Day 59: Cafeteria (noon)

[immortale]

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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[touchedgod]

Some sort of reassurance was just on the tip of Billy's tongue. He hadn't decided yet if he was going to reflect her formality back, or flippantly tell her there was nothing to intrude on. The idea was ruined, the food apparently being too much for her. Billy hurriedly reached out, not for the woman, but for her tray. He pulled it away ans, along with his, banished them with a quick shove several feet further down the table. He shot a resentful glare over the woman's shoulder at some soldier in the distance, who saw the look but quite plainly didn't care. That almost irritated Billy more than the decaying food.

"God. You alright?" Equal parts tired and on edge, but there was enough energy to respond to someone a little worse off than him in the endurance department. The smell wasn't the worst he had faced. The strangest things became the most useful.

He finally got a good look at her, now that he was a little less preoccupied by the threat of her vomiting. She was a pretty young asian woman, younger than he had assumed at first, he realized. Billy found himself oddly surprised. His life had been largely devoid of teenagers since he had stopped being one, considering that the museum attracted mostly the very young or the respectably middle-aged. There was no pattern to the unwilling cadets he saw around him, though. Women, men, children, adults. Not many very old, he had noted, but a few who were shocking young. And some of those people were still eating their food, he saw, although their servings looked no more appetizing. He wouldn't point that out to the girl.

"Take a drink. The water's probably alright," he offered, lacking any better advice.

[requitedfate]

Wow, that was embarrassing. Shiina quickly tried to wave off his question, giving a very weak chuckle, but that almost set her off again. Was she going to be able to hold a natural conversation with this man?

His advice was better than just attempting to hold back gags. She grabbed up her glass and attempted a small sip. Doing her best to breath through her mouth, she shakily waited a moment before taking another cautionary sip. The taste of clean water was refreshing, and if she could just not look at those disgusting blobs in their trays she could probably make it through this. Thankfully, the man had the foresight to shove them out of their line of vision.

She offered the man a thankful smile, carefully placing the cup down on the table. "Thank you. I'm sorry you had to see that."

Again, a foreigner. American, maybe? She was pretty bad at picking out nationalities from westerners, but she supposed one guess was as good as any other. Everyone at least spoke Japanese here.

Shiina attempted another friendly conversation starter, hoping to draw away from the awkwardness they had just experienced. "Ah, I was told that this rotten food thing wasn't likely to be permanent, but I wonder..."

[touchedgod]

"It's alright," he assured her. How polite, apologizing for being disgusted by rotting food. He wouldn't have, unless it had gotten to the point of actually getting sick in front of someone. Then he supposed his embarrassment would have demanded a couple half-hearted apologies. But really, who could be blamed when it came to this writhing mass of half-living food? "I'm right there with you, to be honest." Was that comforting or just unpleasant, being informed that your tablemate also felt nauseous? Billy moved on, sweeping past the discussion of their own roiling stomachs.

"Don't know." He scratched his neck, and risked a glance at his food. He was betting on more maggots, if he dared to look closer. "It's all I've ever seen here. It can't be all the food that's turned, though." He couldn't handle looking at other people eating, though, so he just left that assumption on good faith. His peripheral vision confirmed some of it.