Schiller and Hela returned before long. Stark kept signaling with his eyes, urging Schiller to tell him what had happened, but Schiller acted as if he saw nothing. He returned to his seat, braced one hand against the stool, and leisurely drank his juice.
Strange and Loki both wore stiff expressions. As Schiller drank his juice, he observed their smallest movements. Stark could be said to have immediately sidled over, each of them holding a straw between their teeth and using the act of drinking juice as a substitute for cracking sunflower seeds.
"What do you think is wrong with those two?" Stark lifted his chin toward the opposite side.
Schiller shook his head and merely smiled. Stark felt even more tortured by curiosity. He tugged at Schiller's arm and said, "You can't do this, Schiller. Don't you know secrets are supposed to be shared with good brothers?"
Schiller gave him a rather disdainful glance and said, "As if you could keep a secret. Once a secret gets into your hands, it stops being a secret."
"So there really is a secret?" Stark's eyes widened. After rolling his eyes around, he said, "Those two aren't... you know."
Stark deliberately waggled his eyebrows, but Schiller still acted as though he had not seen it. Stark began analyzing things by himself afterward, but after thinking for a long time, he found no clues at all.
"Surely not." Stark muttered, "I've never seen anything between them before..."
Schiller smiled again, as though he had remembered something funny. Stark could not take it anymore. He lowered his voice and roared at Schiller, "Tell me already! This is my party. I cannot allow gossip to exist that I don't know about!!!"
"Did you know that Stephen spent a period of time standing atop the main