Gabriel Chen (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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zenderael_rl2012-04-19 05:23 pm
turnsteptwirl) wrote in zenderael_rl2012-04-19 05:23 pm
Entry tags:
[Gabriel/Lei Wan] - Distractions
Who: Gabriel and Lei Wan
When: Thursday, February 17th, 2050
Where: Wificafe in Underwood
Before/After: N/A
Warnings: A bit of language on Gabe's part, some creepiness on LeiLei's. Also mention of setting books on fire. :(
LeiLei liked the wificafe. It was such a nice environment to be in, so chill and laid back. And the pastries were wonderful, even if she had to budget carefully to not run down her meager allowance. As long as she got her homework done and was home by dinner, her mother didn't complain too much about her staying out.
She was seated in a booth, curled up with her back to the wall and her knees up, her laptop open on the table in front of her and a book open on her knees. It wasn't a very interesting book, but she had to read it for class. She only had a few more pages to go 'til the end of the assigned chapter, and then she could log into Zen and play her mage until it was time to go home.
Gabe, quite frankly, hadn't planned on going to Underwood today. There was too much to worry about on campus. Between rehearsals and homework and Zen stuff lately, he felt lucky if he got time to breathe. Technically, he was supposed to be at rehearsal today. However, he couldn't handle it right now. Between having to deal with that horrible partner of his that liked stepping on his toes and the madness from the protests and whatnot, he just needed to get away from Fall City, even if it was just for an hour or so. Underwood provided the perfect escape.
And now that he had delicious pastries and hot chocolate, he had to find somewhere to sit. He could have chosen any table at random, of course, but his eyes immediately fell upon a familiar-looking laptop and, curious, he approached the booth, studying her to make certain it was, in fact, the girl he had thought it was before he said anything at all. And it looked like she was reading one of the most boring books in the history of ever judging from what little he could see of the cover. Clearly, he had arrived just in time to save her from sheer boredom. "I thought I recognized the laptop. Hi, honey~"
Oh, that was a familiar voice. And when she looked up, there was a familiar face! She forgot all about the book and grinned up at him. "Hiiii~ Gabe! How are you?" Those last few pages could wait. Gabriel was much more interesting than Great Expectations.
"Better now that I'm here," he said with a roll of his eyes. "FCU was starting to get to me." He paused, eyeing her book now that she had closed it enough where he could actually make out the title. He recognized the title, of course. How could he not? He had heard enough people complaining about that particular book to know enough people in his class had wanted to take a blowtorch to it. "And I'm so sorry for the brain cells you're going to lose reading that, honey. My friends all told me they wanted to set that book on fire when they read it."
She shoved a bookmark in between the pages and let the book slide down to her lap. "Ugh, I know! I don't care about this kid's life. We never get to read anything interesting in school."
She picked the book up and set it on the table, turning to sit properly in the booth. She set her chin in her hands, looking up at Gabe. "What's wrong with FCU?"
"I'm just glad my English class never had to read it." Gabe shrugged, setting his things down on the table top and sliding into the seat on the opposite side of the booth. LeiLei wouldn't mind, especially not when they were discussing interesting things. Besides, she could even steal one of the pastries he had grabbed if she was so inclined. Everything worked out in her favor, he was sure. "When I was your age, we got stuck reading Tess of the d'Urbervilles instead. It was the one English book I couldn't even force myself to read through. It was basically an entire book about some girl lamenting how terrible her life was even though it wasn't really all that bad." He shuddered. His friends wanted to set Great Expectations on fire; he wanted to do the same to Tess.
"And nothing's wrong really." He frowned, passing the plate of pastries across the table to her. "But people are being stupid and my dance partner still hates me. I don't even know what I did to her!" He hadn't done anything, as far as he knew. "I'm seriously counting down the days until we switch off. I've only been stuck with her this long because those stupid protests made my professors cancel classes."
Her feet kicked idly beneath the table; luckily there was enough space between them for her to not be kicking Gabe in the shins. She perked up when she saw him pass the plate over and reached over to take one of the pastries. "Thank you~"
She listened to him complain about his dance partner while nibbling at the pastry, attentive. "You should sic the theatre ghost on her," she said, perfectly serious.
Gabe seriously considered this for a moment or two before shaking his head. "I don't think the theatre ghost does stuff to people on command. I think you really need to annoy it first, but the stage crew doesn't let people into the theatre unless you absolutely have to be there. Even then, you don't touch things like the ghost's stuff unless you're putting it back where you found it."
"You could trick her," she said, as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
"I could," he conceded, frowning. Still, just because he could do something didn't mean he wanted to do it. Admittedly, the majority of the time, that was how most everything played out in Gabe's life. Messing with ghosts were an entirely different matter, and he wasn't so certain he wanted to mess with a ghost that lived in their theatre. "But then she might do something during a show, and I don't want to have everybody mad at me."
She let out a soft hum, a thinking noise, as she took a bite of the pastry. "But if she did something during a show, wouldn't they be mad at her?"
"We don't really aggravate it much while we're performing." He took a sip of his hot chocolate, savoring the warmth and the wonderful cocoa smell for a moment or two before he spoke again. He really did need to compliment Alison on the hot chocolate the next time he saw her, though. It was good stuff. "That's why we've got things like the ghost light and it's friend. They're to keep her from messing with the set and everything else during a performance. If she started something while a show was going on, someone would probably need to take it's friend or something." Maybe. He wasn't quite sure how that sort of thing worked; he just knew it did. "And if that goes missing, people start pointing fingers. It's bad luck to purposely ruin a show, you know, sweetie." Come to think of it, why were there so many theatre superstitions, anyway? Don't aggravate the theatre ghost. Don't wish someone good luck before a performance; wish they'd break their leg instead. Now that he thought about it, he wasn't even sure how some of these had gotten started. He'd have to look that up on the internet later when he wasn't trying to convince LeiLei that messing with the theatre ghost was a bad plan.
"Ohhh, you meant the ghost," she realized. "I meant you could trick the girl you don't like into making the ghost mad. Wouldn't that work? Or is that still ruining a show on purpose and causing bad luck?"
"Oh." LeiLei hadn't been talking about the ghost this whole time? Huh... That was surprising. With how much she seemed to adore all sorts of creepy things, he was surprised that wasn't the sole focus on his conversations with her. "I could, but then I'd feel bad. Not for her, of course," he was very quick to clarify this, "but for everybody else. I'm not going to make everyone suffer just because I wanted to get back at a raging bitch."
She was slightly taken aback by the harsh language, which showed in the way her posture adjusted and her eyebrows rose. But Gabe was a grown up, he could say words like that.
"I guess it wouldn't be very fair to the ghost," she admitted. "Being in college sounds complicated."
It was only when her eyebrows rose that Gabe even realized he had cursed at all. Normally, he was above that sort of thing. He tried not to use such language unless the person in question really and truly deserved it. As far as he was concerned, though, his dance partner did. For all he knew, she was just being horrible to him simply because she could, and, as far as he was concerned, that earned her the title of raging bitch. At least he didn't have to deal with her all that often, but still...
"It can be sometimes," he agreed, "but life's worse. Outside of school, people can do all kinds of weird things to you and think they can get away with it because they don't have to answer to anybody. The worst part is that you get blamed for it, and if you don't have any proof the other person did stuff to you, you're basically out of luck, anyway." He paused then, taking another sip of hot chocolate before speaking again. "Then again, I guess it isn't that much different from school, huh?"
She gave a thoughtful frown, cocking her head to one side. "Do you mean how people are jerks sometimes because they think nobody's watching them? People at my school are like that sometimes. I thought that was something that got better when you grew up."
"Yeah, exactly like that, and, unfortunately, it doesn't." It was supposed to, or so he had been told, but none of the people who had ever told him that had been Chinese or been considered strange or different by anybody else. "Especially not if you're like us, but some people are just jerks anyway..." He shrugged. "You heard about the protests at FCU, right? Someone took advantage of the chaos to throw a rock through my dorm window." He still had no idea who did it, either, which was the worst part. It wasn't as if he could do anything even if he did, either. There wasn't much in the way of proof as it was...
She straightened, setting her hands at the edge of the table, with only her fingers resting on the surface. "They did it because you're Chinese?" she guessed. She assumed that was the reason, because he'd said 'like us.' "Can't you report that to someone?"
"Yeah." He wanted to lie, to just completely deny the fact that their ethnicity had anything at all to do with it, but he couldn't bring himself to do it, especially not with her looking at him like that. He hadn't even been able to admit that to Malachai of all people, and here he was saying that to her. At least he was fairly certain he could trust her to not go running off and telling people they both knew about it. "We reported it to the RA, but there's only so much you can do when you don't even know who threw the rock in the first place. Whoever did it was long gone by the time I got to the window. I'm not really letting it get to me, though." And to emphasize the point, he gave her a little smile. He hoped it was convincing, anyway. "Some people are just jerks and I'll only care what they think about me the day they start paying my bills."
Yeah, he could rest assured that she wouldn't go telling any of his friends about that. Especially since she'd never met any of his friends. "Too bad there's no dorm ghost to go after people who mess up the dorms."
Now that was the sort of ghost he would have no problem sending after people. If it didn't mess with the theatre, he didn't really care what it did. "Well, I don't know about at FCU, but according to one of my friends back home, her dorm's supposedly haunted. Story goes that some guy back in the 1970's hung himself in his room and he's haunted the building ever since."
Her eyes lit up. "Ooh, now if you can get someone to hang himself at the FCU dorms..." Of course that was an incredibly unsettling thing to say, and really, she was joking, but she sounded as serious as she ever did about it.
LeiLei really should have considered herself very lucky he hadn't been drinking his hot chocolate the minute she had said that, otherwise he either would have choked on it or spit it in her general direction. Who said things like that? "Wha... honey, that's a terrible thing to say!"
She smiled brightly, enjoying the reaction. "But then his ghost would protect the dorms forever and ever~"
"Or terrify the students within an inch of their life!" Ghosts weren't always nice and friendly, LeiLei, honestly. Had she ever seen a horror movie? Ghosts were rarely nice in those! "They're dead. They don't care about what you want them to do."
"If it was a malicious ghost, you could build a bunch of staircases and doors that don't go anywhere so it gets lost trying to find people to terrorize! Like Lady Winchester did!" Did anybody even know about Lady Winchester's mansion without having a specific interest in hauntings? That was from the turn of the 20th century, ancient history.
The look of confusion on Gabe's face spoke volumes. "Wait, what?" Who the heck was that and how was whoever Lady Winchester was relevant to anything?
Gleefully, LeiLei popped open her laptop and did a quick search for the Winchester Mystery House. She navigated to the wikipedia page on it and turned her computer around to show Gabe. "She was this lady who kept adding and adding to her mansion so ghosts couldn't settle in it and she built it like a maze so they'd get lost if they tried."
Somehow, he honestly hadn't expected LeiLei to find a source so readily, and yet he realized it didn't really surprise him. This was probably her favorite topic. She'd have to have some websites about this stuff bookmarked, wouldn't she? Curious, he leaned forward to peer at the page, frowning. He had heard and read about some very strange things, he thought as his eyes scanned over the wikipedia page, but this was heading into crazytown. "So this woman honestly thought she'd keep spirits from killing her if she kept building and building her house?" He raised his head just enough peer at LeiLei over the top of the monitor. "Sounds a little crazy to me..."
"Crazy with fear!" She sounded positively giddy about it. "If you were being stalked by evil spirits, wouldn't you be scared too? And if you had the kind of money Lady Winchester did, wouldn't you build a house to keep them away?"
"Honey..." There really was no easy way to say this without upsetting the poor thing, was there? "If I honestly thought I was being stalked by ghosts, I'd expect someone would lock me up in the crazy farm." Did that sort of thing happen nowadays? Gabe wasn't entirely sure, but, if it did, he was almost positive that would be what happened to him. "And even if I did believe that, I don't think a ghost would let some crazily built house stop them. They're dead, after all. They don't have to conform to mundane rules."
"Pff." She rolled her eyes and waved a dismissive hand. "You just have no imagination. Seeing ghosts isn't crazy. You should know that! You have the theatre ghost to worry about!"
She took her laptop back, turning it to face herself again, and closed the window she'd opened up for Gabe. "Did you bring your computer?" she asked. She still had to finish that reading, but if Gabe was here, she'd really rather be doing something fun, like frying enemies on her mage.
"Hey, I just deal with her," he pointed out with a laugh. "I've never actually seen her." The theatre kids all knew the story, though, about the young woman who had supposedly been killed backstage during a performance back in the day. Gabe wasn't sure how accurate that was, of course, since he had never seen records about that sort of thing, but considering the amount of precautions they had to take to make certain she didn't go and ruin anything on the stage, he wouldn't have been surprised if there was some truth to it. After all, he didn't think anybody was inclined to leave lights on the stage for no reason.
"Actually...." He grinned at her, tugging the laptop bag he had forgotten about since he had sat down open to pull his own laptop out of it. "I did, but I thought you were reading the world's most boring book over there. Shouldn't you finish your homework before logging in, sweetie?"
"I'll finish it later," she said. "I only have a few pages left, I'll finish it on the bus." She said it flippantly, but she did mean it. She didn't want to invite the trouble that not finishing her homework got her, but she didn't want to waste her time with Gabe by doing her homework while he sat there.
She logged in and selected her mage--her only character. "Right now I just feel like blowing up some monsters."
Gabe shook his head. The small responsible voice the back of his brain was encouraging him to tell LeiLei to log out, to pick up that book, and to finish whatever bits she had to read now before she did anything. Unfortunately, the responsible voice was immediately squashed by the very thought of killing monsters. Besides, it wasn't as though he was being responsible right at that very minute, anyway.
"Sounds like a plan to me," he agreed as he loaded up Zenderael's launcher. "I'm all for blowing up monsters." He paused, frowning for a moment before continuing. "Well, you'd have to do the blowing up. Nayan just stabs things to death."
When: Thursday, February 17th, 2050
Where: Wificafe in Underwood
Before/After: N/A
Warnings: A bit of language on Gabe's part, some creepiness on LeiLei's. Also mention of setting books on fire. :(
LeiLei liked the wificafe. It was such a nice environment to be in, so chill and laid back. And the pastries were wonderful, even if she had to budget carefully to not run down her meager allowance. As long as she got her homework done and was home by dinner, her mother didn't complain too much about her staying out.
She was seated in a booth, curled up with her back to the wall and her knees up, her laptop open on the table in front of her and a book open on her knees. It wasn't a very interesting book, but she had to read it for class. She only had a few more pages to go 'til the end of the assigned chapter, and then she could log into Zen and play her mage until it was time to go home.
Gabe, quite frankly, hadn't planned on going to Underwood today. There was too much to worry about on campus. Between rehearsals and homework and Zen stuff lately, he felt lucky if he got time to breathe. Technically, he was supposed to be at rehearsal today. However, he couldn't handle it right now. Between having to deal with that horrible partner of his that liked stepping on his toes and the madness from the protests and whatnot, he just needed to get away from Fall City, even if it was just for an hour or so. Underwood provided the perfect escape.
And now that he had delicious pastries and hot chocolate, he had to find somewhere to sit. He could have chosen any table at random, of course, but his eyes immediately fell upon a familiar-looking laptop and, curious, he approached the booth, studying her to make certain it was, in fact, the girl he had thought it was before he said anything at all. And it looked like she was reading one of the most boring books in the history of ever judging from what little he could see of the cover. Clearly, he had arrived just in time to save her from sheer boredom. "I thought I recognized the laptop. Hi, honey~"
Oh, that was a familiar voice. And when she looked up, there was a familiar face! She forgot all about the book and grinned up at him. "Hiiii~ Gabe! How are you?" Those last few pages could wait. Gabriel was much more interesting than Great Expectations.
"Better now that I'm here," he said with a roll of his eyes. "FCU was starting to get to me." He paused, eyeing her book now that she had closed it enough where he could actually make out the title. He recognized the title, of course. How could he not? He had heard enough people complaining about that particular book to know enough people in his class had wanted to take a blowtorch to it. "And I'm so sorry for the brain cells you're going to lose reading that, honey. My friends all told me they wanted to set that book on fire when they read it."
She shoved a bookmark in between the pages and let the book slide down to her lap. "Ugh, I know! I don't care about this kid's life. We never get to read anything interesting in school."
She picked the book up and set it on the table, turning to sit properly in the booth. She set her chin in her hands, looking up at Gabe. "What's wrong with FCU?"
"I'm just glad my English class never had to read it." Gabe shrugged, setting his things down on the table top and sliding into the seat on the opposite side of the booth. LeiLei wouldn't mind, especially not when they were discussing interesting things. Besides, she could even steal one of the pastries he had grabbed if she was so inclined. Everything worked out in her favor, he was sure. "When I was your age, we got stuck reading Tess of the d'Urbervilles instead. It was the one English book I couldn't even force myself to read through. It was basically an entire book about some girl lamenting how terrible her life was even though it wasn't really all that bad." He shuddered. His friends wanted to set Great Expectations on fire; he wanted to do the same to Tess.
"And nothing's wrong really." He frowned, passing the plate of pastries across the table to her. "But people are being stupid and my dance partner still hates me. I don't even know what I did to her!" He hadn't done anything, as far as he knew. "I'm seriously counting down the days until we switch off. I've only been stuck with her this long because those stupid protests made my professors cancel classes."
Her feet kicked idly beneath the table; luckily there was enough space between them for her to not be kicking Gabe in the shins. She perked up when she saw him pass the plate over and reached over to take one of the pastries. "Thank you~"
She listened to him complain about his dance partner while nibbling at the pastry, attentive. "You should sic the theatre ghost on her," she said, perfectly serious.
Gabe seriously considered this for a moment or two before shaking his head. "I don't think the theatre ghost does stuff to people on command. I think you really need to annoy it first, but the stage crew doesn't let people into the theatre unless you absolutely have to be there. Even then, you don't touch things like the ghost's stuff unless you're putting it back where you found it."
"You could trick her," she said, as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
"I could," he conceded, frowning. Still, just because he could do something didn't mean he wanted to do it. Admittedly, the majority of the time, that was how most everything played out in Gabe's life. Messing with ghosts were an entirely different matter, and he wasn't so certain he wanted to mess with a ghost that lived in their theatre. "But then she might do something during a show, and I don't want to have everybody mad at me."
She let out a soft hum, a thinking noise, as she took a bite of the pastry. "But if she did something during a show, wouldn't they be mad at her?"
"We don't really aggravate it much while we're performing." He took a sip of his hot chocolate, savoring the warmth and the wonderful cocoa smell for a moment or two before he spoke again. He really did need to compliment Alison on the hot chocolate the next time he saw her, though. It was good stuff. "That's why we've got things like the ghost light and it's friend. They're to keep her from messing with the set and everything else during a performance. If she started something while a show was going on, someone would probably need to take it's friend or something." Maybe. He wasn't quite sure how that sort of thing worked; he just knew it did. "And if that goes missing, people start pointing fingers. It's bad luck to purposely ruin a show, you know, sweetie." Come to think of it, why were there so many theatre superstitions, anyway? Don't aggravate the theatre ghost. Don't wish someone good luck before a performance; wish they'd break their leg instead. Now that he thought about it, he wasn't even sure how some of these had gotten started. He'd have to look that up on the internet later when he wasn't trying to convince LeiLei that messing with the theatre ghost was a bad plan.
"Ohhh, you meant the ghost," she realized. "I meant you could trick the girl you don't like into making the ghost mad. Wouldn't that work? Or is that still ruining a show on purpose and causing bad luck?"
"Oh." LeiLei hadn't been talking about the ghost this whole time? Huh... That was surprising. With how much she seemed to adore all sorts of creepy things, he was surprised that wasn't the sole focus on his conversations with her. "I could, but then I'd feel bad. Not for her, of course," he was very quick to clarify this, "but for everybody else. I'm not going to make everyone suffer just because I wanted to get back at a raging bitch."
She was slightly taken aback by the harsh language, which showed in the way her posture adjusted and her eyebrows rose. But Gabe was a grown up, he could say words like that.
"I guess it wouldn't be very fair to the ghost," she admitted. "Being in college sounds complicated."
It was only when her eyebrows rose that Gabe even realized he had cursed at all. Normally, he was above that sort of thing. He tried not to use such language unless the person in question really and truly deserved it. As far as he was concerned, though, his dance partner did. For all he knew, she was just being horrible to him simply because she could, and, as far as he was concerned, that earned her the title of raging bitch. At least he didn't have to deal with her all that often, but still...
"It can be sometimes," he agreed, "but life's worse. Outside of school, people can do all kinds of weird things to you and think they can get away with it because they don't have to answer to anybody. The worst part is that you get blamed for it, and if you don't have any proof the other person did stuff to you, you're basically out of luck, anyway." He paused then, taking another sip of hot chocolate before speaking again. "Then again, I guess it isn't that much different from school, huh?"
She gave a thoughtful frown, cocking her head to one side. "Do you mean how people are jerks sometimes because they think nobody's watching them? People at my school are like that sometimes. I thought that was something that got better when you grew up."
"Yeah, exactly like that, and, unfortunately, it doesn't." It was supposed to, or so he had been told, but none of the people who had ever told him that had been Chinese or been considered strange or different by anybody else. "Especially not if you're like us, but some people are just jerks anyway..." He shrugged. "You heard about the protests at FCU, right? Someone took advantage of the chaos to throw a rock through my dorm window." He still had no idea who did it, either, which was the worst part. It wasn't as if he could do anything even if he did, either. There wasn't much in the way of proof as it was...
She straightened, setting her hands at the edge of the table, with only her fingers resting on the surface. "They did it because you're Chinese?" she guessed. She assumed that was the reason, because he'd said 'like us.' "Can't you report that to someone?"
"Yeah." He wanted to lie, to just completely deny the fact that their ethnicity had anything at all to do with it, but he couldn't bring himself to do it, especially not with her looking at him like that. He hadn't even been able to admit that to Malachai of all people, and here he was saying that to her. At least he was fairly certain he could trust her to not go running off and telling people they both knew about it. "We reported it to the RA, but there's only so much you can do when you don't even know who threw the rock in the first place. Whoever did it was long gone by the time I got to the window. I'm not really letting it get to me, though." And to emphasize the point, he gave her a little smile. He hoped it was convincing, anyway. "Some people are just jerks and I'll only care what they think about me the day they start paying my bills."
Yeah, he could rest assured that she wouldn't go telling any of his friends about that. Especially since she'd never met any of his friends. "Too bad there's no dorm ghost to go after people who mess up the dorms."
Now that was the sort of ghost he would have no problem sending after people. If it didn't mess with the theatre, he didn't really care what it did. "Well, I don't know about at FCU, but according to one of my friends back home, her dorm's supposedly haunted. Story goes that some guy back in the 1970's hung himself in his room and he's haunted the building ever since."
Her eyes lit up. "Ooh, now if you can get someone to hang himself at the FCU dorms..." Of course that was an incredibly unsettling thing to say, and really, she was joking, but she sounded as serious as she ever did about it.
LeiLei really should have considered herself very lucky he hadn't been drinking his hot chocolate the minute she had said that, otherwise he either would have choked on it or spit it in her general direction. Who said things like that? "Wha... honey, that's a terrible thing to say!"
She smiled brightly, enjoying the reaction. "But then his ghost would protect the dorms forever and ever~"
"Or terrify the students within an inch of their life!" Ghosts weren't always nice and friendly, LeiLei, honestly. Had she ever seen a horror movie? Ghosts were rarely nice in those! "They're dead. They don't care about what you want them to do."
"If it was a malicious ghost, you could build a bunch of staircases and doors that don't go anywhere so it gets lost trying to find people to terrorize! Like Lady Winchester did!" Did anybody even know about Lady Winchester's mansion without having a specific interest in hauntings? That was from the turn of the 20th century, ancient history.
The look of confusion on Gabe's face spoke volumes. "Wait, what?" Who the heck was that and how was whoever Lady Winchester was relevant to anything?
Gleefully, LeiLei popped open her laptop and did a quick search for the Winchester Mystery House. She navigated to the wikipedia page on it and turned her computer around to show Gabe. "She was this lady who kept adding and adding to her mansion so ghosts couldn't settle in it and she built it like a maze so they'd get lost if they tried."
Somehow, he honestly hadn't expected LeiLei to find a source so readily, and yet he realized it didn't really surprise him. This was probably her favorite topic. She'd have to have some websites about this stuff bookmarked, wouldn't she? Curious, he leaned forward to peer at the page, frowning. He had heard and read about some very strange things, he thought as his eyes scanned over the wikipedia page, but this was heading into crazytown. "So this woman honestly thought she'd keep spirits from killing her if she kept building and building her house?" He raised his head just enough peer at LeiLei over the top of the monitor. "Sounds a little crazy to me..."
"Crazy with fear!" She sounded positively giddy about it. "If you were being stalked by evil spirits, wouldn't you be scared too? And if you had the kind of money Lady Winchester did, wouldn't you build a house to keep them away?"
"Honey..." There really was no easy way to say this without upsetting the poor thing, was there? "If I honestly thought I was being stalked by ghosts, I'd expect someone would lock me up in the crazy farm." Did that sort of thing happen nowadays? Gabe wasn't entirely sure, but, if it did, he was almost positive that would be what happened to him. "And even if I did believe that, I don't think a ghost would let some crazily built house stop them. They're dead, after all. They don't have to conform to mundane rules."
"Pff." She rolled her eyes and waved a dismissive hand. "You just have no imagination. Seeing ghosts isn't crazy. You should know that! You have the theatre ghost to worry about!"
She took her laptop back, turning it to face herself again, and closed the window she'd opened up for Gabe. "Did you bring your computer?" she asked. She still had to finish that reading, but if Gabe was here, she'd really rather be doing something fun, like frying enemies on her mage.
"Hey, I just deal with her," he pointed out with a laugh. "I've never actually seen her." The theatre kids all knew the story, though, about the young woman who had supposedly been killed backstage during a performance back in the day. Gabe wasn't sure how accurate that was, of course, since he had never seen records about that sort of thing, but considering the amount of precautions they had to take to make certain she didn't go and ruin anything on the stage, he wouldn't have been surprised if there was some truth to it. After all, he didn't think anybody was inclined to leave lights on the stage for no reason.
"Actually...." He grinned at her, tugging the laptop bag he had forgotten about since he had sat down open to pull his own laptop out of it. "I did, but I thought you were reading the world's most boring book over there. Shouldn't you finish your homework before logging in, sweetie?"
"I'll finish it later," she said. "I only have a few pages left, I'll finish it on the bus." She said it flippantly, but she did mean it. She didn't want to invite the trouble that not finishing her homework got her, but she didn't want to waste her time with Gabe by doing her homework while he sat there.
She logged in and selected her mage--her only character. "Right now I just feel like blowing up some monsters."
Gabe shook his head. The small responsible voice the back of his brain was encouraging him to tell LeiLei to log out, to pick up that book, and to finish whatever bits she had to read now before she did anything. Unfortunately, the responsible voice was immediately squashed by the very thought of killing monsters. Besides, it wasn't as though he was being responsible right at that very minute, anyway.
"Sounds like a plan to me," he agreed as he loaded up Zenderael's launcher. "I'm all for blowing up monsters." He paused, frowning for a moment before continuing. "Well, you'd have to do the blowing up. Nayan just stabs things to death."