Under the watchful eyes of Jeanne and the others, Kal'tsit wore a dark scowl as she subjected the Doctor to an unforgettable correctional session, coming dangerously close to shattering the strategist's helmet entirely.
"Honestly, what possessed you to go looking for trouble like that?" Jeanne muttered, gently patting the white-haired head of the person sitting before her with a helpless, exasperated sigh.
Because of a brief flash of irritation, Kal'tsit had accidentally cracked the Doctor's protective gear, and was currently working with Closure to re-seal and reinforce the helmet.
To ensure the strategist's mental state didn't suffer another sudden relapse, Kal'tsit had chosen to park her right here beside Jeanne—deeming this the single safest environment available.
Until she could pin down concrete answers regarding those anomalous environmental pressures, keeping the Doctor within Jeanne's immediate vicinity remained the best protocol.
"Glub... slurp-slurp-slurp-slurp!"
The Doctor offered no verbal response to Jeanne's reprimand, only blowing a series of bubbles with her mouth, presumably as some bizarre form of counter-argument.
"Don't talk right now, you're going to choke!" Jeanne slapped the white-haired head sharply. The strategist's head jerked once before returning to a steady balance.
The reason she couldn't speak right now was simple: the Doctor was currently treating Jeanne to a live demonstration of what Babel veterans once whispered of as a legendary culinary spectacle—the infamous "instant ramen consumed entirely within the oral cavity."
Jeanne still couldn't fathom how this human managed to funnel boiling water and an entire compressed block of dried noodles straight into her mouth, let alone steep them internally without scalding the lining of her throat to ribbons.
More importantly, considering her mouth wasn't particularly large to begin with, how on earth did she manage to fit that sheer volume of material inside?
Perhaps, much like Jeanne's own Revelation, it was simply an anomalous skill unique to this particular human. Too bad the Doctor's evolutionary stat points seemed to have been allocated into utterly nonsensical categories.
"I was merely speaking from emotional resonance. If conditions permit, venting whatever is weighing on your mind certainly makes things feel lighter."
Once she had swallowed the contents of her mouth with the terrifying flexibility of a python, the Doctor resumed the conversation, her tone suggesting she had done it entirely on purpose.
Or perhaps she simply knew that even if she pulled these stunts around Kal'tsit, the Feline wouldn't hold a genuine grudge—not when the ledger of past offenses was already too massive for petty additions to matter.
"Still, congratulations on returning to Rhodes Island to start a fresh chapter," Jeanne said, sliding a cup of water over to the suffering strategist.
Judging by her pained expression, that internal ramen trick still had mechanical flaws. Her mouth clearly hadn't been wide enough; the broth had turned out far too salty.
"That's all well and good, but as the Doctor, what exactly am I supposed to be doing...? I honestly haven't the foggiest idea." She slumped back in her chair, staring blankly at the ceiling and muttering to herself.
"What do you mean, what should you do? Haven't you been handling various administrative matters for Rhodes Island this whole time? Realistically speaking, after half a year, you should be intimately familiar with your own workflow."
"Those were just routine commercial tasks. While I'm decent enough at handling numbers, my old self's true specialty surely wasn't filing supply invoices."
She drained the paper cup in one go, then crushed it violently into a tight wad. "Amiya says I'm an expert in Oripathy suppression, a doctor of catastrophe sciences, and holder of a dozen other terrifying titles. Yet none of those things have shown the slightest sign of resurfacing after all this time..."
A deep wave of sorrow colored the Doctor's voice. The grief stemmed not just from her blank slate, but from the haunting realization that those lost memories might never return.
Over the past six months, she hadn't sat idly by. She had pored over academic papers bearing her own signature, grilled operators who had served under her in the past, and even directly interrogated Amiya and Kal'tsit for scraps of her history.
Naturally, whenever she pressed Kal'tsit for details, the Feline offered little more than tight-lipped stonewalling and cold glares. Given that Kal'tsit's resting expression was perpetually frozen in glacial indifference, the Doctor could never quite tell what was going on behind those eyes.
"As for your memories... I can't really offer much advice there, but you might just have to trust their judgment. Someday, you'll understand why you chose to bury those things away."
Jeanne recalled the haunting version of the Doctor she had encountered deep within Kazdel—the one who still carried the crushing weight of her memories. Comparing that hollow, broken specter to the relatively lighthearted version sitting beside her now, Jeanne firmly believed it was better for the current Doctor to remain in the dark.
Not for any trivial reason, but simply because the present Doctor looked entirely free from the agonizing burdens that had once turned her into a ghost of a person.
"Kal'tsit said nearly the exact same thing. She told me that compared to digging up things that would only cause me agony, staying blissfully blank is infinitely preferable. But the look in her eyes when she said that..."
The Doctor shuddered as she recalled the memory. It was an intensely complex gaze—layered with enough conflicting emotions for a dozen lifetimes.
She had genuinely wondered how Kal'tsit managed to cram so many turbulent sentiments into a single pair of pupils. That was hardly a feat within the reach of ordinary mortals.
As that thought crossed her mind, a flicker of pure desperation surfaced in her blue eyes. Catching that subtle shift instantly, Jeanne knew precisely what she was about to ask.
"Let me stop you right there. Don't even finish that sentence, because the answer is a flat no."
Jeanne cut off the petition before it could leave the Doctor's lips. The strategist was undoubtedly about to beg Jeanne to put in a good word with Kal'tsit, coaxing the Feline into leaking a few historical secrets.
Naturally, Jeanne wasn't about to touch that request. It wasn't out of any fear of Kal'tsit, but rather a firm conviction that certain matters were best left in the hands of the people directly involved.
While Kal'tsit treated the Doctor with blistering coldness on the surface, Jeanne could clearly feel that the rigidly expressionless Feline genuinely cared for the strategist's well-being. She would never do anything to cause her real harm.
"I know Kal'tsit isn't trying to hurt me... I just hate feeling like I've dumped the weight of the entire world onto someone else's shoulders while I coast," the Doctor murmured, her voice uncharacteristically dim.
Though the memories were gone, knowing that her past self had deliberately engineered this amnesia meant she trusted her own prior judgment—she would never have discarded her memories casually unless a catastrophic burden required it.
And the only person sharing that hidden vault of history was Kal'tsit.
"Jeanne, surely you wouldn't want to watch Kal'tsit carry the weight of the world entirely by herself!"
"That phrasing... is your mind wandering off into weird places, or are my own ears starting to drift?" Jeanne stared at the strategist with a face full of dark, frustrated lines.
"Still, I'm glad to see you possess a conscience, even if you're wasting it on worrying whether I can handle the weight of my own memories. Not that it matters—you're worrying over nothing. I am hardly so fragile."
Kal'tsit's voice drifted calmly from the doorway. A white-coated figure materialized in the threshold, maintaining her signature flat, uninflected cadence.
Yet, observing the subtle, rhythmic twitch of those white feline ears, Jeanne's read on Kal'tsit's personality suggested that beneath the icy facade, the Feline was in an exceptionally good mood.
Evidently, even someone as emotionally guarded as Kal'tsit felt a quiet warmth hearing the Doctor express such unsolicited concern, though her terminal expression prevented her from displaying it properly.
"Wah... I take it back! I don't want my memories anymore, please spare me!" Seeing the terrifying figure appear out of nowhere, the Doctor—who harbored severe psychological conditioning regarding the Feline—instantly scrambled behind Jeanne's back for shelter.
"I never said I minded. As I mentioned before, I will share what is necessary when the time is right. Until then, simply focus on living your life."
Kal'tsit tossed the freshly repaired helmet straight at the Doctor's chest, adding smoothly, "However, since you've so clearly recognized your idle tendencies, you can compensate for your recent behavioral errors through intensive administrative labor."
"How can someone with a mouth the temperature of body heat spit out words so utterly freezing?!" The Doctor shrieked in absolute despair at the mention of mandatory paperwork.
"Didn't you just say I need proper rest?! Assign me field missions, send me out to play in the wasteland—literally anything is better than trapping me in a room to drown in paperwork!"
It was abundantly clear that the Doctor despised overtime with a passion. In that specific regard, she and Jeanne shared a deeply harmonious philosophical alignment.
"If you wish for fieldwork, your future performance will dictate my decision," Kal'tsit sat down at the table, muttering a parting sentence without looking back—sounding precisely like an exasperated parent laying down terms to a rebellious child.
To think that losing her memories could actually turn out to be a blessing in disguise.
Kal'tsit murmured softly to herself, her voice so quiet that not a single soul in the room could catch the words.