"I read somewhere that elevators are the single most efficient form of public transit, is that true?"

"I think in terms of energy and space and overhead, yeah, I think so. Though I'm not sure if efficiency is most important constraint in a lot of situations, if that makes sense?"

"Go on?"

Lucien has spent probably too much of the last several days thinking about elevators and has some very detailed opinions on them, versus stairs and escalators and longer range forms of public transit.

She will listen to him talk about this for as long as he can keep it going.

"-are you really that interested in this?" he will ask, after explaining why he thinks escalators are overrated.

"...I am kind of interested in the topic and very interested in not being burdensome to have around so that I can continue to be around?"

"Oh...kay."

"You really are welcome to hang around me without needing to listen to me ramble about elevators."

"Well, if you're not talking at all it's harder to -" Handwave.

"Hm?"

"Sitting in the same place doesn't mean anything, and talking to me also kind of doesn't but it's more - salutary."

"Ah - well, I can keep talking with you but um-"

"-I'm going to follow your lead on what I should be doing that will make things easiest for you."

"Okay. Thank you."

Lucien does not know what to do with the fact that the girl mind controlled to be in love with him looks pretty when she smiles.

"-that being said I'm also interested to hear about um, what your classes are like? If that works as a thing for us to talk about."

"Sure, if you're interested? Do you have any witchcraft background at all, my high school didn't offer it so I know some don't."

"Unfortunately not."

"So keeping it to generalities then, I don't think our textbook is very good but fortunately there's a lot of handouts supplementing it, and the other people in my lab section have compatible taste in mood music, which is nice."

"Why don't you think the textbook is very good?"

"The author cares a lot about sounding mystical? But witchcraft reduces to sensible moving parts, it's not actually necessary to go into it like it's a religion - that might help some people but I don't think it's appropriate for a university course and it makes it harder to extract concrete meaning."

"Oh that sounds unhelpful - my general impression is that people rarely treat witchcraft as a science, even though in theory it would make sense to do so?"

"So it's not amenable to - precision engineering - because it's so much about the emotions of the individual witch. Which I think confuses people into thinking there's no principles underlying it at all."

"How does that work, exactly?"

"How does what part of it work?"

"How do the specific emotions effect the outcomes?"

"You know the basic, negative emotion black arts, positive emotion white arts, thing, right?"