Day 59: Cafeteria (noon)
By the time lunch rolled around, things still weren't getting any better. The voices hadn't gone away; instead, Firo was pretty sure they were getting more frequent. Ennis had been silent since last night, but Czes's voice had been an insistent buzz in his ear all morning
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So, he may have been pouting a little as he stood in line for his food, grabbing the two tacos he was offered with little response. He knew he needed to appreciate each meal he got when he was being fed so much better than the rest of the institute, though, and so he quickly got over his sour mood.
The question was... who he should sit with? When he didn't immediately spot any friends around, the boy decided that he might as well join someone he didn't know. He'd already checked on his club members, so he didn't need to worry too much about that. He didn't like the stuff Neku had been saying over the bulletin, but he'd already told him they would talk at dinner.
Which was how Sora ended up wandering over to a woman who was eating some of the gruel. Or trying to, anyway. He tried not to focus on that, instead meeting her gaze and offering a warm smile. "Mind if I sit here?"
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Had something occurred that the Intercom Man felt as if he needed to remind the populace about misbehavior? There had been no more food fights since the first day. Something more subtle, perhaps?
Hmm. No matter; she wasn't likely to receive an answer. In the meantime... "I hope your night went well?" Maya hoped the younger ones traveled in groups, if they ventured out at night at all. But it wasn't her place to have that discussion, was it not?
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Well, either way, there was no reason to hold back a reply. "Yeah, I did! Why, did they not let you eat or something?" Sora wondered if she'd been punished. Chipp had been forced to stand even when he'd gone into the fort, though he noticed that this lady was sitting and no one seemed to mind. Well, she would probably explain.
"And yeah, my night went pretty well! I mean, me and my friends ran into someone who was brainwashed, but sometimes you can't stop that stuff from happening." And Riku was injured, but Sora knew his friend wouldn't let that get him down. "My name's Sora, by the way! It's nice to meet you." He reached out to give her a handshake while grabbing for one of his tacos, ready to dig in.
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Perhaps it wasn't so sinister as Maya thought. But there was no reason Maya wouldn't wake up on her own. Speaking of odd behavior.... It wasn't the first she'd heard of brainwashing, but it was disconcerting to hear of it spoken so casually. 'Sometimes you can't stop that stuff from happening' indeed.
"I'm Maya," she replied, taking his hand with both of hers. "I'm sure you know, but please be careful." Returning her arms to her sides, she followed up with, "Did anything unusual occur last night? ...Ghosts, perhaps?"
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That didn't seem to be the point, though. It sounded like this woman -- Maya, her name turned out to be -- had slept in. "Well, you didn't miss too much this morning. I'm not sure why they sometimes let people sleep longer than normal, but it isn't too out of the ordinary." It had happened to Sora a few times, and sometimes he wished they'd let it go more often. Still, he knew in the end that he should spend as much time as he could meeting people and running the club.
The fact that she told him to be careful when they'd only just met convinced Sora that Maya was a nice person, and he smiled shyly at her in response. Her next question was way more direct, though, and he was surprised to find that there was someone else who had probably experienced what he had. "...Something like that, yeah," he replied with a frown as he stared down at his tacos. "I saw a few people who used to be here, friends of mine, but they were just illusions." Clearly, he and Kairi weren't the only ones.
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Neither she nor Threepwood had come close enough to the phantoms to know for sure; Maya had woken up in her bed before the pair could give chase. Still, the possibility had been on Maya's mind, and from Threepwood's as well, judging from the way he'd vehemently denied it.
There was a pattern here... Threepwood had seen his wife, but it hadn't been Otoya Maya had seen. And Sora had described them as 'people who used to be here'. Oddly specific ghosts, if Maya was on the right track. "Were they acting unusually?"
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"Not unusually, exactly. They just didn't respond to anything I said, and all they were doing was wandering around." Renji and Axel were pretty active people. Even if Axel had said that he wanted to be lazy, the fact was that he'd done a lot during his time as a Nobody, so...
"Also, I saw them out in the forest way away from the institute. It seemed pretty weird for anyone to be out there alone, y'know?" There were a lot of things that had warned him from the start that they hadn't been real, which Sora was grateful for in retrospect.
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But speaking of frantic.... Maya glanced at Sora, then at the guns the guards were sporting. Hmm. Was Maya simply a poor judge of human age? Wataru was brave, but at Sora's age... Maya would murder Kivat the 2nd if he allowed Wataru to become Kiva. ... That had been the reason she'd dropped him off at his father's home, was it not?
... Hm. No sense in dwelling on it. "Are you all right?" she asked instead. "Nerves, injuries, anything?"
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For a second, it felt like the conversation had just shifted abruptly. Sora had been telling her about his experience with seeing Renji and Axel and suddenly Maya was asking him if he was all right.
Well, maybe she thought that it had all been too much for him. Sora thought that he'd been relating all of the facts pretty calmly, though, so he wasn't sure where she'd gotten that idea. He was going to hope that she was the sort of person who worried in general, rather than it being due to his age.
Either way, he'd been fussed over enough in this place that he knew not to make a huge deal out of it. "Oh, yeah, I'm fine! I didn't get hurt and I'm pretty used to the stuff this place pulls by now." Which was kind of a sad thing to admit, but that didn't make it any less true. Being used to it at least meant that he could usually get over it all that much faster.
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What a horrid thing to be accustomed to. For a moment, Maya felt like patting him on the head, but refrained-teenagers disliked to be touched, yes? And asking him again to be careful made it seem as if she didn't trust him. A lecture about the dangers of overconfidence seemed similarly imprudent.
She'd leave it as it was, then. As she was thinking of another topic to make conversation with, she spotted her escort approaching. Ah.... She wouldn't call it good timing, but at least her escort hadn't interrupted in the middle of a conversation this time. "It was a pleasure to meet you." She'd forgotten if she'd said it earlier- Well, no matter, she'd said it now. "Take care!"
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She seemed nice, so maybe he could track her down again sometime. "It was nice to meet you too!" he called back as they were separated by their escorts. So, to the Game Room now, huh?
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