Seymour followed Mr. Mushnik to his car in a daze, trying to process what had just happened and partially failing as if his mind was trying to shield him from the full extent of it. He only realized that he had slid into the passenger seat and that the car was now moving out of the parking lot after the fact, distracted by his struggle to imagine either the conversation he would have with Audrey in AP Calculus AB tomorrow or what it would be like if he had to fill in for Orin without passing out from anxiety. The car was silent save for its numerous run ins with the pot holes of the roads of Skid Row for a long time, until Mr. Mushnik eventually broke the relative silence. "So… I never would've thought you would want to audition." Seymour shrank away from his questioning, almost amazed gaze. "...I didn't, Orin… took me with him and wouldn't take no for an answer…" Mr. Mushnik sighed, seemingly amused and frustrated at the same time. "It seems that's not something he's good at." After a moment, he looked back over at him, and Seymour forced himself to meet his gaze, noting with surprise that it now offered something almost resembling… reassurance? "You'll do fine, Krelborn." Seymour jolted a little taller in surprise. "Really?" Mr. Mushnik turned back towards the road, parking the car in its customary place in front of the shop. "Sure. Orin hasn't missed a performance once."
As Seymour's hopes fell, Mr. Mushnik exited the car, and he followed him to the shop a moment later, setting up his homework at the storefront's desk while he relieved his other employee of her duties for the day. Although Seymour thought he had heard her mention something about another job once before… He combed over the AP Biology assignment Orin had forcibly helped him with for longer than he probably should have, trying and failing to find any flaws in his work, and succumbed back into his not long forgotten anxieties over the conversation he would have with Audrey tomorrow… potentially the last one he would ever have with her… and the play that now loomed over him. How was he going to memorize all those lines? Properly convey such a complex character if it ever came down to it? Balance rehearsals and his classes and getting Audrey 2 ready for the science fair? Oh yeah… Audrey 2… with the contemplations he had devoted to the original Audrey, he had admittedly shirked his nightly ritual of adjusting its living conditions in the hopes of restoring it to health the previous day… that sounded like a more enjoyable task than figuring out what F. Scott Fitzgerald had meant to symbolize with the green light, even despite its seemingly Sisyphean nature, so he might as well work on that first.
Seymour went down to the basement, sitting in front of the table where his science fair project sat and worriedly feeling its increasingly wilted leaves. What would he do if it… didn't make it? …No, it had to make it, it just had to! As he got up, walking to get a watering can that was across the room, he saw a red rose on the ground and absentmindedly moved to pick it up, trying to make his stay in the basement away from his non-botanical schoolwork last longer. "Ow!" Pain shot through his hand, and he realized that he had stabbed himself with one of the rose's thorns… because he was just that smooth… An odd, unexpected sucking sound from behind him distracted him from his attempt to ease the pain by… well… sucking on the wound, and he turned around, seeing Audrey 2… reaching its bud out towards him and making sucking motions with its mouth-like structure? They almost seemed like just a head and mouth respectively now… Wait… was it attracted to his… blood? Seymour pondered this odd situation for a moment before moving towards it, extending his bloodied finger towards it and causing it to strain towards it. …But what if it was suddenly attracted to his flesh and not his blood? He extended a fully intact finger towards it, causing it to lift its head away from it in what he would've labeled as disgust if he hadn't learned in Honors Biology in his freshman year that anthropomorphism was bad and unscientific… although it certainly seemed disgusted…
Well… if giving Audrey 2 his blood was what it took to keep it alive, then that was what he would have to do… as long as it didn't make a habit out of it or anything. After a moment of hesitation, Seymour lifted his bloodied finger above the plant's head, looking away from it in disgust as it greedily lapped up the drops of blood that he squeezed so that they would fall into its mouth. Afterwards, he slowly managed to look back towards it, noting with no small amount of satisfaction that it appeared to be doing better now. He just hoped it would grow for him now… Seymour meanderingly cleaned up a small amount of the immense clutter of his room for a few minutes, eventually managing to force himself to get back upstairs to the rest of his work. He finished it even later than usual, thanks to the auditions and the man who's fault that diversion had been keeping him late, and he dreaded to think how late into the night he would be working when he had rehearsals to contend with. Seymour went back down to the basement to tend to his other plants, hardly believing his eyes as he saw that Audrey 2 had grown… at least three times the size it had been the last time he had been down here. Plants could grow much more quickly than animals, sure, but he had never heard of them growing that much that quickly.
Seymour contemplatively took out his phone, waiting its customary agonizingly long time for it to load anything, and took a few pictures of the plant at its new size from different angles before writing down how many drops of blood he had given it and mentally vowing to remember to convert that into reportable measurements tomorrow before school. School… that conversation with Audrey… oh God… Seymour moved to take care of the rest of his plants after a delay, pausing at a pot of pink lilies. Audrey had said her volleyball team was called the Pink Lilies, so she probably liked them. Maybe a gift of them would help him to restore his good standing with her and celebrate the win she and her team had certainly just achieved… Seymour quickly tended to the others before moving back towards them, giving them water and the minerals they needed and making, labeling, and placing packets of said nutrients in their pot along with a ribbon he had grabbed from the floral arranging station upstairs and wrapped around it. He didn't know why, but a green ribbon seemed particularly fitting for her. Seymour inspected his handiwork, feeling his nerves calm down slightly despite his seemingly complete lack of skill at tying decent looking bows.