Chapter Text
Their paths cross sometime towards the end of the first half of the first season of Psycho-Pass, when Ginoza was still an inspector.
At that moment, Natsuha opened a forum/web discussion place (sort of CommuField) to give out advice about dog therapy (one of her passions) and became famous for giving “accurate” and “personalized” advice. Plus, people asking her questions found she was kind, polite and patient while replying. As she was still working at that time, it was only a side activity that took some hours every 2-3 weeks. One day, Ginoza was confused about the fact Dime (his dog) became more stressed out than usual and didn’t have enough self-confidence to rely on his knowledge only, even though he’s holding a certification as a dog therapist himself. That’s when he decided to look on the net following Kogami’s advice for some additional opinion to complete his knowledge and maybe gain a new perspective on the situation: he was worried he was getting too subjective and emotional because it involved his own dog.
After some research, he found out Natsuha’s forum and was convinced to check out her advice corner after seeing she received multiple positive feedbacks. However, he slowly was disappointed and even pissed off reading her advice in other threads because he thought they were “wrong” and that even some of them could “aggravate the situation”. He quickly changed strategy and decided to rely on himself for the time being.
He managed to somehow solve the situation with Dime but couldn’t get out of his mind this forum discussion: according to him, it was “unforgivable” such a forum could exist and “spread such information” because it could “mislead innocent people only looking for advice”. Ginoza decided to keep an eye on it and was looking for an opportunity to tell everyone that the “advice giver” and “so-said therapist” was giving false information. He was sometimes barging in the recent threads to tell about what he thought was the “true” advice but nobody was taking his words seriously; and Natsuha was “kicking him” out the topic… to the point it kind of became “systematic”: every 2-3 weeks when Natsuha was updating her community and replying to questions, that “coin” was always there to barge in and give his own (unwelcomed) opinion.
She felt pissed off when it became a habit of the “coin” and even issued a warning on her forum, telling the members not to listen to “the coin” because he was “pretending to act as her”. She also decided to restrict access to that user so he couldn’t give his opinion this often.
During the same timing, Natsuha decided to hold one offline meeting to celebrate her new milestone of followers and to meet (new) dog owners so she could give out her advice in person. Everyone in the community was invited to come with their dogs, while wearing their avatars’ costume characteristics. Ginoza saw the event invitation for one of them and decided to dedicate one of his day-off for this meeting, convinced it was all part of his police inspector job to free all those “poor innocent citizens” from “misleading information”.
The day of the meeting, Ginoza is determined to put an end to what he thought being unfair and goes to the place with his avatar cosplay, accompanied by Dime: only his face was hidden by the coin he uses in the CommuField, the rest was simply casual clothes of the same color. There, he assists in the back to Natsuha’s “advice corner”. He stepped forward when he heard something “wrong” and interrupted her in front of her audience: “You’re wrong. I’ve been following your forum for quite a while now and I’ve been waiting for an opportunity to say it. It is yadah yadah yadah and blah blah blah...”
Natsuha simply let out a surprised scream: “the coin man… ?!” as Ginoza was slowly stealing all the spotlight from her. When she tried to stop him, he simply threw at her in a curt tone: “So you’re saying you have more knowledge about it? Tell me about it?” before he asked her some technical questions to which she didn’t have a reply. After several unsuccessful attempts at replying to his questions, Ginoza sighed before straightfully addressing her: “If you don’t know about it then stop wasting my time. I didn’t take my day-off to listen to such miserable advice.”
Natsuha felt outraged and almost shouted at him to leave the meeting if his only goal was to destroy all her hard work. He replied: “Yeah, it’s no problem. I had no intention of losing one more second here anyway,” before leaving. Ginoza had the feeling he accomplished his aim and fiercely believed he managed to put an end to what he thought was a masquerade. He even “bet” the community would sink into the net wonders...
That offline meeting was the worst one she ever had to organize, where she lost some of her followers. Some people even publicly shamed and insulted her in the forum for giving such information. Some others “swore allegiance” to the “coin man” who was celebrated as a hero. It also led Natsuha to feel miserable and hopeless at her own lack of knowledge.
More than anything, how dare this coin head man barge into her community and leave her ashamed like that?!