Riley is also pretty bored. She knows it's important to break up her purchases of supplies between stores. She does actually sometimes make amphetamines or other well known drugs but she's not making industrial amounts.

She doesn't think she's been to this store before, the name at least is unfamiliar. She'll go in and then look around for cleaning products, matches and also check to see if they have nicotine patches behind the counter.

Oh, a customer.

She looks up briefly as she enters, then back down again. Customers don't like you paying too much attention to them, this time of night.

Hmm… maybe she should go on break after this—get a snack or something.

She goes back to listening to her book, but gets ready to pause it when the customer comes to check out.

The selection is lower than she'd find at a proper pharmacy but those are more likely to have people who know what to look for. She ends up with a few cleaning products from relatively pure brands and a couple small bags of chips to look less remarkable. She didn't see any nicotine patches at a glance so she'll have to ask about that as she's checking out.

She walks up to the front counter with a couple hands full and a small smile on her face in the hopes of reducing how much of an impression she makes.

She smiles slightly, briefly looking the other young woman in the eye before looking down and mentally taking inventory of the purchases.

"Find everything you were looking for?" she asks automatically.

Something happens briefly when their eyes meet. It's almost like a small hiccup or maybe a bit like recognizing someone you haven't seen in a while. With both of them mostly feeling bored the foreign emotions don't make much of an impression even if their flavors of boredom differ a little. But if either of them think about it they know each other's names now. Not their legal names but how they think of themselves.

When they look away the link breaks.

Riley is briefly confused, she's not really sure why she recognizes this girl but some of her classes are big so maybe it's from one of those. "Mostly, do you happen to sell nicotine patches? I don't see them on the wall back there."

Wow, that was a weird feeling. She could swear this girl seems familiar somehow. Maybe someone from highschool?

…Oh right, she was asking a question!

"Oh, they're just in the cabinet down below. Can I see some ID?"

She starts ringing up the other items as she talks: no point wasting either of their time.

Right, she pulls it out of her bag. "Yeah, here you go, it's Emi right? Did I hear your name in class over at the university or something?" She'll make eye contact again. She's still feeling confused and a little curious. I don't usually make a point of remembering people's names so why am I remembering her?

Oh, do they know eachother? She sets her scanner down for a moment and gives the girl a proper look, searching her eyes for a spark of recognition.

"Huh. Riley? I—" Huh, she apparently knows her name, too.
"I'm pretty bad at remembering names too, so that is a bit weird."

Could be an exception because the girl's cute? No, but then she'd remember that being why.

"No, can't be university—did we go to high-school together?"

"That would be a weird coincidence. Are you from Clintonville too?" She said it couldn't be university is she taking a gap year or something. Also did Emi just say she was cute? Wait... did she say the bit about not remembering people's names out loud? Her feelings of confusion are building.

And with the rise of emotion there's a vague subtle sense of something getting stronger a little like the way the air changes when there's going to be a thunderstorm soon but not from the same source. As it builds more of their thoughts bleed through to each other and the sense of each other's emotions gets more nuanced.

Huh? She definitely didn't say that thing about her being cute. What? And…

Uhh… "Tsi-imbi?" Wait, nobody actually uses that one in real life.

"—I mean… wait, here."

She thinks for a moment. Then, as clearly as she can, she thinks if you can hear this, please say "monsoon rabies arthropod wax".

There. Either she's imagining things or she isn't.

Great either she's dreaming or telepathy is real now... well or she's tried one too many drugs and she's broken her mind in some sort of persistent way. There's a brief quashed bit of fear at that third possibility. Might as well follow through regardless, she clearly and loudly enunciates "Monsoon Rabies Arthropod Wax."

…Huh. Even after the rest of that, she really wasn't expecting that to work.

She sits down.

"…Okay, so either telepathy is real, or we're both insane… or one is, and one of us is a hallucination."

She's pretty sure she isn't dreaming—if the question ever comes up in a dream, she can usually just tell—and she'd definitely be able to just wake up: that is a mental lever she has access to.

…She sighs.
"I don't think we can easily disprove any of those possibilities, but yeah, this is definitely an experience we're both having."

She feels torn between worry and excitement. She appreciated physics and chemistry and biology being nice and predictable, but at the same time this is something new to understand, something that hasn't had thousands of people already picking away all the low hanging fruit for centuries. And Emi probably heard all of that. "This is going to take some getting used to if it's a persistent thing."

"Oh, yeah that's a good question. Is it persistent?"

It started when they met eachothers' eyes, so… she turns around?

Nope. Definitely still there. Huh.

"Yeah, I'm definitely more than a bit excited about exploring this new thing."

"I think you're right about that. I remember recognizing you suddenly when we made eye contact and that happened to you too. And we knew each other's names even though I'm now pretty sure we never met before, or at least never exchanged names."

She thinks back trying to remember the exact sequence of events as best as she can.

"Do you remember me thinking about how some of my classes are big?"

"No? But this is kind of a lot, so I might not remember that anyway."

But… she can feel the impression of what Riley's talking about, now, and… no, she doesn't think she heard that thought before.

"So wasn't instant. It took more than just looking each other in the eye for a couple seconds." What made the difference though? "Maybe it's time or there's some sort of mental state based trigger?"

"Maybe, but it could also be unrelated? I don't wanna assume it's something we did when we know nothing about it."

She pauses.

"…Do you still want those nicotine patches?"

"Well, either it's something specific to us as a pair or else something changed recently." Does she want the patches? her most recent dose was low enough she's not really expecting withdrawal symptoms and trying to balance a more drug experiments with whatever this is doesn't seem wise. "I think I'll actually put back most of it. I'll still get the chips just so it isn't too weird for your computer systems."