Status Updates From Six Four

Someone has to be out there. Someone ready to accept Ayumi as she is, who won’t try to change her one way or another. Someone who’ll tell her she’s perfect, who’ll stand silently by her side and protect her. That’s where she belongs. She’ll be free to be herself, do what she wants.
He’d thought Minako had given up... But now he knew. She’d been listing the conditions for Ayumi’s survival.

It was probably ironic. Only Kuramae, out of all of them the least interested in PR, had managed to distinguish between the inside and the out. The relationship was the same as that between Criminal Investigations and Administrative Affairs, Media Relations and the Press Room. They were all separate entities, but viewed from above, it became clear they inhabited the same well.

“Don’t you see? The force can’t keep itself going properly, not alone. It’s rotting on the inside and no one can even see it. It doesn’t matter that the reporters can’t be trusted, that the world’s corrupted, it’s still better to connect than let ourselves remain isolated.”

Was he proud of his accomplishments? Or was that all gone now, vanished like a dream? What had a life in the force given him? What had it taken away?