What sort of tea is that?

This is going to bother her forever. She should know. It should be blindingly obvious. Is it new to her? Is that the problem? But then why does it feel so obnoxiously [i]familiar?[/i] It could just as easily be a plain and uninteresting assam as it could be some mystic wonder of the ancient world that even the Aurorae would struggle to remember. It's annoying! It's stupid!

It's... delicious. Eclair cannot help herself but take an extra deep sniff of the hallway with every step further forward into the mist. Were such a thing not unbecoming of a maid-knight (or a mysterious masked hero) she might be salivating. As it happens it is utterly unbecoming and she is walking in accordance with strict decorum, but she [i]does[/i] feel her first pang of regret at spending her entire requisition budget in one place.

"Yuki Edogawa. The technique you seek is simple in theory: I can teach it to you within the span of a single evening."

Yes, this is good. Technical talk. Distracting, soothing. Better almost than the tea. Better by three times or more, in fact, because the tea itself is silly. To the point where it nearly staggers her. If she contemplates what has happened in her absence at all she will stumble into a wall and lose herself to either laughter or crying, or else both in rapid succession and regularly trading turns. 

It is the very sort of phenomenon that, if she contemplates it for too long, if she even considers writing any of this down in her journal, she will shatter on the spot. Because it is proof that had she not intervened, the world might have thwarted Timtam by itself. That far from being a hero or even a useful knight, she is and will remain utterly irrelevant. That she is not outside the flow of whatever concerns the world considers its 'main events' because she chooses to seek other truths, but because nothing in her mind matters at all. Every case might solve itself without a detective. Ridiculous. Cruel. Possible.

This must [i]never[/i] occur to her. 

"But I shall be very surprised if I see even you manage it even once before we part ways. To understand and to achieve are separated by monumental levels of effort. But do not be discouraged; I will explain when we have arrived in the quiet and then you will understand. This is a crass observation, but I believe that in your current state you in particular are quite well suited to my variant of this--"

Her head is turned to the side, in an attempt at eye contact. Unusual for her, to not be watching her surroundings anyway. Unusual even in a mist of tea and the turmoil filling the hallways to not see someone coming. More unusual still for her reflexes to not kick in and pivot her flawlessly outside the realm of a collision she should not have known to dodge. But she did not look. And she did not see. And she did not get out of the way. 

Which only leaves the impossible truth: that she has walked chest-first into another person without realizing it. Even after the moment of contact it takes several long seconds for the mistake to register. She begins to dip into a curtsy automatically and, with a wince, kicks herself out of the habit before she can ruin anything else. She dips her head into the tiniest of bows, instead.

"Apologies. I was... not... look...ing..."

Her throat is dry. Her knees have locked together and fused into immovable rods. No. No no no no, not here! Not now! Tomorrow! Or better yet, never! After the disaster from earlier how is she supposed to redeem herself without even a chance at preparation? [i]Is[/i] there even a degree of preparation that could undo the disaster of her confession? It is antithetical to the role of a detective to believe so, but the evidence does not lie! And it concludes in no uncertain terms that she, Eclair Espoir, is an awkward in between specter caught somewhere between loser dork and complete monster. Which one she feels seems to change almost by the second. 

The truth is inevitable. She cannot ignore the reality of whom she has uncharacteristically run into any more than she can force two and two to equal something other than four. And the woman here in front of her has the power to change everything, and must ([i]must!![/i]) be incensed beyond belief. The unsolvable puzzle. Her only clear superior. Here at the least opportune moment to deliver a deathblow she will not recover from.

At least she cannot think of tea anymore.

"M-Mayzie? I, I did not..."