"Has this carrot or its family wronged you specifically?" came Alair's sarcastic voice.
Ilari immediately snapped out of his thoughts, only to realize he had been frozen in place for heaven knows how long, sizing up an absolutely fine looking carrot in his hand. Sheepishly putting it into a shopping cart, he managed to catch a glimpse of Kir's expression before the other hid it away.
In that brief moment, though, he… didn't look as if he thought Ilari to be stupid? His expression was rather… indulgent? And fond?
Ilari cleared his throat and murmured, "Sorry for that."
"Don't worry," Kai piped in uncharacteristically. "If this carrot really did offend you in any way, I'm sure you'll be able to take your revenge soon. I saw a lot of knives in your kitchen. Personally, I find the very existence of carrots to be offensive!"
"Kai…" Kir rebuked softly, but the two felines only laughed.
"There are also pots to be filled with boiling water," Alair added. "You can add some honey and then the revenge will be absolutely sweet."
Before the humans could say anything to that, there was a sharp, beeping signal and all the lights in the store turned amber. A dispassionate voice sounded from the speaker.
"An active magic shape appeared near the intersection of 45th and 62th. Everyone, please proceed with caution and if possible, avoid the affected area. The forced time-reversal phenomenon is estimated to be December 1780, no known danger is linked to this date and there are no humanoid manifestations confirmed. Mild snowing might appear. Everyone, please stay safe."
As the message ended, the lights turned back to normal. Ilari sighed, feeling the phone vibrating in his pocket as he received the same alert.
Not far from them, a middle-aged pair looked at each other.
"Should we cancel the dinner reservation?" the man asked the woman, probably his wife.
"Why, they didn't even give it a grade, it's just a casual warning," the woman replied.
"But recently there seems to be a lot of shapes activating outside of the predictions. I'm just worried," the man said.
Ilari listened to this exchange absently and his thoughts wandered off again as he tried to remember the news. There were indeed a few more incidents recently, but he also knew that the prediction facility went through some modernization of equipment. It could take a while to calibrate everything properly. They didn't seem to miss anything big so the overall public safety was most likely not compromised.
Then, as if remembering something suddenly, Ilari looked at Kir.
"Do you really believe it's possible for my research to succeed?" he asked lightly.
More often than not, Ilari himself didn't believe that, despite this particular research being pretty popular in some circles as his most well-known one. He wasn't expecting that his casual question would open a floodgate, but as it turned out in the aisle between cold noodles and stacks of cabbage, Kir was not taciturn despite being soft-spoken and easily embarrassed. It was just a matter of finding the right topic and Ilari's research, for one reason or another, was something the man seemed to feel deeply about.
After rambling reassurances punctuated here and there with quotes from Ilari's paper for more than ten minutes as the four of them went through the market following Ilari's shopping list, Kir finally switched to sharing his own observations.
"I compared your research with a few more maps of magic from the Age of Wars that are in possession of my teacher. Although the material is sparse, your thesis that the magic lines move faster after interacting with certain stimuli holds true. Also, after the bank-robbing case from 1967 where half of the hostages died in the accidental explosion as one of the fire elementals went berserk after his familiar got shot, the expected magic shapes in the relevant area activated one to four hours before the predicted time. Unfortunately, the technology back then was less advanced and the estimations tended to be off anyway so it's hard to take it as a solid proof." Kir's deep and magnetic voice was quite sombre, and it was clear that he truly believed that Ilari's research was on the right track.
Ilari listened to Kir's serious explanation and wondered briefly whether he should tell his fiancé that, initially, his most popular research was more or less a minor corollary of his main interest, which was trying to track the shadows' appearances. But, aside from seeming somehow rude, that would put Ilari in a position where he would need to explain about his main research. Although Kir's insight might be really helpful, until now no one, aside from Enre who was there with him to fight off the shadow, knew about the true reason behind Ilari's pursuit of the matter and he self-consciously didn't try to publish anything shadow-related either, afraid of something intangible he couldn't even name.
So, instead, when Kir finished recounting the irregularities that happened after another case, this time it was human trafficking that went wrong around thirty years ago, he exclaimed, "You really read it carefully! And you even checked things on your own! I knew about the case from 1967 but I've never heard about the other one."
"Is it so unexpected?" Kir asked, blinking his golden eyes slowly.
"Haha, you'd be surprised to know how many people tried to chat me up on the topic of my research without understanding even half of my hypothesis and even less of its purpose," Ilari said with a shrug.
"That's… unfortunate," Kir said carefully.
Ilari laughed.
"I don't really care. But I'm glad I can talk with you about it," he said honestly.
"I'm always willing to explore this topic. It's fascinating and if you'd succeed, many of the crimes could be tracked down way faster, or maybe, in some cases, prevented altogether," Kir said, a hint of pride creeping into his voice.
"Yet, I'm stuck," Ilari lamented, shaking his head sadly.