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Bella successfully manages to stay in all weekend except for when she joins packs of students headed for the dining hall. If the elves are still stalking her, she doesn't notice them. On Monday, the subtle artist elf is present in their shared course, and looks at her, but doesn't bother her - Bella leaves with another classmate anyway.
Traveling in packs is quite effective, she decides.
Except she doesn't do it in her own dorm.
It's pouring rain outside Tuesday afternoon and Bella doesn't want to go to the dining hall. She has some stuff in her room - not serious groceries, but enough that she can heat up some broth and noodles, liven it up with a handful of miscellaneous dried herbs, and call it soup. She is hanging out in the kitchen doing this when Brad from down the hall, the same fellow who attempted to interrupt Celo at his baking, chooses to bother her.
"Hey, Isabella."
"It's Bella."
"But your full name's so pretty," says Brad. "You should go by that instead. So Isabella, let's go out tomorrow, I'll show you a good time in town, we'll have some fun."
"No," says Bella, "thank you, and it's still Bella."
"Isabella's prettier. Like you, you're pretty. It's not like I asked you to make like a nymph or something, I just want to take you out," says Brad. "Is it the money, I bet it's that, I can cover it, we can go someplace nice and you can get whatever you want."
"It's still no. It's still Bella."
"Don't be such a bitch, you never have plans," snaps Brad, "what are you going to do, eat at the dining hall and re-read your textbooks, you can come out with me."
subtly_artistic
At this point, Celo enters the kitchen from the direction of his room.
"Hey Bella," he says amicably, "whatcha makin'?"
"Hey Bella," he says amicably, "whatcha makin'?"
subtly_artistic
"Soup," says Bella. "Well, I already made it. You can have some if you want."
"Go suck a cock, I'm talking to her," Brad says to Celo.
Celo offers Brad a brilliant smile and says, "Yeah, but you're boring."
Then he turns back to Bella.
"What kind of soup?"
Then he turns back to Bella.
"What kind of soup?"
subtly_artistic
"...Noodle," says Bella, looking nervously at Brad. "Just broth and noodles."
"That's not what you said the other night," leers Brad. "Fuck off, leave us alone."
"Sure, I'll have some soup," he says cheerfully. "Thanks."
And he serves himself a little bit of soup.
And he serves himself a little bit of soup.
subtly_artistic
Bella sits with her own bowl at the table. She attempts to give Brad a wide berth as she heads for the chair, but he follows her, a little too close for comfort.
"That the kind of thing you like? I know a good soup place uptown."
subtly_artistic
"I'm not going out with you for soup or anything," Bella says.
Celo sprawls into another chair, across the table from Bella and a little ways away from it, with his soup.
"I know you don't have anything better to do!" exclaims Brad. "You're just playing hard to get, but there's nothing stopping you, you aren't even trying to make an excuse."
subtly_artistic
"I expect to be assigned homework between now and then," says Bella frostily.
Celo snorts.
"You spend so much fucking time studying, you can afford to go out for dinner, you do eat," says Brad, "you can eat in Enwich with me."
subtly_artistic
"You are spending a truly staggering percentage of your brainpower on whether I can and none at all on whether I want to," says Bella.
"It'll be a nice time! I'll buy you dinner, we'll hang out, I'm not telling you to get on your knees for me on the first date, it's not like you're him."
Celo makes an eloquently sarcastic face.
"Fuck off," Brad tells Celo again.
subtly_artistic
"Well, I'm sure you can have a nice time by yourself, or perhaps with someone more enthusiastic, but I have apparently gone stark raving mad, because I continue to decline," says Bella.
Celo laughs.
"Dude," says Brad, "I'm not gonna tell you again to get out of here, you can eat your fucking soup in your room. Or the lounge if you can't stand to pass up any opportunity to run into somebody who might fuck you."
"You're not gonna tell me again? Good, it was getting annoying," he says, and he stays right where he is.
Brad stalks in Celo's direction and grabs him by the hair.
Celo carefully puts down his soup.