Love Among Thieves

[Malkavia]

Well—Good. At least they were done pretending the rabbit didn't exist.

Still, Shimmerlace lingered on Angelina's back. It all had the air of an easy win, a currency God wasn't much in the habit of handing out to Shim. She breathed slowly out through her nose, biting thoughtfully at her lip.

"Hrmph..." There was a long pause, during which every possible consequence of what she was considering bounced and flashed around her mind like pinballs.

Well. But no amount of tasing or punching was going to her Thistlebro anyway, was it?

"Sorry," she said, shifting her weight and digging her hand into a pocket. "Can't let you up jussssst yet, Ange." She clicked her tongue, leaning over Angelina as she inserted a paperclip from her pocket into the cuffs around the smaller girl's wrists. "I imagine you'll want these free after all. Yeah?"

Like she'd carry a key.

Keys were for losers.

Then it was a pop, a click, a sudden release of tension, and Shimmerlace found her mouth to have adopted suddenly the texture of cotton. Her face flushed, and she felt a tightness from the base of her spine to her chest. Carefully, she put the cuffs back into her jacket pocket. Then she stood up, backed up three steps, and got ready to lay down, claw, bite, and bash as necessary.

[Monsy]

“Angelina.”

She corrected, then waited for the games to end with flat brows and a dull face. After all this, what was one more hurdle? It beat being shocked like some CIA suspect—her rights null and void for some greater Shimmerlacist interest. She could hear from the lack of jangling of metal dinging metal with more of a tink-tink-tink and quiet stiff crackles like embers to tell it wasn’t a key.

Right—magician escape stuff.

When her wrists came free and Shimmer backed off, Angelina immediately rolled over to her back with a groan, then put hands to her face to try and contend with the situation, put her brain to work and figure this out. Judging by her scout work, the window to catch Serona without Madeleine seeing was closed. She checked by walking the distance at both higher and lower strides to make-up for height variance. It’s been too long.

Should’ve fucking bugged the purse. Shit-. Shit-shit.
Uugghhhhhh. If only she could spit in her drink. Or maybe if she could be bothered to go to the extremes, she’d make her a missing person’s case—but that was compartmentalized with a lack of itch to make it any more than a nice thought. It would be the exact snakeish thing a Yuki would do when desperate, once you bury the little bitch part of her. And likely a Shimmer too, since she already pulled a knife on her unprovoked.

“Say, Shim, you got my lugs?” Her eyes peeked through the finger gaps. “I know ya fucked with the board already.” Angelina sat up and used the wall to help her stand properly. She finger-combed her hair, stroking and petting it so all the rocks, dust, any Shim grime or disheveledness could be restored to presentable. She held out her hand, received the lugs in her palm like drizzling rain, then slowly walked to her board without a word yet. Inside her jacket, there was one main pocket and a filled holster strap. She took the small skate tool from the pocket, then twisted the lugs back on and restowed it, sighing.

“Let's catch a train. We’ll find a car park at least two stations down and a jog.” She got up, stomped her board’s tail so its nose reared up into her hand without a glance. Beginner stuff. “Ready?”

[Malkavia]

She realized her mistake at the moment she always realized such errors—seconds after it was too late. It hit her like a bag of bricks just as Angelina was on her feet—in an ideal position to swipe out with another knife or launch head-over-heels in some kind of pele-kick hurricanrana, parkour leap off the wall axe-kick godlike kungfu.

Madeleine. Through all this shit, talking through Thistledown and her new criminal experience, she'd forgotten Madeleine. How the fuck could she forget—that horrifying, obsessed placard of a "date." Of fuckin' COURSE Angelina wasn't about to traipse off on some heist when—

“Say, Shim, you got my lugs?”

"Er—yeah. 'Course. No evidence at the scene, right?"

As she handed over the cold metal, she steeled herself, primed to respond the moment Angelina grabbed her wrist. When she simply took the tools in hand and kicked up her board, Shimmerlace's heart didn't stop pounding. It wasn't until she asked about the train that Shimmer started to squint.

Mentally, Shimmerlace ran her fingertips over those obsessed knots in her memory. The gold, the Sun. The day planned down to the minute. Angelina's planned opportunities were melting by the second.

“Ready?”

Shimmerlace blinked. She realized she'd raised her fists. The wee boxer in the alley. She swallowed, then — she couldn't help herself — smirked with the surprised pleasure of a theatre boy asked to dance. She ran her hands through her hair, then kicked out her foot for a long stride to follow behind the Marauder.

"Damn straight I'm ready. Where to—Annnnnngelina?"

—

Madeleine checked the time on her wristwatch—a small, golden and leather timepiece she wore because she felt so much more demure and attractive glancing at her wrist than yanking out a phone in the middle of a date.

She had five minutes. Precisely. At least, it had better be precise. If Serona were late or, worse, early, she'd have stumbled over the first hurdle.

By now the barkeep had left Madeleine to enjoy her tray of cheeses alone, and she chewed idly, enjoying the quiet of the mostly empty restaurant while she flipped through her touchpad.

The application on her screen consisted of an interconnected net of nodes and edges like a technicolor spiderweb. Each node came with a label. A few core nodes had large titles like Voice acting development and Project Automaton. These orbited an image of Serona's face, which occupied — along with the notes detailing improvements that could be made for her makeup and hairstyle — the center of the document.

From these core nodes sprung constellations of images and notes and times that, when she prodded them with her stylus, would magnify. The nodes came in three basic colors — red, gold, and white — but color variations distinguished different regions in the overlapping and interconnected sub-webs.

To most, the surface would have appeared a tangled morass of times, places, ideas, colors, images—what Serona had charmingly described as "spaghetti notes" in one of their recent technical discussions. But to Madeleine's trained eyes, these formed the strategic roadmap governing her approach to an investment with beautiful red hair and above-average voice acting talent.

Places that will inspire her. Memories that will seduce her. Images that will steer her.

The key to this mode of planning was its associativity. Far from a simple to-do list, it reminded her of core goals, which she could adaptively pursue depending...well. On how things went. She felt an immense wave of pride as she gave one last skim over the outlines of her plan, which by now she could traverse as easily in her mind as on the glossy surface of her touchpad.

The first web, red, was her favorite. She would open with Red.

She looked at her watch. 9:59 am. Then, expectantly, she put on her most charming and doll-like smile, leaned her head on her hand, and turned to look at the door. Eyes lidded as she prepared to greet the first date she'd had in years.

[Monsy]

10:00am

Serona needed another minute just outside the door. She needed two seconds into every one. This was important—one of, if not thee most important moment in her young career and love life. It could be the start of so much. Look our best, be mature and don’t quirk-out at them. I got this.

She checked herself. Her clothes were ironed, coat impeccable, hair straight and shining — but not oily. She checked herself in a pocket mirror, looked at Madeleine through a window and smiled. Holy crap—is that her? Is that, uh… a disguise? Kinda, not really, to her second glance. A switch in hair colour wasn’t much. It could be dyed!

Another pass through their text chats showed that Madeleine didn’t prewarn her choice of look quite yet, but was a surprise. A girl like her—someone who appears in a room of real nobles and fits right in among them—perhaps leads them, entertains them and scores anyone she really wants. She saw it on her visit to Jouets D’Ors about a few weeks ago.

Her presence was like the head of a marching band as she led a score of people through the main areas to the various shops, booths and stalls. She gifted free things to children, made the serious suits laugh and made everyone in-between think of getting at least one souvenir on their way, sometimes leaving the group to get their own catered experience at a stall—a balloon dino, a teddy bear that could say whatever you programmed it to easily from a UI screen, an insanely intricate electric toy car model that mimicked real cars.

When Serona got curious enough, she joined the group, having been unaware that it was a semi-exclusive paid tour, apart from the ones solely invited. She was given grace that day, speaking out one day when Madeleine spoke about an automated toy-maker. Serona had heard of these things, tried to build it up inside her noodle about how it’s to be done. Sure—state of the art A.I brain was one thing that was far from her expertise, instead focusing on what such a brain would work with. “Does it work with Unity?” She asked that day, “When you give the input, it will need a 3-d engine to make the design parameters to make the toy, so would it be unity in this case?”

The answer was no. They had their own in-house program.

10:01am

Serona came through the front door, stopped at the sign to await seating, then told the first employee that approached her of her reservation. It took three checks of names to get it right. The table was company expense, not Madeleine’s name directly. She didn’t recall if she was told, but a quick scroll through the phone showed she was wrong.

10:06am

“Heey, Miss Citronelle? — Madeleine?” Serona approached, stopping at the end of the table as she took off a purse and a satchel, setting them down on her side of the bench, then extending her hand. “Serona, hi. Am not late, am I? Love what you did with your hair. Natural or dyed?” She smiled, hopefully able to touch the Countess’s palm for a ginger shake. She would bow only with her head for a second, then take her seat. Her posture melted into the backrest.

“Ugh—what a walk. When you said you wanted to go to Matsumoto castle, I didn’t think you were entirely serious or meant a like-name place in Tokyo. But I’m so glad to be wrong. This place? I heard the wine leaves little notes in your mouth that betters your taste for days. You check their menus?”

[Malkavia]

Madeleine rose for Serona, took her hand, and — pressing her lips to her wrist — smiled while her date blushed, hesitating, suddenly unsure what to do with her hands. Madeleine had to suppress a smirk. Well, she is very young.

The compliment about her hair was a fine enough recovery, even if it did teeter on commenting just a touch too directly on the nature of her privacy. Madeleine framed the top of her head with her hands and beamed, curtsying ever-so-mildly.

"You're much too sweet, Serona. I dyed it — a special look for a very exciting date I have scheduled." As they took their seats, Madeleine leaned in over her elbow, drawing Serona into her conspiratorial veil. "It helps to tamp down on unwanted recognition." She winked, then settled back into her chair.

Her smile thinned as she watched her date...melt into a Serona-shaped puddle in her chair. Silence hung for one. Two ticks of Madeleine's wristwatch. Then she picked up the drink menu. "A knock-off Matsumoto castle, hmmm?" Madeleine breathed deeply, sighing as she thumbed absently through. "Serona, my darling, life is too short for fakes. It's not just the castle that will be the real deal, but everything I plan to share with you. Not a moment will be wasted on any cheap or second-rate good enough experience."

By now, the cheese had been at the table for fifteen minutes—long enough to crust just the slightest bit on the gooey edge where Madeleine had sliced through the waxy skin. She took a knife and, with the effortless dexterity of a woman used to serving courses that required twelve utensils to eat, flipped the cheese around and cut a slice of the delicacy.

"Which indeed, begins with 'the menu.'" She lifted the bite and slid it across the table, as if she were expecting to hand-feed a child. "I've found something of a treat for you here. Try it. Tell me all about how it is, hm?"

The cheese hung in the air between Madeleine and Serona, oily and pale, like thick, creamy butter.

She couldn't help but add, in a clipped, hushed tone, "...And do sit up straight."

[Monsy]

Receiving the kiss to her wrist reminded her of her movies and TV shows. She hadn’t thought it a real common gesture in today’s dating world—save for someone in the upper echelons of society where they have a pedigree of formality, technique and properness to everything they do. Japan wasn’t good for public affections. She almost wondered if they’d be squinted at.

But the fact Madeleine was going to do it anyway made it feel sweet.

“Huh? Oh—” And her momentary blush would say so. Her face felt hot, and a tingle went down her spine. A romantic. While she chose against recuperating making a scene, she did smile, had a small chuckle, then sat down feeling a little lighter.

Having watched the show of Madeleine with her cheese, Serona hadn’t realized her shoulders, head may have lurched to catch a better angle of the delicacy in question. In truth, it took a small squint to sniff out the exact details. She was no cheese steward, but she studied the places she went to, the food and prepped her topics. It was a bit of a hard guess to know where Madeleine would take it, being so grand, so beautiful and somehow a little mysterious on top of that.

“A-Ah. Sumimasen.” Serona sat up, reflexive of the Japanese she learned. When offered, Serona again evaluated if this was too much for public view. She couldn’t just allow Madeleine to make all the moves… and they were in their own booth, not very watched, surely ignored enough that she outta ease up a little. Be yourself.

So she took it, using her teeth to pull it back then tasting once back upright. A hand touched her mouth as the cheese spread all across her mouth like melting butter. The taste was powerful with cream, softer than expected, then leaving behind hints of sour as it coursed down her gullet. Her lips pursed, glancing to Madeleine, then smiled. “It’s gooood. Like, really good.”

She started to snap her fingers, thinking. “Brillat-Savarin?” She asked, “A triple-cream French cheese from 1890 named after Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin. Rich, buttery and typically fashioned in a bloomy rind. It’s beautiful. I never tried.” Then she started to scan the table, what utensils she had. She wasn’t versed in the art of flipping and cutting cheese in a way that was aesthetic, but she happened to see a little cup of honey in a ceramic cup.

So she picked up one tiny spoon, a knife, sliced off one corner about the size of a fingernail, then drizzled a small touch of honey on top. “You should try it this way. The sweetness will compliment the rich flavour. I’d say you both have that in common.” Then she extended the bit, sitting there with her toes curled up, aching as she thought how they’d receive this.

[Malkavia]

"Oh, I have a rich flavor now, do I?" Madeleine rested one hand flat on the table, then the other on top, and smiled like a teacher appreciating a student's joke.

Hesitation, hesitation, hesitation. At every little curtsy of their waltz, Serona seemed seemed to have an instinctive need to pause, and she wasn't especially skilled at hiding her embarrassment when Madeleine pushed one of the thousand and one Japanese boundaries. Well what's more important, sweet? Me, or your good manners?

In the back of her mind, she began to form ideas for how she could continue to nudge Serona. Backbone was important in a woman. The next push would, she thought, should require her to rise to an occasion more nakedly in public. Perhaps when they took to the street. Well, an opportunity was sure to present itself, given Serona's apparent sensitivity. In the mean time...

"Yes, it's really remarkable, isn't it? I remember the first time I tried Hikari's, I knew I'd found something one of a kind. Mmm, though. Well." Madeleine sighed, breaking eye contact with the woman across from her. Tap, tap, tap went her index finger against the top of her hand. She paused just long enough to imagine appropriate, but not undeserved guilt settling like an over-burdened barbell on her partner's chest. "I imagine it would have been even more delicate if you had been on time. Cheese is...extremely temperamental once cut, as I'm sure you know."

As she raised her eyebrows, she scanned Serona from waist to eyes. What kind of body language would Madeleine find? Something defiant? Irritated? Scared, sad, pathetic? That last option wouldn't be the most undesirable. There was something sexy, she thought, about imagining a pretty and talented woman like this quaking like a nervous intern.

In fact, what she saw was—yes embarassment, but also a knit brow. A woman in thought. Good. The capacity to think was worth its weight in gold. Before Serona could put into words whatever salvage-operation she had in mind in, however, Madeleine reached across the table and took her hands in her own. "Oh, but don't apologize, sweet. I know whatever happened, it couldn't have been your fault. Sssh—" She squeezed Serona's palm gently, who mumbled but, good girl, bit her tongue when Madeleine shushed. The rest of the world continued spinning along outside their table—the barkeep serving a businessman in a starched white shirt at the opposite end of the room, a woman pausing by the window to look at her phone—either oblivious to Madeleine's affection or pretending to be. "Really Serona. I wouldn't have asked you to meet me here if I hadn't thought you had unique potential and the good character to realize it. So don't apologize for what must have been an act of God. OK?"

“...That's very nice of you to say--you're religious, then?”

Madeleine squinted slightly. She had the self-possession not to verbalize her confusion into some inane UM or what, but even so, it took her half a second to find the groove of this unexpected direction. "...I have a wonderful relationship with the faith community at St. Andrew's, sweet, but...in this case I was using a figure of speech." After this somewhat sharp reply, Madeleine did little to lighten the pause the followed, other than to peer into Serona with boundless confidence in the desirability of her forgiveness. Serona swallowed, then coughed. “Look. I'm really really sorry if I kept you waiting, Miss Citro—"

"Oh please. Madeleine, my dear."

Serona nodded.

Madeleine gave Serona one last squeeze, then sighed and fell back into her seat. "Now, sweet. Indulge me. I've been dying to learn about you."

Glancing at her wristwatch, she proceeded down the old list Batson had taught her when she was eight.

How is your family?

She had three sisters it seemed. And what do they do? Unstated: Are any of them more successful than you? Answer: The most relevant sister clerks for a U.S. senator and faces an almost impossibly bright future in a legal political career.

How does that make you feel? Answer: Well, she's extremely proud of course! And she's modest (read: small) enough to admit she can barely imagine the pressures her sister must face in her professional life.

And any pets? A cat, actually! Madeleine beams when she hears this, and she must see pictures. He's an adorable, if uncreatively named Mr. Mistoffeles. "...You have to promise me, whatever else you take from today, you must adopt dear old Mister Mistoffeles a Rum Tum Tugger. A solitary cat is a lonely car."

And what do you like to do for fun?

Tick. Tick. Tick.

Madeleine beamed, questioning this and that detail about Serona's life, aughing at all the appropriate pauses in the jokes, waiting all the while to see how long it would take dear Serona to say something actually interesting.

[Monsy]

“M-Mm. What if I showed you?" Said Serona.

She expected something along the lines of, ' what do you mean? '

Then she lifted her finger, asking silently for a moment so she could focus on her bags. When she thought about this in her chair, she envisioned praise, success, an ultimate breakthrough to stroke her inner small ego. She imagined Madeleine back at Jouets, graceful and fluent in kind, like a noble aristocrat of old fiction--someone that needed your best effort to hold even a nanosecond of their attention. So you'd be damn sure she tried to suppress any notion of a nerve, blush or delay, keeping herself composed, light and quick on her feet. Anything to calm her jittering index finger, snapping up the satchel lock. She pulled out her laptop, a monochrome local brand with smooth edges and an LED company logo, placed it on her lap, opened it and flicked the power on.

"Hope you don't mind this." After a deep breath, she went on more easily. "I'm on my computer plenty. Lots of after-work stuff, answering emails and doing my own little projects. Buuuut, staying in the house turns me literally crazy, so I get out everyday--hang out around places like Jouets. There's just so much to look at there, not to mention the free wifi, and its been my inspiration leading up to today..." There was a dash of pink on her cheek. Her eyes had closed just a tad, directed down to the laptop screen where she quickly went by her passwords and onto the home screen.

From there, she booted up an application called ' Toy Kingdom ' -- Stuffies came down in an animation, then a teddy bear hit the screen and its belly buttons became the U.I to an arcade game made of pixels and a chibi smiling Madeleine in a marching animation, leading a band of bears, trains and musical instruments.

She put the laptop on her palm, turned it so Madeleine can see. Her cheeks turned from pink to red. "I made a short game about you. W-W-W-Would you like to play? I-If it's not against the house rules of course."

[Malkavia]

"I would be delighted to look!"

As Serona passed down the laptop, Madeleine glanced at her wrist-watch, noting that it had taken a mere five minutes to push off from the shallow shores of smalltalk. Certainly this beat most people, many of whom could spend all day running their mouths without saying a solitary thing.

It got better. "Ah, is...is that me, sweetie?" Madeleine squinted at the screen, drumming her fingers across the tabletop. The question was eight-ninths rhetorical. At first, Madeleine was a small if colorful sprite in a background that was flat and retro in inspiration but distinctly modern in its rich color palette and the depth of detail. The field was not simply a green expanse, but a space covered in textured grass, a river that flowed through a corner of the geography, and a dirt path covered in stones and sand.

Then, however, once she pressed the literal NEW GAME button on the sweet stuffy's belly, Madeleine flashed onto center-screen—her hair bows and pigtails, her face, cartoonish and grinning as she sliced the screen in two with what appeared to be a cavalry officer's saber.

"Wow. Wow wow wow."Questions blasted through Madeleine like grapeshot. She sat, frozen, her mouth slightly ajar—just for a flash of a second, pale, tight, her brow knit. Not long, but long enough for an attentive date to notice. Then recovered herself, and her eyes slid over to Serona, a sly smile creeping into the corners of her mouth.

"...And how long have you been working on this, hm?"

"F-five months." Serona's nervousness was her saving grace. Well, one of them anyway. Madeleine clocked the way her hands, folded on the table, were trembling, and the already pleasant feelings welling in her blood took on a note of sugar.

Then she processed what Serona had just said. Madeleine paused before replying. "...That's no time at all for the kind of fidelity you've achieved with these graphics." Though it was a very long time to be...thinking about Madeleine. Had she even known that Serona existed three months ago? But maybe the art had been added at a late stage.

But she said she made it for you. As in, you inspired its conception. She remembered that detail intently, the way she savored the aftertaste of a particularly rich slice of cheese.

By then, Madeleine was drawn into the tutorial of the game, which seemed to involve managing the complexities of a stuffy army—not in combat, so much, as the politics. Madeleine was the rosy but confident queen, it seemed, of a small kingdom beset from without by hostile outsiders (mice and lizards mostly) and from within by political intrigue and economic precarity. Her job was to manage the promotion, demotion, and assignments of the various stuffed-animal characters who populated her court—all based on intelligence she gathered from exploring her capital and talking to its citizens.

As Madeleine navigated the interface, she recentered herself. Seeing her was...a surprise. A pleasant surprise. But there was much more to this red spool of thread to test. She peppered Serona with questions.

"This seems like more than a hobby. This has the whiff of a commercial project. You work in finance—tell me about the markets you're targetting."

Then,

"Tell me about your team. This couldn't possibly be a solo project, could it? What's your role?"

Followed by,

"You're aware that at Jouets, as in most larger companies, we use proprietary software systems in all engineering branches, including game development. What frameworks are you using, and how easy would it be to migrate if needed?"

Some of her questions veered into the art design.

"Obviously there's a...contrast, let's say, between our dear little stuffy friend here — adorable by the way — and the military world he inhabits. It feels...is Napoleonic right? That does suit Jouets in some odd ways, I suppose—elegance in organization meets sweetness and sugar. Can you tell me more about why you chose to pursue that aesthetic contrast?"

As she drilled Serona, she continued to direct her videogame Madeleine around her fictitious capital, talking to the war-scarred bears recovering from the last war, helping to requisition materials needed to repair one of the jolly toy trains. Throughout, she rarely paused between questions, reacting to Serona's responses only with a nod, a frown, a cluck of her tongue, or a followup question to clarify.

Throughout, Madeleine glanced at Serona, watching—did she remain nervous? Fumble questions? Did she even make this game, or was there a hoax underlying everything? How good could Madeleine depend on this woman to be if she were placed on-stage?

[Monsy]

The worst was over, so she thought. She liked it, genuinely. It had to be true now. You don’t just drop four wows on someone like that. Nor did you start to pelt with specific questions. Now the conversation landed on home turf. “With this?” Two options floated in her mind-space. She took a pause, then steeled herself and chose, “Err—You, really.”

She started to twirl a few locks of hair idly. “I found your… Work… Presence, at Jouets, to be super striking. I was inspired, so—I m-made it specifically to see what you’d think. And to challenge myself.” She gave it some added thought. “I figured if you liked it, then so would your mass following. From Jouets and wrestling.”

After knocking down one question, there was a server. They asked for their drink preferences to start them off. Serona chose water as that felt most modest and right for the early hour. When she heard Madeleine chose a local shinshu wine, Serona was taken aback. Her tongue instinctively wanted to comment that it wasn’t even noon, but respect won out.

And when she thought about it, it sounded adventurous. She heard something about wine complementing food. She hadn’t calibrated the idea of making today the day she tried it. So, with a bit of boldness, she changed her selection, only for Madeleine to then insist on leaving a bottle with them when they retrieve it, her choice, her treat, her gift. Serona accepted this easily, feeling somewhat freed by Madeleine’s way of lifting the burden from your shoulders.

“I have a couple friends from work and online. I did most of the designing, scripts and prototyping myself. A good friend helped with the art, then I used itch.io asset packs to help make most of the backgrounds, maps and details, although I personally made the throne room in aesprite. Another friend helped with all the animations. Also the second level after Baron Linensky tries to sell you the magic cloth was designed by a friend.”

Then,

“... Not easy. This is from GameMaker, which uses its own language. Unless you happen to be using GML in your software, then I’ll need to remake a bunch of stuff.”

Of course she then explained that it was all still possible—it just needed a considerable amount of time to get comfortable in the new theoretical engine or framework and forge a prototype after memorizing its nuances. Then she went on to explain that art can be reused, then likely the levels, concepts, logics, maps and levels, so long as the software had a custom level loader, then essentially just the visuals could carry over. All very doable, yes-yes, but time would be key.

When it came to art design, Serona nodded in acknowledgement.

“Hmmm.” Serona reached, then started to tap the screen at a marching column of Old Guard Teddy Bears, following a column of Cuirassiers. The Cuirassiers were headed by a flag bearer carrying a standard of toy kingdom, with the vanguard otter spewing out the words in fluid text slithering from his mouth. “Viva la Cotton!”

“It had a lot to do with the story frame, the french theme of Jouets and making it joyful. Toy Queen makes the world vibrant, so I thought of European armies in the 18th and 19th centuries. If you look at the story, the invasion from all sides, the reverence the citizens show with all the cake, it’s connected to make a Bonaparte story… with a bit of Marie Antoinette. Let them eat cake.”

She had continued twirling her hair for some time. Her other arm went under the table, rested on her thigh and grabbed it, feeling sweat build and her back tingle with pins and needles as her throat was running just slightly dry. It started to feel like an interview, although she only just now had the breathing room to consider thus.

Just then, a bottle of shinshu wine was set down. They said their thanks, then the server left.

“Now… Can I ask you something?” She picked it up with one hand on the neck and another on the bottom. First she inspected the label, then placed it between them. "How hard is it for you to do dates like this? Surely, it must suck a little bit having to keep your private life so secret."