Tweak's eyes scrunched shut as she completely aborted a sneeze, holding a hand up over her face as containing the pressure contorted it; the process looked somewhat painful and nearly bumping into the waiter as he reached past her to set down a glass of water. Blinking, she slowly lowered her hand and tried to pretend like nothing happened, quietly continuing with what she was doing as Laj began his soliloquy on the history of his inherited name.
Mentally, she frowned in confusion. Her TacOps system had picked up her name being spoken during its passive monitoring, resulting in the sneeze attempt...she had no idea why that particular alert method had been chosen, aside from a very, very vague reference to a superstition in one of her databases that popped up when the question crossed her mind. The 'Spacer neko glanced sideways at George, the unknowing perpetrator of her embarrassment. Why was he muttering about her? A quick review of the transcripts of George's audio (arranged in reverse order by timestamp, sections cut into individual clips by sentence) from her TacOpSys almost made her laugh...then her cheeks felt hot. George thought Kokuten was flirting with her? And with Cassifin? Well, that was possible, if that was true at all. From what she knew of Kokuten, he was just that way by nature. He was flirting? Was he flirting?
Who was George talking to? Some of the audio sounded like replies to another speaker. The only person over there within whispering range was the new guy, Max, so Tweak ran a search on his vocal pattern, pulling up the other half of the conversation, or part of it. Some of the words had been half-covered by the rest of the ambient noises and conversations, needing reconstructing to get the whole thing and was why Tweak apparently missed the first mention of her name. His comments seemed simply concerned about her boredom -- she wasn't sure whether to smile, knowing someone cared, or feel embarrassed, knowing someone had noticed -- and in the end Tweak mentally shrugged and went back to considering what to do about George.
Her hands went into semi-autopilot, finishing up her next reassembly of her little puzzle device while her mind skimmed whatever she could dig up from her notes and records on George. The Nepleslian seemed interested in her, for one reason or another, always trying to stay nearby when they were in the same group. He always seemed so disappointed when they had to part ways, too. Near as Tweak could tell, from her perspective, she and George were on that edge between acquaintances and friends. Written notes on the Sunny Side resort incident confirmed it, more or less. She certainly hadn't made it easy for him to get even that far, that was certain...
What am I going to do about that now, though? That brought up another question: Did she want a relationship at all? She let out a puff of air through her nose, silently slipping the last piece of her device into place. Formal dinners are not the time to be thinking about that stuff, Tweak thought, stopping that line before it got going. She just wanted to get through the night without something exploding. Yes, that was a good goal. She frowned slightly, apparently at her device. Something didn't feel right. Finally noticing the water in the wineglass, Tweak looked at it for a moment, but do anything with it.
