"Wow, this food is so delicious! Did you really make all this, Nana?" C.C., sitting at the dining table, took a bite of a cheese bread and a sip of milk, her face lighting up as she excimed with enthusiasm.

  Nana, sitting across from her, smiled politely and said, "It's just simple food — you're too kind, Miss C.C. By the way, I heard you've known Rulu for a very long time?"

  "That's right." Since Rulu had already briefed C.C. beforehand, she answered without much thought: "It was a long time ago. Rulu was still a little kid back then — much shorter than now, chubby and fair-skinned like a little baby. Absolutely adorable."

  Nana's eyes lit up. "Really? I'd love to see what Rulu looked like when he was small! Do you have any photos of him from back then, C.C.?"

  "No, but the face he makes when he's angry hasn't changed one bit from before. If you saw it, Nana, I'm sure you'd want to burst out ughing — you'd definitely want to tease him."

  "So you were always getting angry back then too, Rulu?" Nana turned to look at Rulu sitting beside her, musing aloud.

  "No such thing. C.C. is joking." Rulu said this with a perfectly composed expression, while inwardly cursing C.C. for talking nonsense.

  "I'm not making anything up. And another thing…" C.C. wore a nostalgic look and continued, "When Rulu was little, he was terribly clingy — always wanting hugs and kisses, and if you wouldn't hold him, he'd pout and cry. Now that he's grown up, he's not nearly as endearing as he used to be."

  "Oh my, so Rulu, you used to cry too?" Nana found this utterly inconceivable — she simply could not picture what Rulu would look like in tears.

  "Alright, C.C., a joke should have its limits. Otherwise Nana will take it seriously." Dark lines appeared on Rulu's face. He thought to himself that C.C. had better not take this too far, or Nana might start to suspect something — and then things would get troublesome.

  "I'm not joking at all. I remember once when C.C. and Rulu were pying hide-and-seek, and Rulu couldn't find me — he thought I'd gone missing. He got so frantic his face turned red, and he kept calling out that he wanted to find his big sister." C.C. said this with evident delight.

  Nana grew more intrigued and pressed on: "What else? What other funny things did Rulu get up to back then? Tell me everything, Miss C.C."

  "All right, since you made me such delicious food, Nana, I'll tell you all about it. Rulu, he—" C.C. began, but at that moment Rulu let out a heavy cough, fixed her with a dark look, and said, "C.C., have you had enough to eat? If you're full, hand your breakfast over to me." He reached out and grabbed the pte in front of C.C., pulling it toward himself.

  "What do you think you're doing — don't take my food!" C.C. cried out in arm, quickly seizing the pte with both hands and wrestling it back from him.

  "If you're not done, then eat up. And don't talk with your mouth full — you'll choke." Rulu fixed C.C. with an unfriendly stare.

  "Fine, fine, I won't say anything. No need to be so fierce." C.C., sensing that Rulu had lost his temper, stopped chatting and focused on finishing her breakfast.

  "Don't frighten Miss C.C., Rulu — you two haven't seen each other in so long. It's fine for her to joke around a little." Seeing Rulu fre up, Nana tried to smooth things over and ease the atmosphere.

  "I'm not frightening anyone. Nana, why are you taking her side instead of mine? To you, she's just a stranger with an unknown background." Rulu looked at Nana with an openly disgruntled expression.

  Nana blinked, then said, "Because… you really were in the wrong just now. C.C. is a girl, after all — how could you be so hard on her?"

  "If anything, I feel like you two are ganging up on me…" Rulu said with a gloomy expression, feeling as though Nana had betrayed him.

  "Nothing of the sort. Don't overthink it, Rulu. Come on, everyone — let's eat." Nana ughed awkwardly and dropped the subject, no longer asking C.C. anything more about Rulu's past.

  After breakfast, Rulu said he had something to discuss with C.C. and, saying no more, took her by the arm and hurried out of the underground space up into the house above.

  "C.C., you've gone too far. If you ever run your mouth like that in front of Nana again, you can stop living here." Rulu said this with a grave expression.

  "But you're the one who said I should make it sound convincing, otherwise Nana would get suspicious." C.C. said, somewhat put out.

  "What you said just now was pure invention. You even said I used to call you 'big sister' — does that sound the least bit pusible to you?"

  "But I was trying my best to make it feel real." C.C. muttered.

  "I don't care about any of that. The point is that Nana matters a great deal to me, and I don't want to cause her any distress."

  "All right, I'll be more careful from now on and say less."

  The severity in Rulu's face eased a little. "That's better. Head back now, and tell Nana I'm going out — I won't be back for lunch."

  "You're going out? Then let's go together — I want to get some fresh air too."

  "No. C.C., the Sanctuary is hunting you right now. You're far too conspicuous — their people could recognize you at any moment." As he spoke, Rulu pulled a pair of bck-framed gsses and a peaked cap from his jacket pocket and put them on to disguise himself.

  C.C., however, looked entirely unconcerned. "Don't worry about that. In Blue Sea City, the only person who knows what I look like and knows anything about me — aside from you — is probably that newly arrived Prince Suwen. You'd do better to worry about yourself than about me."

  Rulu couldn't help but recall what Prince Suwen had said before — that C.C.'s affairs were the highest level of cssified information, and that no one must be allowed to know her face or her story. He nodded. "Fair enough. But just to be safe, you should probably disguise yourself like I have."

  "That works." C.C. went back inside, borrowed something from Nana to put her hair up, pinned her long hair into a bun, then wrapped a purple scarf around her head and topped it with a wide-brimmed sun hat, concealing her green hair entirely.

  After letting Nana know, Rulu and C.C. left the cemetery woods and made their way to a shopping center in the nearby city. Rulu first picked up some groceries and household supplies, and then the two of them went to a clothing shop, where Rulu bought C.C. a selection of women's clothing and undergarments so she would have something to wear rather than going on in his clothes.