"Sweet dreams."

She passes out in two seconds flat, and doesn't dream.

Hideko dreams.

She wakes, suddenly.

It's still dark out. Hideko's in bed, she's in the hotel room, nothing slimy or cold or sharp is touching her.

She waits for her heartbeat to slow down. It's taking a very long time. If she wanted, she could scream. Tamako would probably wake up. Tamako would probably comfort her.

Her arms would probably be warm.

Hideko doesn't know Tamako, and there is absolutely no benefit in becoming reliant on the comfort of this stranger. It's more important for the girl to rest, to be ready and sharp and quick-witted during the gala, than for her to help Hideko stop shaking.

Hideko's going to stop shaking. She always does. She just has to wait.

She wakes up when it gets light outside. She still feels a little achey and tired; that wasn't enough sleep to compensate for how little she'd rested on the flight, but she's used to this sticky, tired feeling. 

After half an hour of wishfully laying there with her eyes closed, hoping to drift off again, Sookhee finally gives up and sits upright in bed, stretching. Her feet are sore from all the practice walking in heels; the price of sophistication, Sookhee supposes. She glances over at Miya's bed.

Miya is apparently still asleep.

She'll try not to wake her, then.

Sookhee gets out of bed and tries to very quietly creep over to the case the agency gave them and her pocket computer set on the table beside it. She stubs her toe on her own suitcase, and has to curl up into a little huddle so that she can whisper-shout motherfucker into her knees without disturbing her partner.

This is not an auspicious start to the day.

Miya goes undisturbed by Sookhee's cursing.

But apparently she does not go undisturbed by her own sleep. After a few minutes of Sookhee reading over their notes, Miya begins to toss and turn and mumble to herself.

Concern.

Fuck, she probably scared her after all, with all the talk about sex trafficking and suicide and everything else. Damn it.

Sookhee tries to concentrate on her notes and give Miya some privacy. The notes are important, after all. Natsumi: rich lady who owns hotels and bars and a mob circle, that last one widely regarded as an open secret. Aki: young, low-profile politician, has been observed to attend nearly every elite social gathering the agency has flagged as suspicious. Kunio...

Suddenly Miya screams and twists about. She sounds quite frantic.

"Miss -- Miya --" Sookhee runs over, eyes wide. "Miya! Hey, hey hey, shhh, it's okay, wake up! You're just dreaming!"

She jerks awake and clutches at Sookhee's hand, gasping. "I -- Tamako? I thought -- wh --"

"It's alright, it was just a dream! It was just a dream, Miya, I promise -- sorry, I would say your real name if I knew it, this probably isn't as comforting -- not that you need to tell me, I just -- the point is that everything's okay! We're here in the hotel room, you're safe. Just a dream."

"Just a dream?" she whispers, her eyes still as round and transparently horrified as a child's. "But I saw... we got caught, and they -- there were guns --"

The poor girl's probably never even seen a blaster in her life. Is there no screening process for the job? Miya's clearly smart and has a lot of potential, but she just as clearly isn't ready for this type of assignment.

Perhaps Sookhee should reconsider feeling flattered by her own recruitment.

"That wasn't real. I promise. I promise it wasn't real. See the hotel room? We've been here the whole time. Miya, nothing's going to go wrong tonight. We're prepared. We have time to get even more prepared. Don't pay attention to the dream."

"...okay. Did I wake you up?"

"No! No, don't worry, I was awake. Going over our notes and everything. You can join me, if you wanna get dressed. I could make tea or something?" She gestures vaguely at the direction of what she thinks is some sort of tea-and-coffee machine. Sookhee... does not know how to operate those machines, but she's confident that she can figure it out as needed.

She rubs her eyes, managing to look remarkably young even as she calms down and begins to straighten herself. "I'm fine. Thank you. I'll just take a bath, that calms me down."

"Yeah! Yeah, sure, good idea. I'll - just be here preparing some more. Then." She goes back to the table. It's hard not to feel guilty for making Miya go through with this even when she's clearly unprepared, but it really will make the mission go smoother to have a second person on her side, as a diversion if nothing else.

It's also hard not to think about how soft Miya's hands were.

Hideko sniffles for a few more minutes, and then slips out of bed towards the refresher.

Inside the bathroom, she washes her face. Then she sets down the washcloth and gazes at the mirror as the sink runs.

That went well. Tamako got enough sleep. Hideko got to receive comfort. She'd feel more accomplished if she could pin down exactly what her goal had been.

Gathering information? She did learn some things. She learned that Tamako is tragically cute when she stubs her toe. She learned that Tamako is very sympathetic, and willing to put her work aside to comfort Hideko, who she'd met less than a day ago. (That says little about her willingness to jump to Hideko's aid when work is more pressing, but. It's still information). She learned that being hugged and hushed and cooed at by Tamako makes her feel better, actually. But none of this information was necessary to her.

The other possibility is that she purely wanted to be comforted by this nice stranger she'd met. This idea is more worrying. She doesn't know what it means, to want a person to be around her or touching her or talking to her. She doesn't know how to plan for that, or plan around it. She doesn't know what it's like to try to avoid hurting or using someone, or whether trying is even a good idea. (Objectively, it's definitely not a good idea. There's nothing she stands to gain from her own feelings.)

Tamako has a tracking chip monitored by an intelligence agency. Most girls who are trafficked do not have tracking chips monitored by agencies invested in shutting down sex trafficking. Trafficking someone with a chip is an unavoidably efficient way of revealing sex trafficking hubs to the agency.

Hideko turns off the sink and turns away from her reflection and takes a bath.

Sookhee focuses very seriously on her very serious work and super does not think about Miya being naked in a bath ten feet away. At all.

(Hideko is also not thinking about being naked in a bath.)

She’s trying not to think about anything, but it’s difficult. The dream still crawls over her (and grabs and squeezes and strangles —)

Eventually she emerges, clean and calm and perfectly poised, wearing one of the white hospital bathrobes. (The robe isn’t very pretty, but she’s surprised to find that she likes it, taking a break from dressing to be seen.)

AAAAAAA okay but she is being seen, is the thing!!! This is causing problems that’s a bathrobe —

Sookhee tries to pull herself together and not make faces. Memorization. Important. Definitely objectively more important than Miya’s collarbone.

“I was thinking, in the bath. We should plan out emergency escape routes from different points in advance, right? Just in case something... is it excessive?”