Hours later, I was still pacing the room.

Knell was watching me and eating a bag of tea leaves. Although normal human portions of food would never be enough for him to survive on, he did enjoy snacking. And on the most bizarre things, at that.

“Clarion, you should go to sleep,” he said.

“How can I sleep when angels are coming to kidnap you??”

“I never said ‘kidnap’ specifically…the guy just said he wanted to locate me as soon as possible. They might be coming to negotiate; you never know.”

“You don’t honestly believe that…”

“I don’t know. Angels aren’t really forceful people, are they? They mostly keep to themselves; they don’t even want to touch us.”

“Yes, but so far, they’ve never needed anything from us. It’s easy to be a pacifist when you’re self-sufficient; meanwhile, most wars start simply because one person wants what another has.”

“Ooh, that’s wise,” said Knell. He started licking the teabag.

For the life of me, I could not understand how he could be so calm. Of course, if he started crying and begging me to protect him, I would be even more stressed, so perhaps it was for the best. But then again, it was his quality of life that was in jeopardy; one would expect him to be at least a little concerned.

“I am concerned,” he said, reading my thoughts. “But I can’t freak out when I don’t even know what’s going to happen yet. It’s useless to fear the unknown.”

I gave him a small smile. “I never realized how much you’d matured.”

“I’ve always been that mature! I only ever get upset about concrete events.”

“Like the time you accidentally stepped on your red crayon?”

“That was a concrete event...”

Just then, there was a knock on the door. Knell stopped licking.

“Get upstairs,” I said, walking towards the door. As soon as he was safely out of sight, I opened it.

Peal, of all people, was standing on my doorstep…or rather, hovering above it. She burst into tears.

Except there were no tears. She was just floating there, making sobbing noises. It was both incredibly strange and irritating.

“…What do you think you’re doing?” I asked her.

“I’m expressing my feelings in a way you can understand! Humans do this crying thing when they’re upset, right?”

I narrowed my eyes. “Ah, I see. More fake emotions. Well, I think I can honestly say that we’ve had about enough of those. If you have any respect for yourself at all, you’ll leave this place immediately.”

I was about to close the door, but Peal stopped me. “Wait, please,” she said. “I wasn’t even supposed to come out here, you know. They could have just sent your invitation to your device, but I wanted to be here in person to talk to you.”

“What ‘invitation’ are you talking about…?”

“Let me inside, and I’ll tell you everything.”

“Sure, I’ll let you inside. So you can get more pictures of Knell to share with your colleagues.”

“I’m not here for that, I promise! I just really need to talk to both of you!”

“You can let her in.”

Knell had suddenly appeared behind us. “She’s telling the truth, Clarion,” he said. “I read her mind.”

“…You’re sure?”

“Well, even if she was lying, what’s the point of getting more pictures? They already know everything about me. The only thing left to do is get me, and she can’t do that by herself.”

I wasn’t so sure about that…but I decided to trust him. “Alright, you can come in,” I told Peal. “But you’re not allowed to get within five feet of him. And you answer our questions first.”

“Okay.”