When 45-year-old Theodore Narrator gets fired from his job as Employee 528 at a large company, he is at a loss for words. His life is already going down the gutter, and this feels like it will be the straw to break the camel's back. But one fateful...
Theo and Cura had gotten to Bug's apartment about fifteen minutes ago. They had waited for him at the coffee shop for the better half of an hour and finally decided that he must've gone up early to read comic books or paint the walls or something. The two of them knocked on his door repeatedly.
"Bug?", called Theo, cautiously. "Bug!?"
"Just yelling his name isn't going to get us anywhere." Cura rolled her eyes. "You have to threaten him. THEODORE "LOVEBUG" JAMES NARRATOR, IF YOU DON'T OPEN THAT DOOR, I'M GOING TO COME IN AND RIP UP ALL OF YOUR COMIC BOOKS!!!" She waited a few seconds before adding, "ESPECIALLY YOUR VINTAGE COPY OF SPIDERMAN, VOLUME ONE THAT YOU KEEP IN A SECRET SAFE WHERE THE CODE IS YOUR BIRTHDAY MIXED WITH YOUR FAVORITE NUMBER: ZERO-NINE-ZERO-EIGHT-FIVE-TWO-EIGHT!!!"
They waited a few more seconds. Theo looked at Cura in horror and then remembered that this was just normal.
"Oh god... he really is dead...", quivered Theo.
"Dead? Who said anything about death? No, he's probably either taking a shower or binging superhero movies." Cura pulled two bobby pins out of her hair and started straightening them out into a low-quality pair of lockpicks. "I know this is a popular cliche in the media, but-" -She winced and clutched her ear clip- "-it works."
Theo watched uselessly nearby as Cura jingled the pins in the deadbolt on Lovebug's door. Someone passed them in the hallway, and Theo waved nervously. "Just forgot the keys to our friend's apartment, that's all!"
With a slam, Cura kicked the door open. Theo winced. The small gust of wind from the opening door stirred up dust on the table at the center of the room. It would have normally wrinkled posters on the walls, and ruffled a few pages of a comic book laying on the kitchen counter. Maybe it would have blown a drawing from one side of the end table to the other. But it didn't. Because nothing was there.
A pang of realization hit Theo straight in the chest like a bullet. He had called Lovebug 'Bug' in the CEO's office. Right in front of the guards. Of course, they noticed. And now...
"Oh wow...!" Theo feigned surprise and happiness. "Looks like, er, Bug finally got around to cleaning up. Spotless!" he laughed nervously.
"Think about it, Drone," said Cura, ever the skeptic. "Would Lovebug... the one we know, ever clean up? No, it looks like he doesn't live here anymore."
"Maybe he... quit?"
"He would've told us. Also, nobody's allowed to leave, remember?"
They both paused to look around the room. Suddenly, Cura gasped.
"Oh my god," she yelled. "He was... he must've been... FIRED!" she ran into his bedroom, throwing open the door. "I wonder if they found his safe..."
"Really, Cura? Our best friend was- presumably- fired, and all you can think about is his stuff?"
"No, I just wanted to check if he left anything... of... value behind. In other words, yes." She strutted over to the dresser, heels clacking, and shoved her back into the side of it as hard as she could. (author's note: in HEELS. The sheer skill this person has is beyond mortal comprehension.) There was a metallic groan as the dresser moved, as if it had been moved before. Cura turned around, realizing she could just push it with her hands instead. Slowly, but surely, a small safe, embedded into the wall, revealed itself.
"Listen, Cura, I don't think we should go through his stuff-", started Theo out of genuine concern.
"Oh, I'm sure he wouldn't mind if we took a little peek..." said Cura, punching in the code: 0908528. There was a soft click and a hiss as the small door opened.
"Ugh. Nothing of actual value... only sentimental things." she held up a copy of the spiderman comic she'd mentioned earlier and tossed it to Theo.
It was really old and worn, but it was kept in a plastic sleeve to keep dust away. It was probably worth thousands of American dollars. He wondered why Bug didn't sell it. A gum wrapper was carelessly stuck in the sleeve, which was odd, because Lovebug probably treated this issue like his first-born child. In memory of Bug, Theo decided to take the comic out of the sleeve and clean it up a bit. Cura was rummaging through the empty safe.
He flipped through the pages until he got to the page with the wrapper. He turned it over in his hands. Through the space between the folds, he could just make out a smudge of purple ink, presumably from Bug's favorite pen. He unfolded it carefully, so that he wouldn't rip it. It said nothing but five digits: 58327.
"Uh... Cura?"
"Yeah?" Cura was looking for hidden panels in the walls of the safe. "What is it?"
"There's a code here. In the book. I mean, in the gum wrapper that was in the book."
"Hm. Let me see." Cura walked over to Theo and snagged the wrapper from his hands. Her eyes widened. "Drone. I have a question for you. Why have one supposedly secret safe in your bedroom... when you could have two?" She pulled a modern silver key out of the gum wrapper. Theo gasped. Cura giggled, although it slowly turned into maniacal laughter. "Now, if I had to guess, I'd say it's under the bed."
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She was right. A few minutes later, they were standing next to an open door in the floor, a pushed-aside rug, and a whole lot of scratch marks.
Theo reached inside the safe and felt around a bit. It wasn't too dusty, so it appeared to have been opened recently. Suddenly, his hand brushed something with a leathery texture. He pulled it back a bit, but Cura rolled her eyes, so he reluctantly grabbed whatever it was.
He pulled a red leather journal from the hole. It had gold trimmed corners and a few scratches. It was clearly fairly old, because quite a few pages had been rumpled and torn.
Cura snickered. "A diary??? Seriously?"
"Don't laugh, it's actually a fairly good exercise for dealing with writer's block." Theo opened it to the inside cover. There were a few things taped in it: a Polaroid photo of Lovebug in what seemed to be his college dorm room with a few friends, plus a business card for a hotel with his name (the real one) on it. Theo flipped through it. He caught glimpses of various entries written in messy purple handwriting: getting fired from his original job, getting hired at theocorp, various D&D campaign notes, and the like. He finally reached the last page of writing when Cura snatched it from him.
"Today was absolutely insane," she read. Theo winced. He knew what was coming next. "Drone was acting a bit weird. I'm guessing it's because we're both super on edge from, well, you know." Theo let out a sigh. Thank goodness for Lovebug's wonderfully unhelpful writing style. Cura paused as she scanned the page. Suddenly her eyes widened. "Oh."
Theo's heart dropped. "I- uh..."
"You might have a bit of explaining to do, Drone."
