Trapped!: Chapter 7
Chapter 7: Not Quite 007
Mamoru’s snooping of his wife’s belongings lead him to realize that his wife might actually be a scholar, despite her blonde hair and chaotic behavior. Other than the suitcase that she had brought with her on the first day that was filled with enough clothes to usurp seventy percent of his closet space, she brought with her a MacBook and an ever growing collection of books.
He didn’t notice the fact that the population of books in his house had been increasing until he had tripped over a stack of ancient literature books (a few tragic Greek plays, Tales of Genji, and the Iliad). When he began to explore the other titles that manifested in his apartment, he noticed that there were non-fiction books and fiction books alike. He was pretty mystified when he saw her copy of Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolution. He had meant to read that book but… his wife had beaten him to it.
He couldn’t help but feel like a kicked puppy. His wife, who he didn’t even know read things other than Cosmo or Elle, had read Thomas Kuhn before he did.
“It’s a really good book,” his wife saw him fingering the black cover. “You should retire Hawkings for a bit and give it a shot. It’s a bit funny how the man was so insistent that his theory could not be used for the social sciences even though he was inspired by the social science when creating his theory.”
“After reading that book, every paper I wrote in college related back to Structures. The book was definitely my paradigm shift.” She giggled than, obviously making a joke about the book that he did not particular get since he did not read it.
It was strange not being the nerdy one for once.
Mamoru wasn’t sure if he liked it.
Usagi’s MacBook was password protected.
Though password protecting your laptop was not a strange thing to do, for a person who was known to possibly blow up electronics by touching it, his wife password protected her laptop. And, from what he couldn’t help but overhear in a conversation between Kunzite and Usagi, she changed her password every months for security.
That was even more than the computer at work made him do and he was the one working for a defense company. The only thing Mamoru ever saw Usagi do on her laptop was shop online and occasionally post on blogs and forums.
There was definitely something fishy about it.
“My wife password protects her laptop.” Mamoru had rolled is chair up to Jadeite’s desk during work. He had purchased some ibuprofen from his drug dealer for the splitting headache he got from working on the Kino project and contemplating the possibilities that was his wife.
“That’s a good habit.” Jadeite moved five cards over to another column in Spider Solitaire.
“That’s wrong with it?” Motoki questioned after hearing Mamoru’s dejected sigh. The sigh was enough to make Jadeite curious, but definitely not enough to get his attention away from the computer screen in the middle of his game.
“What’s so important on a laptop that it needs to be protected anyways?”
“Porn.” Jadeite’s response was immediate and quick. He had an “isn’t that so obvious” tone to his voice.
“Some people are very protective of their porn. One of my old drinking buddies told me that he use to hide his porn in a folder where in a folder, there were six folders labeled 1-6, and in each one of those folders, there were another 1-6, and in those folders, there were 1-6, such that in the end, to get to the porn, you had to be able guess 4-3-5-5-1-2 to get to the porn.”
“That’s obsessive.” Mamoru contemplating his porn folder. Like most guys, he just tried to hide his porn in a folder with boring stuff in it, labeling the folder something also reasonably boring.
“Oh yeah. Poor guy, I didn’t have the heart to tell him that’s so easy to break. You just have to run a search for large video files. They pop up pretty fast that way. Especially when you already know what folder it should be in. If everything else is empty, it’s pretty damn fast to search for it.”
“So you’re telling me my wife password protected her laptop to hide her porn?”
“Naw. You asked me what’s so important on computers and I just told you the answer.” Jadeite frowned when he found out there were no more matches left and he had run out of cards to distribute. “Though whether or not your wife has porn on her computer may or may not be true. It’s like the anomaly of Schrödinger’s cat or how in Causal Set Theory they are testing whether or not the speed of light is constant. It’s all up in space.”
“Your jokes are even worst than my wife’s.”
Jadeite shrugged and started a new game.
In the end, Mamoru was left with the impression that he would make a cruddy spy if he ever decided to go 007. It was a bit tragic to him, because what guy would not want to be like James Bond with all the girls and the all so high tech and nifty gadgets. He had spent many days morning the lost dream.
After coming to terms of his lack of ability to become a spy, he finally relented to his curiosity and asked his wife what her occupation was. Well, he asked after finding Usagi and Kunzite wrestling on the floor. Though it did look more like Usagi wrestling and Kunzite looking rather bored, even after being put in a headlock by the petite girl.
Rather than looking embarrassed at the situation, Usagi easily untangled herself and launched herself onto Mamoru. She had the gull to turn embarrassed after he asked the question. As if it completely slipped out of her mind to tell him what she did as a profession. It was kind of like the way his mother forgot to tell him about his wedding.
“I’m a writer.”
“You’re a writer?” Mamoru said in disbelief. After the few months that he had gotten to know his wife, pegging her as a writer was an unbelievable thing. She tripped up on speech nearly as much as she tripped up on air. It was utterly strange to learn that his wife actually…
“You actually get paid to write for a living?”
“What’s wrong with that?”
“It’s just that…” he looked at her in her cute white strappy dress and silver stilettos kicked off the side, most likely lost during her shuffle with Kunzite. Her blonde hair was like waves with a bit of frizz to it. “You just don’t look the type.”
“If it makes you feel better, her editor doesn’t think she can write either. She gets revised papers back bleeding in red.”
“I’m a bit weak on grammar, sure.” Usagi ignored Kunzite’s jab at her. Instead, she grabbed Mamoru to sit down with her on the love seat, snuggling up against him.
Mamoru was not sure how much of her profession explained the strangeness that was his wife. As a person who majored in Engineering, he had only heard jokes about humanities majors and only knew that great thing about taking G.E. classes in the arts would be the amount of females that there. There were only five girls in his department, two of them happily married with children (or soon to have children) and the other three were either thought of as “one of the guys” or else they weren’t really that fun to look at.
A puff of smoke floated in the air. Regaining his wits, he looked at Kunzite who made himself quite comfortable on the sofa across from them. Mamoru had gotten him an ash tray after Kunzite repeatedly used cups as his own personal ash tray – even if you were currently drinking from it. The man was in a comfortable reclining position, his leather shoes stacked up on top of the coffee table.
“Are you her editor?”
“Hell no, she’s horrible at grammar.” Usagi stuck her tongue out at the man. “I own the company.”
Mamoru raised his eyebrow at his comment. He didn’t understand why a person who owned the company would go out of his way to make sure his wife made her deadlines. Didn’t they have other people for such a task?
“We grew up next door. Even were roommates when we went to uni together. I started up my company with her work. She’s the best selling writer there… but she’s a complete flake.” Usagi tried to look as if she did not know what he was talking about but Kunzite just snorted.
“Don’t even pretend you’re innocent. You caused three of those people to break down. After that I realized that I just had to lock you up in a room if I wanted you to get things done.”
“Hmph, business majors always act like they can do anything…”
“Shut up or the next time I kidnap you, I’ll make sure none of Makoto’s desserts make it to you during the days of hold up.”
The two of them spent a few minutes bantering back and forth. His wife and her “boss” were like abusive siblings. They would glare at each other, bicker, than result to physical violence where their punches and slaps got harder and harder until one of them screamed out for their mothers. It was quite different from the usual television version of a brother-sister relationship – however, the relationship was still there.
‘I’m glad I’m the only child…’ he couldn’t help but conclude, after he watched as Usagi tried to throw things at Kunzite only to have the man pick her up and hang her upside down.
“ARGH! Let me down! I’m wearing a dress! STOP IT STOP IT!” Usagi was flailing around in his grip, his arms holding onto her tight.
He gave Mamoru a cruel smile before throwing Usagi back onto the sofa where she landed partly on her husband. Mamoru wheezed a bit, getting a bit of wind knocked out of him.
“I’ll come back on Tuesday. Get your installment done or else we’re doing it the hard way.”
For some reason, Mamoru just knew that Usagi was going to be doing it the hard way for the rest of her life.
Notes on this chapter:
I. Thomas Kuhn is a theorist who talked about the structure of how scientific theories are adopted and become actual laws of science.
II. The porn conversation is actually something my old co-worker told me on how he hid his porn – it was a rather random conversation that I have no idea why he shared those details.
III. Causal Set Theory is the subject of my semester long research project that is giving me hell.
IV. Kunzite and Usagi act like me and my brother. I have a very strange relationship with him.
It’s so unedited. Please ignore horrible writing. I wrote this chapter a lot faster than the previous chapter, though still taking my sweet time. Ideally, one day I’ll finish this fic.
Thanks to everyone who left a review before! I appreciate.