My Netori Life With System: Stealing Milfs And Virgins

Chapter 299: 299. Ellie Found Old Dirt, Ren Found New Friends, I Found Out Lamb Has Secrets

Ellie emerged from the kitchen again, but she didn’t sit in a chair. Instead, she perched on the arm of the sofa directly across from Mike, her body humming with a restless, kinetic energy.

It was her tell, the way she sat when the evening’s logistics were still swirling in her mind, too energized to actually settle into the stillness of a seat.

"How was your week?" she asked, her eyes bright, searching his.

"Full," Mike replied, the word heavy with the unspoken weight of the secrets he was still carrying. "Yours?"

"Incredible," she said, her voice lifting with the particular, sharp brightness of someone reporting a major breakthrough. "I found a section of the depot’s subfloor that nobody had documented."

"It was tucked away behind a structural pillar, completely overlooked in the last survey."

"There’s evidence of an earlier structure underneath the main building pre-industrial."

"It changes the entire adaptive reuse argument. It’s no longer just a question of what the building is; it’s about the historical weight of what the site was."

Mike leaned forward slightly, his interest piqued by the sheer scale of the discovery. "How far down does it go?"

"That’s the million-dollar question," she said, a determined glint in her eyes. "I have to petition the department for access to the city’s archival records for the lot, which is, as you can imagine, a bureaucratic nightmare."

"But Stanley mentioned he might know someone in the planning registry who could grease the wheels and speed up the process." She spoke Stanley’s name with a seamless, effortless familiarity, the kind born of eleven years of shared life. It wasn’t a performance; it was the ease of two people whose lives were so deeply intertwined that his name was as natural to her as her own.

"He’s good at navigating those channels," Mike noted.

"He’s the best," Ellie said.

There was a fierce, unshakeable conviction in her voice. It was a statement of absolute fact, one that didn’t contradict the complex, perhaps even contradictory, things she had whispered to him in the kitchen a week ago about the paper tucked in his jacket pocket.

In the architecture of her mind, both truths could exist simultaneously.

Stanley returned, carrying the wine with the focused, methodical competence of a man who treated even the smallest practical task as a matter of importance. He began to open the bottle, his movements precise and practiced.

A brief, rhythmic exchange flickered between him and Ellie regarding the glassware, a minor debate over which set was appropriate for the evening, which ended with Ellie retreating to the kitchen to fetch a different set. The exchange was fluid, comfortable, and underscored by the quiet grace of a domesticity that had been polished by time.

The doorbell rang, and eleven minutes after Haruka’s estimated arrival time, the guests appeared. Haruka had arrived exactly when she said she would, having factored in Ren’s peculiar, wandering sense of time.

Ren burst into the room like a sudden gust of wind, carrying the infectious, unbridled energy of someone who had been in a new city for only forty-eight hours and had yet to encounter anything that didn’t fascinate him.

"This is a beautiful neighborhood," Ren said, his voice brimming with enthusiasm as he shook Stanley’s hand, his eyes already scanning the room. "We walked from the transit stop, and I must say, the visual density is staggering."

"I counted seven different architectural periods on a single street."

"Haruka tells me this is standard for Erosyne, but it doesn’t feel standard. It feels intentional... like someone was making a profound aesthetic point."

Stanley paused, his eyebrows arching slightly. He looked at Ren with the specific, calculating expression of a man who has just stumbled upon an unexpected conversational match, a moment of intellectual recalibration.

"The District 5 streetscape is actually a documented anomaly," Stanley said, his professional interest catching fire. "It’s detailed in a planning paper from the late development period."

"The variation isn’t accidental; the estate was constructed in staggered phases by competing developers."

"The city, quite unusually for the time, explicitly declined to enforce a unified aesthetic code."

Ren’s eyes widened, leaning into the conversation. "Why would they decline such control? It seems so chaotic."

"There are two prevailing schools of thought," Stanley explained, settling into the role of the expert. "One theory is purely economic: a lack of centralized will or a desire to keep land prices fluid."

"The other is more romantic: the theory that it was an intentional move to preserve neighborhood character by preventing the stagnation of monoculture development."

"The planning literature has been debating it for decades."

"Which one do you lean toward?" Ren pressed, sensing the depth of the man’s knowledge.

"Mostly economic," Stanley said, a wry, pragmatic smile touching his lips. "Though there were certainly a few visionary officials who retroactively claimed it was an aesthetic intention once they realized how good the resulting chaos actually looked."

"Which, if we’re being honest, is a very human way to operate."

Ren let out a bright, melodic laugh, a sound that cut through the intellectual gravity of the room and felt entirely unforced. Stanley didn’t laugh, but the corner of his mouth twitched upward in that subtle, quiet way he expressed pleasure, a silent acknowledgment that he enjoyed the company.

"Alright, enough of the urban planning lecture," Ellie intervened, her voice brimming with a playful authority as she began ushering everyone toward the dining area. "Let’s eat before this roast becomes a conceptual art piece instead of an actual dinner."

The table was meticulously arranged for five. Ellie and Stanley took the heads of the table, a configuration that signaled their roles as the architects of the evening, while Haruka, Mike, and Ren settled into the sides.

The first few minutes were the ritualistic dance of any dinner party: the rhythmic clink of silverware being laid out, the heavy, aromatic steam rising from the platters, the soft glug glug of the wine being poured into crystal, and the subtle, unspoken negotiation of everyone finding their social footing.

It was the quiet establishment of an atmosphere, the moment where a group of individuals begins the slow process of becoming a single, cohesive unit for the night.

As the main course was served, the rich, savory scent of the lamb filled the air. It was perfectly roasted, the meat tender and infused with the woody, fragrant notes of rosemary and a mysterious, deeper spice.

"What is the other ingredient?" Ren asked almost immediately after his first bite.

He didn’t do small talk; he spoke with a directness that was both refreshing and slightly startling, stripping away the polite layers of social grace to get to the heart of his curiosity.

Ellie leaned back, a knowing, enigmatic smile playing on her lips. "Ask me again in a year."

"That’s a definitive ’no’ in my book," Haruka chimed in, though she was smiling as she enjoyed her own portion.

"It’s a ’maybe,’" Ellie countered, her eyes twinkling. "But it comes with conditions."

"And what are those conditions?" Ren pressed, leaning forward, his appetite for the food matched only by his appetite for the secret.

"The condition is that you actually come back," Ellie said, her voice softening just enough to let the sincerity show. "You come back, you eat this again, and then I might consider telling you."

Ren paused, actually considering the proposition with a gravity that was almost comedic. Then, he nodded slowly.

"That is an extremely reasonable deal," he said.

He spoke with such earnest sincerity that Stanley and Ellie shared a brief, silent look, the look of two people who had just received the quiet confirmation they had hoped for: that this stranger was, in fact, someone worth knowing.

As the initial hunger was satisfied and the conversation began to drift from the food toward the people themselves, Ren turned his attention to Mike.

"Haruka tells me you’re studying international economics," Ren said, his gaze inquisitive.

"Postgraduate," Mike replied, settling into the rhythm of the table. "The program is heavily research-focused."

"Most of my life currently consists of reading dense, labyrinthine texts that eventually coalesce into a seminar, where we spend hours arguing over the minutiae."

"And what is the subject of your current battlefield?" Ren asked, tilting his head.

"Trade agreement structures," Mike said, his tone shifting into the precise, analytical register of a man who lived in the world of data and policy. "Specifically, whether the stated development goals of preferential agreements actually reflect the reality of the tariff schedules or if the entire thing is just a sophisticated piece of diplomatic theater."