[right][h2][color=808080]Floriano's Catharsis[/color][/h2]
[@Blademusica76][/right]

[color=808080]No one comes.

Floriano has been waiting the right amount of time—longer, even. Around him, cups have already found their owners. Steam rises from mugs at neighboring tables. Someone laughs over a shared pastry. The couple by the window nurse matching drinks, easy and unhurried, as though they have been here for years and the years have been kind.

The counter in front of him remains bare.

Somewhere beneath the murmur of other people's contentment, there is something else. Not music. More like the sound a clock makes when you press your ear to its back: a patient, intricate turning. Gear against gear, wheel coaxing wheel, each tooth catching the next in a sequence too deliberate to be accidental.

On the far wall, past the last of the tables, past the reach of the warm light, shadows shift. Large ones. Slow and even, tracing arcs that repeat, and repeat, and repeat. The shape of them is unmistakable.

The café does not notice. The café has never noticed. It simply runs.

[i]Tick.[/i]

[i]Tock.[/i]

[i]Tick...[/i]

Time is no different.
[/color]

[center][color=808080]━━━━━━ ◈ ━━━━━━[/color][/center]

[right][h2][color=808080]Charlie's Catharsis[/color][/h2]
[@BaronOBeefDip][/right]

[color=808080]The break room is gone. In its place stands the same establishment Charlie found herself in before, but William is not here with her.

Instead, a waiter materializes at Charlie's elbow. White gloves. Pressed jacket. The kind of waiter who belongs in a restaurant where the chairs cost more than the food.

[i]"Right this way."[/i]

He offers no explanation, just moves, and the expectation that she will follow settles naturally as gravity.

Two groups sit nearby, each folded into their own conversations, unhearing of the other. Then: a younger man with brown skin, wavy hair and a goatee, a vest the color of good coffee, sailboat on one arm and a blimp on the other, a steel watch at his wrist—staring at an empty table with the particular expression of someone running out of patience.

The waiter stops at a table set for one. He draws the chair back. Waits.

Once Charlie is seated, he produces a menu and places it in her hands.[/color]