Chapter 41

Yuri opens the chapter mid-operation, reading the positions and skill of criminals through their footsteps to time the Lieutenant's raid on an illicit deal, then personally dropping the fleeing Conrad outside the window. His reward is a fresh case: Franklin Perkin, a journalist with a prior arrest for aiding anti-government extremists, who keeps producing pieces attacking Ostania and selling them through black market publishers linked to Westalis. Yuri must gather evidence and identify the buyers before the writing sways public opinion.

Logging Perkin as Subject J-095, Yuri wiretaps and shadows the man for days, recording everything from his commute and meals to his conversations and TV viewing in obsessive detail; the Lieutenant, impressed but concerned, repeatedly urges him to rest. In the field, Yuri watches Franklin bait boys playing with a replica Bondman pistol, tossing the toy into a dumpster so he can photograph them digging through trash as staged evidence of street poverty, then silencing their protests with threats of arrest for Western sympathies. Only the Lieutenant's grip keeps a furious Yuri from blowing the operation. Later, overhearing Franklin tell his father that he writes to make the country better for his family, and that more money might have kept his mother alive, Yuri drafts a note that concern for loved ones may drive the man, then catches himself and rewrites the report.

After observing Franklin slip a manuscript into the mail stream at his post office job, Yuri leads the arrest team to his apartment on the 15th. He has the officers wait outside so the family will not watch the disgrace unfold, informs Franklin that his publisher is already in custody, and, when the journalist asks which of them truly shames the nation, answers that he would never bring suffering to his own family, a reply Franklin accepts in silence. Yuri also pledges to arrange financial support for the man's father, which Franklin sincerely appreciates.

That evening Yuri turns up at the Forgers' door claiming he simply wanted to see Yor's face, with Loid's presence grating on him as usual. Anya, hearing the weariness underneath, gives him a consoling pat, and a head pat plus praise from Yor floods his mind with such loud adoration that listening exhausts Anya.

Yuri's performance in the Conrad raid earns him the assignment to investigate Franklin Perkin.

Days of exhaustive surveillance culminate in Yuri catching Perkin smuggling a manuscript into the post office mail.

Yuri arrests Franklin with deliberate discretion, promises support for his father, and defends his own service as protection of the family he loves.

Mission 41 runs 27 pages in Volume 7 and adapts into Episode 28; the cover features Conrad, Yuri, and Lieutenant Chadwick Curtis. Franklin Perkin, Conrad, Yuri's SSS superior, and Mr. Perkin all debut here, and the surveillance spans the 6th through the 15th of the month.

The chapter's minute-by-minute monitoring sharpens the SSS's resemblance to East Germany's Stasi, and Endo cites the German film The Lives of Others as an inspiration for its premise.