When Julia Chang returned to Arizona to continue her forest rejuvenation research, she was horrified when she was told that the data had been stolen. For three weeks, Julia had searched tirelessly for the data, scarcely able to sleep at night. Then, one day, early in the morning, she heard a knock on her apartment door.
She sighed and opened the door. Standing in front of her was Ganryu.
"Greetings, Julia Chang"
"Er, hi… who are you exactly?"
"That's not important. As soon as I'd heard news of you losing the forest rejuvenation data, I set out to find it"
"Wait, how did you know-" Julia was interrupted by Ganryu handing her a memory stick. It had a label on it saying 'Forest rejuvenation data: very important'. Julia's eyes glistened, and a massive smile beamed across her face.
"You found it!" She took the memory stick and held it high above her head. Then she looked back at Ganryu. "Thank you so, so much"
"Oh, it was nothing" Ganryu said. "Come on, give me a kiss"
Suddenly, Ganryu held onto her tight, and puckered his lips. Instantly, Julia's joy disappeared, and was replace by an intense fury. She kneed him hard in the crotch, and as he stood stunned, she punched him across the face, causing him to fall to the floor.
"WHAT THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU'RE DOING?!"
"I… er… what?"
"HOW DARE YOU TOUCH ME WITHOUT MY PERMISSION!"
"But, my dear Julia Chang, I was only trying to show you how much I love –"
"Save your sorry excuses, you worthless, disgusting piece of shit! And don't you dare patronise me! You never, EVER hug or kiss anyone unless they've expressly said it's OK. It's clear you have no respect for a person's boundaries or any sort of awareness of how consent works!"
Ganryu was shocked. "I-"
"In fact, how the hell did you even know that we'd lost the data in the first place? All the searches were conducted in secrecy – we weren't going to risk having that data fall into the wrong hands; the consequences could have been disastrous"
Ganryu's face started to go bright red. In that instant, Julia had a moment of realisation.
"YOU stole it, didn't you?"
Ganryu's face betrayed his guilty.
"You deliberately stole vital data to our research, waited a few weeks until it wouldn't look suspicious, then came along and gave it to me in the hopes that you'd become a 'hero'. What kind of disgusting, selfish creep are you? For Christ's sake, you're old enough to be my dad!"
"I… just wanted to show you… that I loved you!"
"You don't love me! And if you do, you've got a twisted way of showing it. You clearly don't care about me as a person at all – as far as you're concerned, I'm an object for you to romanticise and nothing more. My mother told me all about men like you – men that would follow her around and treat her as anything other than a person, and who had no respect for anyone but themselves. Now get the hell out of my flat before I call the police on your ass!"
Ganryu scurried away frantically. Julia sighed.
"I know that vengeance is never the answer, but damn, I'm far too forgiving at times"
She headed out towards the research facility to return the lost data.