An hour later, at the palace doors…

With a large sigh, Straf returns to the palace. He lazily pulls the door shut behind him, and places his hands in his coat's pocket as he moves down the hall.

「Tsk… Seriously, where is she?… Ordering the palace guards to do menial shit is a bad idea in the long run… 」

Straf rubs the back of his neck with a fatigued, frustrated expression on his face, grumbling to himself. He heads for the stairs up through the silent ground floor hallway, though the faint sound of instruments comes through the ceiling, and echoes in from elsewhere. After a moment, he climbs up the stairs to the next floor, and turns directly for the ballroom. When he crosses one of the corners, he stops dead in his tracks to not bump into the woman in front of him.

「Fuckin-!… Eh?」

Straf stops himself from cursing Nona out in frustration as she stands in his path. With her hammer resting on her shoulder, she looks at him with a light smile, tilting her capped head slightly, wearing her usual Ministry of Security uniform. Straf blinks at her in mild confusion.

「Straf. You're back.」

She casually remarks, blinking her amber eyes back at him.

「Yeah… I am…」

He nods, pausing between his words with his brows furrowed.

「…I thought you looked nice in that dress. I mean, don't get me wrong, the uniform has special appeal, but it was a breath of fresh air. You didn't like it?」

He adds, staring with wary eyes at the hammerhead hanging off her shoulder behind her.

「You really think so?」

Nona asks, tilting her head just a little further. Her face remains frozen in the same faint smile.

「…Yeeeaah… Did you have a few drinks in the time I was gone?」

Straf rubs his chin, staring at Nona's completely unfazed face.

「No…」

She calmly replies, tilting her head the other way, blinking up at him with a smile.

「I see…」

Straf says with a skeptical tone, and gains a tight-lipped grimace on his face.

「…Straf, do you like me?」

「Yeah.」

Nona asks, and Straf nonchalantly shrugs without giving it much thought.

「…How much?」

She takes a step closer, and her smile widens ever so slightly. Straf's eyes jump to the hammerhead.

「Uhhh…」

He thinks, and his gaze darts between hers, and the hammer.

「How much, Straf?」

She asks again just a short moment later.

「…A lot. You have a lot of… Good qualities. I also appreciate how straightforward you are… Most of the time.」

Straf leans away slightly as Nona leans in, smiling as she stares into his eyes.

「Qualities? Like what, Straf?」

She straightens out, and rests her head on her hammer's shaft, pushing her uniformed chest out slightly.

「You're, uh… Simple. Easy to amuse. You're pretty fit, that's a positive too…」

Straf briefly searches for words, and shrugs his shoulders. His gaze briefly drifts down to her exposed thighs.

「Do you think I'm sexy, Straf?」

Nona asks, placing her smugly smiling face in his vision, blocking the line of sight to her thighs.

「Eh- Uhh… For lack of better words, yeah. Honestly, the uniform is cheating. Stripe and Lia would have to get their own outfits to make things even-」

「Hmmmmm…」

Straf shrugs again, and begins rubbing his chin. Nona cuts him off, pressing herself against him. Straf takes one surprised step back, and stops so that Nona doesn't fall over.

「…So I'm appealing to your senses, Straf? Would you like to do it sometime?」

She asks with her chest squashed on Straf's, looking up at his face with her smug smile just ever so slightly wider again.

「Uh… Suuure? At some point?…」

With a tight-lipped grimace, Straf hesitantly nods along and shrugs.

「Tonight?」

She asks, tilting her head slightly. Straf's gaze briefly escapes sideways, perhaps to check if a maid is looking, and then returns to Nona's amber eyes.

《…Weird. They don't look like they're glowing.》

Straf thinks, raising one brow slightly as he continues looking into her eyes.

「…Tonight, Straf?」

Nona places her hand on his shoulder and asks in a hushed voice, before peeling away and standing straight up.

「…Tonight… I'm a little busy. You know, with the invasion of everyone and all… But your interest has been noted, and I will let you know when my calendar is open…」

Snap.

Straf snaps his fingers, and shrugs his hand as he explains. Nona tilts her head the other way, and her smile fades just a little, becoming slightly narrower.

「…Have you seen Stripe anywhere? She didn't find a way to take the collar off and high-tail it, did she?」

He asks, aimlessly looking around the hallway as he places his hand back in his pockets. Nona walks past Straf the way he came.

「Have you tried looking in your room?…」

Looking at Straf over her uniformed shoulder, she asks as she crosses the corner.

Snap!

Straf's head perks up, and his brows rise.

「Riiight!… Stupid lazy cat is probably sleeping in! Unbelievable…」

He remarks, and turns around to head for his room instead. He crosses the corner.

「…Are you not coming back to the-?」

Straf asks Nona, but she's not there. He stops for a second, furrowing his brows as he stands in the empty hallway with his hands in his pockets.

「…Huh. And where did she rush off to?」

Continuing onward with a brief shrug of his shoulders, Straf thinks out loud…

…

Less than ten minutes later, in Straf's room…

Straf enters, and looks at his bed. Stripe is lying there, asleep, but her ears turn towards the noise, and her head perks up lightly.

「There you are… For being as smart as a bag of rocks, she's surprisingly insightful at times…」

He remarks as he walks up to the bed's foot end.

「Nnhghh… Is it new year yet?…」

Stripe asks while looking at Straf with groggy golden eyes.

「You wish. You'd skip the party… And you almost did. What's the matter with you? You get personally invited by Lia, and you turn her down? You're lucky she's a nice girl.」

Straf spreads his arms, looking down at Stripe with his mouth aslant, throwing his hands up before placing his fists on his hips.

「It's an invitation, so I can turn it down, can't I?」

Pfwap.

She asks, perking up to her knees before turning around and noisily dropping right down onto Straf's bed.

「Technically, yeah. You can technically scream fire when there isn't one, you can technically also turn down an invitation from someone important, but is it really a good idea?」

Straf nods along, shallowly agreeing, before taking a step to the side of the bed.

「I don't wannu!… I hate parties, I hate talking to people!… I'm just not good at that! I freeze up, mumble, stutter!… I can handle one, maybe two people if I prepare myself first…」

Stripe exclaims, hugging her face into Straf's pillow, wrapping her arms around it. Straf lets out a large sigh.

「…And you call yourself a spy? How can you get into a big fight with a bunch of people and blow bridges up, but not attend a party?」

Straf asks, shrugging his hands and noisily tapping his foot on the floor.

「I'm an infiltrator!… Spies are a completely different thing! Spies sit in kingdoms for years on end and pretend to be a native!…」

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Turning her upset, scrunched frown to Straf, she shouts back.

「…I just get in and out! With my face covered! I don't need to be nervous, or search for something to talk about with an enemy in front of me! I can just kill him and move on!」

Fwap.

She adds, briefly pointing her clawed finger at her face, before dropping it back into the pillow.

「Come on now…」

Straf sighs again, and his shoulders slump a little.

「…Listen, I don't like people either, but being unable to even show yourself at a party is excessive. Just go find a corner to stand in, and tap your foot to the beat with a drink in your hand.」

「I don't wannu!」

Straf points his hand at the door. With her face pressed into the pillow, slightly muffled, Stripe shouts back with like a tantruming child. Straf shakes his head and reaches for her.

「H- Hey! Where are you-!? Stop! Let go!…」

Stripe shouts as Straf grabs her and lifts her up by her armpits, pulling her off the bed and up to her feet.

「…Kuhh.」

Crossing her arms, Stripe lets out an indignant grunt of frustration as Straf lets go, setting her down beside himself, and places his fists on his hips.

「Listen… The best way to get over the anxiety of「What will everyone think!?」is simply to not give a shit about what they think.」

After a troubled, fatigued exhale, Straf calmly explains.

「That's easy for you to say!… You don't understand what's it like! You don't care if the maids call you an omnisexual rapist pig that preys on children behind your back!」

Stripe scoffs, shaking her head with her golden eyes turned away.

「They call me fucking what!?」

Pat!

Straf exclaims with his eyes wide open in shock as he grabs onto Stripe's shoulders, and forces her to turn to him.

「…They're saying that you like men… And children… And that you raped me, but I told them that's not true-」

Stripe replies, bashfully avoiding looking into Straf's intense gaze.

「Where the fuck did the men part come from!? Who the fuck fabricates this slander!?」

Straf shouts, spreading his arms, utterly indignant.

「…So you prey on children after-?」

「No! What the fuck!?」

Stripe asks warily, and Straf cuts her off with another indignantly shocked shout.

「…Well, I'm not going to tell you! It's a secret!… It doesn't matter who started it, anyway! One of the maids saw you and Sir Vinis once… In a suspicious setting!」

She shrugs, and quickly turns her eyes away again.

「What!?-」

Straf's head perks up in surprise, but then a brief flash of memory appears before his eyes. He remembers the sensation of slamming his palm against the wall, and cutting off the wine magnate's way off with his arm, penning him in with no escape. With an anguished expression of pain on his face, Straf throws his head back.

「Ffffffffuuuuuuckkkkk…」

He groans out, and his hand drifts up to his face to rub it fiercely in intense frustration.

「…Ahhh… The only time I did that to anyone, and it had to be misinterpreted.」

Straf lets out a massively frustrated sigh and grumbles, then takes his hand off his face. For a few silent seconds, he looks tight-lipped at Stripe with his fists on his hips.

「…Listen. Setting that dishonest slander aside… Of course it's easy for me to say. Want to know why? Think carefully, it'll ruin your personal relations with most of the population.」

Resigned, he shrugs, and asks. Stripe side-glances at him, and thinks for a brief moment.

「…Why?」

She asks in a wary tone.

「'Cause people are fucking idiots. I genuinely fucking mean it. Have you ever thought about how stupid the average person is? The most average of average. Dead center.」

He replies, spreading his hands with a shake of his head as his mouth tilts aslant.

「…Yeah. The average intelligence really isn't.」

Lightly furrowing her brows, Stripe nods her mustard-tipped ears a little.

「I-know-fucking-right? Now think of it like this… The average person is a stupid fuck, but it gets worse! Remember, we're talking about the average here! A third is smarter!」

Straf scoffs with an amused smirk on his face, nodding as he spreads his arms. He then abruptly raises his index finger as he exclaims.

「Right?…」

Still wary and crossing her arms, she nods along with her shoulder turned toward Straf.

「Now if a third is smarter, and a third is average, what of the other third!? The other third is a barely sapient band of dipshits! That's every third person!…」

Straf asks a rhetorical question and spreads his arms wide as he exclaims with his brows raised, and his eyes wide. Stripe's brows furrow, and her gaze drops down to the floor as she places her chin between her thumb and finger. She thinks for a second, and raises her index finger with her mouth open. She closes her mouth, and pensively places it between her thumb and finger again, thinking intensely. The longer she thinks, the more her brows furrow, and the more unnerved she appears.

「…Now, you're telling me that I should give a shit what those two-thirds think!? Fuck no! Not gonna! What do I care what a sheep blares at me, or what a dog is barking!?…」

Throwing his hand aside dismissively, Straf continues shouting, and his face gains an almost maddened grin.

「…The unwashed mashes always have shit opinions! Repetitive, formulaic garbage rises to the top, and everything good is drowned out by the fucking noise from the rabble! Fuck!」

He adds, still shouting, and clenches his hands into fists before jerking them aside with a curse.

「…That sounds like something personal.」

Stripe remarks, blinking at Straf with one brow warily raised.

「It is.」

He replies, and lets out a resigned sigh, before moving his thumb and finger to his brows to rub them in frustration.

「It also sounds like it won't work on that last third.」

She notes, finally turning to face Straf.

「Yeah, you're right. In that case, you're fucked…」

Straf nods, and helplessly shrugs his hands.

「…But! First, everyone will have to prove that they're that last third. Then, and only then you can start giving a shit what they think. It's a waste of time and energy otherwise.」

He adds, shrugging his shoulders as his hands snake back to his pockets, with a greatly frustrated, tight-lipped grimace on his face.

「I get it, but…」

Stripe says, and turns her gaze aside.

「…No kidding. I didn't think about it much. This was in the back of my head all the time when I was working, but I hadn't given it an actual thought. It really does ruin how you perceive-」

She adds, nodding in agreement as her eyes return to Straf's face. Her head suddenly perks up.

「…Wait! Is that why you're so bitter all the time!?」

Stripe jumps away and asks while pointing her clawed finger at him.

「Surprisingly, nope. It's just another point on the list…」

With a listless shrug, Straf replies and heads for the door.

「…Are you coming, or not? Forcing an introvert into a party would feel dirty. You'll probably regret skipping out.」

He opens the door and stops in the threshold, looking at Stripe over his shoulder as his frustration fades into boredom with another faint shrug of his shoulders.

With her arms crossed, Stripe paces around on the spot, turning her gaze everywhere but towards Straf, grimacing heavily.

「…Fine. Just so you'll shut up about it.」

With a sigh, she grabs her hat off the top of a nearby chest of drawers, pulls it over her head, hiding her ears, and walks out of the bedroom with Straf…