He compliments someone who did something well, since that's apparently precedented.

"Thanks, man! Good defense in C-5!"

"Thanks!"

He smiles warmly but isn't sure what else he could say.

"Are we keeping these teams or mixing up?"

"I think squiggles and ombre should trade, ombre's doing better by more than chance and gumption."

"No quibbles here. Somebody from another division wanna -?"

"Yeah, sure, you and you swap."

And then they're off again.

This is great. He should absolutely come back and do this again at some point.

They seem like they'd be happy to have him!

They wouldn't be if they knew the truth. If they knew the entire truth they would realize he's completely fine, actually.

Are there any aquarium stores nearby? He doesn't have firm plans yet but it seems like a good time to start scoping them out, seeing how healthy the fish are and how knowledgeable the staff are and what they have for sale.

There is an aquarium store on the fifth floor of a mall between here and his place!

He goes in and checks it out.

He's never been anywhere like it before. There are shelves upon shelves of tanks - most of them are for small fish; many of them are for longer-lived fish with more stable care needs than the vernal fish he's kept before; many of them come from places where civilization hasn't yet encroached much on the waterways; all of them are intended for a market of aquarium hobbyists who can afford heat in winter. So at a glance at least half the fish are freshwater tropicals, and so the room is full of tanks of water heated to the temperature of a tropical lake, and the air is hot and intensely muggy, and in the center there are tanks full of plants under intense growth lights. It doesn't feel real at all; it feels like walking into someone's aquarium picspam. It feels like discovering that Star Ball was a documentary and now the starship Ventures has made contact with Amenta. Sure, aquariums exist; he had one. Sure, nicer tanks with fancier gadgets and different fish exist; that just makes sense. It's just that now he's surrounded by tanks every one of which is the kind of tank other people posted pictures of and not the kind of tank he had.

They're real. The chequy tetras that his oldest internet friend got at age two and credits with teaching her responsibility are real - their conspecifics are right here. The fish with the weird faces that people keep drawing as the aliens from that book series with the magic cats are real, and really have their weird faces - and he can't reach out and touch them so for once something hasn't really changed - but he can see whatever they happen to be doing at the moment, not clips of their funniest antics. There are overbred fish with huge cumbersome fins - most of these ones are white with subtle blue iridescence - kept in isolation because if they were put with other fish even the herbivores could eat them alive, and he spends a little too long watching them even though he decided a long time ago that he never wanted fish with genetic defects that meant they had to be quarantined.

There are axolotls. He doesn't buy any today.

He asks stupid questions, questions he already knows the answers to and sometimes questions he doesn't, questions about environmental requirements and species compatibility and filter setup and quiet pumps and plant health and feeding and tank cleaning and all the incredibly convenient aquarium tools they sell which are not improvised from literal garbage only some of which he has any idea what to do with. He looks at tanks. He takes notes on the available sizes, thanks the attendant for their time, lets them know he's going to go measure his apartment and maybe come back another day. He isn't afraid or tongue-tied; he doesn't feel like an impostor. Not here. He belongs here.

They're pleasant and salesy and let him know that this one size of tank is on backorder but if he takes the display model they can get him a discount, though of course he should measure the apartment and also make sure that whatever surface he has in mind can take the weight of a full tank.