#miosule

She frowned, eyes flitting to her laptop, unable to keep an incredulous huff at bay. Phishing email? She was usually really careful about this, when did she even—she paused.

She remembers now. Last night, while working late from home, she received an email from what she thought was a travel agency. She had been looking into booking a vacation for their family, and wanted to sign up for their newsletter and so she—oh. She clicked a link.

She sighed, deep and weary, leaning forward on her desk. "Thank you," she waved at the young man. "I'll go talk to Nuno."

He sighed in relief, said his greetings, and left.

-

"He looked terrified! Why would you do that?" She growled across the lunch table towards Nuno, who was holding up his tray in defense. "You could have told me yourself!"

"But how was he supposed to learn? Besides, it's a good time to work on rapport-building, for you!"

"That doesn’t make any sense." She slammed down her coffee mug, visibly irritated. "And also totally targeted. You knew that I was planning a vacation for us."

"What, did you think phishing attacks were just randomly cast nets? These things have gotten more sophisticated! Especially for C-suite individuals like you. Do you know what kind of cybersecurity liability it would have been if your email got compromised?"

"I know that!" Miorine groaned in frustration. "Fine, I'll do the training. But really? Revoking my email access?"

"Hey—you signed off on the ops manual yourself!"

"You have to set an example for following the rules, Miorine-san." Aliya laughed.

And she was right. And Miorine hated it. But she always resented authority who didn't play fair, so she was going to do her best to set a good example. She went back to eating, stabbing at her potato wedges with unnecessary force, making Nuno and Ojelo grimace with each stab.

"By the way," he elbowed Ojelo, who was dejectedly playing with his salad. "You owe me. I told you she'd fall for it."

"You two are impossible!"

-

"There's no way they got you too." Miorine deadpanned, looking at the only other person seated in the conference room. It had several long tables, arranged in a U-configuration, and had high-backed leather office chairs that rolled themselves back to place when you clapped. She thought it was a bit much, but... Nika liked over-engineering things, so here they were.

Nika smiled sheepishly. "They sent me an email for a parts sale. I clicked the link without thinking too much."

"A sale?" Miorine almost laughed. "Nika, your department has the highest budget."

"No, not for work—it was uhm. For mobile suit figures?" She twiddled her thumbs. "The little models I like to build?"

Miorine couldn't even be upset. She actually laughed this time (“They were full mechanics! I couldn’t resist!”). Everyone had their weaknesses, it seemed.

"So this is the training video we made for all the new hires, and whoever else needs it." Ojelo was setting the screen up. "It's about an hour long—"

"An hour?" Miorine slammed her palms on the desk.

"Yes, an hour!" He barked back, crossing his arms. "Obviously, since you two are here—our literal president and the person who designs all our prototypes—we need it! I can hardly think of two worse people to fail this test."

Miorine sighed, covering her face with her hands, because he was right.

"Let's just get this over and done with."

The holo-screen flickered to life, Ojelo waved them goodbye, and then Miorine's jaw dropped because—

[Hello there, GUND-ARM, Inc.!]

She knew that voice. It was only the title screen, without showing the speaker, but she knew. 

Then the video feed finally came on, and she swallowed: it was Suletta. She was smiling sweetly at the viewer, wearing a business suit that had GUND-ARM, Inc's pin on the blazer’s lapel. She felt the air rush out her lungs, and jolted upright from her seat.

[Welcome to the first module of Cybersecurity 101! My name is Suletta Mercury-Rembran, and I—]

Miorine felt her mouth dry up because why?

She whipped her head towards Nika. "Why is my wife teaching the cybersecurity training?!"

She briefly remembers Suletta mentioning something about getting filmed for a GUND-ARM, Inc. video. It was quite a while ago, and Miorine figured it was just another marketing campaign, but she didn't realize that it might have also been this.

"I mean," Nika shrugged. "She is a literal teacher. I imagine out of all of us she's the most qualified to conduct a training."

Which. Okay. Fair—it made sense! But still—why?

Miorine ran her hand through her hair, grounding herself. Why did she look so good even on screen? Who's idea was it? Did she want to thank them or throttle them? 

Why on this ridiculous Earth was she so goddamn attractive?

(A rhetorical question, for sure: she knew with absolute certainty that that was simply a truth of this world.)

[Let's start with the basics: What exactly is a phishing attack?]

-

[14:47 SEST] Nika : It kind of feels like I should leave T_T

[14:47 SEST] Ojelo: lmaooooooooooo

[14:49 SEST] Nika: please let me leave

[14:53 SEST] Nuno: I'm sorry but u are also literally a security risk until u learn this so u can't

[14:54 SEST] Nika: fml

-

It was almost impossible to listen, but also impossible to look away. Miorine put an honest effort into taking down notes, into remembering the tell-tale signs of a fake domain name and the most common typing mistakes made in phishing emails. They even had little quizzes in between that they had to take on their phone before moving onto the next section. Apparently, failing those meant having to take the training again and... and, well, that was both pleasant and terribly embarrassing.

At the halfway point, Miorine had crossed her arms, flushed deeply, and sighed.

"You okay, Miorine-san?" Nika poked her on the shoulder.

Suletta had just flashed another charming smile on screen, congratulating the viewer for finishing this section.

"She's so—" Miorine slowly tipped over, leaning forward, and planted her face on the table, muttering. "—pretty."

-

[Don't forget! Urgent language and unsecured links are really good tells! Are you feeling ready for your next test? Once again, please check your company phone's training app, and—]

Miorine pulled out her phone. She was so ready for this quiz. She had been locked in and could probably recite company policy backwards at this point.

Nika, for the fifteenth time within the past forty-five minutes, tried not to keel over laughing.

-

[Still there?]

Sang Suletta's sweet, whimsical voice.

[Thanks for sticking with it! Good job, we're almost through! You're doing great!]

Miorine had nearly snapped her stylus in half, blushing, but she powered on in the name of professionalism and—spite. For Nuno and Ojelo, of course. Not Suletta.

She checked her watch. They weren't kidding about it taking no less than an hour. She leaned back into her chair, unable to deny the fact that it was nice to take a short break from paperwork and checking spreadsheets all afternoon.

-

She had bolted out the room as soon as the training was done.

"Leaving in a hurry?" Sabina caught her haphazardly stuffing all her things into her leather folio.

"Yes."

It was a Thursday, which meant Suletta didn't have an afternoon class to teach, which meant she was already home by now.

"I'll call for the car, then." She hummed.

"Thank you."

Miorine almost forgot her keys, fishing them out her drawer before grabbing her coat off the back of her chair. It was probably windy, but she was in too much of a hurry to bother putting it on, instead bundling it in her arms with her folio.

-

Suletta was surprised to hear the jingle of Miorine's keys so early in the afternoon. 

She looked up from the book she was reading, happy to see the front door swing open. She carefully got up, a smile on her face.

"Miorine! You're home early—" she stopped in her tracks. "You look mad. Why do you look mad?"

And—in the most confusing three seconds of her life—Miorine had pulled her in by the collar, gotten up to her tip-toes, and kissed her. 

Honest to god kissed her.

"Whoa," she mumbled against Miorine's lips in a daze. She leaned forward a little, settling her free hand on Miorine's waist, bending down so that her wife didn't have to struggle reaching her.

Finally pulling back, Suletta gave her a hesitant smile. "I missed you too?"

"I clicked a stupid phishing email."

What? Suletta blinked, stupefied, wondering what that had to do with the fact that Miorine was shrugging her coat off and kissing her—again.

"An—" she took a breath "—email?"

"Yeah." Miorine pushed them towards the hallway, and Suletta awkwardly stumbled along with her. "How are you so—so—"

"Eh?” Suletta’s brows furrowed. “Me? What do you mean?"

“So…” Miorine had a frown and the prettiest blush Suletta had ever seen. "Beautiful. In the training video."

There was an almost-audible click in Suletta's head. 

She finally put two and two together. 

"Oh!" She gasped. "Oh no, they made you watch the training video?" She laughed. "That must have been funny. I was so embarrassed filming it!"

"I think you did great." Miorine was still pushing her, having kicked off her shoes now.  She fished the book out of Suletta's hand ("Hey!") and placed it on the nearest table. "But I might have already forgotten the whole thing."

Miorine hastily felt for the door knob to their bedroom, swinging it open and pulling Suletta in by her shirt.

"Miorine!"

"You should remind me again."

-

fin

-

A/N: