Expi's New Friend

Expi's New Friend is the eighth chapter of The Two Cats and was published on September 10, 2019.

The New Student
A new student comes into Expi's classroom and sits next to her. It is revealed her name is Mariko and she comes from the country of Sonrisa, a country that Expi herself took a lot of interest in for the culture surrounding it. After class, Expi meets up with Gracie and asks her about the new student, and later at lunch, Expi notices Mariko sitting alone and decides to go talk to her. They have lunch with each other, and Mariko tells her about what it was like in Sonrisa. Lunch ends, and Expi asks her about hanging out after school on Friday, potentially showing her around town, which Mariko agrees to, and also tells her to add her as a friend on Discord.

That Wasn't a Good Thing to Say
Expi logs into Discord later that night, and notices her friends talking about the president's plan to fire missiles at the country. Expi doesn't like what one of her friends has to say, but replies with an "xD" to it anyway like her other friends did as to not get into it. At the same time, Mariko goes home and adds Expi on Discord, who invites her to her server. After greeting each other, Mariko scrolls up and finds what her friend had said, and feels uncomfortable, but doesn't say anything about it

The Next Day
The following day Expi meets up with Mariko at their school, but Mariko ends up seeming angry towards Expi due to her friends' chat. Expi explains the "xD" thing they have going on, but apologizes for what Tester said and not doing anything about it. Later, they go and sit with Expi's friends at lunch, and at the end of the day they meet up with each other and hang out after school.

Hanging Out
Mariko's mom drives over Expi and Mariko to her house, and Expi takes an interest in the decorations that they have, including her father's model jets and fighter jet painting. Expi and Mariko decide to spend their entire night playing ThomKart 8 Deluxe on the ATL Studios Change, but by the time they get done it's 7:25 and Expi has to rush home. Expi ends up being 16 minutes late to get to her house, which the story ends with her mom calling her out for.

Trivia

 * This is the first story to have a cover drawn using an Apple iPad, as opposed to the Wacom Intuos Art that was used previously.
 * There was originally going to be more to the story, however Expi split it into 2 parts since they felt it woud've gone on for too long and the plot sort of changes half way through.