Psycho Pass: Colorful World

22

"Who are you really?" Aoyanagi asked, tilting her head.

With her arms folded and her head resting on the back of the driver's seat of the police car, Aoyanagi Risa watched through the center rearview mirror a handcuffed Miyake Ren, who was sitting in the middle of the back seats with a strangely serene look, eyes narrowed, as if it were a simple tour of the city. His crime coefficient was 182, a little lower than what he had presented in the interrogation cell.

"What do you mean?" Miyake looked at her through the mirror.

"Tell us about yourself. At this point, I don't think it matters."

"Who I am means nothing," his voice was still soft and calm.

"Oh, come on. You have to think about the news, right? Isn't that why you wrote on the wall? You want attention. You had your fifteen minutes of fame, now you're boring," Kozuki Ryogo turned around in the seat next to the inspector, and leaned his elbow on the door with a smug expression. "Who are the people photographed in your apartment? Yeah, our friends found them."

Spider-like drones surveyed the empty, tidy apartment while three members of the Public Safety Bureau opened drawers and collected information about the owner. Standing in front of a shelf of books hanging on the living room wall, Yashiro was pulling some out and putting them back in place, until as she grabbed one of them, the pages separated slightly, dropping photographs to the floor. Daiki, who was in the kitchen opening the silverware drawers, turned around and walked over, picking them up. Katashi came out of the room where there was a closet and a bed with a green quilt, turning on the flashlight of his wristcom to illuminate them.

"Nowadays, you need more than words to make people listen," the man blinked, turning his head to the side.

"Oh, the freak thinks he's special? Looks like they're all the same," Kozuki rolled his eyes, looking at the inspector.

"I'm not. What we do, that is."

"What you do?" Aoyanagi raised an eyebrow, shooting him a furtive glance through the mirror.

"They won't believe it at first, but they won't be able to deny it—not anymore."

Aoyanagi frowned, while Kozuki looked at him slowly opening his eyes wider, until he grinned, "Wow, that was creepy. You know, no one gives a shit about whatever it is you're trying to prove. No one's going to remember you after this. You're the trending song of the week at best. What's so funny?"

Up ahead, they saw a long truck turn onto the avenue, cutting them off and blocking the only remaining lanes. Kozuki frowned and saw in the rearview mirror a black car approaching at low speed in the distance. Aoyanagi unbuckled her seatbelt and grabbed the door handle to face the driver, but it was then that Kozuki heard the roar of an engine start and caught a glimpse of lights out of the corner of his eye.

A black pickup truck came towards them from his side, down an adjacent, narrower street between buildings at full speed, and Kozuki wrapped his arms around the inspector, burying her head in his chest seconds before the impact jolted them from the back of the car, with the sound of metal and steel clanging and glass shattering all around disorienting them. For a few seconds the vehicle seemed to fly, but none of them could see any more as everything melted into black.

When Kozuki awoke, he looked into the driver's seat and discovered that Aoyanagi was not only sitting next to him unconscious, with a trickle of blood on her head, but that she was leaning against the door and the concrete of the street, amidst shards of broken glass. The car had overturned during the accident, laying on its side. Pursing his lips and breathing faster and faster, Kozuki tried to unbuckle his seatbelt with clumsy movements, and would have almost fallen on top of her with a thud if he had not grabbed the seat.