Just Ana

Joyously satisfied with himself, Yuri snorted proudly while he walked through the SSS's main hallway. So far, it had been a nice warm morning. The sun was bright, and the weather was simply delightful, with the mist sparkling above the flowers, birds chirping as they drank on its condensation. It appeared that, for the first time, Yuri Briar was actually enjoying the summer, as opposed to his previous complaints about the heat, about how inconvenient it was to lack proper ventilation in their office. It was to such a degree that while everybody fanned themselves with what they could find — to files or newspapers, even their hats — Yuri seemed suspiciously comfortable.

Naturally, the first one to notice something was off was Captain Curtis.

Upon their return from their last mission, he had noticed something strange creeping underneath Yuri's collar, something that bore a slight resemblance to a paintball bruise, only smaller, dotting the surface of his neck.

The First Lieutenant wasn't stupid. Of course, he knew well what that was. Yet, when he tried to bring it up, Chloe swooped in unexpectedly, claiming the assault on his neck had been the result of a furious mosquito swarm, endemic to the forests of Madenburg. Yuri, on the other hand, had been too slow to react, but when his brain eventually joined him, he whipped his head to the back seats, seething through his teeth, barking a loud threat that he would most definitely find a way to punish her for her incompetence in allowing this attack. Curtis eye-rolled at the absurdity and at the not-subtle way Chloe had jumped up when Yuri glared, trying to reach her with his arm only for her to slap it away, in a slow, measured manner, jolting at the almost imperceptible contact.

Good grief, Curtis cursed out mentally.

Just what the hell had happened at Madenburg? He sighed, backtracking his deduction, safely guarding behind a self-warning. Ignorance is bliss, or something along those lines.

To his bad luck, said bliss lasted around a day.

Curtis had tasked them with the leftovers of their mission, which consisted of filing all the names in the newly built directory, comprised of at least a hundred scientists who had shown interest in working abroad. Apart from their most impressive resumes, the files had family trees, bank transactions from the last three years, a track of all the places they had visited, and, of course, recordings of their latest conversations. The Captain explicitly reminded them to catalogue the logs, then go to the archive and update their files in said order, hoping that when they finished, they would come up again and work on a transcript that had been put on hold ever since before the trip. He expected the task would take them at least two hours — three, if they had any trouble finding the correct names, as there were more than a thousand files, where some people could be homonymous with each other. Yuri, being the control freak that he was, surely would come up with a system to finish as fast as possible. Whereas Chloe, being the most reasonable of the two, would probably try to change that system into one that would guarantee no data would be put in the wrong file, ensuring the names of those who registered the logs were correct, and matching them to the one on the main file first.

Surely, that should've been the case.

At the aforementioned hour, Curtis returned to their office, only to find it still empty. He walked to Yuri's desk, the latter task untouched, sitting by a brown paper bag he hadn't noticed was there at the time they left.

Huh.

Curtis frowned, wondering about that. Yuri usually put all his things in his locker, but Chloe sometimes brought up stuff like snacks in a brown paper bag that looked a lot like the one he was looking at. And, ordinarily, Yuri would scold her about leaving stuff over his desk, as he had done in the past. One time, she had even left him a drawing of himself as a fire-spitting dragon to mock him for one of his outbursts, and he clearly remembered seeing Yuri flip out and throw it in a ball at her head before she hastily returned it, hitting his eye. This bag, however, he noticed now, didn't seem to carry food or any other big items inside.

Usually, Curtis didn't consider himself an overstep as a superior. However… as a member of an organization whose sole purpose was to monitor people's behaviors? Well, he couldn't help but wonder.

Screw it.

It was probably nothing. They'd been careless enough to leave it there too, he added. It was, if not only, a small peek that would feed his curiosity, and that was it. Finally, he walked towards it and peered above the opening.

It was a tiny bottle and a note.

Was it concealer? Curtis raised his brow, thinking. Maybe the note would explain enough, although he had a hunch about it.

"Don't use all of it. It's expensive. Ps. Looking forward to that punishment of yours. Love C.