Reiner - Acting Normal

The door closed behind me with a small thud as my body froze in place and my face felt numb.

“Good…morning…” I replied softly after regaining my composure.

That was all I could come up with to say to him. Why was Reiner standing here in front of my door?

“Good morning, Natalia. Are you going to work today?” Reiner asked flatly.

Is that another way of asking me why I wasn’t at work yesterday? I took in a deep breath and stood up a little straighter.

“Yes, of course. Umm…thank you for waiting for me. Shall we?” I said as I tried to act natural.

I didn’t wait for Reiner to say anything in response before walking past him along the hallway that would lead us to the stairs. My mind screamed all the way to the stairs as I wondered why he had to appear in front of my bedroom like that. Honestly, I wasn’t planning on avoiding him or anything. I had work to do, and I was going to do it.

Act natural, Natalia.

I repeated this to myself with every breath that I took until we got into the car together. Needless to say, the atmosphere in the car was tense. Reiner obviously wanted to know why I didn’t turn up to work yesterday and that question just hung in the air between us throughout the whole ride. He didn’t voice the question and even if he did, I wasn’t sure if I could answer it directly and honestly. How does ‘I quickly hunted for a place so that I could move out of your mansion as soon as possible’ sound?

Unlike the days before, I didn’t bother to make conversation with him in the car. The now-familiar scenery on the way to the office past by in front of my eyes in a haze as I stared out the car’s window.

I’ll talk to him like normal when we get to the office. We’ll talk about work and that would be it.

We arrived at work, and I quickly got out of the car. Wordlessly, we ascended the elevator together to his office. As we stepped out of the elevator together, I was already piecing together what I would say to him when we arrived at his office.

“I left a short list of agents for you to review. Have you seen it?” I asked once we arrived in his personal office.

Reiner sat down behind his table before he nodded at me. He took out what I recognized as the papers that I had printed for him.

“I see. I narrowed down the agent list to those that may have lost a member of their team during a mission because of incompatibility issues. Of course, we don’t know that for sure yet. However, I think that it’ll be worth your time to talk to them one by one,” I explained.

“I see. Let’s do that. If you send this to the secretarial department, they can help you schedule meetings with these agents,” Reiner replied calmly.

“Great. I’ll do that today then…” I readily agreed.

Despite our personal circumstances, it seemed like work was making some progress. I can start analyzing more data the same way and maybe I’ll find more insights. Now that I had my work cut out for me today, I didn’t have a reason to hang around in his personal office anymore.

“I’ll be working outside then. If you need anything, you can give me a call,” I said politely before turning to leave.

Try to act normal, Natalia. I repeated to myself again as I felt his eyes on my back. After walking out of Reiner’s office, I closed the door softly behind me and breathed a sigh of relief. Hang in there, Natalia.

Now that I was back at my desk, I felt a lot more comfortable. Focusing quickly on the work at hand, I went straight to analyzing the data with the hope of finding more trends or any indicators that could help us with the problem at hand. For a moment, I wished that I would run into Charles. Maybe he would have some wise words of advice for me if I asked him about it. If what other people told me about Charles was true, then he’s got to have ample of field experience. He probably knows a thing or two about improving the survival rate of a team on a mission.

On the other hand, I knew absolutely nothing apart from the first level basic insights that the data was telling me. I realized then that some expert insights into this will probably be invaluable. Reiner probably knew a lot about this topic but the same couldn’t be said about me. This work and company were very unique and I found myself getting more interested in it.

“Natalia…Natalia…” I heard someone calling my name.

“Huh? Yes…Yes…Sorry, you were saying?” I quickly replied after snapping out of my bubble.

I looked up to see Reiner leaning over my desk with his face now very close to mine. Being too focused on the work on my computer screen, I had somehow lost all track of time and what was going on around me. I didn’t even notice when Reiner approached me and I wondered how long he had been calling my name. What does he want?

“Sorry, I was too focused working. Is there something that you need?” I asked, trying to sound polite and less flustered than just now.

“It’s lunchtime,” Reiner stated plainly.

My eyes flickered to the clock on the wall and found out that he was right. Actually, it was already 15 minutes past lunch time.

“Right. Do you want me to go buy something for you? What would you like to have for lunch?” I asked as I quickly stood up from my seat.

This is bad. I should have noticed the time and asked him beforehand what he wanted for lunch. Even if I headed out now, all the restaurants are probably packed, and it would take a long while before I could return with his lunch. Why did I have to get sucked up into my work like that?

--To be continued…