A Heart Beats At Night

Chapter 31

            Phichit coughed quietly and straightened his notebook as Yuuri spread his notes across the table in Viktor's library, shuffling stacks of paper to clear a space for his laptop.

"Vitya," he said, ignoring Phichit as he added a handful of colored pens to the array of material, "could you go through and compare the original interview notes with the translations? The files you can work on are in the folder labeled consent to share – don't open any of the others, we haven't gotten permission to let you read them yet."

"Um, of course." Viktor scooted closer to the computer hesitantly, as if expecting it to nip at his fingers. "Shouldn't be a problem. Which document is the actual interview?"

Yuuri adjusted his glasses to hide the glint in his eyes. He wasn't enjoying this, because that would be wrong, but it might have been just a little bit satisfying to see the dawning horror as Viktor realized what a mess he'd made by throwing in Christophe Giacometti.

"All of them." He gestured at the screen. "The ones with rec at the end of the name are the audio recordings of the interviews. Then you'll have a word document with Phichit's transcription of the German, as well as an initial translation to English. Every few lines should be marked with a time stamp, so you can cross-reference with the audio. There's also a scan of my notes from the interview, but don't bother with that – they're mostly in Japanese because I don't always have time to find the right words in English at the time. They've been added into the translation as annotations.

"Actually, if you could edit those as you go too, that would be great." Yuuri extracted a sheet of paper, creased with use until the folds were as soft as silk, and handed it to Viktor, whose smile was slightly too large. "These are the list of words we're adding to the index. For example, if you see a reference to silver and we haven't already tagged it, just highlight the sentence, hit this button and type the keyword. This way, we can pull up all mentions of any particular subject automatically for comparisons. And let me know if there are any other terms we should add."

"I'll just... get started then," Viktor said, glancing over the list and opening the first file. "What does check later mean?"

Phichit spoke up from behind his own tidy stack of books. "That means it conflicts with something Chris said. We're going to go over that again when you're done with the translations."

"I am so sorry," muttered Viktor, burying his face in his hands. Yuuri patted the top of his head, trying to stay professional as he marveled at the surprisingly fluffy softness of Viktor's hair.

"Not yet, you're not," Phichit interjected, smirking, and Yuuri stifled a laugh as Viktor's eyes widened – it was like watching someone be savaged by a hamster. "But you will be."

Five hours later, they called for a break.

Viktor rose with a groan, shaking the bright afterimage of the laptop screen from his eyes as he tried to remember exactly how he'd translated before online dictionaries came into existence. To his left, Phichit was taking selfies with one of the cats, having declared that he "hated languages and was never going to use words ever again."

Meanwhile, Yuuri glanced between a spread of open books and his notepad, scribbling and scratching out the words again, frustrated but seemingly indefatigable.

"How do we get him to stop?" whispered Viktor.

"Let me know when you figure it out," Phichit replied, sighing. "Actually, I have an idea. Hey, Yuuri! Otabek said he'll cook something, we should help."