"Is that so? I'm not familiar with that one. Interesting." Kyouya filed it away, along with the change in the rhythm of the conversation -- it seemed to him that she was somehow slightly distracted, though she obviously wasn't talking with anyone other than him.
The correlation was minimal, but it was there. Not enough to allay those relentless suspicions, though. He would cross-reference it with the conversation he had with Allyra, when he was less-occupied.
"I should speak with the receptionist. I'll let you go," he said lightly. "She's in good hands. Please pass along my regards to Nekozawa-senpai. Ja, ne."
He waited for her response before closing the phone and approaching the receptionist, and did exactly as he'd promised, adding Shiny's and Nekozawa's and the mysterious Faolan's name to the approved guest list for Arillena.
A few moments of further murmured conversation, and Faolan's name had an extra notification attached to it, that blinked into appearance both at the receptionist's desk, and in the security room.
Light supervision requested. There were still far too many questions in the Ootori boy's mind about him.
****
He reviewed what he knew on the way home, while things were still fresh and sharp in his mind, penning the thoughts in place across the paper swiftly, and occasionally cursing that even the Rolls-Royce didn't have a perfectly smooth road feel.
The lie. He came back to it, turned it over in his mind.
Something about her history, affecting what happened at the time. It troubled him. He had no doubts about the veracity of the who, assuming that the aforementioned Faolan actually existed, and the where and when seemed airtight as well. That left what, why, and how. How seemed least murky, from where he was sitting: someone had said something that had triggered a personality shift, and then (in his estimation) compounded it poorly somehow, with an insult to Allyra's person-hood.
Personality shifts were supposed to occur in response to stress, for the most part. He'd seen how comfortable Arillena was with Shiny and Nekozawa repeatedly, and found it difficult to believe that something as tame as a DVD and a discussion, even an intense one, would be sufficient. No. The lie was in the
what. Whatever had happened, it was more complex than that.
And
why remained a mystery.
