Nod nod. "The chalk is why?"

"We have to make sure ours looks red. And thought you were a red, who had jumped off a building."

"Ah." He nods comprehendingly. "Yes. I will change it," a quick consultation of the notes, "before I go."

"Not to red," Nelen clarifies, "you shouldn't look red when you go."

"I will change it to black."

"Black's good."

Nod nod.

Nelen looks at his pocket everything again. "Samfek says there's no spare distilled water, some machines need it for cleaning and apparently we're running tight on that."

He nods acknowledgingly.

"She says she can find you an empty apartment but it would be a little risky because you might be noticed and the more people who notice you the more chance of a leak, so if you don't mind staying here she thinks that's best. I don't mind."

"I don't mind," he agrees.

"Okay. Do you need anything? Or want the bathroom before I take a shower?"

Headshake headshake.

Nelen goes and takes a shower, and switches the projector to a musical and watches that, and then goes to bed.

Eden sleeps on his lovely new mattress which, whatever its failings, is more horizontal than a beanbag.

It's not a great mattress but it does have horizontalness going for it!

In the morning Nelen goes off to work again and Eden is left with Apna the puppet.

At some point during the day he does in fact run out of paper and has to do some very jury-rigged minor transmutation to reorganize all his language notes into a smaller, more neatly written format so he can keep taking notes on new vocabulary.

Apna the puppet is oblivious to his struggles.