Dove got up from her seat and stretched, having finished writing the first few pages of her journal. It had been about a week since she had gotten hired as an intern for this strange building that very clearly has many secrets that the employees are not willing to disclose ever to the public.

"Do other, normal people, know about these agencies?" She hesitantly asked Laurance at one point in the week, not really expecting a clear answer.

"Technically yes, and even the government knows, but it's mostly the dragons that are in charge."

"Dragons are real?" She nearly sputtered out walking beside him as he showed her where to deliver papers and items and such.

"Yeah, it's just best that people don't know, they're introverted. You'll learn more later, but here we are." He said, stopping and showing her to the files room of the detectives' floor.

The door was pushed open and showed stacks of files, organized as best as possible but a bit of clutter is near impossible to avoid. 

Now, ever since she had gotten hired, Dove has not asked many questions, mostly not any questions that pried too deeply about how things worked here. She mostly kept to herself unless she felt it wasn't a bother to ask Laurence for help, or anyone else, though that rarely ever happened, and simply did her job as a paid intern.

Most things were on the computer, but because the documents were so important, everyone from every floor liked to keep physical copies of everything just in case. Her job consisted of taking some of the folders with papers of recent cases, solved and unsolved, and filing them in the room with all the other files.

Sometimes it's going to the other floors to retrieve a requested item, whatever it was for, maybe a case the detectives were working on, maybe to do a little experiment, she did notice, but didn't choose to ask or say a word about them. One time she even had to move a supposed haunted doll into the archives room, wondering during the little trip, whether the doll would do something to her, but she later learned it had already been exorcized.

The elevator, while as nice as its interior was, could be a bit slow at times, and she'd rather avoid the awkward silences with strangers or the forced small talk if they wanted to talk, because she was so unused to frequent company and worried about fumbling. Or, if she were to ever end up by herself on that ride, distracting herself by looking at the artistic design and function of it, the way she was entranced by the 1900s style elevator with its old yet fancy designs, she'd soon succumb to the thoughts of her mind. She doesn't like being alone with her thoughts, at least going up and down the stairs at her pace helps her pass them quickly.

The stairs between the floors were a little difficult to find at first, but the angel of death in disguise she met on the first day- Bence- helped her to find them.

They were in the back, behind the area where the desks of the detectives worked, past the other rooms that she had not been to yet, and there was a neat door, again with the sign explaining the number of each floor, along with even the two letters of the rooftop garden and the basement archives.

"Thank you, I'm sorry for troubling you like this." She told him sincerely, knowing he was supposed to be going out for a recent case soon.

"Oh, it's no trouble, we knew you would need help to find them eventually. Most people think it faster to take the stairs anyway." He said in this smooth, low voice that almost sounded vibrating had he spoken lower.

"Don't trip now." He told her before turning around to go back to his work.

Dove didn't know specifically what he did, or what cases the detectives took, but she saw the ancient looking spell books he would carry around, and sometimes explaining to his clients why he can't just simply revive their pet, or their family or friend and just bring them back to life and would send them off to the Alchemists' floor to learn more.

He had a nice voice, and normally wore this dark suit with a purple hue weaved in the threads, it almost glowed that purple hue in a way. He wore a skull brooch, sometimes the empty sockets could be seen glowing, and he also had this, watch? Compass? Dove had never seen the inside underneath the little gold-looking lid that clicks open when Bence takes it out to look at. Either way, he now reminded her of a necromancer in a suit, which is what she was pretty sure he was, though she wouldn't bother trying to confirm it.

The stairs were quicker between floors, and the other interns of the building, the ones she met who introduced her to this place, also liked taking the stairs more.

Joon would sometimes go up the stairs to collect materials from the rooftop garden, or down to send new little ideas or new research down to the floors below. It was only then after they met each other on the stairs a couple times did she notice his prosthetic leg, and he too spotted her first reaction to it. He liked wearing cargo shorts a lot, so it was bound to happen.

"Cool right? But I bet I can make a better one." He said as they both paused walking down the steps, and he grabbed onto the railing before lifting his knee up, and then grabbing the prosthetic to spin it up, bending it in a way a normal leg definitely should never be bent.

Dove gave his replacement leg a wide-eyed stare before nodding her head and pulling up a smile, acting.

"Oh... Wow! That is cool... But what do you mean you can make a better one?" She asked as he set his prosthetic back down and they continued taking the steps down.

Joon simply giggled to himself, his long sleeves covering his hands as he covered his mouth, snickering.

"It's nothing for now, the guys upstairs still won't let me do any freestyle experiments yet."

Dove could only nod as she spotted the door upon the next flight of stairs.

'Apothecary,' it said.

"Well, thanks for telling me, be careful with your experiments." She waved at him as he kept going down the next flight, holding a box of some sort of prototype to take to the magic store.

The apothecary floor was like a little hospital or a clinic in a way, when Dove walked in, she saw beds or cots, some empty, some being used, walked past them and found her way into the room filled with medicine and vials of pills and such, clutching tightly to a piece of paper with a list of capsules and tablets she was asked to retrieve.

Unlike the Detectives' floor that had colors of beige, brown, and all shades of monochrome, this floor was all shades of blue.

"Ah, you must be Dove." A very pleasant and gentle hearted voice said.

The girl nearly spun around before fixing her eyes on a very tall man with the kindest face she had ever seen, not even his glasses could hide the eyes that looked down at her with such a serene expression she never had before.

In a simple outfit, similar to most of the other people she had seen working through the floors, he wore a white button up tucked into navy blue pants, donning not a white doctor coat like she'd expect of someone working in a clinic.

No, the light, thin blue coat he wore simply looked like a cardigan that drifted behind him as he walked around, like a ghost tail. He was dressed comfortably.

The girl nervously breathed as she slowly, and as politely as she hoped to present herself, handed him the paper with a list of capsules written on it.

The tall man who must've been somewhere around 190 cm at least, gently took it from her as he gave her such a kind gaze and walked around the room of vials and medicine while reading the list.

He hummed and caught her attention as she tensed, starting some light conversation.

"They're asking for more painkillers and sleep inducers. How many field missions could they be going on?"

Dove rubbed and held onto her arm as she drifted her eyes over to all the bottles, so pretty and intriguing.

"I'm not sure... I try not to pay attention to what the papers say." She said before mentally kicking herself and biting her tongue.

For some reason, she keeps unintentionally spilling out the more honest version of what she actually meant to say, and it mostly happens every time she's working in this building. Perhaps she feels too comfortable here.

The tall man simply nodded to him with a gentle grin as he searched through the cabinets. He grabbed a crate box from somewhere, like a caved in, flat dish tray, to put the little jars in.

"It's alright, normally we have to advise our interns not to look, just for their sanity, so your actions are a nice refresher."

She held back, raising an eyebrow at this sentence as he handed her the tray full of capsules and tablets.

"Although, you won't get punished if you ever do decide to be a little curious. We understand."

Dove didn't know how to respond to his words, she could only nod and hum nervously as she avoided eye contact with the kind man, eyes falling to look around the room of all forms of medicine one more time before noticing the door behind him, likely leading to more of the apothecary floor. Probably where the medicines were made,

She gripped the tray, making sure it was leveled in her hands before bowing a little and turning away.

"Thank you."

He walked with her back to the door to the stairs, opening it to find Annabelle who was just about to open it. The tall man smiled knowingly as Dove stood slightly surprised, she hadn't seen Annabelle for a while ever since she dragged the girl to that detective's desk for the internship position.

"Let me guess, you made someone bleed again?" The tall man said teasingly in this parental tone to the girl with blond hair, hands on his hips as he gave her a knowing smirk and arched eyebrow.

Annabelle returned his expression with a 'guilty as charged!' face as she walked into the room, revealing the person behind her whom she was dragging gently by the wrist, the poor soul holding an ice pack to his eye, pursing his lips.

Dove tried not to look at him, fearing she may somehow disrespect him if she even glanced or uttered a word at him, and brushed past them quietly with apologies and a nod of her head.

"Oh! Before you go, tell Laurance that I want him to be careful, and to sleep more often." The tall man told her right as she stepped out.

"Oh, sure." She turned around to face him once more. "Umm..."

"Leon, that's what I have the others currently call me." He said, giving her another gentle smile before he turned his attention to the poor soul with the wound on his eye while Annabelle shrugged in a guilty manner.

Dove began walking back upstairs, minding her own business but remembering his words on the way back, repeating them to herself.

The stairs are quiet, and the flights go up in a square each floor, thank goodness. Had it been circular, many people would have gone dizzy.

She went back through the door to the detectives' floor, carefully holding the tray in her arm before beginning to turn the doorknob, just before someone else opened it on the other side for her.

There was a woman standing there, she had a very stoic, almost military stern-worthy face. Any person with this face made Dove nervous in two ways.

1. The normal kind of nervousness she feels with most people.

Or

2. Made Dove nervous in wanting to be up to their standards.

The beautifully stern woman with her long black hair, loose and out in the open unlike Annabelle's hair bound and braided into rope, stepped to the side to let Dove through.

"Thank you." The girl said more quietly than she wanted.

The stern woman nodded her head as she then left through the door, going downstairs.

Dove exhaled a breath she didn't know she was holding, going over to Laurance's desk, resting the tray of capsules down for a minute as he looked up at her curiously.

"Oh, good, is that all of them?"

"Yes, and the guy at the apothecary floor, umm, Leon? He wanted me to tell you to be more careful and sleep more."