Well there's one potential apparent reason!  A sponge bobs out through the door at around head height before it closes.

The food shrieks and pulls the fire alarm.

The sprinklers go off. Foods emerge from most of the doors. A LOUD BADSOUND OCCURS.

Nooooo :(

That's a lot of foods in a small space.  It floats up horizontally by the ceiling - oh NO the loud badsound is worse up here :( :( :(.  Also its robe is pretending they are at sea and Sponge is reverting to the state it was in when it first picked it up.  It tries to float to where the badsound is the least loud (that is unobstructedly reachable) but is otherwise having a fair bit of trouble deciding what to do.

The foods confer in LOUD VOICES over the loud badsound and file out of the building over the next couple minutes.

In that case it will kind of just copy the foods for the most part, keeping pace in the spaces between them.  There's a bit more headroom in the stairwell; it zooms ahead there.  Some of the foods get a little extra dripped on from its cloak, and it mostly tries to avoid going too near the sprinklers but sometimes it creates a shadow in the spray regardless.

Fortunately the foods aren't actually looking up into the spray much of the time.

The spray stops a while later. Some foods come in and tromp around and leave.

It and its sponge float outside.  It feels kind of . . . something.  That was a lot of things happening at once and it really really disliked being that close to the loud badsound for that long.  Maybe it will fly waaaaaaay up high over this onkplace, drifting around and waiting to be bored again.  It isn't even really hoping to find goodsounds, although if it comes across any it might go check them out.  Possibly from farther away than usual.

Waaaaay up high it can see so many foods milling around! It's wet and cold up in the sky. It's too far up for any foods to react to the sponge.

That's pretty nice.  It stays up there a long time, till the lingering badness of the loudsounds fades almost completely.

And then it will downgrade to being merely way up high, and start listening more purposefully for goodsounds and watching for other interesting things.

There are goodsounds to be had! Some of the shops have it piped in through speakers in the ceiling. There's a pub having karaoke night and some of the foods are decent at it. There is a busker with a violin.

Ohhhhh what's that last one that seems kind of different from the other goodsounds it has so far heard.  It hovers well above the busker and tries to get a decent look without approaching too closely.

The busker is moving a stick along a wooden thing shaped like an empty wobble. It makes different sounds, and its fingers correspond to how high and how low the sound is!

The movements are happening along with the goodsounds just like before!!  Does that mean it can make goodsounds happen by moving the way it did when it was copying those other foods?????

Turns out that no.

What if it tries really hard though.  Like really hard.

It seems like maybe the sound are coming from the wooden thing.

Hmmmm okay it will get a little closer and investigate the wooden thing and its food.

The wooden thing is long and thin on one side and round and figure-eight-shaped on the other side. It has strings, and protruding knobs, and lines across the thin part that the food is pressing in various combinations with its fingers. The strings are different widths, and go in order of how thick they are, and connect one apiece to each of the knobs. The stick is half stick, half - fabric? Hair? - and the latter part is what contacts the strings.

That is so interesting and this is maybe its new favorite food.  It bobs and dances to the goodsounds even though it no longer really expects this to produce goodsounds of its own.

- During a particularly enthusiastic set of arm movements it accidentally lets go of Sponge, which goes flying. Oh no oh no it's got to get it back -

The sponge sails through the air and smacks a food in the ear. The food is upset and confused, but doesn't actually move to pick up the sponge - no one does, and when there's a gap in traffic it should be able to grab it.

PHEW.  That was a close one.  It's got to be more careful.  It holds the sponge close to its chest and checks to make sure the squish-squish quality is undamaged.

It squishes as ever!

A food is looking right at the sponge now.

Foods do that sometimes!  Back over to the busker.

The food makes mediocresounds. More foods make mediocresounds. The busker stops making goodsounds and stares at the sponge.

. . . . Huh.  That kind of makes it seem like there's something it could do with the sponge to cause the goodsounds to resume, but it doesn't really know what that could be.  It tries . . . . bouncing its sponge-holding hand at about the last goodsounding's tempo???