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Juni unpacked her most recent care package from home, which included a large litre bottle of brilliant red liquid. She stared at it for a moment - did Abuela really think she was going to finish all of this before she went home for spring break? Or... She grinned, and pulled out her phone.



And with that, she tossed her phone into her backpack and ran off to class.

When Juni got out of calculus and checked her messages, she giggled. ~"As if I would ever say no to coffee,"~ she laughed to herself in Spanish.

Juni took the short way back to her dorm room after her last class of the morning, startling several pigeons and raising a shout from one of the groundskeepers, but she was in a puckish sort of mood, and ignored him. (And it wasn't as if she'd actually stepped on any of the plantings; she'd vaulted the railing at speed and only touched down once in the middle of a pile of mulch.)

A few minutes later, she had fresh, hot arepas in a flat lunch container along with a little microwaved hot-pack to keep them warm. She tucked the box and the bottle of hot sauce (it was possible that other hosts might show up, after all) in her backpack, and she headed out to the Rose Maze at a more leisurely pace.

It took her perhaps ten minutes to navigate it; she hadn't yet memorized all the turnings, and while parkour was lots of fun, Juni considered using it on things like mazes cheating.

Juni swung her little winged backpack off her back, and settled down on the other side of the table to pull out the hot sauce and the arepas, and the small jar of crema she'd gotten, along with a spoon and a knife for it, and her laquer box with her favorite pair of ebony chopsticks, with their little mother of pearl inlay near the top.

"I think I am doing all right," Juni said, after a moment's consideration. "As, as well as I can, since my project is, um, eating my life." She grinned. "It is good, I have not had a, a thing to hack on so much with joy for...for a while. Last term was, was just too full of things that were stupid." She tucked a dread behind one ear - at some point, she'd apparently started weaving little bits of sparkle into the ends of them, and one caught the light and flashed before settling down her back. "The facial recognition goes, goes well - and thank you for, for the recommendations of people who would, ah, enjoy working with me. We are making a, a prototype, and if, if we get to the point of, um, presentation at the end of, of term, we will put up a booth at the class fairs. It will not be, be everything - but maybe it will be, oh, enough to merit attention."

After a moment she added with a sly grin, knowing what the facial recognition had been for, "Who is getting special flowers?"

Juni slid the jar over to Kyouya with a nod, and a cautionary, "Be careful, I have not tested this bottle, Abuela makes it a, a little different every time. It may be hotter than, than what we gave you for Christmas," before she set about transferring some of the pickled vegetables and rice to her own plate.

She paused to consider the tuna. Hmmm, what would the hot sauce do to that? She carefully set two of the pieces aside to eat plain, just because it was absolutely lovely looking tuna, and she was fairly certain the hot sauce was going to overpower the delicate flavor. "I am glad to hear that, that there are people who suit the flowers," she said cheerfully. She slit one of the arepas in half, sandwich-style, then offered the box and her knife to Kyouya, for when he was done with the hot sauce.

"I do not know if, if the prototype will work," she cautioned. "We still have many bugs to squash. But it has been..." she considered, "it has been both educational and, and fun to work with other programmers. Especially ones who I have not done projects with before. It is not like, oh, picking up someone else's thing, and, and making improvements. This is our own. I think, even after we all, ah, graduate, we will still work together, from, from time to time - if everyone keeps programming."

Juni let out a delighted laugh at the report of the demise of the hot sauce. "Oh, I shall have to tell Abuela, she, she will be so pleased." Watching the slow quiet pleasure (understated as always, because this is Kyouya after all, but still - gastronomic bliss is very hard to repress entirely) spread over his face, she smiled and added, "If you would like some of, of this bottle decanted, I would be happy to share. There is too much for, for me to finish before it loses its picante, its distinction. At least if, if I do not want an ulcer," she added with a wry look.

The arepas had been baked with some cheese in the mix, but were otherwise plain, as Juni's arepa-maker was a fairly bare-bones model, and she'd been in a hurry. However, there was the crema to add as well. Juni liberally slathered half of the arepa with a couple of tablespoons of the hot sauce, then spread crema on the other half, and turned it into an erstwhile sandwich. "Por este, oh Dios, gracias," she murmured, and took a hearty bite. "Mmmmmmmm..."

When she finished chewing, she poured herself some coffee from Kyouya's thermos, and said, "The, the prototype is of, of the basic interface. We, we have not finished with the, the plot or the, the puzzles. But what I, I want to do is, is have the game react to expression. Most computers have built in webcams these days, so, oh, if someone is startled, the game will change - or the reactions of, of the characters might change if, if the player had an, an angry expression, or a happy one." She poured some of the hot sauce into one of the sushi dipping containers, and considered the various picked vegetables.

"One of, of the professors in the university, the one in cognitive science, thinks we might be able to, to use this for help in, in therapy for autistic children. We could program the, the computer faces to have much more extreme versions of, of real reactions, so they could practice how to, to interact with more, um..." she frowned, working on the vocabulary, then said hesitantly, "neuro-typical? I think that is the word. But this is, is all hypothetical, if we get the, the prototype working." She ate a couple of the pickled vegetables, and smiled happily.

Juni looked pleased. "I would be happy to. Translating to Spanish is much easier than, than translating from it," she pointed out. "It is my, my native language, so I just have to, to understand the Japanese, not think of the right vocabulary." She wrinkled her nose, and gave Kyouya a grin. "And of course there is, ah, only one alphabet, not hirgana and katakana and kanji."

At the comment about the stroke victims, she brightened. "Oh, that is a good idea, I, I will have to tell the others. I am, ah, it is not my expertise? I want to, to make the machine do a thing - figuring out what it is, oh, good for, that is someone else's skill. But I am glad to, to know it can be used, because it is a fun project to make go right." She twiddled the end of one her braids between her fingers for a moment, before tossing it back over her shoulder and applying herself to one of the pieces of tuna plain. It was lovely, but her mouth still burned from the sauce...hm. She considered her other piece for a moment.

"We have a...a proto plot," she said. "But it is, is too similar to many other game plots. So we are still working, trying to, to make it different somehow. It has the, the 'find some things' plot and the 'make them do something' plot, but because, because we have the interface, we want to, to make sure that there are different, um, results based on, on what the player shows the computer. And so we, we need a more, more human plot too. We are talking about it."

She imitated his touch of hot sauce on the sashimi and nodded her approval. "Yes, just right."

Juni's smile was crooked. "True. And there are sounds in some languages I cannot even, even perceive much less reproduce. But I have, have resigned myself to just missing my 'rrrr' in classes for the next few years. It is not that, that my name cannot be said in Japanese, just...not quite right."

She dipped a piece of daikon into the hot sauce and popped it in her mouth, then blew air in the air, miming dragon breath, before looking back down. "It is...hm. We can - we have taught it to, to get a few strong emotions. It will handle, um, disgust, surprise, and happy-smiling, though the, the last one gets confused with, with aggression sometimes. But the, the subtle ones we are still working on. It will, will be a learning process of course, but we were prototyping on, on the big expressions that people - that most people -" and she nodded briefly to Kyouya in appreciation of his poker-face, "will show without restraint."