Before long, Erik had the entire first layer of food eaten. To his surprise, there were more letters underneath the first layer of food that had said 'I'm sorry'. This layer, hidden under the first, said, 'for'. Curious to see if there was more, he quickly ate these letters and the rest of the layer before finding the last layer of food in the topmost portion of the bento box. The third and final layer of food made up the words, 'kissing you'.
Erik was stunned. He did not expect Liona to apologize to him for kissing him. He found this funny and somehow adorable, but at the same time he was sad. Did she not want him as her mate? Was she apologizing because she was rejecting him? He felt upset as he moved on to the second layer of the box and picked at his name. He didn't quite know what he would do if Liona was rejecting him.
It hurt to think about, as he slowly uncovered another layer of food in this box as well. This box layer was shallower than the top of the box, but as he ate, he could tell there was something else possibly written in the food. He was full, so he carefully moved the remaining layer of food out of the way to uncover what he assumed was the final lettering. There before him is something that stunned him further. The lettering spelled out, I ♥️ U.
If Erik interpreted everything he had read in the bento, Liona was apologizing for kissing him, but she wasn't rejecting him. She was actually just as into him as he was into her. This calmed his mood down considerably the more he thought about it. By the time he packed up the lunch, unable to disturb the I ♥️ U part, he was feeling quite joyful.
"Hey? I thought you had to get outta here for your next job? If you don't hurry, you'll miss the next bus!" Georgie poked his head out of the office just as the next shift's employees started to flood in.
"I'm going! Thanks again, Georgie! See you tomorrow when I'm back to my school work schedule!" Erik called as he grabbed his bag and headed out the door.
He was in such a good mood that he didn't even comment that the next shift's employees were pushing their start time for their shift, which normally would have irritated him. During the spring break, he had pulled most of his hours here and the coffee shop with the grocery store being his fewest working hours. He was going to miss those extra days when he didn't work at the store and put up with his shitty manager there. He had honestly lucked out with the coffee shop and the fast-food place being owned and run by the same person.
He had coworkers at both places he could now consider as his friends, and he actually looked forward to working each day at each place. Unlike the grocery store, where he felt like his boss was just there for decoration and stood over him like some kind of menacing crow. His bosses at each of his favorite working environments actually did their work alongside him and the other grunts.
Erik wished he had time to walk by Liona's house. But since he had used his extra time eating her bento, that meant that he had to take the bus to his next work location in order to not be late. It was faster to catch the bus and travel the few blocks than it was to walk those blocks to the grocery store. Getting to the bus stop just in time, he boarded the bus and found a seat for the few minutes it would take to travel to his next workplace. Laying his head against the cool glass, he could feel his fatigue. While he had been eating he had ignored his heavy and lethargic feeling of his body, but now that he was on the bus, he felt soothed by the motion of the vehicle.
Closing his eyes for just a second couldn't hurt, or so he thought. It was just a few more stops so he could rest his eyes, and then he'd ring the bell to signal he'd get off at the next stop. Feeling how heavy his body was and his eyelids with it, he felt the slight relief of the cold glass cool his head. He closed his eyes for a split second and the next thing he knew, he was waking up with a jolt.
He took a second to orient himself and realized that the sun had fully set, and it was dark outside. The next thing he realized was that he was now in the downtown area of the city and nowhere near his workplace. He frantically searched his pockets for his phone so he could see the time. Grabbing his phone, just as the bus announced their next destination of The Station being the last stop, he saw he was over an hour late for his work shift.
As the bus pulled into the downtown station, Erik was cursing himself for even thinking that he could close his eyes for just a second. He didn't understand why he had been so tired these last few days, even though he could and did operate on less than four hours of sleep day after day. It was normal to get off work at ten at night, walk the two hours home, and then conk out for a few hours before getting up before dawn, to eat a meager breakfast if time and food stores allowed. Then walk two hours to work at the coffee shop before school for a couple of hours.
Then he attended school before he worked a few hours at the fast-food place and finally headed to the grocery store for his evening job. This was his weekday schedule while attending school, and it only altered Mondays, during school breaks, and the weekend. He had never had a problem keeping up this pace before, so he didn't understand this sudden fatigue.
Getting off the bus at the station, Erik was faced with a dilemma. It would take an hour via the city bus to get back to the part of town where the grocery store was. By that time, he would only have a few minutes at best before he would normally get off during his break schedule. He clutched his phone in his hand and tried to make a call to his workplace to explain his absence today but was met with yet another incompatible device error and unable to connect to the store. He sighed as he stared at his screen. He didn't understand this error message in the least. His phone worked fine just a few weeks ago, so what had changed? The only thing he could possibly think of was that his phone was now too old to work with modern technology. Was that even a thing?
Wandering aimlessly, with this rare and unexpected free time, Erik picked a direction and started walking. He let his feet carry him wherever, as he tried to sort through his thoughts and unexpected messages from Liona in that bento. There were a number of ways he could interpret her message, but he wanted to believe that she meant that cute little I ♥️ U message in the literal sense. That made his heart and his stomach do a little pitter-patter and flutter all at once when he thought that. As he walked and felt this warm sensation in the pit of his stomach at these thoughts, he noticed that the color at the edges of his vision fluctuated and started to shift colors. He got the strange sense of roses, and so he looked around, not quite sure if he was seeing things or his imagination was playing tricks on him.
Turning, he headed in the direction where the pink of his vision became strongest, and followed this sense of roses that his mind kept thinking of when he saw this particular shade of pink. As he walked, he noticed two things. One was that this was a particularly upscale area of downtown he was heading in, and two, there was a massively tall building looming in the near distance. As he got closer, the pink in his vision became clearer to him, and he couldn't shake this feeling that Liona was in this direction.
As he approached the tall building, he realized that this was a fancy hotel of some kind. It was grand with a sense of sophistication, but it didn't seem too opulent either from the exterior that he could see. The closer he got to the hotel, the stronger the sense of rose got. He felt like he could almost smell them as he approached the entrance. He didn't dare get too close to the entrance, despite the near overwhelming desire to find the source of that enticing rose in his vision.
Stopping just shy of the entrance, Erik found himself in a parking lot without realizing that he had even walked this close to the fancy building. But that almost irresistible sense of roses was so close that he could swear he could smell them. Closing his eyes for a moment, he let his feet carry him and when he opened them, he was face to face with Liona.