Psycho Pass: Colorful World

17

When Makishima and Choe arrived at the apartment, both standing on either side of the door, Choe nodded and entered first, pointing a gun forward as Makishima followed him down the main corridor, hands in his open white jacket, until they reached the living room. There was a round table broken and overturned, with a white tablecloth lying on the floor and glass everywhere. Choe stared at the female body lying next to the small table between two sofas, which had a pool of blood around her head, still holding the gun in both hands, while Makishima just walked past it, avoiding stepping in the blood, to look at a broken window for a second and then continue inspecting the room.

While Choe stood behind the wall next to a back door that was wide open, gun pointed at the floor, Makishima crouched in the corner of the room with his forearms on his thighs. Choe stepped outside raising the gun again, but since no one was there, he walked over to the railing and looked out at the other building complexes, which were filled with neon-lit signs. Makishima's golden eyes narrowed, frowning, and his lips curved downward as he grabbed a black pistol lying on the floor.

The shots echoed until one of the last two target sheets fell to the grass with perfect, accurate holes. They were spread several meters apart, held in place by a metal post. The sun was bright in the sky at that time of the morning. They were far from the city, where nothing could be heard but the wind rustling the leaves of the trees.

"If you wish for peace, prepare for war," Yashiro removed her black earmuffs and lowered her gun, which she held in one hand. "I know nothing would thrill you more than seeing me hit a person."

"You are suggesting that I'm more fascinated with the gun than the man," Makishima pulled his binoculars away to look at her with a serious expression.

"Are you?" she turned to him.

"No. Guns are like money. They will give you the means for the satisfaction of your desires, but they will not provide you with desires."

Yashiro walked towards him with the corner of her mouth lifted, and handed him the black earmuffs. He placed it over his long white hair and then grabbed her gun with both hands, pointing it forward. Yashiro shook her head and grabbed his left forearm, so that he used the gun with one hand just as she did.

Yashiro's narrowed eyes resembled those of a shooting instructor as she studied how he held the gun, and passed behind him to see both the gun's standard sights and the target sheet in the distance. Makishima did not complain, and waited for her to finally move away to use his binoculars. He looked at her out of the corner of his eye, then pulled the trigger a couple of times, waiting a few seconds after each shot, frowning and feeling his hand tremble from the movement of the gun.

When he finished and raised his head, Yashiro laughed with her mouth half open in a smile that showed her white teeth, without taking off his binoculars. Makishima did not practice as much as she did, especially one-handed, so he had missed the center of the target sheet. But he took pleasure in defeat.

There was a longing he had never allowed himself to acknowledge. If emotions were one's response to a fact of reality, dictated by one's standards, as he loved books and skyscrapers, and his love for them, there was still a greater response he had missed. A feeling that held the purpose of all the things he so valued in life. A consciousness like his own, that would be the meaning of his world. Not one of the many women he had ever met in his life. A woman who existed only in her knowledge of her capacity for an emotion he had never felt, but would have given his life to experience. He felt the longing in his muscles, in the nerves of his body. There was a link between his love for them and the desire of his body, as if one gave him the right to the other, the right and the meaning, as if one were the completion of the other, and the desire would never be satisfied, except by a being of equal greatness who could live and act for himself.