"Sure. - I can't pay rent," he explains. "I figure it's, uh, similar."

"Seems reasonable to me! We all help out how we can. Sometimes that's cryptid grocery runs." 

She stims absentmindedly, running her hand along the wall.

"Yeah. Should there be any new stuff on the standard grocery list for you? It's a Google doc if nobody's shared you on it yet and you can add new entries."

"Someone's linked to me before but I hadn't  put my stuff on it because I didn't know the secret! ... I should do that while you're in the room, huh."

She walks over to lean against him and also hide her eyes from sudden roommates. "Okay - right, there it is... Ok, fake corn dogs, berry poptarts, tater tots, trail mix, orange juice, frozen corn, baby carrots, done." 

"The secret?"

"That you do the grocery shopping? I wasn't sure if there was a rotation or a pot to pay into and so I hadn't gotten around to asking, Mom got me a bunch of frozen stuff when she came back up with my PC and I've just been going through that and grabbing small things as I need them." 

"Oh, and you didn't want to put stuff on the list without knowing who was buying? That makes sense."

"Yeah. And now I know! ... for now, anyways." She frowns. "...I want to experiment. See if I can retain anything usefully when you're not around..." 

"I think that's not impossible if you're like, going straight from your notes? I'm not sure exactly how it works though."

"Well, that's what Science is for!!" She yawns. "Well. Not today, though. Too tired to think it through. Maybe this weekend? If that works for you?" 

"I was going to work Sunday but Saturday's open."

She closes her eyes for a second. "Okay, looks like I have brunch and then a study hangout with CS people but I'm free after that... Want to do 2 pm?"

"Sure... how long do you think the science will take? There's a party I was going to maybe go to that night."

Hmmm. "I don't really know how long it will take but we don't have to do it all at once! We can write out a list of things to try and go through the list until either of us is bored or needs to go." Pause. "...err, as long as you're sure this is ok? It would be valid to not want to spend your weekend having a weird girl experiment with your memory curse,"

"I mean, I was otherwise going to spend it lying around playing Animal Crossing and reading Reddit, I don't have a lot of high investment things I do with my time."

That wasn't quite why she was asking but she doesn't really know how to say the thing she's thinking unawkwardly. Shrug. "Okay. We'll do 2 pm Saturday, then?"

He nods and writes this down in his phone.

<Remind me to do science with Skip at 2 pm Saturday!>

<Acknowledged.>

Ding!

Xeya vibrates excitedly and grabs her large ketchup container from the fridge.

"Is the ketchup essential to the experience?"

"It is for me! I find them Too Dry without it," and indeed she puts a generous amount on her plate before extracting her 'dogs from the oven (she licks her fingertips, then pinches them by the sticks and plucks them out rapidly).

"But I think that this is a subject on which reasonable people can disagree," she adds magnanimously.

omnomonomnomff

He tries a bite without ketchup thoughtfully, then takes some (smaller amount of) ketchup for himself.

She is most of the way through her first corn dog in a very short amount of time and then remembers that she really wants some water, which she will pop up to grab.

"Want a drink?"