Status Updates From Tokyo tapes nr. 6-4

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?

He understood that no one was unquestioning in their obedience, just as he realized that no leader could ever hope to understand the inner workings of their staff. Yet they still made themselves gods. Whenever someone was newly appointed to them, they would tend to classify them as this or that kind of person, applying brightly colored tabs to shoehorn them into the role they wanted performed.

Inside everyone is unlimited potential. People might work for you, but that doesn’t mean their emotions are any less valid.

She was right, he knew it. Tactics could never genuinely move a person. He wanted to believe they were both gazing at the same peak, even if they saw different routes, even if a landslide had left them both unable to move. He hadn’t forgotten: two sides were needed to shake hands.
They were trying too hard to be smart.

Mikami had already guessed that his interests weren’t going to be compatible with Futawatari’s. But he’d hoped, regardless... that they were both torn between their allegiances, single bodies with two minds, existing in a world where hierarchy was everything; that the man’s conflicted state would come to the surface if he challenged him face-to-face; that Futawatari might finally drop his mask of indifference.

Still, they couldn’t have done anything. The potential danger of revealing the cover-up would have grown with time. They’d been handed a live grenade, and it had harbored more destructive energy than ever before. It wouldn’t have been about self-protection; it was all they could do to bury it as deep as possible.

Words were weapons; the razor-sharp tools of psychological warfare that could lacerate a man’s heart. Mikami had never changed, even outside work. He wondered whether he had ever made a genuine attempt to say something with the aim of actually connecting to another person.

The world he inhabited now was one devoid of murder or corrupt politicians, and yet he wasted more energy than he had when they’d been a part of his job; he was exhausting himself, and his confidence was waning.