Finally. After several awkward minutes of exhaustive explanation, Maxwell had succeeded in explaining everything that had happened to Nova, from his dream about the small, red-bow-wearing mouse to the brief illusion he had seen upon waking, if it could even be called one.
Halfway through the explanation, Maxwell noticed a frown on Nova's face. She stared at him for what felt like a long, awkward minute before she finally spoke up.
"Why do you have so many dreams about me?" Nova inquired, sitting at the head of her bed.
"Haaa... how is that the only thing you picked up!?" Maxwell deflated. He didn't even have the strength to argue; it wasn't even 12:00 a.m., for heaven's sake!
"I was just curious," Nova responded with a careless shrug.
"Well, even I don't know how you ended up in my dream. It's not like someone can control the dreams they have," Maxwell stated, massaging the bridge of his nose.
"If Mr. Ryoji could, then why can't you?" She tilted her head, wearing an infuriatingly innocent expression.
"This is hopeless," Maxwell resigned, lying back on his bed. "You are really exhausting to deal with, aren't you?" he whispered, barely audible even to Snowy.
"What did you say?" Nova inquired.
Since you didn't hear, let's leave it that way, please! Maxwell pleaded inwardly. "Nothing. All I said was, 'Nova is the greatest.'" That, of course, is a lie, but you cannot possibly know that becau—
"That's a lie, and you know it," Nova said, folding her arms.
"Pfff... how did you know!?" Maxwell coughed. "How did you hear that I said, 'You are really exhausting to deal with, aren't you?' How? Even Snowy would have struggled to hea—" Halfway through his speech, Maxwell stopped and clicked his tongue in irritation at his own foolishness. "Damn, I fell straight for that one, didn't I?"
"You did say something bad," Nova hummed, thoughtfully folding her hands. Then, like Maxwell, she lay back down on the bed, stared at the brightly lit ceiling and sighed. Who is going to turn off the lamps now?
***
Maxwell woke up feeling drained. Instead of going back to sleep as he had expected, he and Nova had remained awake all the way till 2:00 a.m.! Sometimes they talked; sometimes awkward silence replaced their banter. It went on like that until Nova eventually fell asleep before Maxwell did. In all honesty, he was mostly the one doing the talking.
"Damn, I'm so tired. How the hell did I wake up feeling this drained?" Maxwell groaned, massaging his puffy, red, tired eyes. He looked at the one who had made this all possible.
Nova.
Unlike him, she looked fresh, relaxed even, like someone who had been waiting for this for a long time. She must have been really lonely all that time in that cave, huh. Oh, if only Maxwell knew.
"Ahhh," Maxwell groaned again. Just thinking about the work they had cut out for them made him shiver. He looked at Nova. She was lying on her bed like him, staring at the ceiling. Then, as though sensing his gaze, she suddenly turned to him. Maxwell smiled awkwardly. "Good morning." Then he quickly averted his gaze and chuckled.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw something white with three black dots on it. It was... an electric socket?
"What in the name of blood? An electric socket! How the hell did I miss that?" Maxwell grinned, all his tiredness vanishing like snow before the sun. "Of all the things I expected to see here, an electric socket should be among the last! Isn't this place supposed to have existed for years now!?" he blurted out excitedly, jumping out of bed. He picked up his phones and checked their percentages. They were both low, 14 and 5 respectively.
"I don't know who you are, First One, but I definitely want to be your friend," he added, already standing in front of the electric outlet, his hands trembling with excitement.
Then, just as he reached out, he deflated. "Damnit, damnit! I did not bring my charger with me to school that day!" he cried out, then weakly trudged back to his bed. He had been so excited that he'd forgotten one needed a charger to connect to an electric outlet.
Meanwhile, Nova watched all this from the side, question marks popping up in her head. She rested her head on her hands and continued to watch Maxwell rant about electric this and charger that, until she eventually decided to pull him out of his own world.
"What is an elec—?"
"Please, don't. Not right now," Maxwell begged. "It's not a topic you want to hear right now."
"Ohh, but I want to," Nova said, tilting her head.
"You just had to ask, didn't you?" Maxwell covered his mouth, hiding a silent chuckle. If Nova wanted the meaning of electricity, then he was going to give her the exact meaning!
"Huuuu." Maxwell took a deep breath, recalling the exact definition of electricity he had once given in an inter-school quiz, the one that had earned him his first medal. He looked at Nova with a serious, scholarly expression as he prepared, nudging the imaginary glasses on his nose.
Nova blinked, not expecting Maxwell to take it seriously.
"Electricity constitutes the manifestation," Maxwell began, "of electromagnetic interactions arising from the displacement, accumulation, and redistribution of charged particles within a conductive medium. Governed..." But halfway through his explanation, he saw Nova's eyebrows knit tightly. She continued to stare at him for some time before slowly relaxing her brow and eventually losing interest, shifting her attention to something else.
When Maxwell saw this, he silently nodded. Mission accomplished. He nodded once more in satisfaction. It really had been a good idea to use that explanation instead of the usual simple dictionary definition. He smiled; the last thing he wanted was a one-hour exhaustive lecture on electricity. He had better things to do right now, mainly finding a charger in this settlement! He didn't believe for one second that the First One, having left a socket here, wouldn't have left a charger head or two to go with it.
"Hey," Maxwell suddenly said, snapping Nova out of her thoughts. She turned, her gaze falling on him. Maxwell ran a hand through his hair, as though unsure whether he should ask his question. After a moment of hesitation, he finally proposed, "Would you mind joining me on a search for a charger I can can use to plug my phone?"
"A charger? What's that?" Nova asked, before shaking her head. "Never mind." She really didn't want Maxwell to start another long, complicated explanation. Like the previous one, heaven knew she wouldn't understand a single thing of it.
"We were eventually going to search the settlement for clues on what happened, so we might as well use the opportunity to do a simple search for your charger," Nova agreed.
Little did they know, it wouldn't be as simple a search as Nova had said.