"Now tha's a new one", Kayt noted, standing in the kitchen with only underwear and a robe. She had noticed Jay sitting on the table with an open book and notes she couldn't even begin to understand. All she could make out was blueprints and sketches of buildings from hundreds of grand cycles ago. "Now's not the time to study, is it?"

"Do I have a choice?", Jay asked, looking up with a questioning look on his face. "Your brother kept me busy enough."

"But can ya even learn like that?", Kayt asked, confused as she loomed over him. Even with the robe, she felt the chills all over her body. "At da very leas', lemme grab ya a blanket."

"Thanks, I'll be fine", he assured her before turning back to his book. "I'm laggin' enough as it is, so every step I make is welcome."

"Ya coming to bed tonight, at least? Wouldn't want ya to stand in for da clock."

"Two hours, at most. I'll be really quiet, I promise."

"Oooh, but ah don't want to wait so long", Kayt told him before putting her head on his level. "Can't ye cut it down to, say, just one hour? Ah'll be waiting for you if you do, if ya know what ah mean."

"Mmmh, that sounds neat", Jay pondered, but Kayt couldn't quite tell if he understood. Maybe he merely wasn't listening to her. "But I'll have to pass."

Bummed out, Kayt replied: "Awww, ye can't even have fun with this..." She knelt down by his side, her eyes widening as if she wanted him to look at the face of an infant.

Jay took a moment to even register that she was still there, but as soon as he did, he turned away, looking annoyed. "Kayt, you're getting on my nerves", he explained before adjusting some papers. "Just tonight, I'd rather pull through. I wanna show myself that I can do that, you know?"

"...oh, yer being serious", Kayt realised before turning away out of shame. "Nevermind me, ah'm just being a little dumbass." After a peck on the cheek, she pushed herself off the floor and said: "Ah'll still be waiting, tho! But ah won't promise to still be up!" As she left the kitchen, Jay said

"Not gonna expect it!"

She then laid down and waited with anticipation, but sleep got the better of her before Jay came back. When he did eventually returned, he noticed her lying on the bed and barely covered with the blanket, so he took it and covered the both of them with it, finishing with a kiss on the forehead.

Ray and Milana have left Kirk's home and rode off to their own place. The suburbs were in stark contrast with the city: quiet, just lit enough to find your way on the roads and not a single soul lurking through the streets. Light would shine through a couple windows, but that was far from enough to compete with the streetlights.

Their destination was a house about the size of Kirk, hardly distinguishable from the ones around it, but when somebody had to drive up and down the same road every day for years, one stopped orienting themselves after their shapes, especially in the dark. With the car parked, however, their first stop wasn't their own home, but the one to the left. One light still shone inside on the ground floor, with a silhouette visible behind the curtain. After Ray rang the doorbell two times, the silhouette moved away and the door opened. A sterlar woman greeted them in her nightdress, carrying a seal in her arms.

“Ah, there you are”, she said before handing over the seal to Ray. “You could've called if you decided to stay away longer.”

“Sorry about that”, Ray replied, tickling the seal's nose. “So, has he been a good boy?”

“As always”, she told the two. “I'm running out of the brand he likes, though. Think you can some of it over again?”

“I'll see that I get around it during my lunch break”, Milana noted. “But for now, have a good night.” They bowed slightly before the door closed, leaving the three to return to their own home.

“You got the keys?”, Ray asked her, moving his hand over the seal's head.

“No, you didn't give them to me”, Milana noted. “Are they in your pockets?”

“Lemme check...” He shook both his legs for a moment. “Left one.”

“My, how you can forget something like this so quickly”, Milana noted and shook her head as she walked to Ray's left and put her hand into his pocket.
“Hey, I wasn't the one who had to be convinced to try out food”, Ray joked.

After fiddling with the keys for a moment, the two of them stepped into their dark apartment, putting aside their jackets before Ray put down their pet and Milana checked the wall for the light switch. When she managed to find it, the seal had already rushed into the living room, as they could hear it making squeaky noises.

“You think Shaz wants a midnight snack?”, Ray wondered as he kept undressing.

“Not tonight; he's got enough weight on his hips”, Milana told him while they made their way into the bedroom.

Like from one moment to another, Ray and Milana were lying in bed and facing each other, but Ray wasn't feeling sleepy yet. He couldn't tell if it was from Agate's filling dinner or the thought of that thief still roaming through town, but he was sure that he couldn't fall into slumber anytime soon. Making sure that Milana had fallen asleep, he slipped out from below the bedsheets and sneaked to the door, making sure he wouldn't accidentally wake her up. He shut the door behind himself and walked into his living room, where the only thing that interested him at the moment was a laptop, propped up on the table and ready to be used. He hesitated for a moment as he stared into the darkness, but as he slowly stepped towards the computer, he knew that it was delaying the inevitable. Carefully taking a seat, he hit the power button and waited for it to load, as he noticed that Shaz was lying on his couch. Leaving his pet be, he looked at the reflection coming from the computer screen and noticed how messy he was already looking. Too tired to care much about it, he halfheartedly pushed his hand through his hair. Before he knew it, Shaz was looking at him from the show with expecting eyes. “Sorry, little one, Mommy said no more for tonight”, Ray explained to him, but he could already tell that discussing this was futile. “...okay, how about I get you a little something from the jar?”

The seal merely reacted by lying down on its back, which Ray found vaguely amusing before he got back up and moved to the kitchen. Slogging through the corridor, however, Ray noticed a picture of a pair of sterlars propped up on a cupboard. One of them was Ray himself from so long ago that he didn't have his beard, the other a woman that looked about as old as he did in said picture. With his mind occupied, he reached into a jar and grabbed two cookies, then went back to the living room and reached the snacks out to the seal. Eagerly, Shaz jumped up and slobbered away at his hand.

His mind still wandering, he loaded a browser before typing:

“connet.and.sto”

The site it proceeded to look was a social media one, for people to keep their connections all listed and tidied up. A long list of people was on the right side of the page, presumably as suggestions for who he could add because he may have heard of them at one point because their name was spoken in a conversation he wasn't even a part of. The left side contained some of his private information, though it wasn't very much. “Rayeold F, residing in Kopernika, Rigudan”. Not a single note written by him, not a single friend registered.
Moving the cursor to a search bar, he typed in: “No-la Frei-seer...” Promptly, a list of people popped up that all happened to share the name, though the only one he was interested in turned up at the very top: A sterlar woman that seemed to look like what Ray would appear as if he was one, complete with blood orange coloured hair and a poisonously green skintone. His hesitation kicked back in, as though he feared that taking a look would be akin to triggering a trap straight out of an adventure movie, but before the thought took over completely, he shook it off clicked on her face, displaying her profile. In comparison to his, it was a lot more lush, and not just in terms of information she decided to show. He could pick a random day and Nola would've made at least a handful of posts, taking pictures of herself with who he thought were her friends, her family and – especially – their own family on numerous different occasions, looking as energetic as he remembered her from when he was still with them.

A large button was embedded beneath her profile picture. “ConNet with Nola Freiseer” was written on it. The mere sight of it irritated him as he put his hands away from the laptop and beneath his head. He intently stared at it, only switching back and forth between the button and the picture, with occasional glances on her dash.

“Why do I keep bothering with this?”, he thought. “She'd probably get a shock if I contacted her! And yet... I keep coming back...” Frustrated, he grabbed a glass with some leftover drink that had been standing on the table and continued: “Just how is it that they can move on and I can't?” With full force, he flung his glass against the wall, soaking it with the drink and making a dent in it. The glass, meanwhile, remained intact lying on the ground. Severely angered, Ray slammed the laptop shut before he heard footsteps approaching from behind. It was Milana, looking bewildered into the room.
“...sorry that I woke you up”, Ray said, acting as though nothing happened. “I just wanted to get a glass of water, and... then I tumbled.”

Without a word, she turned the light on, still not quite sure what to expect, before looking at the wall onto which he threw the glass. “Ray.”
“Yes?”, Ray replied, still pretending.
“You can't tell me you punched a hole into the wall just with a glass slipping out of your hand.”

“Well, when I'm not paying attention, the weirdest things happen... The weekend's coming, so I can fix it up then.”

Milana didn't seem convinced by his apology, but appeared to be too tired to look into it any further. “...so you're coming back to bed now?”

“Yeah, just give me a sec.”
Milana nodded and then walked back into the bedroom, as Ray took the glass of the floor, with Shaz waddling towards him like he didn't see anything, either.

“At least you aren't asking any questions...”, he said and lifted his pet, gently pressing his head against the pet's. “Now come, you'll sleep in Papa's bed tonight...”