It seemed the power of a crush’s attention was enormous. Upsilon touched the corners of his mouth, which had clearly been lifted, and forced them back into place. When had he started smiling? …Had Ro seen it?

With no way to confirm whether Ro had seen him smiling or not, Upsilon let out a short sigh and turned on the cold water. Cold water was utterly unsuited to the chilly late autumn weather, but that did not apply to him right now. Just moments ago, he had been feeling an intense heat from the warning signs of his rut cycle.

“Oh, you’re out?”

When he finished showering and stepped out in a robe, Ro had returned. On the work table sat a paper bag for takeout. When Upsilon showed interest in it, Ro took the food out of the bag as if he had been waiting for that exact moment. The first things that came out were warm chicken noodle soup and crackers, the kind Americans think of first when someone is sick, plus an electrolyte drink and a few kinds of bread, including mini baguettes.

“Hospital food? I’m not the patient.”

Now back to normal except for feeling slightly heavy from the sedative’s usual side effect, Upsilon looked at the so-called hospital food piled in front of him and said,

“Eat quietly when someone goes to the trouble of taking care of you.”

So this was how he got treated after carefully shopping for him. Ro was about to tease him again for not speaking nicely before stopping himself. Upsilon must have had some luck on his side, because right across from the hotel there was a restaurant, a convenience store, and a bakery all lined up, selling chicken noodle soup and crackers. That meant Ro had gone out expecting to take thirty minutes and returned in less than twenty.

He had only crossed one street, after all, so it was not like he had gone far. More than that, even if he sounded harsh, seeing Upsilon smiling faintly at the food he had brought made it feel worth it.

“The soup was just cooked, so it should still be warm. Eat the soup first before it gets cold, then have the bread if you are still hungry.”

“What about you?”

“I bought several breads. I got them to eat too, did you think I bought them just for you? Share some with me too.”

Ro joked with a pitiful face. Since there was only one chair attached to the work table, Upsilon took that one for the soup, and Ro, having successfully received his share of the bread, sat on the edge of the bed and bit into it. Compared to the cookies he had planned to use to get through dinner, this was a royal meal.

“Has the sedative kicked in yet?”

After finishing half the bread in his hand, Ro asked, and Upsilon, spooning up soup, nodded.

“I was already fine by the time you came back.”

“See? It is not called a quick-acting drug for nothing. Still, sedatives have side effects, right?”

“Just a little heaviness in the body.”

“I trust you when you say it won’t interfere with the mission. But while we are working at the orphanage, share even the small things with me. Including how you are feeling.”

“…Okay.”

Upsilon somehow felt like he had been scolded by Ro, so he looked down again and started eating his soup. Like he had told Ro earlier, he was not a patient. But it did not feel bad to be taken care of by Ro. In fact, far from bad, it was…

Did Ro always act like this when doing partner missions with other agents? If so, he would be kind and gentle with anyone. He could not remember ever hearing bad things about Ro inside Amabile.

“Eat dinner and go to bed early tonight.”

“Ro. I am not a patient, I told you.”

“Who said you were? You drove all day and worked at the orphanage, so you have been busy. And you have sedative side effects. I mean you should get to bed early and rest.”

“What about you? You said you did not sleep properly yesterday. Did you bring sleeping pills?”

“I did bring them, but if possible I want to avoid taking them. I do not really like taking meds on a mission. I’ll try sleeping buried under those extra blankets you requested.”

“Like a bear hibernating.”

At Upsilon’s last words, Ro chuckled.

“That’s right. Like a bear hibernating, which is my dream for the future.”

Ro’s eyes, fixed on the pile of blankets on the bed, held a faint spark of anticipation.

✿ • ✿ • ✿

Three days after Upsilon’s rut incident, on the morning of the fourth day since the mission at the orphanage began, Ro showed no sign of getting up from bed until Upsilon finished showering and came out.

It was not that Ro was still asleep, but that he was already awake and just wallowing in the blanket pile.

Until yesterday morning, Ro had been brimming with enthusiasm for the mission, but the moment he left the orphanage yesterday, that overflowing drive visibly vanished.

“Ro, it’s about time to get up.”

As Upsilon said this while drying his wet hair with a towel, Ro’s blond hair peeked out from the blanket pile and twitched sluggishly.

“I expected it, but this mission is a bust.”

Ro’s voice sounded muffled, as if it was buried in the blanket. But Upsilon, who heard it clearly, glanced once at the time on the table and then spoke again.

“There is still one day left. We found the ledger’s location too.”

“So what if we know where it is? We have no way to get it out. I underestimated the orphanage. I thought once we found the location, getting it out would be quick, but I never expected it to be this hard to approach.”

On the second day after the mission began, Ro approached the childcare teacher Anne and learned that there were high-value donors who visited irregularly, and that their information and donations were managed separately. That same night, additional information arrived from Robert regarding Anne and Evelyn, and just as Ro had expected, their relationship was not simply that of coworkers in the orphanage.

As Robert’s original information had said, Anne’s birthplace really was Pittsburgh, and her lie about Philadelphia was, as Ro had guessed, likely some kind of password. They also confirmed why she had been assigned this gatekeeper role. Anne’s parents had been a well-known doctor couple in Pittsburgh, but three years ago they both died suddenly, one year apart.

And her only remaining family member, her alpha younger brother, had suddenly developed an incurable disease a few years ago, and the hospital bills required to slow its progression were astronomical. Even after pouring in all the money her parents had left in their inheritance, her brother showed no improvement. Then the help that appeared was the foundation run by Ashburn Arlen.

‘You’re saying both of her parents died suddenly, and the Ashburn Arlen side came forward to support her brother’s incurable illness?’

– For a short time, the hospital Anne’s parents worked for was one funded by Ashburn Arlen. Her mother quit first, then her father a year later. Both were confirmed dead not long after leaving the hospital.

‘…Magnet.’

– I thought the same. Ro, the fact that you thought of that first means my guess may not be entirely far-fetched.

‘So Anne’s parents were victims of Magnet.’

– There is no proof, but the circumstances make it entirely possible. I cannot say the details, but Ashburn Arlen likely demanded something related to Magnet from the doctor couple, and the couple refused and left the hospital.

‘And Ashburn Arlen got rid of the couple to silence them. With Magnet.’

– Probably. Her younger brother’s rare illness might not even be a real disease, but the effect of Magnet. It seems the son already had the illness while the couple was still alive, so perhaps they first administered Magnet S or N to the son and then used his life as leverage to coerce the couple. As proof, it seems there was an attempt to take the son out of the hospital while both parents were still alive.

What came after that was the obvious story. Grateful to the donor foundation that helped her younger brother, Anne would have been guided by Ashburn Arlen into getting a job at Saint Grace Orphanage, and after that they likely used her as a gatekeeper through her accomplice Evelyn, just as things were now. The problem was that, from Ro’s perspective, Anne seemed to want to quit the orphanage.

The next day, after Ro tested her with leading questions, she had been terrified. She said that once she completed one full year she could quit, and after leaving the orphanage she would move far away with her brother. As if fleeing from someone. Since she kept trying to move on her own terms and slip out of their control, Ro suspected that Ashburn Arlen was pressuring her through Evelyn.

And on the third day, he found the location of the ledger, the mission’s target. Evelyn took a strong interest in the handsome alpha Upsilon, and Upsilon used that interest to confirm the ledger’s existence and determine its location.

He had also learned that Evelyn managed the special ledger by hand and usually kept it in a small safe, but it did not seem that she took it outside, perhaps because she was under surveillance from Ashburn Arlen.

From the atmosphere, it was clear that the watcher was not the director, and there was a high chance the CCTV system was connected to the watcher’s side. Thanks to that, they confirmed the ledger was in the safe in her office, but the safe’s password and a way to retrieve it without being detected were both still far off.

“We needed more time. More time.”

Ro murmured from under the blankets. If they had had more time, he would have come up with a way to quietly remove the ledger, but today was already the fourth day since the mission began. Because they had confirmed the ledger’s existence and location, the mission deadline had been extended to tomorrow, but then one piece of bad news made even that meaningless. Ro let out a deep sigh at the instruction message Robert had sent that morning.