74 His Friends (7)

Once the bell rang, Iris dashed into the bedroom, where she had dragged Kyro's phone at one point during the day. Luckily, his phone had once ran out of battery while she was around, and she noticed both his pins. Now, she quickly typed in the screen-locking one and located a person she knew in the contacts, Gale.

But this was a bit too early, Kyro was still talking to the delivery girl. Iris waited until they were finished and gave a short call to Gale. When he picked up, she clicked end call and pulled the phone closer to the bed table, to make it seem like it had dropped from there.

The first part of the plan was done, so she moved to her food bowl and collected a good mouthful of crickets and a few mealworms. It was uncomfortable to just hold all of them like that, but it wasn't like she had any other way to carry stuff as a fox.

As expected, Gale called Kyro soon after, and the latter abandoned his unpacked food to get to his phone. The opening was not missed by Iris, and she soon jumped onto the sofa and the coffee table.

Today's dinner consisted of a couple cutlets, mashed potatoes, and a bowl of salad. It was just perfect. She deposited all insects into his salad and tried to stir it a bit to hide the evidence. However, using a fork wasn't really up her alley. She almost threw all of the salad onto the table in her attempt to use it.

Quickly deciding that it was an impossible matter, she abandoned the fork and pushed her right paw into the bowl. It was much easier to stir with it, and in no time, she hid what she'd done. Proud of her mastery, she licked her paw clean and ran away from the scene of the crime.

After waiting for a bit and seeing no sign of Kyro, she frowned. What was taking him so long? He should have just told the other he didn't call and that's it, so what was he doing in the bedroom still.

Annoyed, she ventured over and peeked in through the doorway. Kyro was standing by the wall-length window, the phone by his ear.

"... won't work. I told you we can't have such quality stuff associated with us. As cheap as they're willing to go, it doesn't change the fact our quality will drop, and that's our selling point. We cannot afford that."

The topic seemed business related, so Iris tuned it off and decided to continue on with her plan. She picked up the last few insects left and brought them into the living room. These ones, she chewed a bit to make them smaller, then placed them into the mashed potatoes. It wasn't as easy to mix them in so that no one would be the wiser, but she managed in the end.

Her target was busy with his conversation, so she didn't have to hurry and could afford spending time to make sure everything was perfect. But once that was done, she grew somewhat bored. It had been quite some time already, and he still wasn't coming. What was he thinking? The food was almost cold!

Since he didn't want to eat it, she would take the chance. It was only fair for her to eat his dinner when she gave him hers.

The cutlets were quite large, so Iris had some trouble stealing one away. She couldn't pick one up, while dragging it through the ground was not appealing to her. Everyone walked on that ground, so how could she eat from it?

With a quick glance back, she decided that nobody was around to see her, anyway. Kyro sounded still in the middle of some discussion, so he wasn't coming to stop her. That left her free reign in the living room, and if she wanted to eat his cutlet, it was her choice alone.

Swiftly, she returned to the coffee table and began munching on the tasty treat. It had been a whole week since she last ate human food, and she had missed the taste. This was nothing like the insects that now constituted most of her diet.

One nibble at a time, in some twenty minutes, she finished the cutlet. Her stomach was bursting full, and she half-rolled, half-dragged herself to a corner of the sofa, unwilling to move even a centimeter farther. 'Next time, some restraint should be exercised,' she told herself while massaging her aching belly.

As she licked her lips clean, her ears caught the word 'bye' in the other room. Kyro placed his phone down and started coming back into the living room. With unbridled excitement, Iris dragged herself to a better vantage point and lay down as if she was asleep.

'Bon appétit.'