crime, you must fully suppress his freedom," Yashiro uttered with a dreamy voice. "We have only two choices then—happiness without freedom, or freedom without happiness. What would you choose, Choe? Will you take the blue one or the red one?"

He twisted his lips to the left in a never-ending mocking smile. The dark circles beneath his eyes were still there and gave him a somewhat peculiar expression—which added to his clenched jaw and then immobile body, resembled that of a teenager remembering the first time he had ever evaded the law.

"The red one—always. But both terms are inseparable. How can you enjoy a predetermined life? How can you live a life that you don't live for yourself? Is that true happiness? Or is it a lie instead?"