“Eki, this building is supposed to have a kitchen, right? Do you think the freezer has ice in it?” grumbled Mizusaki, massaging his sore head. He sure hoped he hasn’t gotten a concussion due to having been attacked by a door from behind.

“We can check but if it doesn’t have, I’ll go get you some from the nearest kitchen,” offered Eki, softly chuckling at the crippled walking stance Mizusaki had taken. “Actually, I don’t even know if this building is equipped with anything since the whole area was recently remodelled.”

“That should be the smallest of your worries as we have sorted out that matter ourselves,” announced Azuma as he quickly adjusted his glasses on the bridge of his nose.

“And by ‘sorted out’, he means we got this whole building furnished,” explained Kinjou while rolling his eyes around just the slightest. “Though I will give them all of the credit of carrying all of the furniture, electric appliances and resources from the other buildings of the base back here.”

“Sounds like you all had a busy day,” acknowledged Murayama as he offered a nod at Kinjou as a greeting.

“We just discovered that they’re quite well-behaved if they have a ‘mission’ to accomplish, whichever nature it may have,” tiredly sighed Hisaka, unglueing his back from the wall he had been leaning on as he supervised both Atsumu and Azuma, who had been waiting at the entrance of the building for the arrival of the main ‘babysitting’ squad. “Since the whole building was empty, we had them furnishing it to their own taste. We did give them a bit of helpful advice on what should go inside of a house, though.”

“Well, that’s a surprise,” said Miue, crossing his arms over his chest as he looked around his surroundings. “I didn’t think they would be as cooperative as getting a whole building furnished in a single day.”

“A whole building?” repeated Atsumu, tilting his head a little bit as he closely thought about Miue’s words. “We also did the same thing for the other buildings in this area.”

“Ask them for details, I just want to go back to my bed and sleep,” sighed Hisaka as an answer to the silent question he was receiving from the other squad members’ eyes.

“I’ll be calling the other guys so we can all finish our ‘shift’ at the same time,” said Kinjou, giving a quick jerk with his chin to urge Murayama to follow him. Once Murayama caught up with him, both of them started to walk deeper inside of the two-storied building. “There’s not much to report for the change of squad, to be honest, but I’ll just give you a quick abridged version of things.”

“I appreciate it,” acknowledged Murayama with a soft nod of his head.

“As you can see, they’ve finished setting up their nest,” started Kinjou, lightly cracking his neck to release some of the tension in his body. “You shouldn’t have anything missing in this building, from breadcrumbs in the kitchen to toilet paper in the toilet. Like Miue noticed, they were surprisingly cooperative and didn’t fuss all that much about getting it all done. Sure, it was quite hard to communicate and explain to them what was what and where they usually went to, but they quickly got the hang of it so they pretty much did it all by themselves in the following buildings.”

“I didn’t know we had as many pieces of furniture and resources to be able to decorate a couple of buildings in one go,” pointed out Murayama, an eyebrow slightly arched in surprise.

“We don’t, actually, but all of the stuff that was previously in this area before it was renovated was being kept in the storage buildings. All we did was take it from there back to their original place,” explained Kinjou with a quick shrug of his shoulders. “You know how ridiculously strong and fast they are. So it took them a ridiculously short amount of time to transport all of those tones here, more so when they all worked as a team. Ah, I nearly forgot about it. We only transported preexisting stuff from this area. None of them has their personal belongings, such as clothes and other things that they may like. Then again, they might find human stuff repulsive so most of them are going to wind up being minimalists when it comes to their things.”

“A shopping adventure was already something I thought we would have to do in the future, yes,” sighed Murayama, a small shudder running down his spine. That would probably wind up being a shopping trip to hell, but it was still something necessary if the Ms were to be educated in human lifestyle. “How did they fare on an individual basis?”

“Atsumu was a babbling machine, asking about what he didn’t know and informing the others of what he knew of stuff, mainly what he learned while watching TV in the lab,” said Kinjou after releasing a tired sigh. They both stopped in front of the kitchen’s door, from where an extremely appetising scent was coming from. “Azuma remained quiet throughout the whole day, but cooperative nevertheless. He also replied if we talked with him, though certainly in a very moody way. Mitaru is still sleeping so that’s that. As for the other three… Well, you will get your answer to one of them right here…”

As soon as the kitchen’s door was open, the mouthwatering scent that was waltzing around the corridor exploded in their faces and became exponentially more seductive and tempting. Tsugi was in front of the counter, carefully chopping some vegetables on the cutting board. Kuwabayashi was sitting in a tall stool next to Tsugi, an open book in front of both of them and beside the plate of fried rice that the human soldier was snacking on.

“Yup, now all you need to do is cut the carrots like this and all of the prep work for this soup will be done,” acknowledged Kuwabayashi, cheerfully tapping his hand on top of the open book. As he did so, he noticed the newcomers to the kitchen area. “Oh, is our shift over? Tsugi cooked loads so we might as well take some dinner back with us, Kinjou-san.”

“With Tsugi, Eki and Ikusaki all living under the same roof, I don’t think your squad will ever have to worry about starvation,” said Kinjou, quickly adjusting his glasses as to ignore the small hunger pang he felt in his stomach at the display of countless plates and glass containers featuring a diversity of main dishes, side dishes and desserts. “Are there any plastic containers around, Kuwabayashi?”

“Third cupboard on the left wall, at the bottom shelf, inside of a cardboard box,” answered Tsugi without any hesitation, his eyes extremely focused on the cutting board as he carefully manoeuvred the kitchen knife.

“This guy has memorised the entire kitchen. Can you believe that?” said Kuwabayashi, pointing with his thumb at Tsugi when he saw an eyebrow arched in both Kinjou’s and Murayama’s faces.

“Ah… Well, I guess Eki and Ikusaki will appreciate the help,” acknowledged Murayama in a quite hesitant way. He still wasn’t sure if the Ms and the bottomless appetite present in some of them was a good or bad thing to the base’s food supplies - now that one of them had learned how to cook, it was just a matter of time for him to find out.

After Kinjou claimed some clam miso soup, a bowl of rice and a large portion of teriyaki shrimp stir-fry for himself, he and Murayama proceeded with the shift transfer. The kitchen was now occupied by the other squad members, Atsumu and Azuma, who had begun having their dinner amid incessant chatter and bickering.

“The usual two missing, then,” said Murayama in the midst of taking a bite out of the yakitori skewer being held on his hand. “How was their behaviour?”

“Nothing out of the ordinary, as far as it concerns both of them,” explained Kinjou with a quick shrug. “Iru continued sticking like glue to M0 and kept a close eye on whoever got close to them. However, after this building was fully furnished, they closed themselves inside of the living room, instead of helping the other three continue the furnishing adventure throughout the other buildings. James and Umiko have been standing guard on them.”

“What have they been doing the entire day inside of the living room?” asked Murayama, a small questioning frown appearing on his brows.

“Reading,” shortly answered Kinjou, leading Murayama to the division of the building that was being occupied by the other two soldiers of the ‘secondary babysitting team’ and the missing ‘babies’.

True to his words, when both Murayama and Kinjou stepped inside of the living room, they found Umiko and James sitting down next to each other at the table, a bored expression on their faces as they sluggishly fumbled with their cell phones. In the sofa further down the room, surrounded by several towers of hard and softcover books, were Iru and M0 - the former neatly sat down in the cushions, one of his hands casually holding an open book; the latter was pretty much sprawled on the sofa, his head nestled on top of Iru’s lap, both hands holding a book right in front of his face, left leg spread over the backrest of the sofa and the right one dangling over the armrest.

“Time to switch?” asked Umiko, lifting her eyes from her cell phone’s screen and peering over to her commander and Murayama. James just leisurely stretched his arms over his head while loudly yawning.

“Tsugi has made lots of food so take some as dinner if you want,” said Kinjou, pointing in the corridor’s direction while giving a nod in acknowledgement at his subordinate’s question. “And no cell phones while on duty.”

“Sorry, but we got bored after we finished our first book and they reached number… Ah… I lost count when they both hit the two digits,” apologised James, awkwardly rubbing the back of his neck. “I seriously have no idea how they can just read all of that non-stop. One thing is novels and manga and the like, another is technical books. I get that they want to learn more about humans, but damn, this is a bit overkill…”

Murayama looked over to both James and Umiko, who seemed as tired as the other members of their squad, and to Kinjou, who simply gave a small shrug with his shoulder. Then he directed his gaze back to the sofa.

“Iru-kun, how do you read this word?” asked M0, tilting his book backwards just a fraction so that it was at the same level as Iru’s eyes.

“Shin.Ryaku.Sen.Sou. ‘War of aggression’,” read Iru out loud, slowly pronouncing each character of the word so that M0 could accompany the reading. “Noun. A military conflict waged with the justification of self-defence, but usually as a mean of territorial gain and/or subjugation. Exactly how this world war first started.”

“Thank you,” acknowledged M0, returning the book to the previous position and silently resuming with his reading. The book was, however, slowly pushed further back and its proximity to M0’s face was replaced by something else.

“You’re welcome,” said Iru, gently kissing M0’s lips. When he straightened his sitting position once again, a smirk was present on his features, his eyes now stuck to the soldiers further down the room. “Feel free to ask whenever you have any doubt or question. For as long as I know the answer, I will provide it to you, my ‘Beatrice’.”

“Nn…” acknowledged M0 with a small nod of his head, his eyes readily getting stuck to the open book once again.

“Though humans have so many books around them,” added Iru, his smirk widening even further and eyes turning a soft shade of red. “Certainly they would never need to seek answers out of us, as all we know is the same knowledge that they can obtain through their books. Right?”

“...” Murayama maintained his gaze locked with Iru’s for brief seconds, in a staring contest that seemed to last much longer than it did in reality. When he lowered his gaze back to the floor, he turned his body around a small fraction and said, “Tsugi has made quite a lot of food and it’s getting late. Why don’t you two join the others in the kitchen and also have dinner?”