"Baron Brenton," Rosa murmured, shaking her head. "Funny business, funnier name."

"Rosa! So rude. His name is fine.”

We were currently at the edge of the balcony that we somehow got access to by climbing up a ladder at the side, looking down at all these gamblers (or competitive cooks?) milling around and talking. Every single one of them looked suspicious, but maybe that was just me-- Rosa seemed to be very intently and meticulously examining each group.

I’d given up on actually trying to distinguish between the innocent and the guilty about fifteen minutes now, after I’d complained, “How am I supposed to know what I’m looking for?” to Rosa, and Rosa shook her head.

“You just have no talent for it,” Rosa told me, scanning the crowd. “You can leave the searching for me.”

I wondered how one could have a talent for singling out suspicious beings, but then decided it was probably something similar to liars knowing liars best. I nodded. “Suspicious folks know suspicious folks best,” I mused aloud.

Rosa shot me a look, but she left it alone and only said, “I’ll leave the eavesdropping to you.”

“I’m eavesdropping?”

“Yeah. I would, but I attract too much attention.”

Ha, of course she would have to flip her hair the moment she said that. I wanted to roll my eyes, but honestly she wasn’t wrong, and I was here to help her out anyways. I shrugged. “Sounds good.”

And I was now just watching the cooking competition in boredom, which had started about ten minutes after we'd gotten up here.

It was actually pretty interesting-- though I'd thought it would be a boring, 'who cooked the best dish' kind of competition, it was actually more of a pretty dynamic fight. And by fight, I meant fight. Ingredients were flying up in the air, cooks sabotaged each other's meals, and then ran around trying to steal other people's frying pans. Five cooks, bent on making each other’s cooking experiences torture. It was pretty entertaining, I had to admit.

In fact, at this very moment, one of the cooks was stomping on his apron trying to put out the fire while the crowd either cheered him on or booed him out.

I didn't understand half of what was going on in there, but from the commentary the guy next to me was giving to his friend (thanks, random guy next to me), Dry Tomato was the one whose apron had caught on fire. Potato Peeler, the one Rosa had recommended, set it on fire. There was also Brunch Dealer and Spilled Spaghetti, but I still didn't know the name of the fifth cook in the arena (as they called it), who was the only lady in this fight. The guy next to me had mentioned her once or twice, but only in relation to her frying pan, and I couldn't make out much other than that.

And honestly? I'd kind of given up finding out her name by now. It was hard enough figuring out the other cook's name was Spilled Spaghetti over all this noise-- I'd thought they kept saying "Spillsick Betty," which had made no sense at all.

"Any luck, Rosa?" I asked, watching as one of the cooks aimed what looked like a carrot into their neighbor's pot. "Ohh, nice," I said, nodding appreciatively once it went in. That was a good throw.

"I have three points of suspicion," replied Rosa in the meantime, taking out a notebook from inside on sleeve, and a pen from her other sleeve. I raised an eyebrow at that for a moment-- wow, that must’ve been super uncomfortable in the cart. Also, those sleeve pockets were nice.

She began scribbling down stuff. "Give me a second, I'm calculating what would be our fastest route of completing all three points."

"Take your time. Ooh, that poor man." The lady cook had used one of her spare frying pans (that she seemed to be defending with her entire life) to knock down another cook's cutting board, and now all his well-chopped lettuce was flying in the air. "He spent, like, the last three minutes chopping that." Which was harder than it sounded, because from what I'd seen, you barely got a minute of peace down there.

Hey, at least he caught most of it with his colander, while the lady gleefully ran back to her table. I shook my head. Well, that's what he got for abandoning his table to sabotage his neighbor's eggs.

The click of the pen let me know she was done. "Okay! Ready to go?"

I snapped out of trying to figure out whether Spilled Spaghetti was making spaghetti (he was trying to dice up tomatoes on the cutting board he'd stolen, but he had no pot or frying pan) or some other dish, and nodded. "Let's go."

We managed to squeeze through the crowded balcony, head down another ladder, and maneuver through the ground floor to whichever was Rosa's first point.

"Remember," she reminded me, “you do all the snooping. Signal me if you think you got the right person.”

“Sure, whatever that means.” I shrugged, then leveled a finger at her too. “And you, do not, for a single second, think of busting out some improv acting. You hear me?”

Rosa scoffed, but I knew she'd understood when she began grumbling under her breath, which I kindly ignored.

But also, the way she was grumbling made me wonder-- why was she so disappointed? Had she actually been planning to do some improv acting?!

I shuddered, then quickly shook myself out of that thought. Sometimes, it was better to just not think about some things. It worked wonders on your stress levels.

Once we stopped near a rather quieter spot, Rosa grabbed me and said, in a low voice, "Okay, don't interact with them yet. Just stay close, and eavesdrop. We're playing a long game here."

"What am I listening for?"

Rosa considered the question for a second. "I'm suspecting illegal trade activities, so if you hear anything that might be related to that?"

“Got it.” Nodding once more, I proceeded to inch closer and closer to the two people Rosa was gesturing at very subtly.

"...stole it from the Palace? " one man asked, low enough to sound secretive but loud enough to be heard over the sparse crowd. My ears perked up-- stole what? And from the Palace? Hm hm! That sounded pretty illegal.

"Yes," the other man said. "His sister's the maid, and he absolutely had to get the cookies. It's his pre-competition ritual."

...cookies?

"Still, egg-flavored cookies? Why would he want to eat that?"

Egg-flavored cookies?

"Who knows?" The other man grunted. "Apparently it's all the craze in all those noble houses these days, and he decided he wanted them too. But without the flour, he's already screwed..."

Haha. Egg-flavored cookies! Who would’ve thought! I locked eyes with Rosa and subtly shook my head. Yeah, nope. She nodded back at me, then gestured for me to follow.

We threaded our way through the crowd once again, this time going way around to the other end of the warehouse, underneath a second balcony.

Like before, I casually stood near the two or three people Rosa nodded at, facing the arena like everyone else.

This group began with one lady hissing "You stole what?!" and a loud "Shhh!" that followed it, which sounded promising enough (also why was everyone stealing something??) until I listened for five more minutes and realized they were talking about how one of them had filched Spilled Spaghetti's flour. "Dry Tomato needs to win!" the second person growled, which was my cue to leave.

As we trudged along to our third group, I sighed. Was this even going to work? What was Rosa’s criteria for judging how suspicious these people were? And why were people all stealing something? This wasn’t some thieves’ association, this was a gambling ring!

I frowned. Did thieves’ associations exist in the first place?

I opened my mouth to ask her if she really thought this was going to work, but before I could Rosa nudged me and whispered, "We're here."

We'd reached the corner of the warehouse that was farthest from the door we'd come in from. A group of three people, tall and muscular, were standing around, talking to each other in low voices amid the crowd. They all wore rugged clothing and had grime expressions. One even had a nasty scar, right across his bicep.

Yeah, they looked plenty suspicious alright. I leaned towards Rosa and gestured to the three as subtly as I could. "Them?"

"No, them." When I followed her gaze, I found another three people, with one rather sharp-looking, well-dressed woman and two men.

I frowned. "Them?"

She nodded. "Them."

Though I wavered for a second, I murmured, “Suspicious people know suspicious best,” and planted myself near the group, pretending not to see Rosa’s glare. Oh give up, Rosa, even you know you’re suspicious.

"The shipment is late," the woman hissed to one of the men.

The man seemed to whimper. "Mistress, but the ship--"

"What about the storm!" whisper-shouted the woman. "The Baron needs it by today! Do something!"

Baron? I held my breath as the other man cleared this throat nervously.

"We need the cargo ready before the end of today's match. Understand?"

When the two men shuffled their feet and didn't respond, the woman turned around and let out a frustrated groan. "Get this solved!" she snapped, then whirled away.

I immediately sent Rosa wide-eyed looked and signaled towards the lady with my eyes. This-- this was actually a pretty good lead. We needed to do something before we lost it.

Understanding instantly dawned on Rosa's face, and she pressed her lips together. Nodding resolutely, she made a series of hand gestures, whipping her hands around in front of her, then nodded to me again.

I furrowed my eyebrows. Okay...? What was that supposed to mean?

Rosa rolled her eyes (as if I was the one who was at fault here) and mouthed, as exaggerated and slow as possible, We should follow her!

Ohh, I mouthed back, then turned back to where the lady had gone. Once I spotted her, my eyes went back to Rosa, only to discover that she was still mouthing something to me. I watched her through narrowed eyes, then repeated to myself, "Ewfarawer and yooattyka?" What did that mean?!  What? I mouthed back.

Huffing, Rosa opened her mouth, then apparently decided not to and shook her head, pointing urgently to where the lady had gone.

Good idea. I nodded to her, and mouthed Let's go!.

Rosa sighed, then walked over to me. "Okay, so where did she go?"

"That way. Quick, we're going to lose her!" I took one step, then paused.

...remind me, why were we mouthing to each other again? When we could've just, you know, done this?

---

A/N: Finally! An update!¹[insert kung fu panda meme here]

Hahaha... sorry I'm late. I've analyzed two (2) reasons for my (hopefully not increasing) tardiness: one is that I lost a good chunk of writing last Monday because I (against all advice) like to write directly on this site (ahahah), and my computer decided to crash! Which, you know, was all my fault. The other one is because my English is, simply put, suffering. Haha. Kudos to everyone who writes in English without living in a place where you speak English all day!

Yeah. Hah. tl;dr: I'll start reading books or something. In English. :D

(I don't think I'll be able to update this week again, but I'll for sure try to go back to weekly double updates from next week again! Sorry!!)