Jaid resumed her venture after several deep calming breaths. The rest of the trip was uneventful, and she glanced around the restaurant when she arrived. It really was closer to a cafeteria in size and scope, but the atmosphere felt like a cozy family restaurant. It was surprisingly crowded, with more people here than there were members.
At the door there’d been a sign welcoming the citizens of Bisomote, so it seemed the restaurant had also opened to the public for lunch today. It was a smart idea, she had to admit: getting the community comfortable and welcoming to the now large gang of murderers they were sharing a town with.
Jaid didn’t spend too much time lollygagging as she noticed people behind her and didn’t want to stall things. She went into the queue for the counter and was soon greeted by a kind elderly woman. “Welcome, Jaid,” the woman greeted her by name to her surprise, but figured everyone must have seen the dossier by now. “As a member, all food here is free. What can I get you? You can have whatever you like and however much you like.”
Her stomach growled on cue, and Jaid’s eyes lit up at the prospect. She stared at the menu for probably an unreasonable amount of time, and eventually ordered three full meal’s worth. It wasn’t long before she’d been handed her food by an equally kind old man and sat down at an empty table.
While she wanted to dig in, the first thing she did was look up the old couple’s names in the app so she could address them properly next time. Then, after eating just over one meal’s worth, Jaid finally decided to look around a bit more. There really were quite a few citizens from the town. They were easy to pick out. Some seemed to be having the time of their lives, a few seemed scared witless, and one or two looked as if they were observing animals in a zoo. It was hard to judge them since her mission was essentially the same thing.
She did notice a few standouts among the crowd, though. Right away, she saw the young Fiend Rusa from yesterday, but she seemed slightly older now. Next to her was a boy whom her best guess was a Fiend named Rezin. His picture on the app had been hard to make out. It was quite blurry and slightly transparent somehow, but his hair color and general build seemed to match.
They were watching a video together on a tablet, chuckling to themselves like they were the only ones in the world. Jaid could almost find it endearing, if they weren’t Fiends. Rezin went to take a sip from his drink, but was suddenly spitting it out and coughing everywhere. A moment later he was rubbing his tongue with his napkin while crying out, “So saltyyyyy!”
Jaid had seen it all. The Fiend Niloy had managed to sneak up behind him without him noticing and slipped a finger into his drink. From her bio, Jaid knew she could manipulate the properties of liquids, so what had happened was self explanatory. Niloy—or was it Nini?—was now literally rolling on the floor, laughing her ass off. Unable to watch the torment any longer, Jaid averted her eyes and continued scanning around the room.
There was a table with a few Fiends and Lessers. One of them had hair wrapped around her entire body. Jaid had to assume this was the group mentioned in an announcement that were waiting for further interviews with someone from a circus. The announcement wasn’t really relevant to anyone now living here. It was so no one would be surprised at any unknown Fiends and Lessers wandering around the campus. .
At another table were several new residents she recognized, most of them in their late teens or early twenties. They were all sitting around one of the staff members, a teacher that was also part of the science division. From what Jaid could slightly overhear, they seemed to be discussing education progress and lesson plans.
Lastly, Jaid’s eyes landed on a lone Lesser sitting on the exact opposite end of the restaurant, staring directly back at her, dead in the eyes. It was Tize. He smirked once she finally noticed him, not slowing down from his rhythm.
There were several empty plates next to him, so he likely finished his meal a while ago, but there was also a large pile of nuts. He was deshelling them and eating them one at a time, slowly and meticulously. It was egregiously inefficient, but it was an excuse to loiter for a while that no one would question. He did it all while never breaking his line of sight, his hands working deftly on their own.
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She didn’t know how long he’d been watching her, but given the circumstances, it was likely the entire time. Although she’d likely been staring for too long now, she couldn’t let it phase her. If she quickly glanced away, it could be telling. So instead, she smiled back and gave a slight friendly wave, then directly returned to gorging on her food like their encounter had been nothing of consequence.
For the entire rest of her meal, she didn’t look up or at anyone else. While she couldn’t be certain, she still felt his gaze on her. Sadly, she didn’t think of it sooner, but when she was almost finished eating, she summoned an almost microscopic version of herself on the back of her neck. The micro-Jaid hid in the collar of her blouse, only her eyes poking above it so that she could watch Tize.
Her suspicions had been correct, and he was still staring at her. However, he eventually ran out of nuts and then didn’t dawdle afterwards. Once he’d cleaned up the mess around him, Tize nonchalantly strolled out of the restaurant without looking at her again.
With the immediate worry waning, Jaid tried to absorb her clone, but found the stubborn little thing refusing. This was why Jaid tried to avoid using heavily distorted clones whenever possible—they often had strong personalities. While nothing was spoken, she felt a telepathic desire from the clone to be fed for her services. Jaid merely sighed, and broke off a crumb of her dessert, pretending to rub her neck as she passed it off. Once the clone was stuffed and satisfied, it finally let itself fade from existence.
Now satisfied herself, Jaid cleaned up and left the cafeteria. She had no obligations until the welcome dinner several hours from now, so she decided to do some more exploring to make up for the interruption last night. This time, it shouldn’t raise an eyebrow of suspicion from anyone, and expected many others to be doing the same today.
She had already seen most that there was to see at the back half of the compound. While she hadn’t been inside the general’s manor or the resident apartments, it’d be rude and unwarranted to enter either without a direct invitation. She briefly pondered visiting the workshop to formally issue a complaint, but she didn’t know if Nathym would actually be there, and expected little from the result anyways.
For now, everything Jaid wanted to see was in the front half, so she left out through the main front entrance. On the way, she was greeted by the same receptionist as yesterday who choked down a bit of her own lunch to offer her pleasantries.
There had been two buildings she’d seen yesterday on opposite sides of the campus, but had no idea what they were. One of the few resources still yet to be given was a map of the place. While there was a good chance everything would be explained at the orientation later, she was impatient and wanted to see everything with her own eyes anyways.
Jaid headed to the southeast first, since that seemed like the smaller building from what she could discern in the distance. What she found was quite different than what she’d imagined, however. It was a small lodge… or a large shed? It was hard to figure out the architecture exactly, but it was unimportant compared to what was happening outside of it.
On the lawn of the undefined building was a full laundry setup: washing machines, dryers, ironing boards, folding stations, and one casually dressed boy running between all of them. *preep* A whistle blew and the boy stopped moving. The butler who’d blown it now scowled at a stopwatch. “You actually want to work here, right? You’ll need to do much better than that. Again!”
She blew the whistle again, and the boy resumed his mad dash. Jaid had experienced drills like this before in her past life, but to go to such an extreme for laundry was a bit ridiculous. From what she’d heard about the butler, though, it seemed rather on point.
After studying him a bit longer, Jaid noticed the boy had a nametag: Crucion. That answered the question of who was living on the third floor of the dormitory. However, he seemed completely human from what she could tell, which made it seem a bit odd that he was living and working in a dorm full of Fiends. It was hard for her to decipher any of this group's decisions, but if this was all the type of work he’d be doing, she didn’t feel the need to raise a stink about it.
Finally averting her eyes from the cavalcade of cleanliness, Jaid glanced around the rest of the building. It didn’t seem particularly special, and ‘Staff Office’ was written above the main entrance. Since she was technically staff, she assumed she’d be allowed entry, but doubted she’d find anything of note in there, especially not when someone would be looking over her shoulder.