Private Finished Letting the Cat Out of the Bag

Everything was... too much. Sprinkles had the stupid idea of raising his hearing during one of his walks out in the city. As he should have expected, ears were blasted noise. If he hadn't forced his hearing to almost stop existing, there was a good chance of him vomiting.

Sound was a bad idea. I need to stick to smell for now. Controlling his sense of smell was significantly easier. So far, the worst he had was becoming overwhelmed from some of the more unfortunate scents on the streets and become teary-eyed.

Sprinkles managed to recover from his earlier mishap by closing his eyes and focusing on the smells of the city. Someone was eating ice cream. A man had put on too strong of perfume. A person based by. No, wait. A cat? A NEK0? It was kind of jumbled, but Sprinkles knew for sure the smell was familiar. It was similar to the one he picked up from Natsuki.

Opening his eyes, he saw a dark-skinned and blue-haired person pass by. By the shape of the cones sitting atop their head, Sprinkles was immediately reminded of the girl (boy?) he saw in the M3C occasionally. And from them came the smell of cat-fur.

Sprinkles was... confused. Wasn't this the same person who called themself human? He rushed over to walk by his side, giving them a cheerful wave. "Hiiii. I think I recognize you from the center. Valentine, right?"

The smell was definitely coming from them. There was no doubt about it now.

Sprinkles had not thought this through at all. He completed step one: talk to Valentine. Step two was in progress.

"Uh, sorry." He laughed nervously, "I had something to ask you, but now I'm not too sure about it." He cringed. Asking people about their species was a taboo here. Valentine was a NEK0, though. It couldn't be too bad to ask, but maybe not out loud. It sounded like they didn't want it displayed.

He used a note-taking app to type out, "This is a weird question. Are you a NEK0? You smell like one," before showing it to Valentine.

Sprinkles watched Valentine closely for their reaction. He was tempted to raise his hearing. See if he could catch some kind of indication that Valentine was lying based on their heartbeat. Sprinkles didn't want to risk giving himself another headache, however. Focusing on the smell of cat fur was all he could use right now.

Admittedly, Sprinkles did wonder if he was mistaken. They didn't even say the name right. But there was still one more thing to point out. After correcting Valentine out loud, he typed another text.

"No, they're catpeople. Even have ears shaped like the cones on top of your head. Which, by the way, smells a lot like cat fur." Perhaps he came off too sarcastic, but if they were lying, this was an annoying waste of time.

Suddenly aware that they were just in the street, having what looked like a one-sided conversation to an outsider, Sprinkles gave Valentine a gentle smile. "Want to find a place to talk? You can choose."

It looked like he went too far. Better to try livening up the mood and not make them feel so threatened. Whatever reason they had for hiding must have been important. This island does have its fair share of scares.

Pocketing his phone, he gave a cheerful hop out of the way of some citizens passing by. "Sounds perfect! There's this café nearby. It's nice and generally pretty busy, but not too busy. I'm open to other ideas though. I've just gotten pretty familiar with this place"

Guilt hit Sprinkles. "I understand. Sorry for, uh, coming at you like that. I didn't mean to scare you. I just get really curious about things." He gave an apologetic smile before turning to start walking towards the café.

Then Sprinkles realized something. If Valentine was this concerned over staying hidden, he wondered if Tieragoran knew. They seemed to hit it off well enough at the community center. What if he gave Valentine the same treatment he gave Sprinkles and Natsuki the first time they spoke together in private?