Nicole sighed to herself, and figured it was time to get back to work.

Ideally she would have moped for another ten or twenty chapters, but unfortunately we only have so many characters anyone cares about. And we have to rotate between them heavily to keep things from getting too stale. It was Nicole's turn to get back into the rotation, so it's a Nicole chapter we're gonna have.

After rotting in bed for three hours, she was able to bring herself to throw on a dirty t-shirt (even though she had a pile of clean clothes in the dresser - opening the thing took too much effort for what it was worth) and skittered out of her room.

On her way to the lab, she was accosted by a small gang of bullies.

"Oi! It's sewer girl!"

"Oi oi! She's walking around with her stinky sewer feet! Let's throw socks at her!"

A good ten minutes passed as the bullies threw a large number of socks at her, that they ostensibly carried around for the sole purpose of bullying her just in care they ran into Nicole. Nicole then silently and mechanically put the comparatively dainty socks on her big-ass bug feet.

"Yeah, you wear those socks! And don't you forget it!" one of them called out before they all left.

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Nicole sighed to herself. Another day of interacting with people.

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Nicole decided to not spend her day interacting with people, and decided to spend it in the sewers with her only other friend besides Tofu.

This, naturally, absolutely ruined the brand new socks her co-workers selflessly gifted to her. Not that this slob cares about that, or anything...

Mr.Chonkers, for his part, did an excellent job of pretending to care about his matriarch's girl troubles, nodding and quacking at the appropriate pauses. As long as the treats kept coming, he would pretend to care about anything!

"I dunno. Sometimes I think he just looks at me like I'm cardboard! It'd be nice if he'd act as if I was girl a little bit. If he would just look at me just a *little* like that creep Tedic looks at my tail sometimes... you know??"

This two-second pause was Mr.Chonkers' que! "HONK!"

"Aw, thanks buddy..."

The conversation lapsed into comfortable silence for a bit. Nicole pondered on what to do with her questline. Did she want to pursue a dating sim route with Tofu.....?

..... no. No she did not.