𝐏𝐀𝐑𝐀𝐍𝐘𝐌𝐏𝐇 || ʜᴀᴡᴋꜱ

40➟ In which we decipher the code.

  I sat back on my chair, poking at the lunch Rin had picked out for the two of us down in the cafeteria.

"I thought you were hungry," Rin looked at me with a confused expression, his mouth stuffed with food.

"No, no, I am," I spun around in the chair, coming to a stop in front of the large window in front of me, "Just thinking."

"Thinking about what?" Rin prodded.

"Wouldn't reading my mind be easier than asking?" I replied, leaning over the clear glass part of the floor and wincing before turning back to my desk.

Rin shrugged, "I respect you and your privacy," he swallowed his food, proceeding to shovel way more than a single spoonful of food into his mouth.

I raised my eyebrows, "Since when?"

"Since now," He mumbled through his mouth full of food, "So... what are you thinking about?"

"Clover," I admitted, flashes of that night still flickering across my vision every now and then, like a broken DVD, "And what's going to happen after all this is over," I added, finally picking up some food and eating.

"What's there to think about?" Rin asked, "You get your freedom and I become a hero like Hawks." He paused to think, "You know, you can always do that too, if you wanted."

"I don't think I'd be a good hero kiddo, I haven't used my quirk once since we started this mission, all heroes use their quirks daily."

"Fine. What about a Comission spy?" He asked, "Your quirk's good for interrogation."

"Mhm, maybe," I replied, flicking through a stack of paper on my left, trying to change the topic. I didn't want to admit to Rin that I wanted to leave the Commission behind, because that would mean leaving him behind too. "I don't want to believe this is all from today."

"It is," Rin nodded, "That's everything Clover's received in the last few hours at work."

"We've spent days in this office looking for more code, and there's been absolutely nothing there," I complained, picking up the top sheet of paper, "This is just a doctor's bill for an ear infection! How does the luckiest man on earth get an ear infection?"

"If we don't look through them then someone could die."

"If I look through them all I'll be the one dying of boredom," I looked at the stack of papers again, "But you're right. You're always right," I sighed, "Come on then, let's look through hundreds of sheets of paper and feel fulfilled when we find nothing."

I'll be the first to admit that I don't know anything that heroes have to do other than save the occasional people. I didn't realise that there was so much paperwork. Oh, you saved a kid? We need you to fill out 20 forms for the event. Did you save an animal? Surprisingly, that's even more sheets of paperwork than a human. If I were a hero, I'd just try to stay away from saving animals.

Clover obviously didn't look through all of these forms, and I couldn't blame him, I'd do the same if there was this much paperwork. All he did was sign the forms and hand the rest of the paperwork over to his notary on the other side of the hallway who'd do the rest for him. I'd only met the notary once, but that just speaks volumes about how much work he ended up doing. Enough to never have time to talk to people face to face, or ever see the light of day it seemed.

"Anything?" Rin asked, looking over at the small stack that was forming in front of me.

"We only just started?" I looked back at him, "Wasn't I the one meant to be complaining?"

"I'm not complaining," He protested, "I'm just asking."

"Sure, you sound annoyed to me," I mumbled, ignoring him when he tried to correct me and instead, continuing to scan over every single sheet of paper I'd picked up and put in my pile at the fastest pace I could manage after running on no sleep. No code. No code. No code. Just a cypher and nothing to actually decode. I stopped, my head turning back to Rin, "So what are you doing then?" He was sitting opposite me, ruffling through my bag, not looking through anything. At all.

Rin rolled his eyes, pulling another stack of sheets from the bag. The ones from the Commission meeting. "I'm looking through these," He replied, way too smugly.

Rolling my eyes, I returned to my sheets, ignoring the even smugger snicker that left his mouth as he took my silence as defeat. When did kids get so smug?

The papers felt endless. I felt like I was looking through them for hours and hours after just 20 minutes. But it was boring. Mindlessly boring. And painful. Ancient Greek eternal fields of punishment, painful. This must have been what hell was like- or at least my own personal one. I was actively choosing to torture myself. For the safety of humanity- but was it really worth it?

Of course, it was, I've just learnt that I'm just easily annoyed and extremely selfish.

"Mei Eros."

I looked up a Rin, confusion evidently reflected on my face, as he looked at me and shook his head, pointing to the sheet of paper in front of him, repeating the name like it meant something to me.

"It's a name," He gave me an unimpressed stare.

"No, I get that."

"Didn't seem like it."

"Just explain what the name means Rin."

"I don't know," He shrugged.

It was my turn to give him an unimpressed stare, "So you've just said a random name and I'm supposed to do... what?"

"Work out what it means?"

My eyes widened before I shook my head, "Where did you find the name?"

"On the sheet?"

"Is it code?"

"Yeah," He shook his head like it was obvious.

"Well, you didn't say that!"

"I mean it was pretty obvious," He shrugged again, his shoulders brushing against the ends of his hair, "Then it says 'Witness'" he added, making me push up from my chair and kneel down next to him so that I could look at the piece of paper myself. Sure enough, a line of code was written along the side of a missing persons report. I checked it against the 'cheat sheet', not because I didn't believe Rin- but because I couldn't believe we'd actually found something, and, sure enough, it really did say something.

"Holy shit."

M E I E R O S W I T N E S S.

I turned to Rin, a stupidly large grin on my face, and greeted the Librarian instead.