[i][color=brown]"This book is pretty bad."[/color][/i] Thomas thought.

The book was in fact one he picked up for the occasion. It was a book he bought in case he needed to pretend to read it. He didn't exactly plan the reason when he bought the book, so he bought one that may have interested him. It was one on ancient history, a favorite topic of his. The problem with the book was that it was quite biased. It had to do with events leading up to the current government so he supposed he should've expected it, but he'd had high hopes for it anyway.

There wasn't much written on Thomas's notebook. First and foremost was there was the statement "This book sucks." He'd found that out early. The second thing was "Internal strife in black guild?" and "Shiro's offer", as well as a few other keywords. Shiro was probably right that other guilds may attack the black guild, but didn't the black guild have a large amount of sweepers? They should've been fine if that was the case. In numbers alone, the black guild wouldn't fall short of any guild. The biggest issue with a new guild is normally organisation and with the sweepers on board, that shouldn't be a problem. He'd penned that section off with "Needs investigation".

Flicking to the next page, Eris gave Shiro her response. It was more or less a refusal, Thomas noted down the key parts of her statements. Most of what she said was significant, even the part about Cassandra; though not really significant in the current context, it may be useful later.

The thing that surprised Thomas the most was the fact that Cassandra, who Eris relied heavily on, was so young. He estimated her to be several years younger than he was. Though she looked the same age as Aaron, so he supposed that shouldn't mean much, but it was rather surprising that such a young girl would share Eris's burdens.

Thomas shot a quick glance at their table before turning back to his book. Perhaps the most interesting thing about Cassandra and Eris was that they were fairly unique kinds of people who happened to be very different to each other. He wondered what brought them together in this kind of world, but that wasn't something he should look into. Though Cassandra was just one of the 2 red haired somewhat European people he knew...

[color=brown][i]"Speak of the devil."[/i][/color] Thomas thought.
The other one had just entered the cafe. Emma, one of the few people left in the journalism club. He wasn't expecting her here, though he didn't know why he expected her to be anywhere. She went wherever she pleased and he could never get a read on where she would go. In fact, she could kind of be relied on for finding something interesting just because she had a habit of going wherever she wanted to. He was sure that her being at the mall at the time he was here was probably a coincidence, though he was unsure of whether or not she knew what he was doing there. Evidence was pointing to the fact that she did, though, but he didn't want to blow his cover.

He shot her a quick unimpressed look before turning back to his book. A gesture between friends, perhaps. Little beyond a greeting. Acknowledgements of sorts, a little gesture to keep face and to accept her presence. He wasn't entirely sure what she was going to do but it wasn't his place to interfere anyway.
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[@KoL] @everyone else I guess, though it's not like I did that much to anyone :\