Comfortember 2022

Locking Down - Kokoro Kurokawa & IRL Mikado Sannoji

24. Night Time

Warning: spoilers for SDRA2 chapter 0

***

The clock had ticked past one in the morning in a hidden laboratory. Kokoro looked up at the clock with a sigh, she really wasn't in a mood to deal with the noise, however quiet it may be.

But when she looked at the time, she realized that she should probably lock up the lab for the night. She and her coworker, Mikado, had pulled an all-nighter the previous day when he asked her to scan the data of her late estranged daughter's brain chip.

The first thing she did before anything was save her work, she planned to check for mistakes the next morning. Or afternoon, depending on when she woke up next. Once that was done, she turned off her computer and stood up, wanting to quickly stretch her limbs and back.

With a tired sigh, she got ready for the hardest part of her task: getting Mikado to go to bed. There was no doubt in her mind that he'd been awake longer than she had, that man seemed to stay aware only by caffeine and pure determination towards reviving that person named 'Utsuro.' That name appearing in the brain chip was why they were awake for so long in the first place.

Kokoro only hoped that Mikado would cooperate with her, he had a tendency to be stubborn about some subjects, even bribing her with more money when it came down to it. But this time, Kokoro wanted to prevent any mistakes from occurring in their drowsiness and would not cave to any bribes.

She walked into the room adjacent to her working room, and she was not surprised to see the hacker still hard at work. She walked up behind him and looked over his shoulder to see what he was working on, not surprised to see him having to frequently correct his own mistakes in his coding.

Finally, she decided to make her presence known. "Mikado-"

"Eek!" he yelped, whirling around to look behind him. He quickly relaxed when he saw that it was just Kokoro and settled back into his chair. "Mrs. Kokoro, please don't scare me like that. I couldn't hear you coming up."

"I wasn't making any effort to be quiet. You were just too distracted to notice me, plus your senses seem to have dulled. Most likely because of how long you've been awake," Kokoro explained to him. "I'm locking down the lab for the night. Save your work and go to bed. Electricity bills aren't cheap, and we can't afford to make mistakes."

"Huh?! Um..." Mikado hesitated, his voice trailing off. He eventually nodded with a sigh. "Yeah, maybe that's for the best. I don't think seeing coloured blobs in my vision is normal, haha..."

Relieved that the hacker had conceded, Kokoro gestured for him to save his work already. "I'm going to shut the power to the facility off in a little while. You'd better get to bed or else you'll get lost," she advised. As for herself, she didn't need to worry about getting lost in the dark. She had lived in her lab longer than he had.

She watched as Mikado left the room, then she made her way towards the power generators in the back of her laboratory. Turning it off would cut the power to the whole building, but she didn't need to worry about the food in the fridge due to the amount of dry ice packages in there.

It was a simple process: unlock the door, go in, flip a switch, feel the wall to get out, and lock the door once you leave. That's exactly what Kokoro did, having done this routine several times before, and going in and getting out was like clockwork.

Once all of the lights were out, Kokoro felt along the wall to get to her bedroom. However, she heard the sound of her work partner struggling with something near her room. "What's going on?" she questioned, making her way towards the sound.

"Um...the door's stuck," the hacker sheepishly explained. Kokoro gently pushed him aside to see if he had simply not grabbed the door to his bedroom, but she found the handle easily. But she soon realized that he was right, the door was stuck.

"...I'll look at that tomorrow. You can stay in my room tonight, just be quiet," she instructed, turning around and feeling her way towards the door. When she opened it without a hassle, Mikado followed her inside before she closed the door. Not bothering to change out of their clothes until the next day, they put their glasses aside and climbed into the same bed.

Because Kokoro was a relatively small woman, she and Mikado were touching each other as they laid side by side. But with how long Mikado had stayed awake for, he fell asleep and was no longer bothered by the problem.

In contrast to her young adult years, Kokoro had dealt with a fair bit of insomnia growing up, so she wasn't getting to sleep easily. She ended up wishing that she had some kind of ability to sleep quicker when she became acutely aware of Mikado's tendency to cuddle in his sleep.

She gave up and resigned herself to being a human teddy bear, reminding herself to scold the young man in the morning. Sleep could not come quicker for her as the peaceful silence overpowered everything.

***

Art credit: rascal_Dangan on twitter