Psycho Pass: Apology Of An Endgame

3

As they walked through the streets of Tokyo, a large hologram with a happy woman's face flashed on one of the buildings, and it seamlessly transitioned to a sanctuary. Yashiro stopped to raise her head in its direction. People passed by her and continued on their way. Only one of them turned around with an arched eyebrow and stood next to her, glancing at what had caught her attention.

"Have you enjoyed that power?" he asked with a deep, enveloping voice like that of someone speaking in an auditorium.

"I was not aware I had one."

"Think of what those in these sects preach: personal... selflessness. Don't you think that's what you've been doing all these years? They wouldn't accept your motives, but motives don't alter facts. You never cared about becoming a mirror. The voices themselves changed the reflection. Naturally, you gained reputation. Does it change reality? Suppose you wanted to help your classmates out of pure altruism. Isn't that what you did in the end?"

A wind that neither of them was able to stop had risen, and the waves were already too high. She dived in, "In order to express the opinions, the desires they lacked or did not truly want to admit, I abandoned my ego. And they accepted me, they freely supported me by looking for me in the corridors of the academy, wanting to know what I thought about issues that concerned them. Reflections, you say? They have represented everyone but me."

He looked at her in silence for a while. His eyes slowly opened as if he had just witnessed an explosion in the distance. She looked down instead, her body sinking like stone. It was the first time she had ever admitted that to anyone—she had not even done it with Rikako or Touma. But what surprised her most was that she had never done so with herself before. The quiet sense of power he was talking about had been always there nonetheless, though she had actually never used it. He felt it too.

"That's not what they—and even the Sibyl System, may I say—think about altruism. They would claim that you shouldn't let people decide on their own free will. You should be the one to do so. You should determine what you think they should like—your own idea of good and evil. It would have to be by force, for they have freely chosen already."

"I am not an altruist. I do not like to decide for others."

"What do you think of God, Yashiro?"

"I do not think of God."

There was an involuntary grin on his face, and after several seconds he allowed himself to let out a slow, deep laugh that caused a lighting up of his eyes.

"Being Sibyl a global life-long welfare support system that embraces every aspect of human life, people no longer need to cling to religion. An atheist, then?"

Yashiro shook her head with a peaceful expression. He was not the first to ask that question, and he would not be the last.

"Since my mother was a Catholic, she taught me everything she knew. So I used to pray when I was a child for my father to leave us alone or even... have an accident. It never happened. It just got worst. As I grew up, I knew it was myself the one who had to do something if I wanted change. My mother did not think the same—she kept using religion to hide our problems. People seek shelter in gods. I find it in friends."

Yashiro attentively looked at him out of the corner of her eye. His calm expression was somewhat victorious, for he had managed to convey to her the strange peace that surrounded him, so that she would let her guard down in his presence without even realizing it.

"There are people who consider Sibyl a god and are devoted to it, believing its judgements to be of divine origin," he looked up the hologram again.

She instantly grimaced.