Eien watched as Aino stared at the statue. She squatted in front of it, her arms resting on her knees, unmoving. He was unsure whether to say anything. He had never seen her shaken like this. Was she shaken?

“Is…is that one of your sisters? One of the ones we are looking for?”

“Yes.”

“What kind of statue is that?”

Aino stood and covered it with the blanket, “Something only she can do.”

“What does that mean?”

He followed Aino into the main room where she sat on the broken chair, resuming her eating of the orange bread.

“It means we will do recon in twelve hours. Did Jar teach you anything?”

“Using a sniper? We don’t have one on us, but I could probably make do.”

“No, cooking.”

“Uh…” Eien rubbed his head and shifted his weight between his two feet, “No, I…I have never cooked.” Aino stared at him. He felt hot.

“The military provided it for us, or…when I was at home, my sister would cook usually,” he explained.

“Fine then, come on,” she said, standing up. He followed her into the kitchen.

It was a disaster.

“Are we really supposed to put all that into a pot?” he asked as she unceremoniously dumped the third jar of vegetables into the largest pot they could find. The green vegetable mixed with the red and orange vegetables, forming a kind of brownish slop. He stirred it a bit over the high heat on the stove. It boiled over, liquid splashing on the stove. Briny water sizzled.

“Is it supposed to smell like this?” he asked after about a half hour as he scraped the burned parts off the bottom of the pot, smoke starting to waft about the air. She added another can of some kind of purple vegetable.

“Will this taste okay?” he asked, looking at the concoction in his bowl, steaming up a noxious fume into his face. Aino was already dipping her orange bread in it and shoveling it into her mouth hole.

He watched her, mouth a bit wide, as she wiped her bowl clean with more orange bread and took got up to get another bowl from the kitchen. Eien shifted on the chair bottom, stirring the glop with his spoon.

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He shoveled a spoonful into his mouth, pressing it around in his cheeks and toward the back of his tongue.

Oh.

It was just as horrible as he thought it would be.

He gagged a bit, swallowing the bite.

“Shit. Why does everything you make taste like shit?” he asked as Aino came back with a whole bowl full and another bag of orange bread.

Aino sat for a moment back upon the pile of blankets, considering his comment, her steaming bowl set neatly on her lap.

“When you need to eat, it doesn’t matter what the taste is,” she replied. He supposed that was the case, but even Mari had a way of making the porridge taste edible.

“Didn’t you have a kitchen in that apartment? In your complex? Didn’t you use it?”

“Didn’t you have a kitchen in the complex? Didn’t you learn anything from Jar?” she asked. Eien sulked a bit, trying to eat a bit more. At least the bread tasted good.

“Why didn’t you take Jar with you?” he asked. First of all, he was much bigger than Eien was. Secondly, he was definitely a better shot. Lastly, he actually could cook. If Eien was going to take someone with him who was not Aino, it would definitely be Jar.

Aino swallowed the last of the brown stew in her bowl, wiping up the rest with the last of the bread. Eien watched as she set the bowl down gently and looked at him.

“I chose you because you came back.”

Eien considered that statement while Aino left her spot and walked into the bedroom, shutting the door behind her. He supposed that was as good a reason as any.

—

After sleeping, Aino started working with the wires again, waking Eien up from his slumber on the pile of blankets in the living area. He lazily eyed her, watching her fingers peel back colored rubber and twist metal ends together. She attached them to the large screen. Discarded eyeballs lay on the floor, staring up at the ceiling.

“What are the eyeballs for?”

She did not answer.

“Is there something in them?”

No answer.

Eien sighed, rolling over and reaching just far enough to grab one of them. He rolled it around in his fingers, pressing it lightly. It squished horrifically in his hand. But he also felt something sharp.

He sat up, pulling out a knife. Carefully, he cut a slit in the eye and wiggled the knife around to make an opening. It hit against something. His fingers were too big to grab it. He cut the eyeball in half and found a tiny square.

“Is this it? Is this what we don’t have?” He asked, showing her his hand.

She looked at the small square and ignored it.

“It’s burnt out. No good.” She said, pressing some buttons on the screen.

The screen was lit up now with a soft blue glow. On it were words, letters, random symbols, most of which Eien could not parse. Colorful wires fell out the back of it like tangled locks of hair, and were weighed down by strange looking contraptions. One of the contraptions looked like a box with holes and metal poking out around it.

“I didn’t know you could do stuff with technology,” Eien said, watching as she used a small bit of cloth to wipe down one of the contraptions.

“Not well. Better than most,” she replied, “We leave in two hours.”

She set down everything and started poking at the screen. It went black for a moment.

Then noise began to play; it was something like a baby crying, high pitched and whiny.

Aino pressed something and the screen blurred, like white and black and brown.

Then Eien saw someone with black hair, dark eyes, covered in greenish, snot-colored goop. He was dressed in white hospital clothing, sitting nervously on a bed. The screen showed the rest of the room, lined with beds and people, patients, and caretakers, and oh shit.

Eien pushed down a noxious feeling.

That man the camera was staring at was himself just yesterday.