"Terrence," Sal says quietly. "About Roby. I was wondering if you could explain something to me."

He folds the paper, looks up attentively at Sal. "Oh?"

(Inaaya's been sort of weirdly quiet this morning, because all of the things she's thinking about are things she does not want to try to explain to the others, but she noticeably starts paying attention when Sal says this.)

"What is the deal with Aldebaran."

Jing Yi is the Most Awake Person In The History Of Ever. So, so awake. So awake that he is having a breakfast only of coffee recreationally, and not because of any lingering effects of nausea and insomnia. He is also definitely not wincing at whatever Oscar says. (Today is not a day he would like to deal with Oscar, but unfortunately, here they are.)

"Sounds like a nonsense word to me," Oscar says confidently. "Probably invented."

The rest of them have only heard the word in three concerning contexts: in the play itself, from Nessa Clapper, and while talking to Alexander Roby.

Except for Inaaya!

"...no, it's a real star. Brightest in the constellation Taurus, ninth brightest visible from Earth. The name comes from Arabic, it means 'the follower,' because it follows the Pleiades."

(Follow your dreams, and follow your star; specifically, Aldebaran-- and Inaaya has more of an idea than most of them, she thinks, about what 'follow your dreams' is supposed to mean, but she's not sure how Aldebaran comes into it even if at this point she's pretty confident it does--)

"Hm." Terrence nods thoughtfully. "It's in The King in Yellow. It's connected with the figure of the King."

Coffee is better than stars.

"Connected how."

Terrence looks thoughtful but slightly embarrassed. "It's a... difficult section. They're related, but I don't have a good handle on the metaphor. Yet. I clearly haven't spent enough time with that passage..."

"Terrence," Oscar says, "I meant to ask you. It seemed like you really... got through to Roby, in a sense. And that he's most comfortable when discussing the play. Do you think you could draw... some kind of diagram, maybe, with key concepts?"

To save us the trouble of reading it, he doesn't add.

"I could do something, but, I mean - you've read it, right? You saw the play too."

"I didn't. It's the one that had the riot after it, right?"

"Gotta love plays that have riots after them."

"Well, not in the script. ...But yes."

Terrence is so single-minded that he forgot Oscar passed out. "By all accounts it's an ambiguous text," says Oscar. "With its own system of symbols."

Jing Yi is Uncomfortably Aware that Inaaya apparently carries a knife. (Who does that?)

He's currently stuck at the same table as Inaaya and Oscar and it's just great. Brilliant. He loves it. This Is His Ideal Morning.

"You wouldn't be able to, to fake having read it, if that's what you're getting at. Much the same way you can't describe Mozart to someone for them to appreciate it. But if you just want a bit of the language to talk with him - but it'd be so obvious - or, or to see if it's relevant...? I mean, I could try, I suppose..."

Thanks for the lecture on art, Terrence.

"Terrence, I'm going to be honest with you. That was a terrible staging for a play. You've read it already, maybe you could track what was happening in act 2, but I couldn't hear the actors and I couldn't see anything and I doubt anyone else could either. The ending wasn't even performed. I am not exactly feeling enlightened about how any of that relates to what happened yesterday."

Terrence is surprised, a little offended and put off to hear this, but he tamps down that part pretty well, because that doesn't mean Sal's not open to experiencing it - Terrence thought the performance was rather transcendent but maybe that's the thing with performance art, it's higher-variance - "Well, I'll do what I can to summarize it now. But if it seems that important for the case, you'll want to just read the thing yourself, of course."

God.

...Couldn't hear the actors? Whatever, it doesn't matter. The important thing is getting this breakfast done so he can be far away from any judgemental bookshop owners or teenagers with knives. Unfortunately staring at other people's plates does not make them eat faster, or stop talking about the bloody King In Yellow.