2024-05-13: Next on My List: Eating Lunch on the Rooftop
- Log: Next on My List: Eating Lunch on the Roof
- Cast: Elan Ceres, Suletta Mercury
- Where: Asticassia Rooftop
- Date: 2024-05-13
- Summary: Elan invites Suletta to eat lunch on the roof, and gets to know her a little better. Suletta talks about 'us', and she couldn't mean the both of them, could she...?
<Pose Tracker> Elan Ceres has posed.
The benefit of living on on a front is that every day is a pleasant day to eat outside. The temperature is mild, the panels overhead display a sunny blue sky dotted with puffy white clouds, and there's a decent number of benches to sit on here and there. There is of course the mess hall, and there's plenty of space there, but sometimes you want to eat outside. Sometimes it's on a list of experiences you explicitly want to make.
Elan Ceres doesn't know anything about that. But he sent Suletta Mercury a text inviting her to meet her atop the roof of a certain building for lunch all the same.
It's a pleasant rooftop. There are a few benches up here behind planter gardens, with a nice view of the grounds; tall fences prevent any accidents. It's a place with limited access, but as a member of the Dueling Committee and the head of one of the three major branch houses, Elan is free to come here when he likes--and invite whom he likes. It's a privilege he doesn't usually bother to take advantage of. It doesn't mean anything to him.
But it would mean a lot to Suletta Mercury. And that's why...
Currently, he sits on one of those benches, facing away from the artificial sun. A boxed lunch he purchased from the mess hall rests on his lap as he waits. He wears his usual modified school uniform with its capelet-like sleeves and ruffled triple-cravat, and a light, refreshing, artificial breeze brushes through his bangs and tassel earrings, which in turn caress his face.
He has such a pretty face.
It's only a short time into their lunch period. No doubt Elan is here first because his privileges let him get a lunch sooner than other students might. His impassive eyes only watch the false sky, though, and not the digital clock reading that ticks forward every minute. He can wait.
<Pose Tracker> Suletta Mercury has posed.
The sky is...
... bad...
Even so, Suletta Mercury has an exciting thing happen -- she RECEIVES A TEXT FROM A FRIEND! Her eyes shine as she clasps her phone, basking in the alert for a moment before she panicks, realising it might be important, and fumbling her thumb as she tries to open it quick-as-you-please.
Luckily, her nerves prove misplaced, as it isn't bad news -- but an invitation!
"H-he wants... to eat on the roof...!!" Suletta cries, as she spins about in a circle.
"ENGAGE PARKING BRAKE," the Scooter Haro demands. "ENGAGE PARKING BRAKE!"
"O--oh! I'm sorry!" Suletta apologises to her scooter, as she turns back to properly park it. This isn't that strange; Suletta apologises to all sorts. People she runs into, chairs she runs into, doors she doesn't realise are 'push' instead of 'pull'...
... or like when she tries to pull the door to the roof open, only for it to CHONK argumentatively. One muffled "I'm sorry!" later, and Suletta pushes the door open, to rush on out. With greater clarity, she calls, "I'm here--!!"
She looks around, as she steps out, to figure out just what she's supposed to do. There are benches, but how close is she supposed to sit to Elan? A brief pause as she panics internally, before she decides on the bench opposite him.
Sure, the sun is in her eyes, but that's fine! That's totally fine! "Thanks so much for inviting me, Mr. Elan!" Suletta enthuses, as she pulls out her own boxed lunch.
NOT SHOWN: Suletta being later getting up here because she got halfway up the staircase before she remembered that she forgot her lunch.
She unwraps it without pointing that out. "This means I'm having lunch on the roof...! It's another thing I can tick on my List!"
<Pose Tracker> Elan Ceres has posed.
The door to the roof goes CHONK. Elan turns his head to look at it. Suletta enters a moment later and hurries over, choosing the bench across from him. Elan doesn't comment on that. He simply watches her from his spot further to the left of his bench, tracking her movement until at last she comes to a stop.
"You're welcome, Suletta Mercury," he replies. Now that she's here, he starts to unwrap his own lunch. Since it's something he bought from the cafeteria, it's reasonably robust: grilled salmon, stewed vegetables, a small garden salad, a bed of rice, and a few slices of rolled omelet. It's today's A set lunch. As he pulls chopsticks cleanly apart, he regards Suletta's enthusiasm with his usual lack of expression.
He doesn't tell her he invited her here expressly because this was an item on her list. It hardly bears mentioning. But he does watch her a little while longer before he himself starts to eat.
"Have you had a chance to complete many other items on your list yet?" he asks.
<Pose Tracker> Suletta Mercury has posed.
Luckily, even though Elan doesn't mention it, Suletta gets around to it once she's conquered her flusteredness (or at least managed to push it down briefly): "Thank you, Mr. Elan," she smiles, sunny. "You're very kind."
Even though he looks at her with the exact same expression he wears looking at his salmon, which is not to say that it's hungry but more that it looks like not much of anything at all. But it's a kind action, isn't it?
No alternate explanation comes to her. She's quite sheltered. (And with no Miorine in sight.)
"Yes! I had a friendly conversation in the halls on the way to class," she says, "though I think I messed it up... she said 'Good morning', and I just said, 'Thank you for your kindness'," Suletta laughs, a touch nervously. "But she was a big fan of Aerial! I hope I'll get to see her around again!" She kind of exited the interaction in a hurry, but being fair, something VERY scary happened. Who knew Guel had so many fans?
Maybe something like that is notable in her mind -- when most of the people passing her in the halls have been gossiping about how she's a cheat or a witch.
<Pose Tracker> Elan Ceres has posed.
It's true that Elan's expression doesn't shift at all between his lunch and his companion. But all considered, it's for the best if Suletta judges him by his actions and not his face--sheltered or not.
It does stick out to Elan, though, that Suletta thanks him twice for his kindness, and then mentions that she met a girl in the hallway whom she also thanked for her kindness in greeting her. His expression still doesn't shift, but his eyes focus on her a little more. "The Aerial is impressive," he says, because he intends to segue back to that later, but right now: "Is it that unusual for others to be kind to you?"
He means in general, even before Suletta arrived at Asticassia. He isn't interested in rumors, but the gossip about her is inescapable, especially for someone on the Dueling Committee--and nearly none of it is kind. It would be easy to misunderstand, though.
<Pose Tracker> Suletta Mercury has posed.
She doesn't realise it is a kindness.
"Aerial is very impressive!" Suletta enthuses, again humanising her more than it seems like she ought. "And, um -- of course everyone has been nice enough to me, really, I mean, no one's sent me away!" ... her defence of the rest of the school might make it clear that there's a difference in her mind between people who are kind to her and people she's defending by claiming they've done her no wrong.
Perhaps it is telling, just the same, what she chooses to defend them with. Her ankles criss-cross under the bench, as she pokes at her lunch -- she has salmon, too. A Lunch buddies! Because she's Sulett-A, get it? Get it? ... okay, no, that joke is too stupid, no one will laugh...
"It's just..." She sighs, looking down at her boxed lunch. "A lot of the adults on Mercury weren't happy we were there. We put a lot of demands on them, since Mom had me, even though there weren't any kids around. It was a big burden on them to have someone young to take care of... sometimes they'd even criticise me when me and Aerial rescued them."
<Pose Tracker> Elan Ceres has posed.
The more Suletta talks, the clearer it becomes to Elan that her standards are rock-bottom. Maybe even lower than that. Maybe he would need to dig to find them. It explains a lot either way, and it lends weight to his suspicions. His gloved fingers curl on his chopsticks, which bend a hair under his touch.
His next question would be how life here compares to life on Mercury--but Suletta volunteers that information on her own, and he listens, still watching her closely.
He does see that she has the A set lunch too, but reads nothing into it. It is, after all, the first thing on today's menu.
"That sounds like it was difficult for you. Especially piloting," he says. His tone and expression still don't change, but the slight tension in his chopsticks remains. Though they're poised over his meal, he has yet to start to eat. "Was it?"
<Pose Tracker> Suletta Mercury has posed.
"Huh?" Suletta asks, tilting her head, before her hands fly up to wave in front of her. Grains of rice go flying in the gesture, which she completely didn't think through. "No, no, not at all!" She insists, with word and gesture and panicked expression. And then: "-- oh! Mr. Elan, I'm sorry! I didn't mean to throw rice at you!"
Internally, it sounds a lot like the bird who goes, AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
"B-b-but -- but it really wasn't so bad!" She remembers what she was saying, finally, managing to lower her chopsticks back down to her food. "Really -- really, it wasn't. Aerial and I saved a lot of people's lives... since Mercury can be dangerous, we were doing an important job. And it's not like everyone hated us, either... and you know, everyone was really happy with why I wanted to go to school."
And then she falls quiet, instead of explaining just why that was. It's... better if she doesn't talk about it. She has a bite of salmon, instead. And since she's noticed how clean his own chopsticks are: "It's good... please don't let me distract you from eating, either, Mr. Elan."
<Pose Tracker> Elan Ceres has posed.
Grains of rice go flying. One of them manages to make it to Elan's cheek. He blinks one, raising a hand to it; it brings the tension out at the same time. As she panics and apologizes, he stares at it. Then he brings it to his lips and eats it.
"It's all right," he reassures her. She reassures him in turn on the food, and his own chopsticks lower to his food, laying claim to a piece of those stewed vegetables.
He considers what she's told him as he chewed. She said it wasn't difficult. But she wouldn't, would she? It's an important job. They're saving lives. And people who don't actively kick her out are being kind.
He can't take her on her word, he realizes.
Maybe if he knows more.
(He wants to know more.)
"Why?" he echoes--which conveniently also means 'Why did you want to attend school?' and 'Why were the adults at Mercury happy about it?', and just as conveniently for Suletta is broad enough that she can interpret it as she wills. In the meantime, he swallows and picks up another vegetable chunk.
"Though that reminds me..." he adds before he eats it. "There's a member of Cathedra who attends school here in the university program. Her name is Leina Ashta. She asked me about you. She had a bad experience with a Gundam before, so she seems to thinks Aerial is a Gundam, too."
Not that it would prove or disprove anything if Aerial were a Gundam, because it's a specific type of Gundam that he's looking for.
<Pose Tracker> Suletta Mercury has posed.
Elan ate the rice ELAN ATE THE RICE even though it touched her chopsticks which were IN HER MOUTH oh god oh man aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
Why is Suletta staring? What secrets could be locked within her wide-eyed soul? Just... just don't ask. Don't ask.
"Because Aerial and me were the only ones fast and strong enough to do it!" Suletta boasts, completely missing the point of his 'why'. "Mercury is, you know, inhospitable to life, so when life support failed or someone drifted out of their trajectory, someone had to get them back in a hurry! So even if some people resented the burden we placed on them, people were grateful Mom brought us here!" She does certainly seem invested in the idea of Aerial being a life-saving robot. Don't ask her why a search and rescue machine has so much beam weaponry; it's clearly to help clear a lifesaving path.
Suletta, of course wouldn't know how to lie if her life depended on it -- and perhaps that's why her mother's told her what she has. "O-oh... the Cathedra people... they said I was a witch," Suletta says, downcast. "But Mom doesn't remember raising me as a witch! And she said that me and Aerial aren't like that, either." She smiles, remembering what Prospera said -- that they were her precious daughters. "So of course Aerial's not a Gundam!" She has full confidence in her mother.
She frowns, looking down at her bento. "If Cathedra has people who are attending school, too... is that why all the kids in the hall call me a witch? That's what they said I was... I guess she's saying it, too." Suletta sighs, before she puts a smile back on. "But that's fine!" She insists, looking back up. "Aerial and me will just have to prove them wrong!"
<Pose Tracker> Elan Ceres has posed.
Why is Suletta staring? Elan can't even venture a guess. He stares back at her for a moment. But soon the conversation moves on.
Suletta misunderstands what he means by "Why?"--but that isn't a bad thing. It's telling in its own way what she interprets it to be. She seems to contradict herself a bit, too. She's clearly proud of the life-saving work she and Aerial do, and says that people were grateful, but she said earlier that there were people who were upset at the rescue work she did.
...Then again, if it's just a matter of different attitudes at different times, then that could explain it. And what she says about how Mercury is inhospitable to life is certainly true. And while he doesn't think Suletta is lying to him, her perspective doesn't necessarily line up with reality.
So he doesn't ask her about why all the weapons on a search and rescue machine. Instead, he wonders, "Where did you live before you all came to Mercury?"
She deflates when he mentions Cathedra. He nods once in acknowledgement of what she says. "I don't know about that," he says of their classmates calling her a witch. "I don't think so. She seems to want to help you. But..."
He pauses.
It's not that they wouldn't want to save a kid in a suit like that - that's taken the field. It's that they can't.
Oh.
"...even if she does turn out to have genuine good intentions, I doubt you" (I (we)) "can rely on her."
As for whether she and Aerial can prove Aerial isn't a Gundam, that Suletta isn't a witch... "Good luck to you both."
<Pose Tracker> Suletta Mercury has posed.
"Ummm..."
Suletta's mind blanks, as she looks up and thinks back. Did Mom ever tell her that..? "... I don't know!" She answers, cheerfully, looking back to Elan. "I pretty much lived my whole life on Mercury -- and Mom never told me where we lived before that. Mom goes to the Earth Sphere for her work a lot, though... so maybe she lived closer by before Mercury?"
Does her perspective not align with reality? Her reality is perfectly aligned with her perspective.
She frowns, though, as she thinks of Leina. "I don't like it," she says, sulky. "There's no way someone can really have good intentions for us if they're putting down Aerial. They're just scared of her, so they're going around calling her a Gundam... but Aerial's not a Gundam! Mom said she wasn't -- and Mom knows all about Gundams, so she'd know."
And Suletta means 'herself and Aerial', but there's a different meaning to 'us', in that sentence.
If only she knew.
<Pose Tracker> Elan Ceres has posed.
'I don't know!' Suletta says. But does she not know, or does she not remember? Were those memories, perhaps, burned out of her? Or was she genuinely just that young?
It's really extremely hard to tell. There's frustration in that. But strangely, it's not... bad.
It means there's a reason to talk to her again another day.
"I see," he says. "If your mother didn't always live on Mercury, then it would make sense if she lived somewhere closer to the Earth Sphere before." He pauses. "Did you have any friends on Mercury?" Obviously she had no friends her own age, at least; she already said there weren't any other kids.
But then Suletta does something that surprises him, based on what he's seen of her up until now: she frowns and sulks and says she dislikes something. His eyes widen a fraction, too, as she uses the word 'us' unprompted.
Does she mean...?
...But... she just said that Aerial isn't a Gundam. That she isn't a witch. Even if she is, she doesn't think she is. She can't mean "us" as in... him and her. She can't.
...can't she?
He stares down at his mostly-untouched lunch. Slowly, he starts eating again, moving from the salad to the salmon to the rice and finally the omelet. Once he's cycled through them, he looks back up at her.
The sun is at his back right now. That means it's in Suletta's face, something he observes again now.
She looks so brilliant--
--but that brilliance must be blinding, too.
With slow care, Elan scoots to one side until his shadow drapes over her instead.
Then he resumes quietly eating his lunch. When he's done, he'll wrap up its remains.
<Pose Tracker> Suletta Mercury has posed.
"Of course! Aerial was always with me!" Aerial... was Suletta's friend on Mercury? "We used to play games all the time -- and read books -- and watch movies and anime! I learned all about the Earth Sphere from her." Which... might explain why she seems to know very little.
Movies and cartoons aren't a lot like real life.
"And we had friends amongst the elders, too," Suletta nods, cheerfully. "Even Mrs. Melissa -- her husband, Mr. Ergo, he never liked us very much, but Mrs. Melissa was kind to me. Especially when I got older and did more rescue missions, a lot of people did warm up to us... it was a relief. I didn't want to be trouble, or give Mom a bad name."
Suletta is very dutiful to her family, evidently. To her mother, and to... Aerial, the machine she feels so strongly about that she'll defend, even when she's never willing to stand up for herself.
(Both she and Aerial are her mother's daughters.)
Her eyes squint a little as she speaks with him, procyonic against the light; she doesn't complain. She does, however, notice when Elan decides to move, all defined by the shadow he casts on the world. "Oh!" She exclaims, her smile growing sunnier, as if to compensate for the shade. "Th-that's much better! T-thank you, Mr. Elan!" He was thinking about her...!
And thanks to his thoughtfulness, she can finish her lunch without missing with her chopsticks. That would be super embarrassing, huh?
<Pose Tracker> Elan Ceres has posed.
"Always...?"
It's a good thing in this moment that Elan is so inexpressive, because that word--that fond way that Suletta describes Aerial, as if it were a person she played and grew up with rather than a diabolical machine cooking and eating her from the inside out--thoroughly confuses him.
Is Aerial really not a GUND-ARM after all? Is Suletta innocent of the accusations zipping through school? But if that's so, then what was that decisive climax he saw...?
...He doesn't know. He can't know until he sees Suletta and Aerial in action again. (Maybe not even then.)
And when she goes on to say that yes, she did have friends, he finds himself--disappointed. Disappointed? He's not sure. He's not sure why it matters. (He knows exactly why it matters.)
But then she describes those friends, and now he's not sure in a different way. Her thoughts and emotions are very obvious, even to someone like him, but her nature and the natures of those around her are so opaque. He's been talking with her all this while and he still can't tell if she's blessed or cursed.
But then she thanks him with a smile sunny enough to compensate for the shade. He doesn't smile back. He just looks at her.
And quietly replies, "You're welcome... Suletta Mercury."
Maybe it's those contradictions that keeps pulling him into her gravity.