boy is this chapter pointless I mean hello there!
I, uh. I got nothing. This is the part where things happen and Lucy does stupid things. It's funny because she's a woman!
Enjoy. Just another reminder that I'm a weirdo and you should disregard my hypocrisy.
Bonus question! How much do I love Webdings?
Despite the peculiar start, the day proceeded like any other, with only occasional lapses of normality. Once every ten minutes or so, Manny would hear, "Mister Coachen, You have a call!" from a rather cheerful Lucy, and he would pick up the line and answer it like any other. But unlike a normal day, he didn't have a single misdialed caller; usually he had about 3 in one day. Besides this, he saw very little of the receptionist. One time he left his office to speak with Colias, he saw Lucy crouched in her chair, diligently eating her way through a thermos of noodle soup. She followed him with her eyes as he walked past, looking much like a lioness suspicious of something that could steal its dinner.
When he returned to the third floor after speaking with the ambassador of some trivial matters, she immediately called him over, gesturing rapidly for him to look at her computer monitor.
"Look, Mr. Coachen," Lucy said, using the mouse to point at something on the screen. "I just got this e-mail and it's addressed to you, but look! It's all in Webdings font or something, and I can't get it to change. Should I get rid of it?"
Manny leaned over her desk and studied the content of the email. Just by looking at it, he knew instantly that it was typed in Cohdopian- and he caught the words "transaction", "white crystal oil", and "confidentiality" within the text. His mind suddenly went cold when he realized that this e-mail was filled with information about the smuggling ring, and he had to act quickly if he was not to be caught.
"Hey!" He shouted, hitting her desk with both of his hands. "You aren't allowed to read e-mails; just forward them! All of them are confidential, and I can't have you looking at them! Understand? If this were to be leaked into the public, everything would turn into a giant mess!"
His shouting was involuntary, since he was accustomed to becoming angry with grown, familiar men, such as Colias- not unfamiliar young women. Manny realized that his tone had been too harsh, but he was too late to take it back. Lucy had her hands cupped over her mouth, she seemed to shrivel back in her seat, and a high-pitched whimper escaped her throat.
"Oh, no," was all Manny could think to say as two large tears fell down her cheeks. "Don't get so upset, it's not that big of a deal. You're not in trouble or anything."
He offered her a tissue from her desk in compensation, which Lucy accepted graciously. "I'm sorry," she said, pausing to blow her nose. "I'm nosy, aren't I? Really, I didn't know. I won't read them ever again, honest."
"I know, but it's alright," Manny reassured her- and himself, inwardly. "Don't worry about that e-mail, either. It's probably in some foreign language; I'll deal with it."
Manny's gentle lie seemed to straighten her up, and she tossed the damp tissue into the waste basket below. "Alright," Lucy inhaled deeply. "I'm fine now. Thanks."
With this issue revolved, Manny strolled back into his office and buried himself in his work. He was, again, very lucky. Though it wasn't luck that Lucy didn't understand Cohdopian as much as it was just a convenience, since Cohdopian wasn't a widely known language. He felt relieved enough that Colias hadn't been involved in this situation.
As the early evening drew nearer, the amount of time between calls grew longer, and Lucy began to sound less and less enthusiastic over her headset. Eventually the grandfather clock against the wall struck five, and as if on cue, she poked her head through his office door, bade him farewell, and left. Manny's time came as well, an hour later, where he locked the door to his office and began to make his way to the elevator to leave.
He stopped suddenly in his tracks when he saw the flash drive on Lucy's desk. This now struck him as odd; why hadn't she taken that flash drive with her? It lay against the computer's keyboard, not quite hidden from sight. Manny hesitated before picking it up, turning it over in his hand, and unclasping the plastic that covered the metal input piece. This little device had seen a lot of use. It even smelled of fabric and mint, as if it had been stuffed in a handbag full of women's articles and chewing gum, and kept there for ages.
With his curiosity bursting, Manny retraced his steps back to his office, unlocked the door, and sat at his laptop computer. He waited in anticipation for the computer and the data on the flash drive to load. He felt hypocritical for hollering at Lucy for reading their e-mails, while he was, basically, breaking into one of her personal belongings.
All the data files stored on that flash drive ended with ".mp3", every single one. He couldn't count them all; there seemed to be at least four hundred. No matter how hard he looked for "hidden" data, there simply wasn't anything else there but those music files. They were named after song titles, some which Manny had heard of before. Some were soundtracks of movies he had never seen, musicals he had never heard, and television shows he had never watched.
Manny wasn't sure whether to laugh or groan at these discoveries. He unhooked the flash drive and returned it, unscathed, beside the keyboard on Lucy's desk. He felt a vague sense of trust towards the young lady, though no one else in his life earned anything more than vague trust, not even members of his own family.
After all, she had a rather sweet face and a good taste in music.
