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All of that had to have been made even more difficult, however, due to the current circumstances. With Zeff and so many other prominent Rainlords abroad, Hector couldn’t deny being a bit worried about Selena and Ojarea’s progress.

So to see her coming up to him like this certainly made him curious. “H-hello, Miss Cortes,” he said, setting his fork and knife down.

“Sorry to bother you while you’re eating,” she said, looking briefly like she was about to sit down across from him and then thinking better of it.

“...Is something the matter?” he asked. Wait, should he have invited her to sit? Probably. Dammit.

“Oh, no, I was just--er--” She looked around. A few of the other Rainlords were watching them now. “I’m sorry. Is this inappropriate? It is, isn’t it? I’m sorry. I’ll go now.” And she was already turning to leave.

“Hold on a second,” said Hector, more confused now than concerned. “Whatever it is, just sit down and tell me.”

She stared at him for a moment, eyes big and gray. Then she glanced around again and finally sat down without saying anything.

Hector waited for her.

But she still remained quiet.

Umm.

What the hell was going on here?

Girls had always been rather impossible for him to understand, but he had to admit that Selena here was consistently proving to be the most confounding one he’d ever met. He still remembered her jubilant, irreverent attitude when he’d found her having mounted a giant gun on that underground train. Compared to how he’d found her shortly thereafter, panicking and crying while Ojarea yelled at her, Hector didn’t know how to consolidate those two completely different versions of her in his mind.

Sure, maybe she’d just been full of bravado and hadn’t realized how much danger she was putting herself in. In fact, that was almost certainly the case. But he also had to wonder if that part of her was still in there, somewhere. Thus far, he’d yet to see it again, but... did people really change so dramatically so quickly?

She’d snuck away from her family during a deadly train ride in a foreign land filled with bandits and monsters. She couldn’t have been entirely ignorant of the danger, so that had definitely required some guts on her part.

Not that he actually wanted to see such recklessness from her again, of course. It just him made curious about her. About what kind of person she really was.

After all, he’d come to realize that he had some... different sides to himself, lurking within his mind. It only made sense that other people might have something similar going on, no?