Captured by aliens (It was his own fault)

34. Toru understands words?

Tonuk's perspective:

He woke up before Ri and Toru, so, he decided to move everyone to his bed, since it was better at retaining heat.

Thankfully, Toru was sleeping heavily, as always, and Ri's species sleep a lot more deeply when cold, so it was easy moving him as well.

He then joined in to share some warmth, but since he wasn't tired, he decided to use the tablet for a bit of time to see if Gint had responded to his messages.

There weren't any messages, which he expected from the early hour, but it meant that there wasn't much to do other than play some games, which he couldn't do, since one of his arms was trapped under Toru and Ri.

Eventually Ri also woke up, groggy, and went over to have some breakfast, which he then joined in.

They ate, Ri had a small salad while he had a huge chunk of meat with a big plate of vegetables.

Ri- "It's always so weird how your species just, eats so much on winter"

Tonuk- "Well, that's when it's easiest to collect food, so, might as well bulk up to not be cold"

Ri continued to silently judge him a little bit.

After eating, Ri went over to Tonuk's office to practice his writing, since there wasn't anything else to do while they waited for the snow plows.

Tonuk soon followed, but instead it was to draw some landscapes.

They practiced for a while, until Tonuk heard Toru saying his name.

They had taught it the word, but since it didn't ever use it, he assumed that Toru didn't understand it.

It was very surprising when Toru started guiding him over to the kitchen and point to its plate, asking for food.

He served up a quick meal while wondering whether or not Toru understood more words, replaying memories of Toru, but it didn't ever use words, as it usually made other sounds instead.

While he was thinking, Toru walked out of the kitchen and called his name, which he followed, and then Toru went back to the kitchen once again.

He realized what Toru did, so, while he was there he tested out if it knew its name, just out of curiosity.

It didn't work a couple of times, until Toru walked out, made some sounds while looking annoyed and went back in.

It usually ignored him and Ri when they spoke, so this meant that it did understand, which was impressive.

He started to walk around while wondering about what other words it understood.

It was also interesting seeing that it was actually fairly smart, since not only did it remember the words, but it learned the meaning just by him pointing.

He decided to look for the tablet and ask Gint about it, since he had said that they would do more tests, and this was important.

He sent the message, but quickly noticed that Gint hadn't even seen or responded to the previous message, so he was probably busy again.

Since there was still some downtime until the snow plows came, so he went over to Ri to chat about how to test Toru on if it understood more words.

He walked back to his office and saw Toru leaving quickly just as he entered the room.

He asked Ri about it but he hadn't noticed Toru entering, but it was probably nothing, as Toru liked to look around the place often.

After this, Tonuk explained what had happened and they thought for a moment on how to test Toru, deciding to teach it a verb like, picking something up, since they could then ask Toru to pick an object that it knew the name of.