And Felicia simply blinked, still unsure what she had done wrong.
Zinnia, who had been standing beside Kaivan, erupted. "Unbelievable!" Her slap landed sharply across Kaivan's cheek, the sound echoing like a whip crack. Kaivan staggered, eyes wide, unable to comprehend the situation.
All work stopped. Everyone stared at him in disbelief. Ethan stepped forward, usually cheerful, but now speaking with icy sarcasm. "Wow, bragging about that kind of thing at work? Bold move, man." His pat on Kaivan's shoulder felt more like mockery.
Isabel, always quiet, approached Felicia instead. "Felicia… did it feel good?" she whispered, her clear eyes filled with innocent curiosity.
Felicia froze. Her face flushed deeply. In her mind, her earlier words replayed, slowly, painfully. She finally understood. Her innocent explanation had been twisted into something far more intimate.
Her chest tightened. Sweat gathered at her palms. Words refused to form.
But it was too late. A tiny misunderstanding had exploded into a storm of rumors.
Felicia looked to Kaivan, pleading silently, begging him to help untangle the chaos.
Kaivan stood stiff, gears in his mind grinding. Then his jaw tightened, a strained smile forming, somewhere between disbelief and despair.
Across the room, Radit, Raphael, and Frans watched with baffled expressions, as if they had stumbled into an unexpected drama in the middle of the workday.
"Kaivan… it was just ice cream," Felicia whispered at last, voice trembling with shame. "Really… just ice cream."
Kaivan took a deep breath and shouted, "EVERYONE! Felicia was talking about ice cream! Vanilla ice cream! Nothing else!"
Silence followed. Thick, awkward.
A few exchanged glances, unsure. Zinnia blinked rapidly, trying to reassess. Ethan loosened his hold, though his smirk remained faint.
Slowly, the tension in the workshop thinned, though it still clung to the air.
Kaivan let out a long, weary sigh, not just from the personal chaos, but from the mountain of work waiting for him. And Felicia lowered her head, cheeks burning. She never imagined something so simple… could turn this disastrous.
In the dim corner of the room, the soft clinking of tools echoed faintly, becoming a quiet rhythm beneath the thickening silence. Radit focused on mixing the extraction materials, while Thivi beside him tried to steady her breathing. Her hands moved carefully as she poured golden powder into a chemical solution, yet the air between them still carried the lingering awkwardness from the earlier incident.
Radit glanced at her, took a slow breath, then offered a small smile. "So..." he began, his voice calm but weighted with meaning. "How did you even end up thinking Felicia did that to Kaivan? All because of a normal ice cream?"
Thivi raised an eyebrow, then let out a small nervous laugh. "I thought... Kaivan rejected me back at the villa because he had someone else in mind." She hesitated, her voice softening. "And when Felicia said something ambiguous... I thought she, they, really meant something else." Her words trailed off, her gaze drifting away as a soft blush spread across her cheeks.
Radit nearly dropped the tool in his hand. "Wait, what? He rejected your move?" His voice cracked with disbelief.
"No, I mean..." Thivi fumbled, her tone growing faint. "That time... I just got carried away. In the storage room, it was just the two of us... so I got curious. But Kaivan, he pulled away. And apologized." Her voice was barely louder than a whisper, but enough to thicken the air between them, awkwardness slowly turning into something warmer, something fragile.
Fast footsteps echoed through the workshop hall, cutting through the moment. Zinnia emerged from behind a stack of equipment, her expression firm. "Is the gold already melted?" she asked, her tone sharp and precise.
Radit jolted, nearly dropping his tool again. He spun around quickly, his face stiff as if he'd been caught doing something forbidden. Thivi also froze, her smile tight and nervous, silently hoping Zinnia hadn't heard anything.
Zinnia narrowed her eyes, her gaze shifting between the two. "What were you two talking about just now?" she asked flatly, too calm, too direct.
Radit opened his mouth, but no answer came out. Thivi lowered her head, clinging to the fragile quiet as if it could shield her. Whatever Zinnia sensed, the tension between them was impossible to hide.
On the other side of the workshop, the atmosphere was entirely different. Kaivan and Isabel were focused on completing their testing device. Cables lay neatly arranged across the table, and the electronic components had finally begun to integrate. Isabel activated the Tome Omnicent, a living book filled with weather data, maps, and vital information, while Kaivan connected the final cable to a small scanner.
"Finally," Kaivan murmured, wiping sweat from his brow. "We've reached the first stage."
Isabel nodded, her eyes bright. "Place the Tome now," Kaivan instructed, and she complied. The book slowly opened its pages by itself, responding to their new device.
Kaivan gave the first command. "When will the rain fall?"
For a moment, silence. Then the Tome's pages trembled softly. Text appeared on the scanner's screen: There will be no rain in this city today.
The information shone clearly, their OCR device had finally worked.
"Yes!" Kaivan exclaimed, his eyes lighting up. "We actually pulled it off!"