Alason stopped at the police station and looked at the square, inconspicuous building of blue color and a couple of small windows covered with rusty steel bars. Gloomy, like a prison, the only architectural asset of which, if you can call it that, is the cross roof, like an open tent, under which one could see an endless number of lancet windows. At first it might look like there were two or even three floors inside, but in fact it wasn’t, there was only a floor and idiotically high ceilings.

He went to the steel door, knocked and entered inside. An ant-like commotion greeted him in the hall. Many police officers, not sparing themselves, sat at their small wooden tables, surrounded by piles of papers, from above, from below, and from the side of them. They took a sheet from one huge pile, signed it and put it in another, no less huge pile. The smell of sweat filled the air. It was hard to breathe. So much for the realities of the police work, Alason thought, as if we have nothing better to do. One investigation takes less time than its registration. And if you didn’t do it properly, then you’ll immediately go to court. Then try and explain that it's not your fault. Moreover, no one does anything about it. Is it impossible to do something humanly or something? Although why? After all, if someone complains about this system, it is only to himself, away from others. Here’s the result.

Alason went to his cozy and small office, yawned every other minute, and in the breaks, he greeted and signed various documents without looking at them. He climbed a small staircase of five steps to a wooden podium, turned left behind an artificially made wall and stopped in front of the entrance to his “second” house. He sneezed, wiped his nose with the back of his hand, swore and entered. At his desk, Jacob was sleeping on a rocking chair. Each of his breaths was followed by a snore, comparable to the sound of the Jericho trumpet.

"For God's sake. Jacob! Hey, get up! Why didn't you go home?"

"I'm sorry, sir," Jacob answered in a hurry, rubbing his eyes, "I had to finish all my business, and in the end I was so tired that I realized that I wouldn't make it home. So I borrowed your chair."

"Comfortable?"

"Yes. Even too much for this kind of work."

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"What do you mean?"

"In such a chair, you want to relax and fall asleep. And a good cop is always on the lookout."

"Well. You're right about that."

Jacob yawned, opening his mouth to an indecency, asked:

"How did it go?"

"Bad. The Inquisitors don't have tunnels in that area. Someone dug it up, and then destroyed it."

"And we need to clean it up…"

"It's like chasing a ghost."

"He's already far away now."

"God knows he is. Someone is resting, and someone is working, it has always been so."

"Then I'd rather be the one who's resting. Good night. I’m going home."

"No. Since you're here, you'll have to go through all nine circles of bureaucracy with me. We're going to the forbidden city tomorrow."

"Please, don't do that. I'm still young, I can stand one, well, two circles at most."

"Why are you clowning around? Today, fate is not favorable to you. However, to you and to any other police officer. Sooner or later, you'll still encounter it."

Alason sat down opposite Jacob, asked him to pull out some forms for obtaining permission. The latter, with a dissatisfied and offended expression on his face, carried out the order. They started filling out the information, when Alason suddenly jerked and said:

"I promised my wife to go somewhere together today."

"Go later, she always forgives you everything."

"That's a bad thing. Maybe in this case, I could be home more often and not forget about our plans."

"She loves you, how else?"

"I'll write her a note."

Alason got up from his chair and went to the closet and took a small notebook and tore out a page and sat back down.

"It seems to me that I have already said the word "sorry" to her so many times that it has ceased to have any weight."

Jacob smiled and chuckled. Alason raised his eyes, looked at him with a serious look, said:

"I also sometimes laugh about it. But now, for some reason, I feel sad."

"You are lucky to have such a wife. She understands."

"It's true. I think I’ll save up some money and put a monument to her in our garden. Although her exploits deserve more. One day I came back from the war. I was completely disappointed in people. I stopped expecting something good from them…"

"Tunnel vision."

"Yeah. I even forgot that it's my birthday. I woke up, looked around, and the balloons were all over the house, as if I was five years old. There was a cake on the table in front of the bed. At first, I was surprised how she did everything like that and didn't wake me up. Generally speaking, it's childish, but it was very pleasant for me. Family heroism is built on such details."

"And what do you do for her?"

"You'd better not ask me that. I'm ready to fall onto the ground. Okay, we have a long night ahead of us. Let's start."