In the evening, Shirou helped the safe and sound group prepare the food they wanted to eat.
"Those guys actually ambushed us today! I'm so pissed."
Exusiai complained while eating a warmed apple pie, her speech completely slurred.
"Seriously, if they'd broken the van, we wouldn't have made it back until tomorrow, and missing this meal would've been a huge loss!"
Croissant's chopsticks never stopped moving, sweeping across the food on the table like a herd of cattle grazing.
Sora and Texas were much more refined, quietly moving their chopsticks and mouths.
Though Sora's chopsticks mostly went for the vegetables, while Texas went for the meat.
Aside from Exusiai, that anomaly who started eating dessert before taking a few bites, everyone else enjoyed their meal quite normally.
However, Exusiai's condition was much better now; the piece in her hand was just to satisfy her cravings, specially heated up in advance.
This time, Shirou made a large table of dishes following Lungmen's customs. If he used his original cooking method, the single-batch portions would be too large, and if he made individual set meals, the table wouldn't have fit them all. Shirou was already considering a larger dining table.
Though it was still a bit cramped this way, squeezing things in barely worked.
"Soup's here, watch out, it's hot."
Wearing heat-resistant gloves, Shirou brought over the final bowl of soup and placed it steadily right in the middle.
"Is this soup boiled with earth beast meat and mushrooms? It smelled so good just now!"
Sora had been looking forward to it for a long time. Her other job required her to maintain a certain figure, and unlike the others, she didn't have a massive amount of physical activity, making it hard for her to let go and eat. But with soup, she could indulge just a tiny bit—just a very tiny bit!
"Yes, earth beasts were on sale today, so I bought a bit extra."
Shirou removed his heat-resistant gloves, picked up a large ladle, and doled out a bowl for everyone.
"Whoa, you even went out of your way to buy discounted ingredients? Shirou, what kind of century-best mama are you?"
Croissant sighed in admiration while drinking her soup.
Through a few days of observation, Shirou's first choice when cooking was never what he felt like eating, but rather what was on sale and how to pair it.
"Ahem, ahem..."
Exusiai, who was sipping her soup, nearly spat it out when she heard Croissant's words.
Seeing Exusiai's reaction, a slight smile appeared on Texas's face, and then she gnawed on a bone in her soup.
"Be careful, it'll be bad if you choke."
Shirou didn't have time to think about the Mama Emiya incident from a few days ago; instead, he grabbed some tissues and handed them to Exusiai to wipe herself.
"That wave of intense childcare vibes is..."
Croissant muttered quietly, earning the agreement of both Texas and Sora.
Since her voice was relatively soft, Shirou didn't hear it. If he had, it was a safe bet that the only thing Croissant would be eating for the next few days would be croissant bread from the supermarket.
Though Shirou wouldn't show it on the surface, he actually held a bit of a grudge.
"Speaking of which, upstairs is remarkably tidy. Thanks for your hard work today, Shirou."
After finishing the soup in her hand, Texas decided to change the subject slightly to avoid accidentally calling him out by the wrong name if she saw Shirou later.
She, Texas, would never commit such a mistake!
"I was shocked when we got back, too. I never thought I'd see the day the floor regained its shine."
Sora chimed in, though she had indeed been startled.
"More space cleared out to put my merchandise now."
Croissant was already starting to ponder what she should buy for her next batch of goods.
"Please stop that thought! Clearing out space is not for you to keep piling junk up!"
Shirou delivered a single-handed chop to the top of Croissant's head, putting a stop to her buying spree.
"That's right, that's right."
Exusiai, having caught her breath, pointed at Croissant and said that. She had just been quietly jabbed by Croissant and needed to get her own back!
"Wuwu, Sora, look at them bullying me."
Croissant turned to seek out Sora.
"I also think it was finally cleared out, so it's better not to mess it up again. It'll put a burden on Shirou." Sora chose to betray Croissant.
Croissant cast her gaze toward Texas, but Texas only quietly took a sip of the coffee Shirou had brewed.
"Has everyone been bought off?! Have you all sunk into clean environments and delicious food?!"
Seeing that no one was supporting her, Croissant clutched her chest with a pitiful expression.
"Well then, tomorrow's breakfast will just be roadside croissant bread for you."
Shirou pretended to take away the bowl in front of Croissant, only for her to grab his hand and snatch the bowl back.
"No, no, no, Lord Shirou, you are the light of Penguin Logistics. We can't live without you anymore."
Having snatched back her bowl, Croissant ladled up another serving of soup and sat serenely in her chair to enjoy it.
Shirou felt helpless regarding Croissant's antics; he had only meant to scare her a little, not expecting her to cave so instantly.
The others also strongly condemned Croissant's instant-folding behavior.
After teasing Croissant a bit, Shirou thought of Texas's headphones.
"Speaking of which, Texas, are you planning to replace those headphones?"
"Yeah. It's a shame, though, but they are broken after all."
Mentioning the headphones made Texas look regretful. Those headphones had accompanied her for a long time, their model could no longer be found, the price to send them in for inspection and repair was a bit high, and asking Isv for help felt making a mountain out of a molehill. It was better to just find a new pair, except she wasn't very satisfied with any headphones she could currently find in Lungmen.
"I took a look when I was cleaning today. It should just be a wire issue, and it's probably fixable."
Shirou pulled up a chair and sat down, picking up his own bowl and chopsticks.
"Really?"
Texas's eyes lit up, her ears and tail twitching nonstop.
"It should be doable. The main problem is the wire. Just cut off the broken part and solder it back together."
Shirou briefly explained how the headphones would be repaired, leaving the rest for Texas to judge.
"Then I'll have to trouble you. What do I need to prepare?"
Having roughly understood, Texas decided to leave it to Shirou to handle. After all, the worst-case scenario was still her buying a new pair; she just didn't know what needed to be prepared to fix headphones.
"I've got all the stuff on my end. I'll fix them for you right after we finish eating."
"Then I'll go get the headphones down first."
Seeing that Shirou had been busy until now and was only just starting to eat, Texas decided not to disturb him and went upstairs to get the headphones.
Watching Texas look exceedingly happy, Exusiai asked:
"Shirou, you know about this kind of stuff too?"
When it came to firearms, Exusiai had the confidence to say she could take them apart and repair them, but she wasn't very good at electronic products like this.
"It's not overly difficult stuff. If something inside the headphones themselves is broken, then there's nothing I can do either."
"That's still awesome. I think capacitors and circuitry and all that are such a hassle."
Sora marveled from the side. She knew that Texas had been troubled over the headphones, but she hadn't had any good solutions herself.
After finishing his meal, Shirou abandoned washing the dishes and subsequent cleanup despite the dissuasion of Texas and the others, picked up the headphones, and walked toward his room.
Placing the headphones on the small desk, Shirou carefully sliced open the wire from the frayed spot.
"Carefully extract the internal wires... and then cut off the damaged section."
Shirou operated with extreme care; any improper operation at this step would mean having to cut away even more wire.
The few people outside the door put down their work, crowding into the doorway of Shirou's room to peer inside.
"He's really repairing them?"
Croissant had originally thought Shirou was just interested in this sort of thing and wanted to use Texas's headphones to practice.
But seeing Shirou's practiced movements, she realized that he genuinely seemed to know how to fix them.
"Shouldn't you be paying attention to something else? That line of knives on the big table next to us is the biggest problem! Who buys a bunch of identical knives?"
Exusiai called out Croissant for focusing on the wrong thing.
"Those look like the newest survival daggers released by that survival shop in the Dagu Shopping District. Each one is pretty expensive."
Texas thought the knives looked rather familiar, so she checked her phone and discovered they were quite pricey daggers.
"Where'd he get so much money?"
Seeing the price of the daggers displayed on Texas's phone, Croissant's complexion changed drastically.
Good grief, the price of a single dagger was probably several days' worth of her food budget.
And that guy Shirou actually bought a whole bunch of them and left them sitting on the table?
"Money isn't the issue, is it? Who buys that many identical daggers anyway? It's not like they're dedicated caster staves."
Exusiai once more pointed out Croissant's misplaced focus.
"Shouldn't our focus be on how Shirou is going to fix those headphones?"
Sora's face was full of puzzlement. They were clearly curious about how Shirou was going to repair the headphones, so how did things suddenly veer off toward the table on the side?
Though she was also quite interested in those cups on the table.
When the work in Shirou's hands reached a stopping point, he finally noticed the crowd outside his door.
"What are you guys doing?"
Shirou asked while slipping a heat-shrink tube over the headphone wire in his hand.
"Hm? Ah? Nothing, just curious how you're fixing them."
Exusiai felt three hands shove her forward. Her mind went completely blank, and after stammering for a moment, she suddenly remembered the original purpose of coming here.
"Then you guys probably won't get to see it; I'm pretty much done."
Shirou slightly lifted the somewhat unsightly wire in his hand. He had already checked it with magecraft; the headphones could already operate normally.
"Really?"
Texas sprinted over to Shirou's side and looked at her headphones.
Although the wire section looked a bit unsightly, it was barely acceptable.
"Yeah, you can listen and see."
Shirou didn't rush to finish the heat-shrink tubing, letting Texas test them out first.
Texas carefully plugged the jack into her phone, put on the headphones, and heard the sound of music coming through them after a long absence.
"It's rare to see Texas look this happy."
Exusiai watched Texas's tail wagging nonstop, swaying so much her eyes were starting to spin.
"Yeah, truly."
Sora agreed with Exusiai's words.
"How is it?"
Shirou asked, watching Texas listen intently to the sound in the headphones.
"Extremely good, just like before."
Texas contentedly took off the headphones and handed them to Shirou for the final finishing touches.
"That does it then. By the way, what color do you like?"
Shirou took the headphones and pulled out a heat gun to blow on the heat-shrink tubing, watching it quickly shrink and tightly wrap around the wire Shirou had just sliced open.
"Red?"
Before you continue