The awkward part was that the Noi people and the Loren Alliance had to spend some time on "overtime communications" afterward. The experts and scholars at Sorin Command Center worked extra hours to explain to their interstellar friends why a single planet could contain so many bizarre races—and how those races could actually coexist harmoniously in an "alliance." Throughout the entire process, Gawain stood nearby, his mind churning with strange thoughts.
He truly had not expected the first contact after Loren and the Noi people had finally restored communications to turn out like this. It did not feel like a serious official exchange between two civilizations across the stars. It felt more like two interstellar newbies who had finally connected for a voice chat, the kind who kept talking until midnight before they had no choice but to disconnect. Before hanging up, one messaged, "Going to sleep," and the other replied, "See you," only for the first to send a selfie less than half a minute later. The other answered with a whole set of pictures, and the two decided to chat for another five minutes. Then they looked up again—damn it, it was five-thirty in the morning.
That was exactly how Gawain felt right now, but what frustrated him most was not the awkwardness. It was that he could not explain this association and sentiment in plain language to anyone else—not even to a certain Shadow Assault Goose standing before him, whom he had trained to understand more than half of Earth's memes. If he tried to explain the chain of thoughts in his head, he would need at least forty pages of documentation to go with it—which was somewhat like the siren materials the Loren Alliance had sent to the Noi people.
Then again, Gawain did not think