Her legs trembling, Mai Mingle climbed to her feet. For a mont, she still couldn’t believe she had escaped the consequences of breaking a rule at the last second.
’I was too naive.’
’The rule "No one may sit at the central round table" must have had a double aning: first, one could not sit *near* the central round table, and second, one could not sit *in the chairs* belonging to it.’
After all, no one sits *on* a restaurant table. If there was sothing you couldn’t sit on, it had to be the two chairs.
The couple must have taken advantage of the mont she was in the restroom delivering the face piece. They probably had a waiter drag one of the chairs to their table, trying to trick her into sitting down.
"I’m going out to sea and need to pack sothing to eat for the boat if she doesn’t die what will I eat what will I eat what will I eat!" The husband was still howling, though whether it was at his wife or at Mai Mingle was unclear. "It’s so hard to plan a wedding anniversary trip! Why won’t you just die? Why? Why! Just die for my trip!"
The wife sat motionless in her spot, letting her husband kick her again and again. She simply fixed her bulging round eyes on Mai Mingle, as if her gaze alone could pierce and dissect her.
"...Everything you just said was a lie?" Mai Mingle was still shaken. "But didn’t the woman reapplying her makeup say the sa thing? Was it lying to too?"
’The wife’s analysis had sounded perfectly logical. But the reason it chose not to use a thod that would seemingly maximize its own benefit had to be so hidden piece of information—Mai Mingle’s death was what would truly be to its advantage.’
"Interested in the Nest?" The wife’s face twisted into a smile. "Once your body has been dissolved by the Nest, once you’ve beco many residents, you’ll know everything, won’t you?"
Mai Mingle turned to scan the room.
She didn’t dare look at the table with the three female diners; at every other table, every single face had turned toward her.
The young people at the party table stared at her from over a ss of plates and glasses. The man with the stud earring and his boyfriend, their faces close together, watched her without blinking, as if they had forgotten the untouched tacos on their table. The man on the laptop revealed a pair of eyes from behind his screen, like two ghostly black holes.
’...As I thought. These residents couldn’t be trusted.’
’I have to get out of here as soon as possible. The next face piece, I have to find the next face piece... ’
Four pieces left. The left and right cheeks, one eye, and the mouth.
’But what are their clues?’
Mai Mingle thought her courage for the day had been wrung dry. No, perhaps it really had been, which was why she was too exhausted to even muster the energy for fear.
As she looked at the tacos in front of the man with the stud earring, an idea suddenly sparked. A small, distant voice in her head reminded her that any human who touched a Cowboy Sanches product would die.
Under the gazes of the nurous residents, she walked over step by step and picked up the plate holding the tacos.
She wasn’t dead. She hadn’t dropped dead on the spot.
’I should probably thank the wife for the reminder,’ she thought. ’Just touching the plate, not the tacos, probably doesn’t count as breaking the rule—assuming the tacos on the plate really are Cowboy Sanches products, that is.’
Mai Mingle flipped the plate. The two tacos imdiately tumbled to the floor, splattering at filling and sauce everywhere. The taco shells hit the ground with a soft FLAP, like a limp hand falling open.
The inside of both "shells" was covered in countless, densely packed pores.
"There isn’t much food here you can actually chew, yet you didn’t eat the two tacos on your plate... That’s because they aren’t Cowboy Sanches products at all, are they."
Mai Mingle crouched down and picked up the "shells."
...She was still alive.
"Always hiding the answer sowhere that looks fatal to the touch. You residents are a real piece of work, you know that?"
’Only two face pieces left.’
Ten minutes remained before the end of the third half-hour.
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