Clam Noodles

"Mmmmm"

Closing his eyes in bliss, Oliver scrunched up his face from the taste. When he opened them again, he licked his fingers free of the sauce and repeated the action.

Was it really that good?

According to my experience, the combination of this dish shouldn't be that suited to each other.

I took one stuffed mushroom and dipped it into the dip. Then I took one bite.

.....Hmmm

In my opinion, the whole thing was slightly too sweet for the meat-like taste of the mushroom. This overly sweet taste also overpowered the taste of the honey juice and green berries.

I looked over at Oliver, who seemed to be having the time of his life eating this combination.

Oh well, if he likes it, then whatever. As long as he is happy any combination would be fine.

Swallowing the rest of the stuffed mushroom, I headed over to the pot on the stove to check on the ovals. They seemed almost done.

These small ovals were taken from the WonderFood website again, although they were used in a slightly different dish. Called 'Clam noodles', the writer of WonderFood had explained they had created this dish from leftovers in their house when they had a midnight craving but not enough ingredients to eat.

Stirring the clam noodles with a ladle, I waited until the color seemed dark enough before scooping it out into a bowl. I then brought the bowl and placed it next to the dip.

Looking at the dip, which used to be a full bowl but was now only half-filled, I glanced at the massive amounts of dip on Oliver's lips and felt a small smile creep onto my lips.

"I've brought the clam noodles for the dip."

Passing one spoon to him, I used my own spoon to scoop a little of the dip before taking some of the clam noodles. Then I ate it.

The star of this dish was the dip, whose overly sweet taste was diluted by the clam noodles to just the right amount. The clam noodles themselves weren't there to only dilute the taste though. The texture of the noodles added a nice bite to the dip, and the slight sweetness of the green berries served to highlight the dip.

Looking at Oliver, who was eating the dish with a happy smile, I saw him scoop generous helpings of the dip to both the clam noodles as well as the stuffed mushrooms. And by doing so, we ran out of the dip much faster than we ran out of both of the dishes.

Eating the stuffed mushroom without dip was delicious. After all, that was how it was supposed to be cooked. However, the clam noodles, who without the dip was a little too tasteless for both our tastes, were slightly harder to swallow.

Next time I cook these two dishes, I must make much more dip.

After eating, Oliver took the empty dishes to the sink to wash as I went over to the pot to pour out the water.

[Done with breakfast?]

Hearing Sazzy's voice coming from the kitchen doorway, I turned around to see her with her personal terminal up and typing away.

"Yeah we just finished. Is there something we need to do?"

Going over to the sink and taking over the dishwashing from Oliver, I observed Sazzy as she entered the kitchen with a troubled look on her face.

[Kind of. You see, I was tracking the police progress with catching the intruder to your house, and we might have to stay a while since they are having some troubles with them.]

Sazzy sighed as she then closed her personal terminal and slumped on the chair.

"Them?"

Oliver whipped his head to Sazzy's direction.

"So there was more than one intruder?"

I asked as I kept the pot back where it belonged.

Drying my hands on my clothes, I watched as Sazzy rocked her head as she tried to explain to me.

[Well, no. There was only one physical intruder. However, the police have determined that there are quite a couple of people involved in the break in. They may also have been planning it for a while so the police officers are having their poor IT guy track them down.]

Oliver listened intently to her words and fell into a thoughtful look.

"I thought the security of the personal terminal is quite poor? Why is it that you say they are going to take a while?"

I walked over to where Sazzy was and sat down beside her. Oliver followed, breaking out of his thoughtful look, and sat down beside me. He instantly locked his hands around my arm after he settled down.

[The public server does have practically non-existent security, but the traffic is quite huge. It's because of all the noise that it's quite hard for the IT person from the police to track down just everyone involved so quickly. The only good thing is that these people should be novices, since they didn't block or do anything to their personal terminal to hide their locations. So it shouldn't take the police more than a week to catch all of them.]

A week... was quite long. If we were just staying at Fluvius without doing anything, I wasn't confident I would be comfortable staying that long. Especially since we had never visited this village before.

"A week is a bit..."

Making a troubled face, I thought over how long we should stay here. Should we stay here all week? Or should we leave and hang out at the AT center? Or maybe take a slow trip through the forest towards the AT center? And since we had already ordered the new alternative personal terminal, it should arrive in a couple of days. Leaving it at the AT center for so long would not be ideal.

While I was thinking about all of this, Sazzy was resting on the table with her chin propped on her hands.

Then suddenly, she stood up and stretched.

[Staying here overthinking probably won't help us! Let's go to Amanda's place! Maybe we can gain some information from her? Or maybe not? Either way anything would beat staying here.]

Getting out of our chairs, I agreed with Sazzy's thinking as we headed out of the house.

"Do you think the people who attacked Amanda are connected to those who attacked us?"

I asked Sazzy as we followed Olivia's words and headed away from the left gate.

[Honestly, I don't know. Based on the photos the police sent they seemed to be searching for something. Maybe the jar of preservative? But then we have to ask where they got their information and how much do they know? The 'best' case would be that they are just extremists and targeted you just because you are from the anti-Colonizer side.]

I thought back to the information that Helen had given. The possible pro-Colonizers in Margret's village.

"Do you think someone who is pro-Colonizer from Helen's village found out what she was doing and leaked that we had that jar?"

Admittedly, I didn't want to think about this option. When I first did the interview with several of the villagers, they all seemed like good people.

[Possibly.]

Walking along the periphery of the clearing, we passed several houses. Looking at their front decks, we saw many things left there but none of the decks matched the picture we saw. Until we went to one that was particularly far away.

Seeing all the locks and cameras, we approached the house and I stopped talking to Sazzy.

Oliver tightened his grip on mine as we pressed the doorbell right beside the door.

Immediately, a woman's voice rang out from inside.

"Hello? Could I ask you to state your name?"

"I'm Alex, and my little brother here is Oliver."

After I introduced myself, I angled my body to show Oliver. Then, in a couple of seconds, I could hear the rattling noises of locks being opened. Finally, the door opened a tiny bit to show us an older version of the woman from the picture Linda showed us in her house.

"I heard from Linda you were searching for me. Could I ask why?"

Hiding the majority of her body behind the door, I saw her eyes dart around to check that it was only the two of us. I then slowly explained the story again. From Ken's background to Vastum to even the invasion of our house.

"Other than asking about what you know about the poison, I also want to ask whether you have an idea of who was after you."

Hearing the invasion, I could see panic rise in Amanda's eyes as they started to dilate and sweat started to bead on her forehead. I then noticed that she was slightly trembling.

"Honey, calm down."

Behind her, we suddenly hear a man's voice. A hand then curved around from behind Amanda and held her firmly on her shoulders. Her trembling then lessened.

Opening the door wider, we were met with a man who was squinting his eyes sharply at us. He was taller than Amanda, and obviously protective of her as he pushed his way between the two of us.

"Would you mind waiting a while behind the house? Just travel to the back, and you will see a picnic table. Please sit there and wait."

With that, he closed the door on us and I could hear soothing sounds coming from behind the door.

[That should be the man Linda briefly mentioned. Her lover. Or maybe husband.]

Listening to his instructions, the two of us walked around the house and towards the back. There, we saw the picnic table he mentioned and took a seat.

"I feel slightly bad for meeting her now."

Sighing, I used a hand to comb through the strands of Oliver's hair. Surely us coming over and asking her about such a horrible time in her life was reopening some old wounds.

Oliver closed his eyes as he enjoyed my actions and reassured me.

"We need some answers of our own. So coming to find her was something we couldn't help it."

I sighed once more as I continued to play with his hair.

True to the man's word, after some time he and Amanda opened the back door of their house and sat opposite us from the picnic table. The man had his arm around Amanda's shoulder, clearly there to support her.

Taking a deep breath, Amanda first introduced herself.

"I am Amanda, as you should have already heard of. This is my husband Charles. I hope you won't mind him joining us for this talk."

Answering that I was fine with him being here, I saw Charles tightening his hold on Amanda's shoulder to remind her he was here for her. Amanda then took another deep breath before we started talking about what happened five years ago.