The crowd of people made the entire procession towards the site of the first trial slower than what Alice expected at first, giving her ample time to actually observe the people around her. The event earlier made her lose track of the gasmask-wearing person and the person that was talking with them, so Alice had to find someone else for now to take notes about. It was an even more convenient time to do it, since now the gibberish she heard around her somehow turned to be actually intelligible voices. The language barrier had been shattered! She never thought of paying any attention to the language barrier in her story, so for it to conveniently disappear was appreciated. Now events had started to unfold on the right track.

On her mind as she continued her observation, this would be the time for Alice to try forming a three-person group. That's how most of the protagonist of these school stories usually do, as far as Alice was aware. Of course, Alice was convinced that she's better than the usual protagonists of such stories, so rather than waiting for fate to give her the group she'd be sticking with throughout the rest of the story, keen-eyed Alice would observe and pick up said peers by herself. However, she still had to play the role of the shy and clueless heroine for the beginning to make herself adorable, so Alice acknowledged that she shouldn't be too forceful with that.

As she started to look around, she noticed that someone was looking at her. It was more of an aside glance, and she was content on leaving it be for the time being, but after a while, she noticed that the look was deliberate instead of just a passing glance. This short-haired boy, was looking at her. Was he impressed by her mere presence? Alice considered to pick him up, but she felt that his first impression wasn't as interesting as she thought, at least from one look. Either way however, being looked at like that did stimulate her curiosity, and perhaps talking with him would set the flag to trigger interesting events in the future. The boy was now looking at another direction, and Alice used it to prepare her meek and shy appearance for the meeting before approaching him while he's not looking at her. Using the crowd of moving people as an alibi, she bumped herself accidentally to the boy.

[color=fff200]"U-uh, sorry! 

I...I was thinking that I saw someone familiar around here, but...I can't move well on this crowd. So...uh...you looked at me earlier, right? M-may I ask your name? P-perhaps we can go together for now? I don't know anyone here..."[/color]

Even now, Alice was still not good at conversing with people, but since she's playing the role of a shy girl now, it worked to her advantage with a bit of extra spices. The thought of whether the boy would be dangerous or not had not really passed her mind for the time being. Neither the thought about whether her speech sounded forced or not. She wasn't really thinking of much right now aside from how she should take this story next, actually.

[@Letter Bee]