A/N: In this chapter, going off of what I said in the A/N of last chapter, I've worked to provide something of an in-universe reason to downplay what I referenced there, with Naoko's crush. It'll be referenced here and there, but aside from that, I don't plan on making things too crazy.

By the way, for a breather chapter, this ended up being really long. I really wasn't expecting that.

With only one day remaining until their pool/gaming party was to begin, the five of them definitely had quite a bit of work ahead of them. Each of them had what was, at the very least, a somewhat broad role that would go towards making things nice for everyone.

Eryu ended up organizing the whole thing, which seemed fitting, since the whole thing was his idea in the first place. He claimed to have a very particular idea of what they would need and what he would need everyone else to do. Aside from that, there was also the matter of Haru, who had worked last night to create some metal objects, and would continue to do so. He'd also be able to lend a helping hand if they needed someone to do some heavy lifting, since he touted himself as being quite strong. Yasuo, per his suggestion, worked for a little while on preparing the game room and music room for the festivities in the former. Other than that, he was on hand in case they needed someone to fetch something or perform some miscellaneous task, which he was more than happy to do.

That left Naoko and Yori, who were in charge of the decorations in both the game room and the pool room. It seemed like a simple task at a glance, making sure both rooms looked appropriately festive. Naoko had sort of expected they'd have to do some decorating, considering the list of items on those sheaves they had handed out.

However, there was an issue with that: they had very limited access to party decorations. This was very much unexpected, considering the array of useful items that both storage rooms contained, but it was unfortunately true. They lacked streamers, paper lanterns, and balloons, and had very little in the way of creative lighting choices.

Still, the facility apparently had some of those items, but not on the first or second floors. Apparently there was a storage area on a lower floor which contained said items. IMONO had offered to bring them up for them, but Eryu had declined the offer, citing the fact that IMONO was to have no part in the party preparations. Naoko didn't like hearing that, and he was confused as to what they were supposed to do, until it was explained to them what he and Yori's position as the party's decorators truly entailed.

Haru had apparently been asked to create, among other things, some metal frames for paper lanterns. Combining those frames with colored paper, scissors, some string and some fast-drying glue would allow them to circumvent the need for IMONO's party decorations by making their own. And, well, Naoko and Yori were in charge of making them. They'd also take similar steps to whip up some colorful streamers, and once they were done, Naoko and Yori would be in charge of the actual decorating process. It was quite a bit of work, but hey, they would be working together. Eryu would also help them a bit, but he was also working with Yasuo and, to a lesser extent, Haru, so he couldn't always be there. So really, it would just be Naoko and Yori for the most part…

...Just the two of them.

Naoko and Yori walked to the meeting room together, Naoko doing his best not to seem nervous. Yori had in her hands one of the many plastic boxes found within the primary storage room. The box had previously been emptied out to contain many of the supplies that they would ultimately need to finish up their little arts and crafts project that they had been saddled with. Unfortunately, the paper lantern frames were too big to fit inside it, so Naoko was carrying two of them in his hands. As for the rest, they'd have to ask Yasuo to bring them over once they got around to making them. That aside, they would have to do what they could with what they already had, the meeting room, with its large table, acting as their little workshop, as the actual workshop was being used by Haru.

Naoko awkwardly opened the door and the two made their way inside single-file. Once inside, Yori immediately placed the box down and began setting down its contents, and Naoko unceremoniously dropped the two metal frames onto the table in turn. They had much work to do.

"So," Yori began, taking a seat and starting to work on the streamers, "this is an unusual task, isn't it?"

Naoko swallowed. Was Yori trying to initiate small talk? Naoko thought she wasn't good at that. Could she have wanted to talk to him because...No, that couldn't be it. There was no way he could be so lucky, he reasoned.

"I guess?" Naoko shrugged. "I mean, it's interesting. Should give us something to do."

Yori nodded in agreement, and Naoko attempted to get his mind off of things by taking a look at one of the metal frames in front of him. He basically had to make sure it was covered well with colored paper. It sounded simple. Naoko tried his hand at it, picking up some red paper and seeing what he could do with it.

Naoko was pretty confused at first, and didn't really know what he was doing, which really made him anxious, but once he actually took a step back to think, he felt like he could actually make it work, and started to make some real progress. Yori, for the most part, was able to work with little in the way of pause, and they worked together on it for a good while.

"Hey, Naoko?" Yori asked suddenly in the middle of their work.

"H-huh?" Naoko instinctively uttered, looking up from cutting paper for the streamers.

"Sorry to interrupt your work," she apologized, "I just wanted to ask you something."

Naoko's eyes widened. "What is it?"

"I wasn't sure about asking it at first," Yori admitted, "because I wasn't sure if your reaction would be conducive to us working together well, but…"

Yori looked down, sighed, and looked back up again, giving Naoko a somewhat stern look.

"Be honest with me. Has the Lita-22 made you feel differently towards me?"

Naoko was so shocked that he nearly cut his own finger with his pair of scissors. He moved back in his seat a bit and gave Yori a surprised look.

"Do you really think that?" he asked.

Yori looked him up and down. "Hm...Well, now I'm sure."

"What do you mean?"

"I'm almost positive you're not normally like this," Yori explained. "I've noticed how you act around me, you know. I'm not stupid. And you know what?"

Yori then did something that Naoko really wasn't expecting: she gave him a patient smile.

"I don't hold it against you in the slightest."

Naoko looked at her curiously, her now kind demeanor making him relax a little. "You don't mind?"

"Not particularly," Yori replied. "I mean, you have yet to do anything that I would consider to be unacceptable. You haven't obsessed over me in public, and you certainly haven't forced yourself onto me."

Naoko flinched at this. "Do you really think I'd do that?"

Yori shrugged nonchalantly. "Maybe. Like IMONO has stated, there's a chance some of us could act a bit...differently than we normally do. We've seen that with Mariko well enough, and as for you...well, you aren't normally this...outwardly nervous, I wouldn't say. Then again, maybe this is just how you act while you're in love."

Naoko gave an awkward chuckle. "Yeah, maybe," he replied. "I haven't felt the way I have recently in a long time, I don't think. It makes me feel...kinda-"

"I think I know what you're going to say," Yori interrupted. "You're not stupid, and you're not pathetic. You're just in the same bad situation as the rest of us."

"Hm. I guess we're all kinda messed up by this," Naoko agreed. "Thank you, Yori."

"No worries," Yori replied. "Having this conversation with you at least breaks up the monotony. Speaking of which…" She pointed towards the part of the streamers Naoko was working on.

"Got it. We have work to do."

Naoko and Yori returned to work, feeling a lot better than they had before.

After they had successfully completed the creation process, they were then tasked with actually placing the decorations. Of course, Eryu had insisted that he be there when they put up the decorations, so that everything looked the way he was intending they do. That meant that they'd have to meet up with him, so they left the meeting room with the intent of finding him. And, well, it turned out they didn't have to look for long, as he was approaching the doors to the meeting room just as they were leaving it.

"Ah, perfect," Eryu said as he approached. "You two are done right on time. Come on, let's get to work decorating the rooms."

Starting with the game room, Naoko and Yori could see that Yasuo hadn't done too much work in it, other than move the furniture around a little bit and lay out some game boxes and a pack of playing cards laid out on the tables. There were also some things on top of the cabinet of games. A book that looked like it had some songs in it, and a box of plastic-looking reeds. Probably retrieved from the music room for Takeshi.

Well, despite Yasuo already having prepped the room, the three of them still needed to apply the final touches. They taped some streamers to the walls and some paper lanterns to the ceiling, suspended by string. It was actually pretty easy, and they finished up without much fuss. The pool room, however, would be an entirely different beast.

When the three of them entered the room, Naoko and Yori noticed some things that were different inside. To the right of the pool were a couple of those black folding chairs from the gym, and by the wall opposite of the entrance were some speakers, connected together by an extension cable which led to an electrical socket in the lower left corner of the room. Finally, to the left of the room, just below the entrance to the men's changing room, was a folding table, covered by a blue, silky-looking cloth that went down enough to almost touch the floor, only missing a few inches. Yasuo was standing behind it when they entered the room, looking between a sheet of paper and a boxy-looking device.

"We're all here, Yasuo," Eryu called out to him. This made Yasuo reflexively stand at attention.

"That's perfect," he said. "Don't worry about me, sir. I've just been preparing the playlist."

"Playlist?" Naoko asked. "So that's that music player from the list of items, isn't it?" Naoko pointed to Yasuo's device.

"Oh, this?" Yasuo put his hand to the device. "Yes, Naoko, you're correct. We need music for the pool room, and Takeshi cannot be in two places at once, can he?"

"While you two were working," Eryu explained, "one of the things Yasuo and I did was go around and ask what kind of music the partygoers in the pool room would enjoy."

"Don't forget what food they would like," Yasuo added. "Naoko, Yori, if you'd like, you can add to either list while there's still time."

"We can talk about that later, I think," Naoko suggested.

"Well, I have no preferences for either, really," Yori replied, looking uninterested.

"Can I ask where you found that music player?" Naoko asked.

"Of course you can," Yasuo replied with a smile. "We found it in a box in the primary storage room. The one opposite to the medical room, with all the boxes and such. It had a wide range of songs on it, so we decided it fit our purposes just fine. We found those speakers over there in the same storage room, conveniently enough. Oh!"

Yasuo reached to a part of the table besides the music player, where Naoko couldn't see from where he was, and pulled out a small, black device. "We also found this in the same box as the music player."

"What is that?" Naoko asked, moving closer.

"Have a look for yourself," Yasuo offered, presenting it in front of him, allowing Naoko to close the distance and take the device in his own hands. It was some sort of remote control, and a very basic one at that. Most of it was taken up by a big button that had a plus symbol on the top, and a minus symbol on the bottom. Underneath it were two smaller buttons, with a left and right arrow each.

"Oh, I see," Naoko said. "The big button raises or lowers the volume, and the buttons underneath change the song, right?"

"Yep," Eryu confirmed. "We tested it ourselves already. It's hooked up to the music player and works just fine. Anyone should be able to change the volume, if they need to."

"Need to?" Yori inquired. "To do what? Drown out a particularly noisy argument?"

"...Sure, something like that," Eryu replied.

From there, the four of them got to work on decorating the pool room. The issue that they had in the pool room compared to the game room was that, while placing the streamers and such was simple in the game room, the pool room was noticeably taller than the game room. Thus, the streamers would have to be placed higher up, and hanging the paper lanterns from the ceiling? Well, that'd be tricky.

Luckily, Yasuo was able to bring in a collapsible step-ladder from the secondary storage room, and though its height was nothing mind-blowing, it was enough to reach the ceiling. This meant that hanging things from the ceiling was feasible, as well as one other thing. Apparently, the lighting in the room was too bright for what Eryu had in mind. Thus, they needed to dim the lights somehow. Unfortunately, there were no dimmer switches connected to the lights in the pool room, so dimming the lights seemed like a difficult task. Deciding to avoid getting too technical, Eryu and Yasuo decided that the best solution would be to cover the lights with parchment paper to block some of the light.

Dimming the room in such a manner was a bit of a slow process, as they worked carefully to avoid any sort of on-the-job accident. But, once they had finished, the room was noticeably dimmer. This was when Yasuo went to fetch some things, and returned with a spotlight and something kind of strange. It looked like black paper, cut into a circular shape, with some holes punched through it. Plugging it into the same outlet as the speakers, the paper circle was taped to the front of the spotlight, and the spotlight was placed down on the floor in the lower left corner of the room. Finally, it was switched on, allowing light to shine through the holes in the paper to create dots of light that hit the wall at the back of the room.

"Well, it's no pattern projector, but it'll do," Eryu said proudly.

"That was...well, quite a lot of work, really," Naoko commented, looking around the room, a job more or less well done.

"It didn't seem like all that much to me," Yori noted.

"I feel the same way," Yasuo agreed. "Then again, I'm more than used to long hours. Still, I think it's good that we're keeping busy."

"I suppose," Yori replied. "If our work here is done, what now? Should we speak to Haru?"

"Right," Eryu said. "He should still be in the workshop."

"Is he still working?" Naoko asked.

"He should be," Eryu replied.

"What else is he making? I thought-"

"Don't worry about it," Yori interrupted.

Naoko snapped to look at her.

"Sorry," she continued. "He should be working on some things that we may need. We can't really speak about them freely, though. They're part of our plans, and IMONO can't know."

"Can't IMONO see what Haru's working on, though?" Naoko pointed out.

"We thought about that, too," Eryu explained. "We just put up a barrier so that the camera can't see the workbench he's making the stuff on. IMONO doesn't want us covering up the cameras, but we can still hide stuff from them."

"That's true," Naoko agreed, thinking back to the times they wrote to avoid IMONO eavesdropping.

"With any luck, mister Hagane will be done momentarily," Yasuo said. "Then, we should all be able to rest for the upcoming festivities. Isn't that just lovely?"

The remaining three occupants of the room nodded in agreement.

After a while, Haru was indeed ready to put his work aside and relax with the rest of them, and the group separated. The work took some time, certainly, but being able to put it all together was nice enough. Eryu was also quite happy with how it all turned out, considering that IMONO wasn't involved in any way. He was certainly able to keep his promise, it seemed...even if it meant it took longer.

Well, Naoko noticed that he still had some time to himself, so he figured he'd find someone to talk to, to unwind a bit.

Naoko went into the cafeteria for the time being, and noticed that Haru was also there. At the moment, the metalworker seemed to be stretching and cracking his joints, and looked rather content.

"Yo," Haru said simply. "Just got off of workin' my ass off, and thought I'd grab a bite before dinner. You in?"

Naoko figured this sounded like a nice enough way to unwind, so he agreed. From there, the two of them proceeded to hang out with each other in the cafeteria for a while. It was fairly casual, and Haru seemed assuringly at ease after working his ass off, as he would put it. All things considered, a nice experience, and Naoko felt like the two of them grew a little closer because of it. He figured that he could give Haru a little gift while the two were together, so he slid him a bag of peppered jerky.

"Damn, Naoko, this is sweet! I'm definitely gonna be holdin' onto this, believe me."

Naoko brought his hand to his mouth in contemplation, an act which Haru was quick to take notice of.

"Somethin' botherin' you, man?" Haru asked.

"I was just thinking about asking you something," Naoko replied. "I'm just not sure how to."

"Just say what's on your mind," Haru suggested. "Don't hold anythin' back. That's what I do."

"Sure," Naoko said hesitantly. "Since we first met, I've noticed you're very against factories."

Haru's eyes narrowed, giving Naoko pause, before he relaxed them again.

"Hah," Haru chuckled. "Sorry, old habit. 'Guess to guys like you, I must sound like a fuckin' luddite or somethin' when I talk about that, huh."

"I mean," Naoko began, a bit cautious, "I wouldn't go that far."

"Well, I can give you an answer if it's botherin' you," Haru offered.

"Sure," Naoko replied. "What is it?"

"Well," Haru began, "remember when I said that nothin's better than makin' something with your own hands?"

"Yeah, I remember," Naoko confirmed.

"Do you know why that is?"

"Why?" Naoko repeated back. "Is it because mass-produced items aren't as well made?"

"That's definitely part of it," Haru replied. "But that's not the only reason."

"There's another reason?"

"Yep. It's a bit of an, uh...What's the term? Abstract?" Haru stopped for a moment to think, but eventually shrugged it off. "Fuck it. I'll just come out and say it. It's about passion."

"Passion?" Naoko asked.

Haru grumbled a bit. "I'll just explain it like this: When you get somethin' for yourself, how much would you say you appreciate it?"

"That depends on what it is," Naoko answered.

"Alright," Haru replied. "Then how much do you appreciate somethin' you make yourself?"

"I'm supposed to appreciate it more, right?" Naoko guessed.

"Exactly!" Haru said, a bit of a grin developing on his face. "See, when you make somethin', you appreciate it. You appreciate the effort that goes into makin' it, and you don't wanna have to make it again, so you make sure you don't break it or lose it or some shit like that. That appreciation, that passion, it just ain't there when you get somethin' that was made in a factory."

Naoko contemplated this reasoning. "Huh. I guess I never really thought about it like that."

"Not enough people do," Haru said pointedly. "Not these days. People go to a museum, and they see old weapons and armor and shit, and the first thing that they focus on is who used 'em, who they were for. They don't give two shits who made the damn things."

"Are you sure about that?" Naoko asked. "I feel like that's kind of a generalization."

"Call it whatever," Haru shrugged. "That's how I see it. Anyways, I could go on all day about shit like that. But I bet you're already bored outta your skull."

"No, no," Naoko assured him, "I think this is actually really interesting."

Haru's eyes widened. "Oh. Is that so? Well, even if that's true, we can't go through all this at once. Let's pick this up later, yeah?"

"Sounds good to me."

So, Naoko left, glad to have gotten the information that he did. It was by no means life-changing, but he felt like he understood where Haru had been coming from. The guy certainly had his passions. Maybe some other time, they could talk more about them.