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Part One / Chapter Two
The cheerleader waited for their response calmly. The boys in front of her stammered relentlessly. "Russians? We weren't talking about Russians." Dustin tried covering it up, glancing at Steve for some help.
"Yeah, not Russians were talking about—um." Steve hesitated, looking back at Dustin helplessly.
"Percussion... instruments." Yurina looked at Dustin unimpressed and unconvinced. "Y'know like ... the xylophone."
"I might be a cheerleader but I'm not an idiot." Yurina said. "I just ran into one of them today."
Dustin nearly flew out of his seat. "What? When? Where? How?"
"Well, one of my dads packages got delivered to the wrong store in the mall. He asked me to go pick it up. I walk near him and before I cans even explain why I'm there, he points his gun in my fucking face." Dustin and Steve gasped and Yurina continued to tell her story, "Walking around with an armed weapon to guard chinese food is like crazy suspicious. I don't think it's dumplings that they're protecting in there. It's gotta be something valuable."
"This—this is important information. You are an asset. Would you like to be on our team?" Dustin looked her at intensely, which kind of scared Yurina.
"Dude, calm down this isn't a James Bond movie." Steve said, pushing Dustin back by his face. "But, do you want to help us with this? American hero alliance?"
Yurina grinned. "I'm in. Any information I should be caught up on?"
The three sat behind the counter of Scoops Ahoy. Yurina had just finished listening to the recorded tape Dustin caught the previous night. Definitely Russian.
"I think I have a way we can get this translated." Yurina grabbed the tape recorder. "Can I borrow this for five minutes?"
The tape stopped and Kenji Sasaki looked down at it and back up at his daughter suspiciously.
"What is this for?"
Yurina tried to make up a believable excuse. "My friends doing this new scavenger hunt thing, but she couldn't really decipher exactly what was being said here. It's an important code. Can you help?"
Kenji hummed. "Can you play it once more?" Yurina reminded the tape and her father took out a pen and paper, be beginning to translate. He hesitated when he saw that his daughter was still hovering over him, wide eyed. "You can go back to work."
"Oh alright, thank you, love you!"
Nearly an hour had gone by and Yurina was growing desperately impatient. It was nearing the end of her shift, so she helped the remaining customers, said goodbye to other employees leaving and greeted those just coming in. Now, she frantically wiped every glass counter in the store clean, glancing back at her fathers office. In that time, Yurina had cleaned the entire store before closing. Finally her fathers office door opened and the man stepped out with the tape recorder and paper in his hands.
