Now Evelyn is confused too! There is just a lot of confusion to go around right now! 

She smiles at them, though. "Of course. We don't need to make a decision here and now, you both look wiped anyway. Let's talk about it tomorrow once we've all slept."

She turns to smile at Marian as well. "Where do you live? It's getting pretty late. We could give you a ride back, if you want, there's room in the car." 

....Probably Marian cannot at all reasonably feel like it's weird to be offered a ride home by Evelyn thirty seconds after she offered to pay for martial arts classes for Evelyn's foster kids. Objectively speaking, being offered a ride is way more of a normal thing to do. 

She's very tempted. "Uh, I live downtown, right by the hospital? ...Uh. I did bike here, though...?" It technically wouldn't be the end of the world to leave her bike here overnight - she has work tomorrow morning but it's walking distance, she doesn't need a bike - but she is also definitely hoping that maybe Evelyn has a solution to that too. 

"Does the front wheel come off? If it does, we can fit it in the trunk no problem." 

"...Yeah, it does. Uh, you really don't have to, if it's out of your way..." 

"It's really not far out of our way, and it's pitch dark out there." 

It's been a really long day and Marian is not incredibly hard to tempt into accepting awkward favors. "Okay. Thank you, really, I super appreciate it." 

Evelyn smiles brightly at her, tells the girls to 'wait right there', and goes off to inform the instructor that they're going to go home and think about whether the school is a good fit for the girls, and she'll call back once they've decided, is that okay? 

....Great. Now Marian can stand here awkwardly with her absurd offer to pay for things hanging between them. 

Iomedae will wait where she is ordered. Marian is not any more confusing than Evelyn but she doesn't know that Marian might require assurance about this. She drinks the rest of her water and studies the mat.

Evelyn lowers her voice and has an inaudible conversation with the instructor for a minute or two, and then heads back over. "Right. Let's get going, it's late."

The adrenaline high from sparring is wearing off and Marian is yawning and fantasizing about being horizontal in her bed. She's happy to follow Evelyn out and retrieve her bike, though her shoulders definitely complain about lifting it into the trunk and getting it nestled there. 

Marian can have the front seat, so they're not all crammed in the back; Iomedae isn't small, it would be a tight fit. 

The entire car smells like Chinese takeout. "I picked up some food for once we're home," Evelyn says as she reverses out of the parking spot. "- Uh, there's not enough for you, sorry, Marian. Did you meet Aisha, by the way? Her father owns the restaurant next door from the studio, apparently." 

Marian isn't sure they would have any way of knowing which one Aisha is; the instructor doesn't make a habit of doing introductions for new students, people just sort of come in and out, she still doesn't know everyone's name in the class. "Aisha is the small Asian girl - uh, the one who kicks ridiculously hard. She used to do kung fu." 

"Her father said! Since she was six, apparently. ...Anyway, we've exchanged contact information. I might invite their family for dinner sometime, they sound lovely." 

Does Evelyn do that with literally everyone??? Wild. 

"Marian, we'd still love to have you over sometime! I had no idea you did krav maga too, that's very neat." And doesn't exactly match her stereotype of what hobbies nurses have, but as usual, that just means Evelyn is making assumptions about people and should stop. 

Marian had completely forgotten about the dinner invite, but...it feels substantially less awkward now, for some reason? Maybe it's just impossible to feel too awkward after sparring with both of the girls.

She's still not sure what the expected polite response is to being invited to dinner by a near-stranger. "That's very kind of you...?" 

"Well, do any evenings this week work for you? We live pretty far out, but I could swing over and pick you up." 

What a relentlessly extroverted person. "I'm off Thursday through Saturday." 

"Thursday night, then? We usually eat at 5:30 or 6:00." 

This is so surreal. "....Yeah, five-thirty on Thursday works." 

"Great!" 

Evelyn drives hospitalward. It's a lot faster than cycling over was, especially at past 9 pm with literally no traffic. Once they get close she'll need more precise instructions, since Marian presumably doesn't live literally inside the hospital. 

Nope! She lives in one of the row of little apartments above a moderately scruffy-looking laundromat, apparently. She thanks Evelyn warmly and smiles at Iomedae and Alfirin - a genuine, albeit very tired, smile - and then hauls her bike out of the trunk, wincing slightly, and wheels it over to the laundromat to carry it upstairs. 

And they can drive home! Evelyn won't try to make conversation. The girls are probably tired. 

Iomedae is physically tired but hardly mentally, but she appreciates the time anyway so she can sort out her confusions into an ordered list in her head. 

The most important one -

"America pay you every month to keep us as foster childs?"