The mood in the faux restaurant wasn't quite romantic, to say the least. It felt like lunch at the cafeteria, except with a random assortment instead of my usual friends. And a very angry sibling of a friend sitting with her arms crossed.

"I know this is supposed to be a 'date,' but I want to make it clear now that I have no interest in you," Anastasia said, starting things off on a charming and welcoming note. "I mean no offense to your character, save for your poor judgment in being a friend of Zeta Faleur."

"You don't have to remind me you hate Zeta," I said. "You were just saying pretty much that back when we were in the store. Which was about fifteen minutes ago?"

"Tch," Anastasia said.

"And you've done pretty much nothing but remind us you hate Zeta since you unmasked," I said. The disappointment at having her as my match for this silly game was clear in my voice, and I was surprised just how upset I was about that.

I wasn't sure which of the others I'd rather be with, but any would have been better than Anastasia. The other tables were close enough that if we talked loudly we could all probably hold a conversation. KJ was paired with Charmaine, Ash was with Rain, Michi was with Amara, and Sai, Myles, and Tay shared a table.

I caught Anastasia looking around at the others too, likely wondering who she'd rather be grouped with as well.  She scoffed, as though us having similar thoughts at the same time was an offense to her, and leaned back on her chair. "Do we just have to hang out together? Now what?"

Thadley had a suit on now and handed out menus. "Now the thing is, you gotta earn points." He didn't explain what he meant by that. "The robot will get your orders."

Thadley left, giving us time to look over the menu before ordering. The menu just had three items, listed simply. 'burger,' 'pizza,' and 'pasta,' with very low resolution stock images of each item next to them. The top of the menu said 'Xtreme' for some reason, maybe it was the name of this pretend establishment?

The table closest to us had Tay, Myles, and Sai. As Ana leaned back on her chair, Sai leaned as well.

"What are you gonna order?" Sai asked.

"Probably nothing?" Anastasia asked. "As soon as I get the chance I'm going to end this Thadley character."

"I'm annoyed too, but we're probably not getting that opening for a while, so I guess we can try to enjoy this a little?" Sai said.

"That is highly unlikely." Anastasia scowled, then seemed to realize something and her expression contorted even more.

"Weren't you going to try and do something other than the usual scowling for the rest of us today? It'd make me slightly happy if you tried a little bit to relax and enjoy this pretend lunch." Sai said.

"Why would it make you even a little happy?" Anastasia asked.

"Might get your mind off of things," Sai said. "Lillia, what are you getting?"

"I'm not sure," I said. "None of these look particularly appetizing."

"Focus on your own damn date," Anastasia said.

"You were trying to get me to talk to Lillia earlier, now you don't want me to?" Sai asked, then seemed to realize what they said. "Er..."

I still wasn't exactly sure why the two called out to me earlier, and this just made things more confusing. "You wanted Sai to talk to me?" I asked.

"It was nothing," Anastasia said. "Just me messing around. Put all the blame on me for that one."

Sai's expression was neutral. I wasn't sure I wanted to blame either for talking to me, but Anastasia's behavior was frustrating to say the least.

Myles waved from the other side of Sai's table.

"Hey, please don't leave me alone with Tay," Myles said.

"You know I'm sitting right here and can hear that, right?" Tay asked.

"Yeah, and you were rude at the store so I'm being rude back," Myles said. "Sai, get over here and I dunno, talk date stuff."

"No thanks," Sai said.

"OK, talk about anything else," Myles said. "Alternatively we can just scoot the tables together and we can all forget about this date thing."

Myles didn't say that loud enough for any of the other tables to hear, but it did inspire Anastasia to get up and push our table, testing the waters to see if we'd be penalized for not entirely playing along. Nothing seemed to happen, though.

"Maybe as long as we're technically with our 'date,' we can get away with that?" I said.

"Who knows?" Myles said. "As far as dumb void things go, this is one of the better ones I've been in since we got here."

"Are you serious?" Anastasia asked. "This is just...a complete waste of time."

"I dunno, we're all hanging out and we're gonna get free food, that's pretty cool," Myles said.

"You know what else is pretty cool?" Tay asked. "Telling me more about yourselves for my research."

"I'm good," Myles said.

"You're not getting anything out of me," Sai said.

"Hm," Tay said. "Lillia, may I confirm that you are freshly single? I apologize for the bluntness."

I figured it was coming, but it still gave me a rush of uncomfortable emotions to hear it out loud. Like stepping outside and being met with blistering cold wind.

"Yes," I said.

"Unfortunate, but you will bounce back, I'm sure," Tay said. "Interesting that you're paired with someone who was also freshly broken up with."

Sai and Myles looked like Tay just put a loaded grenade on the table. The two turned to Ana like she was also a loaded grenade.

Anastasia gripped the tablecloth, and I thought she was going to flip it over on me. She shut her eyes and took a deep breath. "Yep. Funny, that."

As the devils sighed in relief that Tay's prodding didn't boil over into a brawl, something almost clicked for me.

"If there is some method to the groupings, could we use that to figure out..." I sighed, unsure what I was even saying. Figure out what, exactly?

"Like there's some pattern we can find out?" Sai asked.

"I'm not sure, it's probably foolish to expect it to help," I said.

"No, I think you might be right," Sai said. "Maybe if we find out the pattern with these, we can figure something out about us ending up here."

"And maybe we find a break in that pattern, which could be a break in this whole void construction," Myles said.

"Ana, before you say anything," Sai pointed at Anastasia. "I know I just said to enjoy yourself and play along, and now I'm talking about finding some glitch in this system, I just want to note that I can tell you to chill and enjoy the game while also keeping an eye out for things we can use to our advantage. So don't go on about me being a hypocrite."

"I wouldn't call you a hypocrite," Anastasia said. "Maybe wishy washy, but I am trying to be less...you know. We talked about it."

If this was Anastasia trying to be less abrasive, it didn't seem greatly different than how she'd usually been.

"So shall we go to the other tables and try to find something out, then?" I suggested. "Chances are about zero we find anything, but—"

"It's better than just sitting around," Anastasia said, rising to her feet. "The food would probably be fake anyways."