years spent travelling both before and during his time with the inquisitors, it’s woojin’s instinct to pack light. everything can be left behind in a rush, and less personal belongings mean that there will be fewer things to look back to. he hardly carries anything special on his own person, and if anyone asked, woojin would say he has no items that he puts any kind of value in. every single thing in his luggage can be replaced, and he would hardly bat an eye. the reality is, there’s just that storage room in jeju, one that his father moved everything into after he moved to another city. it’s wired to a fake account under a false name, but every little belonging that ties to him to his past is there. covered with dust, locked, abandoned. and as morbid as it sounds, it gives him a sense of ease, knowing that he can shift and change, fit into the position he needs to fit in. with fewer things anchoring him down, more flexibility comes with it.
so, he guesses he’s one of the members that require the least amount of time to pack, especially since he doesn’t need much equipment to do his task within the team. with tech and weapon specialists, or even historians and linguists, he partly understands the need to have familiar equipment with them, so that things go smoother when they need to do their job. in his case, however, he finds getting weapons through customs too much of a burden, so he prefers to get whatever he needs when they land, usually through illegal means. having done this for quite some time, it’s quite easy to find what he is looking for, with necessary resources and enough money on his side. with the same mindset, he quickly packs for their tokyo and begins thinking about any of his former contacts that are still solid.
the plane ride is long, and a bit tedious, but in the end, it feels nice to be at their new hq. everyone goes off to do their own thing, and woojin unpacks quickly, taking his laptop and phone before leaving the room to see how everyone is doing. it’s not the biggest hq they had, but still a miracle by tokyo’s standards. he remembers staying there almost a decade before, in a twenty square meter studio apartment, so, in comparison, this is luxurious. and that much they deserve, for the amount of work they are about to do. plus, he has the inkling that everyone would start complaining if there were fewer rooms in the hq. glad for bochica’s skills, he picks up another task. wanting to see how everyone is faring, woojin takes his laptop under his arm and walks through the corridors, first the training room and then stopping to see the alotted gear room. it’s a bit surprising to see many of them have already unpacked; papers, books and anything of the sort are thrown on the tables; much, much messier than he would have liked. others must have been doing their own thing, because the linguist is the only occupant in the room, and such, the only person woojin could chide for being so messy.
the moment he walks in, he promptly trips on a suitcase, pushing it a few centimetres ahead, he straightens up quickly, but there’s a bit of a ruckus that comes from it, and before he can open his mouth to say anything, lena’s exclamation reaches his ears. he doesn’t mean to frown, not entirely, but words leave his mouth before he can even think. “with how messy this place is — that’s no surprise. it’s like a hazardous zone. how the hell did it get so messy so quickly ?” he discards his laptop on a nearby chair, and kneels to close the suitcase shut, pushing it to the wall so no one else can trip anytime soon. “i really can’t understand sometimes —” there’s a tirade that’s soon to follow, but he settles with clearing out the floor first. “please tell me you have finished unpacking. otherwise i have the feeling we might need to bunk more people together —”
Ah, of course. I knew there was no way I was going to unpack without someone reminding me how messy I am. When Lena hears Gin’s voice, she almost even smiles. No mission was a real mission if the strategist didn’t somehow find a way to scold her for the way she organised her working space. So she turns, grammar manual still in her hand, where she had caught it before it could land on her foot, and said, “I’d like to point out that this space isn’t only full of linguists’ gear, Your Honor”. When she smiled after that sentence it was with her tongue bitten between her teeth, a sort of cheekier smile than her usual one, because hey, working in my mess is what makes my work great. It’s quintessential part to the success of our missions.
“Don’t worry, Gin, I’m pretty much done. Jasper has something more, I think, but no big dictionaries. Those were all in my luggage,” Lena says, turning back to put the manual back on its stack. “Because of course, who better to lift a forty kilos suitcase of books than me, who has the same arm strength of a canary?” Okay, maybe that was stretching it a bit. She does have arm strength or she wouldn’t have been able to keep up with the other Inquisitors. Still, some drama added flavour to life, especially if it was in a conversation with Gin.
“And look, not all of us can travel with nothing,” Lena continues, leaning on the desk and looking back at the strategist. “I basically have one backpack only of personal stuff, everything else are work essentials! And Jasper and I had to send everything else to our storage in D.C. before we moved out, It was a whole thing!”
