"...I am... having a similar problem," he admits. "Perhaps you could neglect the excuse and come back anyway."

She's still not looking at him, but she does smile.

"I would like that."

"As would I."

She wonders if this is a good time to mention that she lied about having time. Probably not. That would probably lead to her not getting tea.

"So, uh, have you lived here very long? I've only been living in this city for a couple months."

"Longer than that. About half a year. My previous apartment building was torn down, and I had the money to move somewhere with more space and better privacy, so I did."

"Oh wow, that's - um, I guess it's all right, if you like this place better anyway. It's definitely a nice place."

"I miss the rooftop workspace; it turns out those are hard to find. But everything else about this place is excellent."

She compliments his apartment a few times and makes awkward small talk until the tea is done. She resists the impulse to check her everything for the time. 

The apartment is worth complimenting. Spacious, attractively decorated, less cluttered than his previous one.

The tea, when made and cooled to a drinkable temperature after only a few minutes in total, is delicious.

She lets him know that the tea is, in fact, delicious.

And then she does check her everything. She apologetically tells him that she had better finish the rest of her deliveries, but that she'll be back later, if that's OK. She gives him her everything info again so that he can reach her if something weird happens and she for some reason doesn't show up.

She doesn't tell him she's more than half an hour behind schedule now; that doesn't seem super important.

He smiles and wishes her well and expresses a positive opinion of her decision to come back later.

She makes it through her shift and apologizes profusely for her lateness at the end. She is told to come in later for what she expects to be a reprimand, but for the moment they let her go with little more than a sigh. She arrives back at her apartment and paces around for a while, trying to think of some kind of strategy for interacting like a person. She's not sure how many more awkward silences can happen before Madral decides she maybe isn't such a great potential friend after all.

Coming up with conversation topics is hard. Baking pies sounds marginally easier. She's pretty sure people like pies.

She shows up outside Madral's apartment with a homemade pie a few hours later. 

He opens his door and is once again delighted to see her.

"Hi! I um. Had this pie. And it's hard to eat an entire pie by yourself."

This is the sum total of her plan for this interaction. Why did she not prepare more. Hopefully it's a really good pie.

...He smiles, half quizzical, half endeared.

"I would be happy to help."

"Oh good," she says, more relieved than she probably should be. She steps inside.

"It might not be a very good pie. My grandfather is a chef and I learned how to make them from him, but I'm not, like, a professional or anything? I've never been that good at preparing food. But hopefully it's, um, serviceable."

"I do not anticipate having any complaints about the quality of the pie."

She has not gotten any better at being a person since this morning. Maybe she can just ramble about food while she sets the pie up on the counter.

"Well, I hope it lives up to your expectations, then. My grandmother used to try to convince me to be a chef all the time, so my cooking probably isn't completely terrible. But we'll have to see."

"I look forward to the experiment."

He has plates! And cutlery! In his kitchen! And he can put the kettle on again!

She cuts slices of pie and sets them on plates. The pie is still sort of warm. She's pretty sure it's super obvious that she just decided to make a pie for no reason. Maybe she can just ramble about that. If she rambles enough then there can't be any more awkward silences where she's forced to examine her inability to engage in basic social interaction.

"Ha. I dunno if it's as interesting as the tea, but maybe it's similar? I like cooking because it's making something straightforwardly useful, you know? It's not like a pie is going to be super earth-shattering for anyone, but sometimes it's nice to remind myself that I can, like, cause things to exist in the world that didn't exist in quite that way before I got there. And then eat them."

He smiles.

"I think that's a valuable perspective on life."

What are you supposed to do when people say nice things. Aaa. Maybe you give them the slice of pie you just cut. She does that and hopes it's somewhere in the ballpark of a reasonable response.

Madral seems to think so!

"I was right," he says after a moment. "I have no complaints about this pie whatsoever."

"I'm glad. I'm sort of out of practice, but maybe I can make another sometime."

"That sounds like a fine idea, particularly if it results in you bringing me more pie."