"So." Wipe wipe. "Guy number one is Elias Richards, the prodigy teacher."

"Mmhmm. He has green hair," Rosa provided helpfully.

"And guy number two is Drew Zimmerman, whom you call Glitcherman."

Rosa spooned some cereal from her bowl into her mouth. "Glitcherman," she seethed, her spoonful of cereal hanging in the air. "My worst enemy. The bane of my existence."

Wipe wipe wipe. Ignore. Examine. Set fork down. "Anyhow, guy number three is the Crown Prince, your current, um, target."

"Yes, and his fiance Lady Mildred of the Lindvall house is the Villainess."

"Whom you befriended."

She shrugged, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. "I judged that a relationship with her had a statistically significant chance of positively influencing my route chances."

Pick up spoon. Wipe. "Whatever that means. Lastly, we have guy number four, um, Linerd Avelaide."

"Leonard Avelaide," she corrected. "Not le nerd. Ha! Imagine, a capture target called le nerd." Rosa snorted.

Frown. Shake head. "Anyways. Leonard Avelaide. Son of the Prime Minister."

"Yup! And that's everyone."

Sigh. I looked up at her then, setting down the spoon into the rack and pursing my lips. "And every time you make a choice, you inch down a certain person's road?"

Rosa took some time to reply, since she was in the middle of drinking up the milk directly from the bowl. Setting it down, she grimaced at me. "Very simply put? Yeah. You probably don't need to understand it any further than that, though."

For the last two days, Rosa had been coming in her spare time to fill me in on the details of her 'prophecies,' which she kept calling 'routes' of this 'oto-meh' game. Still wasn't sure what that was, but I was kind of getting used to it now. I mean, listening to Rosa talking about stuff I didn't understand? I'd been doing that my whole life.

I chewed on my lips as my hands automatically continued to polish the utensils. "And each, um, road leads to three different possibilities: good, normal, and bad."

"Technically called sweet, friendship, and devastating, but basically, yeah." She made a face. "Sweet and Friendship, I understand. But Devastating? Really? They had to take it that far?"

"Well, maybe they were trying to spice things up a little," I answered absentmindedly. Rosa barked ha! at that and dove back into her bowl. "Anyways. These prophecies depend on how well you, um, romance them?"

"Pretty much," she nodded, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. "Uegh. Hand me a napkin?"

I pulled one out from my apron pocket and handed it over, then returned to my polishing.

We continued in silence, partially because I was trying to wrap my head around all of this again and partially because Rosa was busy trying to chase down every remaining speck of her cereal.

As I put down another well-polished fork into its designated spot in the rack, Rosa suddenly piped up. "Fibonacci numbers," she kind of announced, "are numbers in which you start from 0 and 1 and keep adding."

"...huh?"

"It's basically a sequence of numbers where you keep adding the last two numbers. Starting with 0 and 1, you get 0+1, which comes out to 1. The sequence becomes 0, 1, 1, so then you add the last two numbers, 1+1, which equals 2."

"Um, I already know this--"

"You just keep doing that from there. To remember easily, just think: the last number you added plus your most current solution. Like in 0+1, the last number you added with is 1, and the solution is 1, so for the next number, you add 1+1."

"Rosa, you already explained this to me--

"The sequence is now 0, 1, 1, 2, so now you add 1+2 to get 3."

"--when we were ten, and I told you I was bored--"

"Then next would be... that's right! 2+3=5. You're getting the hang of this. Then it's 3+5=8, 5+8=13, 8+13=21, so on and so forth. This is very handy entertainment for when you are utterly bored and have no outside stimulation available. Keep that in mind, and try it out the next time you can't fall asleep!"

"--Rosa!" I set down my rag onto the table, narrowing my eyes at her. "Fabionacci numbers explanation why?"

"Fibonacci," she corrected. "And this was just for the people in the back who didn't get what Fibonacci numbers were from the omake."

She then turned to the nonexistent screen and winked.¹shield your eyes, folks! here come the sparkles!

What the... Whatever. This is fine, I told myself, this is fine. This was Rosa. With that in mind, I just sighed and picked up my rag. Then promptly lowered it when a thought struck me momentarily. "Right! Didn't you say something about hidden people or something?"

Turning back to me, Rosa blinked innocently, as if she hadn't just addressed a nonexistent audience.²Of course she hasn't. "Oh, you remembered that? Yeah, they're always in these games. They're called hidden characters."

"And you romance them too?"

"Well, that's your choice. I had to take his route to complete the game, so I did."

"Oh." I wiped the spoon in my hand and set it down. "So who's the hidden, uh, character here?"

She picked up her spoon again. "Here? A dog."

Silence ensued.

"Oh, so he has a bad personality."

"No no, he's an actual dog." She glanced at me, nodding. "Very fluffy."

...a dog...?

I stared at her. She grabbed the box of cereal at her right and poured the tiniest bit more in. Then she shoveled new spoonfuls of food into her mouth, then chewed, chewed, chewed, and swallowed.

I took a deep breath. "You romanced a dog?!"

Rosa choked.

After five minutes of hacking and coughing and generally trying to stay alive, Rosa found her breath enough to tell me in between smaller coughs that the dog, apparently, would turn into a human.

"It's not like people would cough would fall in love with a dog, goodness gracious," she wheezed, while I pounded on her back. "And-- ow! Ow! Filian, stop that!"

"Oops, sorry." I returned to my side of the table with the silverware rack and picked up the polishing rag. "But really, Rosa, you should've said that first."

"You didn't give me a chance!" she squeezed out, still gasping a little.

"You seemed pretty done with this conversation! --anyways, that's not important. How does he even turn into a human in the first place?" I demanded.

Taking deeper breaths now, Rosa put a hand on her chest and exhaled slowly, still glaring at me. "Obviously, his love for the heroine is so big that the Powers That Be or something magically turn him into a human."

"Obviously?" I repeated, shaking my head. "That isn't obvious at all! And besides, I've never heard anything about animals turning into humans with only love. Somebody's got to have done something."

She shrugged. "I thought it was pretty typical, but okay."

I rolled my eyes. Of course Rosa would think something as unprecedented as that was 'typical.' Deciding it wasn't a conversation I wanted to really pursue, I moved on. "How come he was never in your considerations for choosing your 'target'?"

Rosa, who'd picked up her spoon again, set it back down and held up a finger instead. "First of all, his route is only possible when you've gotten all the bad ends for the rest of the characters. In other words, everyone else has to have died at least once. Second of all, I'm more of a cat person."

"A cat person?" I repeated. "You mean like cat b--"

"NO!" Rosa shouted, jumping up. "Don't you dare finish that word."

"Ack! Rosa!" I picked up the spoon I'd dropped, glaring at her. "What do you mean? I was just going to say 'cat breeds'!"

"No you weren't! Nobody says cat breeds! They say, they say bred cats!"

My jaw dropped. "Bread cats?! Nobody says that! Besides, what did you think I was going to say!"

"I refuse to say it! I refuse to put those words into my very own mouth! But nobody says cat breeds!"

I threw up a hand. "I'm sorry I don't say bread cats, but I think this is a little uncalled for!"

"Perhaps!" she shouted, then sat back down.

Taking a deep breath, Rosa picked up her spoon again. "Anyways," Rosa said, completely normal (as if we hadn't just had a mini shouting match, the nerve), "I'll try to tell you more about each character over time. No need to, oh, memorize them, though. Think of them as stories."

"Think of what as stories?" asked a new voice.

We both turned to the restaurant door at the same time. "Oh! Hey Idel!" (Rosa also popped up behind me and went, "Yo there!" right after me.)

"Hello," she greeted back to both of us, a slow smile blooming on her face. "Long time no see."

"That's right, where have you been?"

"I was visiting my parents in Ribdus," she explained slowly, as she sat down on one of the nearby stools. "Is Paul not here yet?"

I put down the rag and checked the clock-- it was ten minutes to open, so Paul must be coming soon, too. "Yeah. If he's on afternoon shift, he should be here soon." I dropped the polishing rag into my pocket and gave her a sunny smile as I grunted, hefting the rack of utensils into my arms. "Are you waiting for him?"

Idel paused for a moment before gently nodding her head, even as her neck reddened slightly.

Laughing, I flashed her another knowing smile, then twisted my head back to look at Rosa, my body posed to head to the kitchen. "You going?"

"...yeah," she said, but she looked a bit shifty. 

That wasn't a good sign. "Rosa?"

"I am!" she insisted, standing up. After a beat, she abruptly picked up her bowl and the box of cereal, and said, quite stiffly, "I'll just go put this in the kitchen."

I blinked. "But those are your utensils, and your box of cereal. Shouldn't you be taking them home?"

"Right. I'll just go wash them in the kitchen, and then go home."

My eyes narrowed as I turned to her fully. "Rosa," I warned, "if you're planning something weird--"

"I'm not!" Huffing, she threw her head back indignantly and stomped to the kitchen. "How is washing a bowl and a spoon in the kitchen sink weird?!"

"It's usually not," I muttered to myself as I watched her go, an eyebrow raised, "but it's possible if it's you."

Once Rosa disappeared into the kitchen, her nose still in the air, I turned to Idel kind of apologetically and gave her another smile. "Well, I'm sure Paul will be here soon. Give me a moment and I'll just put this back, 'kay?"

"Take your time," Idel answered, her lips rising into a smile as she swept her long hair back. "I'm not in a hurry."

I chuckled at that-- she never did seem like she was in a hurry-- and took one step towards the kitchen before I heard Cook.

"Get your hands off my bag!" he roared, and I groaned.

Rosa! You said you wouldn't do anything weird!!

---

A/N: Aaaand we're back in business, folks!³a teeny bit late, but I'm sure nobody noticed, right? :D Also, does anyone remember me saying I'd be updating every other day, or every day even? Haha, that was me utterly overestimating my abilities.

So! I'll be updating twice a week (as per usual) for now, and see if I can squeeze in a faster schedule (maybe three chapters a week?) as we go along. Happy reading, and lowkey good luck to me for hope you enjoy this second season! :D