"Hey, you want help with those?"

"Oh! Yes please, that'd be great." She smiles at him.

"Do you live here?" 

"I'm just around sometimes. I'm Skip, Annika's brother."

"Oh, cool! Nice to meet you, Skip. I'm Xeya." 

She attempts to try for a handshake, half dropping and then catching the box she's holding. 

"Whoops, let's pretend we shook hands and actually carry boxes," he laughs, picking one up.

"YesLet'sDoThat," she says, blushing furiously. 

Okok topic change! "So, what are you studying?" 

"I'm not, I am that mythical creature who can't get into college."

"Oh! Sorry."

 She reaches the top of the stairs, and... "Uh. Would you happen to know which room I'm going in? Annika texted it to me and I just checked it five minutes ago, but my memory is... not good..." 

"I thiiiiink you're in the one Dave vacated, which is this one over here, and if I'm right you were at least correct about which stairs to go up, the place is weird to navigate because it was originally a triplex."

"I do remember it's the staircase on the left!" she says happily, following him towards Dave's old room.

"What was Dave like?" 

"I do not think he'll be much missed. He was... good for playing Mario Kart with and under most other circumstances kind of volatile, not like dangerous but unpredictable. His ex also left, so if you make friends at school you can tell 'em there's a room right next to yours."

"Oh dear! Well, I was worried about making a good impression and I guess I still am, but it's nice to know that I have easy competition on the VOR front."

"VOR?"

"Oh, uh, Value Over Replacement. I think it's originally a sports fan term but I picked it up from a really good chain of shitposts talking about... I think it was late 20th century politicians?" She follows him into the room and puts her box down. 

"Huh, seems hard to calculate. - you want these next to each other or a stack? - like what if one possible roommate is on time with rent but never replaces the toilet paper and the other one's awful about paying up but does a lot of dishes or something."

"Next to each other, thanks! And I think you have that problem in sports too? A guy can be good at running but bad on defense or have mediocre aim... I think you're supposed to line up the stats and then look at them and see what stands out and you think matters..." She pauses. "Or maybe you could just do it by vibes, that sounds easier and it's still a coherent thing to talk about. That's what the politicians post was doing." 

"Gotcha. I'll go get you another box."

There is no guy in sight unless she chases him pretty fast.

Time to grab another box!

...she sees a guy going down the stairs ahead of her. "Oh! Hi." 

"Hey! You're the new move-in, right? How do you pronounce your name, anyway?"

"ZAY-ya! And that's me, yes." She smiles brightly at him. "Do you live here? Annika did give me a list but I'm so bad with names and it's such a big place..." 

"Nah, I'm just around a lot." Box: get.

"Oh! Uh, thank you, I can grab that if you don't want to bother with the stairs..."

"I work at a warehouse, I'm great at hauling boxes." Hup!

"Oh, okay! Well, thank you, I appreciate it. I'm in... Dave's... old room..."  (...wait, who is Dave? The guy who moved out, presumably, Annika must have mentioned him.)

(She passes him on the stairs and grabs the box with her dresses and poi in it.) 

Okay he's going to avoid being in her room still by the time she comes up with the next box. He pokes his head out of the adjacent Viv room instead. "You have any more of those you want help with?"

New person! "Oh! Hi, I'm Xeya. Yeah, I have... more boxes..." She trails off as she looks into her room. (Has she really been up here four times now? Stars. She's almost entirely sure she took her meds today....)

"I'm good at picking stuff up and putting it down," he says, stepping out of the adjacent room.

"Oh, excellent! You could make a career out of that, I bet." She grins at him and heads into her room.

"I make a job out of it. I think it's only a career if it's like, physically possible to be promoted at it someday."

Xeya stops with the box still in her hand, clearly thinking. "...ok, there has to be some career that technically satisfies the description, but I admit I'm not thinking of one." She sets down the box and shakes herself a bit like a dog. "Anyways! What was your name? ...Sorry if you said it already, it takes me a while to learn them and I have yet to convince everyone else to wear nametags all the time to help me with this even though it would be very reasonable, I feel,"

"I'm Skip. I'd wear a nametag if everyone was doing it."

She grins at him. "Ooooh. Maybe I should buy a big pack of them and leave them by the door with a sign and a sharpie, see if it catches on!" (She's definitely considering it.)

"Maybe people'd do it at parties. Probably not for just hanging out."

"Honestly, that's still probably worth it? And sometimes people leave them on, I knew a guy in high school who wore this ridiculous oversized top hat to parties and he put a nametag on it and it stayed there for a year." She remembers to put her box down and starts heading back to grab one of the last two.

He's got long legs and gets ahead of her by a hair. "But if you accidentally put one through the wash on a T-shirt it seems like it might gum up the washing machine."

"Oh, true... I hadn't thought of that," she admits. (She attempts to grab the heavier box, so he doesn't have to, but she's clearly struggling a bit with the weight.)

"Lemme grab that one, I pick up boxes all the time for a living and the rumors have probably reached this one so it won't try anything."

"Ah, if you're sure! Sorry, that's the one with the books and the - " Um. "...books." 

She hands the box to him and grabs the last one. "So where do you work?"

"Amazon warehouse. They have this thing where you don't have to do an interview or give them a resume, they'll take anyone who walks in off the street."

"Huh! Neat. Is it a lot of the same people?" Followfollowfollow.

"There's a lot of turnover but some people have been there longer than me."

Neat! ...she's out of things to say. Awkward!

 And then they get to her room which she just remembered is Dave's old room. "So what was Dave like?" 

"By the time he left he did not have many friends here, I think. He never hurt anybody but he was the kind of guy where I have to specify that."

 "Oh. gosh. ...Good news for my roommate VOR anxieties, I suppose? And, uh, for the unhurt people." She sets the last box down.

He puts his box next to the others. "Yeah, hopefully his new place brings out the best in him or something, I guess."

"Hopefully!" She smiles warmly at Skip. "What about you? How long have you lived here?"

"I actually don't, I'm just around frequently."

"Oh!" Whoops. Right, Annika said people are in and out often, which is exciting but will also take some getting used to! "Well, I'm glad frequently included now, it meant getting professional help with my Heavy Box." She smiles at him. (She smiles a lot.) "It's nice to meet you, Skip."

He smiles back. "It's nice to meet you too, Xeya."

Yes! Friend made! 

She pulls her poi sets (Learn&Glow, Moon&Stars, and her high school graduation present, Rise&Fall) out of the already open box and confirms they're all fully charged (they pulse green, briefly) before setting them carefully aside on the floor. (She's going to put them up on command hooks, but she needs to dig those out.)

"Whoa, what are those?"

Yessss. "They're poi! You can spin them to make pretty - actually, it's probably easier to just show you -" 

Xeya looks around the room (mostly empty, nothing fragile out, standard ceiling height) and picks up and turns on the cheapest-looking of the three sets, wrapping the leash of each around her hands in a practiced motion until there's a bit under a foot of length from her hands to the bulbs.

She takes a step back so there's nothing in her danger sphere and begins spinning them. She starts with simple intersecting circles of pulsing blue in front of her, and then moves on to a more complicated pattern that moves around her body. "You do this with them!" 

"Oh, neat, it's like juggling but you can't drop anything?"

"Yeah! Or, well, I just got a set of throwing poi and you can drop those, but mostly the things to watch out for are hitting yourself or something else with them or getting the leashes tangled up." (She demonstrates both of these in intentional ways; the poi bounces off her outstretched arms and then reverse directions, and then the leashes wind and unwind around each other, moving the bulbs in a shrinking/growing horizontal orbit.) 

"Like that, but not on purpose!" Grin. 

"Are they heavy, they don't look like they'd hurt that much if they did bop you."

"These ones are light and squishy! Good for learning, really hard to hurt yourself with. But the light units are a lot simpler and they have a harder time holding momentum..." She puts down those ones and picks up another set, doing the same around her body pattern at almost twice the speed.

"These ones can be ouchie. I hit my face a lot when I was learning this pattern." And her tits, but that's more embarrassing and she's showing off, not flirting,

(The light pattern here is indeed more complicated; blue/cyan pulses forming interlocking rings of light.)

"Is that something people wear masks about or should I start asking people with black eyes if they've been learning - you said 'poi'?"

Ehehehe. "Poi, yeah. I've never gotten a black eye from it or seen someone wearing goggles about it, but I suppose there's no harm in asking! I guess it be easier for taller people with longer arms, I know they have to be more careful spinning indoors." (Xeya is about 5'3")

She winds down her current pattern. "...do you wanna try? I'm ok at teaching the basics."

"- oh, sure, that sounds fun!" He's nearly six feet tall and looks like he picks heavy things up for a living.

Eee! Xeya actually bounces a bit.

She looks up at him, and then further up at the ceiling. "Weee should probably do this outside. Or somewhere with more open vertical space, if the house has it?" 

"The middle 'dining room' is pretty tall. And doesn't have a dining table since that would make three and be silly."

"It would be! Gosh, this building is a confusing delight." She wraps Moon&Stars around her arms so she's free to scoop up Learn&Glow, then looks at him expectantly. 

He will lead her out of the room, though he keeps looking over his shoulder to make sure she's following him closely enough.

This a good strategy because (as he may have noticed) Xeya can be a bit spacy!

She does a lot of peering around curiously as they go through the house. 

It's a house! It's kind of janky and cluttered in the way that only a former triplex occupied by an endless carousel of college-aged persons can be, with posters and dents in the wall and a surprisingly robust spider plant over there and a couple of shared video game systems associated with a TV someone pulled off the curb for free at some point and a rug that looks like it was made out of ripped up old T-shirts. None of the furniture matches. There's a suncatcher over there. The fruit bowl has four apples and a banana in it and only one of the apples is going bad at this moment.

It's so lived-in! She loves it...

Xeya pauses to stare from time to time, but she is excited about this and won't let herself get lost in thought. 

He stops when she does, till they're in the relatively tall open space of Not A Dining Room Because They Don't Really Have Everyone Sitting Down To Dinner At The Same Time Such That They Need Three Dining Tables.

Cool! (She doesn't actually notice that he's stopping, she'd be embarrassed about it otherwise.)

She examines the room happily. "Oh, this is perfect! Okay, so..." she puts down Moon&Stars and also Glow, walking up to him with Learn in hand. "Can you hold out your arm for me?"

"Which one?" He offers both.

"Right now I just need to measure one! A good starting leash length goes up to here on your arm." She presses the bulb against his outer arm below his shoulder and holds the full length of leash along his arm, seeing how far it goes. (This amount of touching a stranger without permission would be embarrassing if she were less focused on what she was doing! But she hasn't noticed, yet.)

"Ueah, we want this to be about two bulbs longer, give me a sec..." She fiddles with the handle end for a bit, letting some rope pass through the knot assembly, making a bunch of small fiddly adjustments before she's satisfied.

After confirming the new length on his arm, she grabs the other one "It's surprisingly disorienting if they aren't the same length, so it's best to lay them out side-by-side to match them" and repeats the process.  

 "Okay! We can start with whichever hand you want. I think in some ways it's easier to start with your off-hand, because it means adding in the second one comes a lot more naturally, but I think people who are less coordinated find that approach more frustrating to start with so it's up to you, really."

"I'm right-handed and not particularly uncoordinated." Here is his left hand.

"Okay, for the simple grip, it's easier if I just - can you hold your hand out like this?" She demonstrates: palm up, fingers slightly open.

Like so?

Yep! Xeya flattens the loop of nylon that makes up the handle and slides it between his middle and index finger. Then she opens the top of the loop and pulls it down over his fingers before sliding the whole assembly up his fingers until it's secure between his middle and upper knuckles. "There! Basically impossible to send it flying, if you hold it like this."

She takes a few steps back and slides one of her heavier poi onto on her right hand, mirroring him. "Okay. Now - to start, let's just do a little bit of a pendulum thing. Swing the bulb back and forth in front of you - see how high you can get it without losing control." Like so!

Vwoop vwoop?

Vwoop Vwoop! Once she's satisfied he's got it down, they can move on to loops in front of them, and she can teach him how to stop a spinning poi and reverse directions. (It may or may not become clear that she started him off with the pendulum to make this easier.) 

(Xeya vibrates happily during all of this.)

He will quite gamely attempt to learn to poi. For as long as this lasts.

Xeya will equip him with the second poi and teach him how to spin them both together! (He's definitely not bad at this! Hopefully they can do this regularly, it's fun having people to spin with)

She puts on some slow instrumental music from her phone for them to spin to (it sounds video-game-y).

"Is this from... I'm going to get it wrong, I'm not very widely, uh, gamed..."

"Final Fantasy X! ...which I have never played, but the soundtrack has some songs I like a lot. This one is nice and flow-y." She pauses. "What kind of games do you play?" 

"I've been on an Animal Crossing kick."

Awww? She would have guessed something totally differently oh no she has gaming stereotypes... "I never could get into that genre but the characters are sooo adorable..." Happy sigh.

"Yeah, I've never had a pet but I do like animals."

Nodnod. "Mom's too allergic for cats, but when I'm older I do want to get one, I think."

As the next song starts playing, Xeya determines the ceiling is high enough to show off some tossing poi stuff! "Oh, one sec, let me grab something-" and she darts out of the room with very little warning.

...ah.

He takes off the poi and leaves them on the coffee table. He picks up the Switch. The animals remember him.

She grabs Rise&Fall, humming happily to herself and thinking about underarm tosses and ignoring the wiggling feeling that she's forgotten something because she's lived her entire life ignoring that kind of feeling. She'd never get anything done, otherwise.

When she gets back she realizes she left her phone playing music?? kinda loudly??? Her headphones must have ran out of batteries without her noticing! She hates it when that happens, and - oh no there's someone else in here now! Augh! What a terrible first impression she's making!

She dashes to her phone and pauses the music. "Ah! I'm so sorry, I didn't realize my headphones disconnected," he is going to JUDGE HER as an INCONSIDERATE SCATTERBRAINED and he WILL BE CORRECT, apparently,

"That's okay, don't worry about it."

He doesn't seem annoyed, which is a relief. (She still kinda wants to flee the room, but that feels... rude? Weird? And she does want to spin, and it's very cold outside...)

She moves into the room's open space and starts doing some simple tosses. "...I'm Xeya, by the way," she says after a minute.

"I think somebody told me that, yeah, it's nice to meet you. I'm Skip."

"It's nice to meet you too, Skip!" Smile.

"Whatcha playing?" She doesn't recognize the music, but it's nice.

"Animal Crossing." He turns the screen so she can see.

"Oo -" (She mistimes a catch slightly and accidentally whacks the heavy end of the poi against her shoulder) "- ouch!"

She shakes it off and peers over his shoulder. "I never could get into this genre, but the characters are sooo adorable..."

"- you okay there? Yeah, they're really cute, Isabelle's my favorite. The yellow dog one."

"I'm fine! I hit myself with poi a lot when I'm practicing. Shoulder isn't very bad." She moves the arm experimentally. Yep, all good, just a bit ouchie.

"I know Isabelle! ...mostly from Smash Bros, but I've also seen a lot of cute fanart of her."

"Yeah, she's originally from here but it is now possible to play her in Smash. I usually don't, though. It seems out of character."

She grins. "I know what you mean. 'Beautiful cinnamon roll doggygirl too good for this game genre, too pure'."

"Mm-hm! I don't do a lot of Smash but if it's what everyone's crowding around doing I'll pick up one of the Pokémon or Mario."

She nods. "I play a lot of Zelda and Samus and also Lucina." And it sounds like she plays a lot more Smash than he does. (heheh)

"I figure the Pokémon must be at home there because fighting to the not-death is also how they say hello in their games. Though I've never played one all the way through."

Awwww? That's so cute??

"None of the ones I've beaten had a grimdark twist! Though there's people who do permadeath challenge runs and some of them draw edgy comics about it."

"Like there's an in-game way to kill your Pokémon or they're just pretending hardcore?"

"They release their Pokémon if they faint in battle and call it killing them! If it were me, I would just put them in a box until postgame and call that purgatory, but I do not really understand the mindset that drives people to this kind of challenge." 

"Yeah, me either. Games are what I do to relax."

She shrugs. "I don't mind frustrating puzzles or combat, if it's not impossible! But permadeath Pokémon isn't either of those, really, it's just go fight a billion wild battles until your best friends can effortlessly defeat the local Gods. And that just seems boring." 

"There are gods in Pokémon? I have been missing out by spending my childhood unable to keep a save going past a couple towns."

"Some legendary Pokémon are very much Gods! Sometimes in vaguely contradictory ways. Articuno, Zapdos, and Moltres control the weather (but maybe only in their region), Kyogre and Groudon created the lands and seas," and she can go on like this for a while, really. 

He'll sleep the Switch while she's explaining.

"...and then in gen five, I think they must have realized they had jumped the shark a bit with Time and Space and also The Creator Of Everything Forever because the box legendaries there are about... Truth and... Bravery, I think? I don't actually remember. But anyways those take the form of black and white dragons, of course." She pauses for breath. "That one actually has an interesting plot! With characters doing things! And your rival is a Disney princess and he makes you ride on a Ferris wheel with him while he talks to you about his feelings, it's delightful."

"He's a... Disney princess...?"

Grin. "He was raised by Pokemon and calls them his friends and he at least claims to be able to talk to yours! And most of the times you fight him, he always uses Pokémon from the adjacent areas only, so a very common headcanon is that he isn't catching them, just asking them if they want to hang out with him and do a bit of battling..." (Her voice starts to trail off near the end, as she realizes she's been. Babbling kind of a lot.)

"Oh, that's cute, there's this sort of inherent weirdness in how you're catching stuff and only making friends with it after it can't leave."

"Yeah, I feel like a lot about Pokémon kinda falls apart if you think about it too much... It would be cool to have a monster collector game that handled that aspect better." 

"Is that a whole genre, monster collection?"

Nodnodnod! "Pokémon is the one everyone knows and there's Digimon games too, there've been two different Final Fantasy ones that are both supposedly bad... Ni No Kuni looks like a Ghibli movie but unfortunately it was not very interesting as a game... I haven't played Cassette Beasts but I hear it's quite good!" 

"Casette Beasts? Like... tapes?"

"Yeah. I think you record the little guys to catch them? So the cassette tapes are like the pokeballs." 

"That doesn't just... copy them?"

"It might! I dunno, I haven't played it." 

(It does! You record monsters onto a tape and get a copy of them to fight with.)

"Because that would also be weird, if there were two of it after. You might wind up, like, making it fight itself, or something."

"I mean I think from their perspective that's a common trope from a different genre?" She does a voice.."Off-brand Pikachu, you must fight your worst foe... a corrupted copy of... yourself..." 

"I think they did literally that in the first Pokémon movie."

She laughs. "Right! They did, yeah." pause. "...Sometimes I wish more media franchises could get that kind of popularity. Where's the anime spinoff movie for, I dunno, Transistor."

"I don't know that one."

"Oh! It's really good, you play as a mute woman with a talking sword and he acts as the game's narrator? It's - a really cool way of injecting story into a game, the first game by that studio did a similar thing and the voice acting and writing of the narrator really ties both games together. They aren't really Animal Crossing levels of relaxing, though, they might not be your cup of bees..."

Sporfle. "Bees?"

Giggle. "Beeeeees!"

Then she shrugs. "I dunno. Sometimes the version of a phrase that gets stored in my head has a funny word substitution in it, we all have to just live with that."

"I guess we do. I have a hard time imagining a bunch of cups of bees where I'd actively want any of them over the others, though."

She shrugs again. "Maybe it's the one full of nice friendly bees? Or it's the smallest cup there, and you are being forced to pick one by narrative contrivance." 

"The narrative contrivances are at it again this time with bees. I guess some cups have lids?"

She nods along. "Right, and of course you'd want that one, to release the poor bees trapped within,"

"I'd probably find a beekeeper who wanted bees. They must want them, or they wouldn't keep them."

"It's right there in the name!"

"Exactly. Though I suppose the name could also be a keeper of something else, who happened to themself be a bee."

"Maybe we've been spelling it wrong and what they actually do is eep beaks! Because birds are very scary."

Nod, nod. "Like in A Bug's Life."

She mimics his nodding cadence. "And bees are a type of bug! It all fits..."

"I don't think any of the characters in that one were bees, but if they had been they'd fit right in."

"Yeah, they had a lot of different factions going on there already..." 

Xeya happily keeps chatting with Skip for a while, but eventually she remembers she needs to go set her room up! 

"Okay, I should go unpack, but this was great! See you around?"

"Yeah. I'm around a lot." Small smile. It's a little sad.

...Aww, maybe he lives somewhere that's bad for him? "Well, don't be a stranger!"

She gathers up her stuff (huh, why did she have all her poi out here again?) and heads back to her room.

Yeah.

The next time some guy she's never seen before is ambient in the house he's bringing in a load of groceries. Looks like there's a literal Radio Flyer wagon that can hold a few bags full and is doing it, plus another bag under one arm.

Xeya has met a few of her housemates by now and likes all of them at least fine! This big guy is new and - woah, he's got one of those little red wagons? (cute??)

"Gosh! Big haul, what's the occasion? ...And do you want any help?"

"Big house, big haul. Ice cream lives in the other freezer, it's all in this one -" He hands her a bag.

"Got it!" She salute him and takes the ice cream, heading freezerwards.

If she comes back she will find him putting away ramen noodles and seaweed snacks in a cupboard.

Xeya finishes putting the ice cream away for somebody and then wanders back through the kitchen. (She's not 100% sure what she was doing before this, but that's ok! Sometimes having a ton of ADHD is like that, especially when she - no, she did take her meds today, tomorrow is her skip day, right?)

Ah well! Can't let it keep her down. "Oh, hi! I'm Xeya, the new girl in Dave's old room."

"Yeah, I've heard you mentioned! You're the only one with blue hair. Annika used to have purple but not recently."

"Oooh, she did? I had no idea..." Her face brightens. "Maybe she'll get back into it and we can start a trend! Rainbow-haired house! Just like in anime."

"Sometimes anime people have normal hair colors, so I guess not everybody would have to be in on it for it to work?"

Nod. "Yep! Which would you be?" She looks at him curiously, imagining him with different hair colors. 

"Probably I wouldn't go for dye. Seems high maintenance. And it'd take more than hair dye to make me stick out, I think."

"Oh? ...It is definitely high maintenance, though, you're not wrong about that." 

"I'm not very memorable and I think I still wouldn't be even if I went, uh, green or something."

"Huh. I bet people would remember you with green hair! It's not like there are other green haired tall people around here." Pause. "Not that I've seen, anyways? I suppose I wouldn't know, I haven't been around long." 

(...hard to tell if this guy wants to be more memorable or not?)

"I'd take that bet but you forgot I made it," he says, hefting the canned tuna out of the bottom of the bag.

"What? No way! But I could write it down in my journal if you were really worried about it?" (She pulls her phone out of her pocket.)

"- oh, don't worry about it, I was just making a bad joke."

"Oh." ...she doesn't get it... "I don't get it, sorry." 

Does he want help with putting stuff away?

Sure. He seems to know where everything goes. Between the two of them they can empty all the bags, which appear to live folded up in the Radio Flyer. "And now this is supposed to go by the bike rack in the yard."

"Okay! I can do that!" she says to the allegedly-unmemorable guy whose name she forgot to ask for, she realizes as she's about to leave the room,

"Thanks!"

She puts the wagon away like she was asked, and then heads off to run the errand she eventually remembers she had to do. (Poptarts!)

The next evening, she brings her laptop out into the common room to write up her journal entry for the day.

There's a few people around - a handful doing study pomodoros at the dining table, somebody fixing hot cocoa while talking on the phone, some guy on the couch with his own laptop.

She doesn't want to interrupt the pomodomo people! She'll sprawl out on the floor near the couch and start typing. (Anyone who looks her way gets an excited lil wave, especially the people she recognizes! ...Which is everyone but couchguy.)

People wave back!

"I can... move over...?" says the couch guy, who is already in a corner and cannot actually move over very much.

Headshake. "Nope! It's Floor Time," she says conspiratorially. "Also hi, I don't think we've met yet? I'm Xeya."

"I'm Skip. Is Floor Time regularly scheduled or does it strike at random like Opposite Day?"

"It's not quite scheduled but it does strike pretty often when it is Journal Time, and that one has to happen in the evenings or I risk forgetting everything that happened to me that day." 

"Huh. ...do you like actually re-read stuff, or does it just help you remember when you've written it down in the first place?"

"A bit of both? It's searchable, which is really useful, and sometimes I scroll up and go on nostalgia binges. Or, uh, sometimes I'm a grumpy mood and go check the date after a bad breakup..."

"Huh. But usually you're doing this in the evening so anything you forgot earlier in the day won't be there."

"I try and write down important things when they happen instead of waiting! But yeah, it doesn't work perfectly, if there isn't something I know I need to remember and might forget, it can fall through the cracks..." She sounds wistful about this. 

"And that's bad?"

She shrugs. "It's... not great? My ADHD is really strong, and - mostly I don't mind, mostly I really love the tradeoffs there, but... that's the symptom that's hardest, for me and the people in my life. It's why I journal at all."

"So it's a practical thing, not, like..."

...like...

"Like, a matter of principle about never wanting to forget anything, or whatever. It just like keeps being annoying when you've forgotten something?"

"Annoying, sad, stressful... depends what I'm forgetting, really. But yeah, it's a practical concern, not a principles thing."

"Gotcha."

She looks at him curiously. "How about you? How's your memory?"

"My memory's pretty much fine, I think. I've never tried keeping a journal so I guess I don't have the experience of looking at old entries and seeing how much is familiar."

She shrugs. "I really enjoy it, but I do get that it's not for everyone."

(As always, she's doing a bit of fidgeting. Lying on the floor, this looks like kicking her feet in the air.)

"Well, if you wanna put me in there, it's Skip, spelled like the word."

"I was going to! Met Skip while doing evening journaling in the common area, talked about memory and journaling and Opposite Day. He seems neat! Looking forward to getting to know everyone here better." She's already starting to type.

"...yeah." He buries his face back in his laptop.

(Huh. Guess that conversation is over.)

Two nights later and Xeya is the only one in that common room. She's sitting at the table, typing into her laptop with a focused expression on her face.

"...long day?" says somebody, appearing to put a ramen in the microwave.

"First day of my Tuesday classes," she says distractedly, and then she registers that it's a New Person! "Oh, hi. I'm Xeya, the new/blue girl."

"Yeah, I know, we met on Sunday evening, I'm in there next to something about Opposite Day."

"...Wait, what, really?" She scrolls up - 

Met Skip while doing evening journaling in the common area, talked about memory and journaling and Opposite Day. He seems neat! Cute, too... 

She stares back up at him. "Gosh. I'm really sorry, we even - talked about memory. Ugh."

"...it's not your fault. I'm just like that."

She looks at him. "What? No, I wrote down that you were neat, I clearly liked you, I just... I guess I didn't take my meds, but still, it's weird that..." she frowns in thought.

"I'm literally just like that. I also helped you carry your stuff up to your room and told you where to put away the ice cream and the wagon when you showed up while I was bringing in food."

"I -" Xeya thinks, her face becoming more and more concerned.

She doesn't remember who helped her carry stuff up to the room, or who told her where to put the ice cream or the wagon... She remembers doing those things, and her memory isn't great, but - "- you saying that what, like, people... just don't remember you? Somehow?"

His ramen beeps. "Yeah. It happens to everyone. Not your fault."

"I -" that sounds like magic and magic isn't real, but, but -

he doesn't seem like he's joking, and she really does not remember those things, and -

- she tries to think about what her life would be like, if that were her, if nobody was ever ever able to remember her -

And - she is no longer on her laptop and is now pretty close to him. "Do you want a hug?" she says, softly.

"I - um - yeah."

There are people in the world who will hug someone they just met. He's not starving. But it's nice to have a hug.

She wraps her arms around him tightly. "I'm so sorry," she whispers. "I - that must be so lonely -"

"You're taking this remarkably, uh, acceptingly."

"I - if it's true it seems really straightforward to test, and the preliminary tests that I didn't know I was running suggest you aren't lying, and I will want to run the more straightforward test but - I don't know, if the worst that happened here is you pranked me into hugging you I will be definitely kind of annoyed with you but also really relieved and if I tested it first and it was true that seems like it would be... cruel..."

(She isn't going to let go of him until he indicates he wants that.)

"I don't try to test it all that often. Sometimes people freak out really bad."

"...that makes sense, I guess. ...to be clear I'm not not bothered, like, my memory is bad enough without there being some weird curse in question, but - if this is real it would be wild to blame you about it, you're the biggest victim here!" Squeeze.

(Some part of her brain is running through confusing things that happened to her the last few days, and...) "...Did I make you spin poi with me?"

"You didn't make me. I was having fun with it till you, uh, left the room suddenly and then I had to put them down in case you were going to be like 'who are you and why do you have my poi'."

"Oh no, I'm sorry, I probably wanted to just grab something, and -" she pauses as she processes that, and then continues in a much more horrified voice "- me leaving the room was enough to make it happen???" She'd been thinking it was like, every day, not - 

"Yeah. Sometimes it doesn't even take that much but I can usually - keep - whatever's going on, if I keep up enough patter, short of that."

cliiiing. "I - that's so horrible - do you need anything? Can I help?"

"I don't really need anything. I get by. I didn't like, tell you this because I'm about to need a power of attorney, or anything."

She looks up at him, loosening her grip a bit. "Why did you tell me?" she asks, after a bit.

"...if you'd been like, 'yeah, right', it would've been pretty easy to play off without even having to run out of the room suddenly."

"But it was right there in my journal!" She frowns. "...I should take a bunch of notes, if you are done being hugged, if I want to even try and keep any of this..."

"Go ahead." He lets go. Sits down with his ramen.

She lets go of him. "Okay. Um, when you finish eating, I can get set up to run that test, if you're okay with it, but I can start writing down stuff now in my journal, and maybe I should actually just have a dedicated notes file for you so it all goes in one place, right," she's babbling a bit, words coming out too fast. She feels a bit lightheaded. How is he so calm about it - well, he's used to it, obviously, but - 

"You don't really have to go to the trouble, especially if you're - going to get really invested in it and have a problem, when you can't remember any of it -"

She looks at him sadly. "Do you - not want me to try? I - maybe it doesn't work, but... aren't you lonely?"

"I've been like this all my life."

She looks at him with concern, and doesn't immediately say anything.

"So like yeah but it's not an emergency."

Sheee is going to walk over to where he's seated and wrap her arms around him. "I feel like it kinda is," she says quietly, "but it's your life."

"It's not an emergency. Nobody's dying and nothing's on fire." But he will hug her again.

She doesn't have anything to say to that.

But she does have arms for hugging.

She's very good to hug.

Eventually she lets go. "Right, sorry. I'll let you eat while I start taking notes?" She gets up to go back to her laptop.

He nods and takes a twirl of ramen. Nomf.

She opens up her laptop and - 

- that's a lot of unread discord messages?

She opens her DMs with Risa and - oh wow, girl it has been three days, how did you - 

There's not, like, a telltale eye-glazing, or anything, to go by. But when she doesn't say anything for a while he has a guess.

After a while, she notices she's sitting across the table from someone and looks up in surprise! "...Sorry, I got so into something I don't think I even saw you sit down?" And then she frowns. She - she was about to do something, and it was something important, before Risa messaged her, and now she doesn't -

"I'm real stealthy. Don't worry about it."

He tosses the empty ramen cup and puts the spoon in the dishwasher.

Xeya is clearly worried about something! But he can successfully slip out her mind, if he wants.

He doesn't have the energy to try not to twice. He leaves.

She opens her mouth to at least introduce herself, but - 

RISA! I am serious you really should not sleep with a professor on your first week of class!!!!

Life goes on. He does another grocery run. There's chocolate chip and also blueberry muffins courtesy of the good people at Kirkland in this one.

Xeya gets settled in, does her best to meet and make friends with her roommates. There's lots of people to chat with. There's muffins, sometimes! She writes a big thank you note with a silly drawing of her devouring a muffin in a single bite and leaves it on the fridge with the text "to: whoever got those muffins 💙".

Weeks pass. She settles into a pretty reasonable routine - she keeps odd hours, sometimes, and talks with people a lot, but she's always in the common area at 10:30 pm to update her journal and chat with people about her day, if they're interested.

Her note disappears from the fridge the next day.

Sometimes people are around then, sometimes they're not. Today somebody's around.

(Xeya knows everyone who lives here, now. She made a map and labeled it! And she hasn't seen him around before.) She waves!

Wave wave. "Hey Xeya."

"Hi! Sorry, I am terrible with names, if I could get everyone to wear nametags around here I would..." She sounds embarrassed, but only a little. She has blue hair and a funny name - she's more memorable than average.

"It's okay. I'm Skip."

"Hi Skip!" Smile. "I'm just finishing up my journal, and then it's bedtime - can't be up late on Tuesdays, I've got early and long Wednesdays. How was your day?"

"Same old. Somebody got floss picks and a plastic ice cream cone beach toy in the same Amazon order but it's probably a coincidence, I haven't even come up with a joke explanation for why they'd go together."

Giggle. "Maybe they need to comb the beac- no, that's nothing, the gag doesn't even work with a floss pick. They... have kids, and also... teeth." She mock-whistles. "Damn, I'm good."

"It's a weird time of year to get a beach toy, though."

"They're going on a tropical vacation! With their kids. And teeth."

"Do people pack their beach toys for tropical vacations? I guess I don't know how scarce luggage space usually is."

"...Probably not, no," she admits. "Curses. Foiled again..."

"I didn't note where they live. They could just have a backyard sandbox in Los Angeles. And teeth."

"Huh, I would have thought it'd ship from somewhere closer in that case? But maybe, yeah, you'd know better than me." She pauses. "And teeth."

"And teeth," he nods sagely.

Giggle. (She likes Skip! He seems nice. She hopes she'll run into him more...)

Next Tuesday, she doesn't seem to get back to the house till 1 am, but she looks weirdly energized as she heads into the kitchen for a quick bite to eat.

Somebody's asleep on the couch but is awoken by nearby movement.

"Oh! Sorry, didn't mean to wake you," she whispers.

Yawn. "'S okay, it happens... why're you up so late?"

"Ah - it's, uh, a secret, sorry."

"Oh. Okay."

Xeya gives him an apologetic wave and makes herself a nice midnight (well, 1 am) dinner.

Xeya continues to behave oddly over the next few days, to someone who was paying close enough attention.

She often comes home much later than she did in the month prior, and occasionally a bit underdressed for the chilly weather, but it doesn't seem to bother her.

She asks a few different people what the most-attended sporting events around here are. When people ask what kind of sport she shrugs and says that any are fine.

She radiates even more joy than usual! Not enough that it feels badly out of character, but like she's having a week's worth of really really good days in a row.

"...so are you going to the soccer game tonight?" somebody wonders while he's emptying the dishwasher and she comes through.

Huh! She smiles up at him. "Yeah! Why, are you?"

"It's only free for students, and I'm not."

Oh, huh. "Sorry, I shouldn't assume everyone is a student..."

"It's a natural assumption. I'm actually just Annika's non-college-going brother."

"Oh! Nice to meet you - I'm Xeya."

"You've come up once or twice, you're the only one with blue hair. I'm Skip." Because she usually asks.

"Hi Skip! Do you like soccer?" (She would offer to tell him about how the game went but she's planning on doing homework while she's there, so.)

"I'll watch it if it's on, it's not my main thing, I just heard you like going to games."

She nods. "This is going to sound weird, but I just - I love the vibes? It's so energizing!"

"Oh, that explains why Annika would've been so unclear on which sports you like. If they're all energizing."

"Some aren't! It's the big crowds that I'm looking for, really."

"So a theater or the circus or whatever'd work?"

"You know, I'm not sure? ...Or, well, the theater, probably not, but a circus might be worth trying, actually, that's a good idea..." She's kinda getting lost in thought...

"Huh, why a circus but not a theater?"

"Um." Oops? "...the vibes aren't quite right?" 

"For what?"

Oops! "...Um. I think maybe... it's too quiet? Because it'd be rude to talk all the time during the show..."

(...Xeya is not an incredible liar.)

"...huh. Okay. Well, have fun at the soccer game."

"Thanks! I will. Have a nice evening!" 

It's a couple of days after that that there's a godawful screeching and honking down the block from the house.

It's pretty late but those are concerning sounds! She's already got everything she needs on her and - is anyone hurt -

Yeah. There's a guy who's been thrown into a neighbor's mailbox and he's bleeding and his leg probably isn't supposed to be like that but you can tell he's still breathing because he's gasping and sobbing.

Oh no.

She pulls on her oversized black hoodie, the hood covering her hair and eyes, and runs out the door in the direction she knows the victim is, checking to see if anyone else is nearby and approaching - where's the driver -

The driver skidded to a stop over there and is having a screaming argument with his shotgun passenger.

Augh. But if they are not - paying any attention to where the person they hit is... she can ignore that for now.

She runs over to the mailbox - she knows someone there is hurt! badly! 

Yup, there's a guy there, he's not doing so hot. He blinks up at her when she comes into view.

"Hey, hey, it's going to be okay, I can help you," she says, still shrouded in the hoodie, and - she really does not sound like a panicked bystander would? She sounds like she totally believes it. 

What's the damage?

Broken leg, road rash, shoulder's fucked, pelvis in too many pieces, bruising and crush damage, cracked ribs. He tries to say something but it comes out pretty gurgly.

Ouch! But... it's going to be okay.

She reaches out a gloved hand, and -

A warm blue light washes over his body, painlessly undoing his wounds, current and past alike. 

He catches his breath a little, then: "Xeya?"

Shit.

Well, it was going to be hard to keep a secret from everyone forever...  She pulls the hood back just a bit.

 "Are you okay?"  He is physically, she can tell, but major injuries are often pretty traumatic!! 

"That or I'm hallucinating??"

"You're not! All healed." And there's her smile. 

She reaches out a hand to help him up.

Okay??

"You're - magic? There's more - there's magic people?"

Pull (with. More force than her body should have, really,) and he's upright! 

"I don't know if it's magic, but -" wait

"- what do you mean, more magic people?" 

"Well you got way fucking better powers than I did!" he says, a little hysterically, tugging at a rent in his shirt.

"Yeah... I'm really lucky to get to be able to do this - why, what are yours?" And how does he... know her... 

"I'm just really, really unmemorable and I can't turn it off and the last time I told you this you were going to write it down but you got distracted!" He's maybe crying. "Oh my god, I would have died, maybe somebody else'd've lived through that but I would have just, I'd have died, six people would've had to call an ambulance before one got me to the hospital -"

Yeah ok he's not okay!! "...can I hug you?" 

He hugs her without further invitation.

(If she's listening to the screaming couple down the street they're now examining damage to the car and talking like it was probably a deer.)

She holds him tightly. "Hey, it's okay, you're safe now..."  

And she hears the argument and then she processes the rest of what what he said and  <have I met this person before?>

<Multiple times since you became a Blue Lantern, yes.> It helpfully gives her a calendarized list of her ring-journal snippets corresponding to those interactions.

"Skip?", she whispers hesitantly. 

"...that's me, how'd -"

"Oh, uh - it's like a computer in my head, I journal in it now, and - it remembers you just fine, even if I don't..."

She sounds distracted - she's still processing. Augh, she introduced herself to him like seven times in the last few days? (Squeeze.)

"...yeah. Computers remember me."

"Okay, wellllll. I am debatably part-computer, now - please don't tell anyone, by the way - and I think I can get it to remind me when I notice you? And centralize my notes? I will try and set that up right now, actually..."

<Okay. Whenever I notice this person and don't recognize them, please remind me that this is Skip, he has a... mysterious condition that means I can only remember him through notes, and pull up a file called 'notes on Skip'? Start it with the fact that he knows I have powers but not about you, that I saved his life after he got hit by a car, and then a summary of everything from those prior interactions.> 

(If he looks down at her, he'll notice that her eyes are glowing.)

"I won't tell anyone. They might not remember if I did, sometimes people can learn things from me, like where the ice cream goes, but only things that they'd... buy if they just 'heard it somewhere'."

"Well, that's good news for my secret identity," Xeya mutters.

She looks around. "...Do you want to get back inside?"

"...yeah. I think the car people will forget me no problem." (They now sound very confident it was a deer.)

"I've been listening, they think it was a deer." She sighs and lets go of him.

Wait, hmm. "Actually - can I - " and she reaches her right arm out to him.

"Yeah. That's probably smart." He takes her by the arm, he's a little stress-wobbly.

Xeya is remarkably stable for her size and weight! (Flight costs nontrivial amounts of ring charge, but quietly augmenting her strength and balance with her hopes really doesn't seem to.)

Her eyes stop glowing and she looks up at him. "You must have told me the first time before I got my powers, sorry. I don't have any of that." 

"Yeah. I've lived here as long as Annika has, we've run into each other. ...are the powers why you started showing up in the middle of the night?"

(Her eyes flash momentarily as she commits these facts to her notes file.)

"Yeah. I've been going out to the big hospitals in bus range and healing people in secret." 

"Oh, that's so cool..."

Happy wiggle. "It's great! I love getting to help people like this, bring hope into their lives... I feel really lucky." 

Here's the house. She'll let him open the door. (She's not letting go of him.)

He knows the door code, of course.

Yeah. Of course. 

"My room?"

Nod nod. He knows where that is too.

Yeah. That makes sense.

She opens the door to her for him and once he's inside, she flops face up on her bed and after a moment, pats the spot next to her.

"Okay. So."

He sits. "So you've got good magic powers and I've got lousy ones?"

Xeya is a very cuddly person by nature, which he will have observed by now. She moves into easy cuddling range but does not initiate without asking.

 "...sorry yours are so shitty. I think I have mine set up to help me remember you? I have a notes file and I'm adding to it as we talk, and I think it's set up to remind me when I see you. Which... we should test, but we don't have to do that now, if you don't want to."

"I'm, uh, not in a hurry. ...if it doesn't work, then what."

"If you tell me that I have notes on you or that we've met before that should work even if my reminders don't? It worked this time." She looks over at him. "...How are you on, uh, physical contact."

"I hugged you a minute ago," he points out.

Then she will lean on him, a bit tentatively.

"Do you - want to tell me the things I haven't remembered, so I can actually get it written down this time? It's okay if not."

"I didn't write them down either. I helped you move in. I asked what the poi were and you started teaching me how but then you ran off to get something. You helped me put groceries away one time, I sent you off with the ice cream and the wagon. And once I tried explaining, I said something like, yeah, I'm in there next to something about... Opposite Day?... and you checked, and you hugged me then, too, and you were going to write more about it and then I think something on your computer grabbed you and I wasn't continuous enough."

Her eyes flash. (She's already exported her old journal to the ring, so it's easy to search.) 

 "Oh, gosh, I - when I was writing up my journal Saturday night, yeah, there you are. And then..." She frowns, eyes glowing. "...do you remember what day it was, that you told me the first time?"

"It might have been a... Tuesday?"

"...Okay, if it was the first Tuesday I was here, that night I had to talk Risa out of sleeping with her professor, which... definitely could have distracted me, jeez." She lets out a weak laugh. Leans into him a bit more.

...he puts an arm around her. "That does sound distracting."

"Yeah, but I - man. That must not have been fun for you, sorry." She wraps an arm around him and pulls herself closer.

"It happens literally all the time."

"Yeah, but - you'd just told me, right? Do you do that often?"

"Not that often. Every few months if there's a, like, good setup for it, and most of the time they figure I'm doing a bit."

"Ah. Yeah, I think I would have if thought it was a bit if I didn't have journal entries? But - it's really rare I write something down and don't remember it on reread, especially not with that much detail." 

She updates her notes a bit: Fine to hug and stuff. Tells people abt curse only rarely, usually they think it's a joke. (She is maybe doing that a bit compulsively. But whatever!)

"Yeah, I guess I've never happened to specifically tell someone how to look me up before unless they were like, a bank teller who wouldn't expect to personally remember me."

That makes sense. "Well. You shouldn't need to for me, anymore. ...not that I'm excited to test it, really? But notes are a lot better than nothing."

"Can't put off testing it forever. One of us is going to need to go to the bathroom or something, or you'll get a text, or sometimes I can't even reconstruct what does it."

"Yeah, but... no need to rush it." Xeya is maybe clinging a bit?

(It's hard not to think about - how she'd feel, living like that, and... she'd want to be held about it, if it were her.)

He is certainly not trying to shrug her off. "Yeah."

She's quiet, for a bit. "You know, from almost everyone else's perspective, this house is haunted."

"I'm not invisible. People can see me do stuff. They just don't remember that I'm anybody specific. And I don't like, make the walls bleed," he says. "I could break into a house that didn't have this many people in it and move things around if I wanted to but you could also do that, if you wanted to."

"I mean, yeah, it's an unusual and minor haunting." And then she grins, and - a tendril of blue light reaches out and locks her door before disappearing. "I think I could haunt a house pretty well, if I wanted to."

"I don't think I'm like a ghost," says Skip.

...oh, whoops. "You're not! Sorry."

She squeezes him in a way you cannot squeeze a ghost.

Squeeze. "It's okay, just. I did not in fact die ten minutes ago and that was pretty neat how I didn't die."

"Yeah! I am very glad I heard the car noises and could figure out what happened from there. And, uh, had the ability to do something about it, you might have been okay if I'd called an ambulance and stayed with you but that could have been really scary and this was much simpler!"