Just Pretending (Bubbline/Sugarless Gum)

The Dichotomy of Strawberry Muffins

As they sat to eat dinner that night, Bonnibel couldn't help but feel a creeping suspicion that the culprit was in the cozy dining hall with them, perhaps at one of the tables, or perhaps someone that was serving them. She glanced around, wary of anyone who was already looking at her, and glanced back at her food, to notice her muffin had suspiciously disappeared. She looked across at Marceline's plate and noticed it was right next to the very muffin she already half-consumed. "You stole my muffin," she deadpanned.

Marceline glanced up at Bonnibel and raised a brow, and amused, said, "That's a really big accusation. Maybe you never had a muffin to start with."

What!? That'd be absurd! She remembered putting a muffin on her plate at the buffet table, and she was very much looking forward to eating it! "I'm not hallucinating, Marceline. You. Stole. My. Muffin." She crossed her arms over her chest and glared at Marceline, who rolled her eyes in return and floated across the dining hall to replace said muffin. Bonnibel sighed, thinking she probably could've been nicer in her accusation, but she couldn't be bothered to care at the moment. Let Marceline be annoyed at her.

Her thoughts returned to the information they've discovered. One, they were being spied on, most likely by someone on the staff due to all the staff information files missing. Two, it seemed to involve multiple people, judging by how on edge the man they met earlier seemed to be. Lastly, three -

"Here's your muffin, your highness," Marceline said, jolting Bonnibel out of her thoughts, and paused to sit down before asking, "Hey stop being such a space case, what're you thinking so hard about anyways?"

Bonnibel looked down at the muffin and noticed Marceline had gotten her a strawberry muffin, one of her favorite flavors. Well, she was pretty sure they were strawberries. It seemed Marceline had sucked out the red on the way back to the table. She smiled, ignoring Marceline's question to instead look up at the aforementioned vampire. "How'd you know I like these?"

Marceline blinked and leaned forward, flicking a piece of hair out of her eyes. "Why wouldn't I? The last time you came to my place you brought so many that you were probably half muffin by the time you left," Marceline said, snickering to herself.

Bonnibel nearly forgot about that memory, and laughed, remembering she only brought all of that because she knew Marceline liked how the red in strawberries tasted, and the cook went a little overboard. "Well, you do have a point there. I guess it was a lot wasn't it?" Bonnibel let herself relax a little the rest of the dinner, as she and Marceline shared their usual banter and laughed at old memories. It was a nice change, it reminded her of the times when the two of them used to be a lot closer, and the pressure of ruling of the Candy Kingdom and throw herself into her work wasn't so pressing.

After dinner, they went back to their room. Bonnibel couldn't decide what she wanted to do first, try to find the camera that had been placed into their room, or go to sleep and pretend for a few hours that everything was okay and that the danger was farther off than it really was. She sighed and sunk into the desk chair, as Marceline floated past her to the bathroom, and organized her notes, which were minimal and essentially useless now that so many files had been stolen.

The thing about those stolen notes was that it seemed pretty sloppy of the intruder to have only stolen files on the staff, as that essentially gave away that at least one or more persons on the staff were the culprits to this whole mess. But at the same time, it's not like she could do much about it. She couldn't get more copies of staff backgrounds, as that would involve her leaving the resort and that would probably raise suspicions even higher to whoever was in charge of all of this. There was also the matter of perhaps whoever stole the files was smarter than she thought and maybe stole the files to intentionally misguide them.