Jesse was eating some dish that was a rather pretty shade of pink (nobody would tell them what was in it, and so they decided not to be a nuisance and pester them about it) when Soren walked in.

Well, more accurately, he said, "Good morning" while he was right behind Mevia, which caused her to jump and choke, which then in turn caused her to swear like a sailor at him and simultaneously choke and cough while Isa thumped her on the back.

His mustache was turned up at the ends in what suspiciously looked like a smile as he continued, "Good morning, October Children, good morning Isa, Harper, hello, Petra, nice to see you, and..." His smile turned into a wider one as he lifted his hand in greeting. "Hello, Jesse."

Jesse bobbed their head and waved over their pink dish. "Hi, Soren. What's this?" They pointed at the pink dish.

He went over to look at it a bit more closely, staring at the dish closely.

(Jesse was busy looking up at him with big eyes while he looked at whatever pink mush they were eating, and thus missed the death glares half of the room proceeded to send Soren promising his imminent doom if he told them exactly what was in it.)

After a moment, he shrugged. "Since you're eating it, I don't think I should say. There is a small amount of meat in it, but nothing particularly disgusting or, ahem," he cleared his throat slightly, "exotic, so unless you're a vegetarian..."

"I do tend to eat less meat, but I'm not vegetarian or vegan, so..." Jesse shrugged and looked down at Reuben, who was snuffling quietly in a little bowl of some kind of plant that Aiden had put out for him (he said there was a kind of flower mixed in that would help Reuben digest and that didn't taste bad, but that was all he'd say about the ingredients) in their lap.

He was getting some plant debris on their clothing.

"Oh, is that so? You're fine, then." He ruffled their hair and looked up at the others with a small smile. "Well, may I ask what you're all doing passing through here? You all don't usually muck around in the End."

"We do usually try to skip it," Gill murmured.

Maya kicked him in the shin.

Lukas stopped eating his weird black ramen dish (well, it looked like ramen to Jesse, they had no idea if it actually was anything like ramen) to answer, outright ignoring Gill and Maya swearing at each other quietly. "We're actually headed to Fortrylle."

"Enchantra's capital," Isa told Jesse quietly when she saw their bemused expression.

"Oh."

Soren nodded, as if that made sense. "Ah, I see. But surely you could've skipped the End...?"

He faltered, and then he sighed, a slightly more annoyed expression fixing itself on his face. "Oh, wait. The bandit activity has been more active in Hizelk lately, correct?"

"Yeah, so we spent about... what, half the day yesterday fending off this one giant group of bandits?" Aiden sighed and bit off a large bite of his toast. (Was it toast? Jesse couldn't tell. It smelled like toast and looked like burnt toast, so it probably was something along the lines of toast.)

"Oh, yes, and then you've got to spend all that time muddling through Jupin, since Beacontown's in turmoil as well, and the bandit activity's even higher..."

Maya swore again, and this time not because she was bickering with Gill. "Oh, that's fantastic... what kind of delay would that add?"

Soren pursed his lips, considering it. "Well, any messengers that come from Beacontown usually end up having to take a full day... so two days to get through Jupin and end up in Beacontown, including a stay at Beacontown since you can't really blaze through the night..."

"It would be difficult to blaze through the night with all those Ghastly monsters roaming about at night," Mevia said, with a completely straight face.

"No," Harper told her, trying not to grin while scowling at her.

"Is this really the time for puns?" Aiden muttered, frowning at Mevia.

"It is always the time for puns."

"It really isn't, Mevia," Isa mumbled.

Jesse giggled, which made Soren sigh and ruffle their hair. Either from sympathy or as some kind of 'punishment', Jesse couldn't tell.

"Two days isn't that bad, truthfully," Isa said, after she'd finished shooting halfhearted insults at Mevia, "most slower people would take longer."

"Yes, so for normal people it would take weeks," Aiden said flatly.

Soren nodded. "Essentially."

Jesse took another bite of the pink dish as Soren leaned on the table, quietly thinking through the schedule. "As long as you hurry, you shouldn't have to worry about a huge delay."

Harper looked faintly relieved at that. "Good," she said simply.

Soren nodded, evidently not taken aback by her complete lack of talking. Maybe it was a well-known thing? They were still in Hizelk.

Mevia sighed and looked at Jesse eating the pink dish.

It was like pink powder. Jesse would probably have pinned it as the sakura denbu they'd eaten once at the school culture festival at the Japan booth, except it wasn't sweet and it was a bit clumpier, like there were small chunks of something inside.

"Do you like it?"

Jesse nodded and took another bite. It was... actually, it kinda tasted like toast with butter on it, but... not.

(Yes, what a wonderful description. Jesse really couldn't have described it beyond that; it was buttered toast but not quite the taste of buttered toast.)

"Yeah; I was kinda expecting it to be sweet like sakura denbu."

Aiden shot them a rather weird look. "Sakura what now?"

"Oh, um, sakura denbu... it's like this... it's a Japanese powder thing. Kinda looks like this except minus the chunks," Jesse hastily added, trying not to blush bright pink at having let their thoughts slip.

Lukas nodded, as if that made perfect sense.

Maybe it did, but it probably didn't.

"Oh. That makes sense. What is it made of?" he asked, tilting his head at Jesse. They couldn't see his eyes due to the ever-present blindfold, but they would've been willing to bet that there was a good amount of curiosity in his eyes.

"Sakura denbu is like... sweetened codfish flakes."

They got some extremely weird looks for that. Even Reuben peeked up from his breakfast to give Jesse a skeptical look.

"I know it sounds weird but it's actually really good..."


A/N: Sakura denbu is actually a thing; you know in Studio Ghibli's Totoro the older sister (Satsuki, evidently) makes a bento with a heck ton of rice, some kind of fish, peas, and pink stuff? It's commonly speculated that the pink powder is sakura denbu.

It actually does seem plausible. It's very pink. xD

No, the thing's not poisoned or anything. Just not some very savory ingredients for a human to hear xD

RQTC: Have you ever done something that just made you close your eyes and take a very deep breath and try not to throw whatever it is across the room?

Yes. Coding. I spent most of yesterday coding the user interface of a visual novel. Which in itself is not bad, but the effort it took was... well, simply put I don't understand most of the coding language so when an error came up I was like "... Google! Help me!"

I am a cup. Reviews are my coffee. Oh no, I'm overflowing xD

Responses to reviews!

Toni42: Yeeee x3 / It's not that, he's used to half-demons not remembering their wish because their hearts were taken. So while he DOES realize Jesse's a human, it just flat-out doesn't occur to him that they still remember it. / There are a lot of half-demons roaming around Cosmos. xD / Hehehehe xD / oh noes xD / Lots of puns, yes xD

ThinMintE: No prob :P / I might've had those once too! I think I liked them, but it was a long time ago now so xD

Guest: Ahh, thank you! Honestly, I thought he was out of character for the bits where I had to make nonsense up. xD / That is true. I also fear death, although for slightly different reasons. xD / Lol, true! / I think we do have more freedom, but with more freedom... comes a hell of a lot of more problems xD / Nah, is good. / Thank you! I'm glad you liked it :3

Guest: I had to purse my lips at that pun. I'll be tote-ing that one around. / Oh, I won't punish you, I thought it was puntastic.

TheAmberShadow: That does sound interesting xD / I'm just squidding, I'm having a ton of fun. I'm not salty that you're able to match the pun-making, though, you're an absolute star(fish)! / Oops. I'm not good at noticing typos xD I just meant that they didn't have a good control on light magic. For some reason I forgot to finish the sentence xD / Hehehe, I didn't even think of that. / Nope. Someone else. (Redstonia is one of the cities on the border, as well as Boom Town, so both are alive and well.) / He wouldn't tell someone else about someone else's secret- it's not his to tell. / Yeah xD

Darkbeast Dend: That's fair. xD / That's cool. I personally just get jumped too easy xD / Glad you enjoyed it!

That's all for now! I also am starting an MCSM Let's Play series on my YouTube! It's not hard to find me, if you google 'ariza luca' a ton of my stuff pops up xD

See ya, so long, and g'bye!

x.X. A.L. X.x