Chapter 8

Mira returned, and brought normalcy home with her. She was clearly still riding the high of her success in the public eye, and glowing like she always did when she'd completed a project on top of it, and in the wake of everything, she made time for Silicia again. And so, while fall rolled in with the rain, a weight finally lifted off her chest. She could almost convince herself the small, condensed ball of anxiety that had sat in the pit of her stomach since last spring had disappeared wholly.

She came home one day to Mira sitting at the dinner table, pouring over stacks and stacks of loose paper. Silicia went straight for the bathroom to attempt to dry her sodden hair, and Mira hadn't moved a muscle by the time she'd grabbed the plastic bag of takeout from the entryway. She held it up like she was going to deposit it right on all her documents, still dripping with rain water, and raised an expectant eyebrow at her girlfriend.

Mira grumbled something about her work flow and bent to retrieve one of the binders she'd completely emptied onto the table. While she started pulling papers together seemingly at random, Silicia glanced over what it was she'd been reading. To her surprise, it was her own reports.

"Looking to keep reading until you find a flaw you can fire me over?", she prompted, and went to get them plates when Mira had finally cleared enough space that she could set the food down. Mira cringed looking at the wet spot left on the wooden table top.

"You know I would never. Naturally I would have your death faked before bringing the dishonour of being fired upon you, love."

She laughed, and waited for Mira to give in and answer her honestly. As much as she enjoyed joking with her, she was very curious to see what she was doing with her notes.

"I'm just looking them over to see what your charges will be most suited for."

"Oh, the control system for the chips, is it?"

She couldn't fully keep her slight bitterness about finding out with everyone else out of her tone, but like always, if Mira noticed, she didn't let on.

"Don't be crude, it's not a control system. Think of it as an interface, maybe," Mira corrected, and Silicia started lifting the food containers out of the bag, smiling wryly.

"And of course that too has to be built from the copies of real people, makes sense."

"Ha," Mira said, "yep."

---

The kid was sitting crouched against the stone border of a flower bed as she was heading out on her lunch break, and she stopped a few steps from him without even thinking about it. The expression on Erik's face was glum, and there was mud caked on his shoes. It would soon be too cold for them to be out all day.

She followed his gaze to where his friends were standing, looking to be play acting. Right at that moment, Alec sunk into a curtsy in front of Lia, who rolled her eyes but dutifully pretended to knight him with a stick. Her attention wandered from Tump's scowl to Rin next to him, wringing her hands as she stared intently at the back of Cris' head. She'd been right in assuming, it seemed.

"They're at it again?", she asked, and Erik startled slightly, looking up at her. She wasn't sure if he'd just not been expecting her to say anything, since there was no way he hadn't noticed her.

"I don't get what's fun about it," he said, sounding like he had said it many times before.

"Different people like different things," Silicia said optimistically. "They could take more care to not exclude you, however."

"They're not excluding me," he mumbled into his collar.

"Aren't they?"

"They didn't tell me to beat it or anything."

"But they know it's not fun for you, don't they?"

Erik looked away, and Silicia left.

---

Mira was already waiting for her when the elevator arrived on the 12th floor, and she was vibrating with excitement.

She pulled Silicia into the lobby and spun her in circles, and it was all she could do not to trip and send them both crashing down.

"Woah, woah there, calm down-"

"Si, they're such fools! Eating out of my hand!", Mira hollered, and didn't give Silicia a chance to confusedly congratulate her before she crushed their lips together.

As she learned once her girlfriend had exhausted herself, Mira had been promoted into a position somewhere between head of research and CEO, which to her just sounded like they made it up to justify giving her more money. Because they were doing that - as Mira was very excited to tell her. Apparently the few higher ups left above Mira had high hopes for her chips and she was taking them for all they were worth.

Her previous spot would be filled by a grumpy old man who'd once been her superior, and was not taking this development well. Mira had many disparaging things to say about his character, although she was personally considering him as a project lead for when she finally got to restructure Frinet's research department, for politics reasons. Silicia absorbed all this information and stored it away just in case she was ever asked about it in polite conversation.

---

As was routine, she checked a box on her report sheet and looked up at the boy with a bland smile.

"How in control of your emotions have you felt this week?"

Tump's head tilted to the side like he hadn't thought about it. She'd been asking all of them about their emotional states at every session for over a year now, so he really ought to have.

"Better than last," he finally said, a corner of his mouth turning downwards.

"Was it that upsetting to you?", fell out of Silicia's mouth without her permission.

The eagerness in her voice was breaking protocol and they both knew it, but she was still driven by that hungry curiosity to pry people open until she could understand their every action that had driven her to psychology in the first place. She'd make it look like he'd been the one who wanted to talk about it in the report, of course. Silicia wasn't actually sure how it would reflect on her to reveal that the children sometimes lied to her.

"It made me feel like I was going to lose them," he said after a while, and stopped himself there, frowning like he didn't like how the words had felt passing his lips.

"But," Silicia said gently, "You didn't. They made up."

Tump nodded mutely, and she heard him swallow before he spoke again.

"I'm not sure- I mean I didn't even notice."

"That was scary?"

"Yeah. I just looked over and they were fighting."

Silicia bit her lip and said nothing. Their session would end all too soon and the bell would call him to lunch, and then the moment would be broken- but she'd have to let him decide to tell her on his own.

"You can't tell anyone this, okay?", he said suddenly, volume rising, his eyes sharpening with determination. Silicia nodded solemnly.

"Not the others but also not the company okay? I don't want him to get in trouble."

Silicia nodded again and put her pen down, watching his shoulders relax.

"They fought because Cris caught Alec stealing."

Silicia raised an eyebrow, but didn't interrupt. Tump was fidgetting with a loose thread in the hem of his shirt.

"I think he threatened to tell on him? But really it was probably because one of them said something again."

"Said something?"

"Something hurtful. Probably about Lia."

"Do they often say hurtful things about Lia?", she asked, feeling a bit ridiculous, like she was being made to play along in their children's games.

"No," he said quickly, then looked away and am ended: "Yes. But never to her."

---

The clouds had already been darkening when she'd hurried home, but the rain she hadn't believed the weather report about this morning hadn't broken quite yet. The first rumble of thunder in the distance now summoned her to the cracked living room window, the largest in the flat. Her half revised tax form sat abandoned on the desk in the bedroom where she'd been all too happy to leave it. She hadn't even turned off the light.

Now, Silicia watched in awe as the clouds unfurled, dropping rain on the city in a thick sheet which gave way to a steady noise as it beat against the rooftops. A few drops snuck through the gap in the window and landed on the bared skin of her arms and face, flung sideways by their impact against the glass. It was wonderful.

"Oh," Mira said softly behind her, "if I'd waited a bit longer we could have saved on the water bill."

She wandered into the living room only clad in a towel, leaving a trail of wet footsteps on the carpet. Like Silicia, she'd left the light on behind her. In the dark room, backlit and bathed in the dim glow of the storm, she looked formidable.

Mira joined her by the window, her smile highlighted dramatically by the occasional flashes of lightning, and Silicia smiled back. Together they watched as outside people cowered in house entrances and autumn leaves gathered up in neat piles were swept out into the road by the downpour.

"What are you thinking about?" Mira asked after a while.

"Work," Silicia replied with a self-depricating little laugh.

Mira cocked her head to the side, waiting. She wasn't sure if it wouldn't make her seem terribly immature to admit to thinking about literal teenage drama. Then she remembered that time in college Mira had snuck a microphone under a professor's desk in an attempt to verify a completely baseless rumor, and figured she would understand the itching need to snoop.

"The kids fought, recently. And it took me over a week to needle it out of them what actually happened. Somehow in the time between dragging them into my office and a teacher arriving - and I had my eyes on them the entire time! - they worked out a whole official story."

Mira's eyebrows rose, and instead of judging her for caring, she slung her arms around herself and leant in in a cheeky 'I'm listening' pose. Silicia went on, abandoning her own official story.

Outside the sound of the rain warred with a ringing church bell.

---

"I don't think Cris likes me much."

"What makes you say that?"

"Just... the way he looks at me sometimes is like he wishes I would just disappear? And," Erik nervously scratched the back of his neck, looking like he thought he was doing something wrong by telling her, "not in the way he dislikes Alec and Tump."

"How are they different?", Silicia asked interestedly, sketching a little relationship diagram on her notepad, waiting for him to tell her what to write above the arrows.

"I think he sees them as rivals, but I'm- actually, it's ridiculous. You'll think I'm making it up."

"Would you say it anyway?", she prompted gently, and Erik sighed, conceding.

"I think he's scared I'll usurp his place in the group because I'm close with Rin."

Silicia nodded and wrote 'intimidated by' above 'Cris -> Erik', and 'usurper' next to it, underlining it twice.

"I think you're a very good friend to her," she said tentatively, "but the relationship she has with Cris is very different. You shouldn't worry too much about it, because I think he is going to realize that soon."

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