You Want a Physicist to Speak at Your Funeral
| You Want a Physicist to Speak at Your Funeral | |
|---|---|
Harper Memorial Library - U of C | |
| Players |
Javi is doing nice things for nice reasons and Ji-Ho is just being too curious for his own good. |
It's still summertime, and while there are always going to be //some// students hanging around a university campus library, it's a little quieter today than it will be in a couple of weeks. Still various things happening, like early department meetings or summer semester students cramming for a final, but relatively quiet. Someone who //is// here, though, is Javi. He does not look out of place, with the ostensibly-careless-yet-very-specific thrift store vibe he has going on, and especially not while he's going through the stacks, looking at books. That is what one does in a library, right? It's only if one were to look a little closer that they might pick up something a little bit weird about how he's doing it. He takes a book off the shelf, flips through it far too fast to read anything. Puts it back. Takes another book that's right next to it. Flips through it. Puts it back. And repeat.
The _third_ time that he goes by, slipping a handful of folded bills into his pocket, Ji-Ho pauses. He watches. ...he eels closer, slipping on soft steps. Habit. +----------------------------+ Ji-Ho rolls 5 Dice +----------------------------+ Roll: Stealth Result: Success (1) -- (3 10 1 5 7 3) +-------------------------------------------------------- success (public) ----+ +----------------------------+ Javi rolls 8 Dice +-----------------------------+ Roll: Perception +2 Result: Success (1) -- (6 7 1 3 1 3 4 8) +-------------------------------------------------------- success (public) ----+ Pick a book, flip through it, put it back. Maybe this is some sort of strange meditation thing? There are a million apps nowadays, there's probably one that says something about flipping through books to center yourself and focus on the present. Possibly coupled with the smell of pages being healing or opening chakras. Who knows. Javi can't be looking for a specific book in particular, because he doesn't even seem to be reading the spines. He's literally just going down the line, one by one. He doesn't notice Ji-Ho at first. He hasn't paid much attention to the movers, but it's probably the sort of thing that happens regularly at the library. He's too focused on whatever it is he's doing. So, the other man is able to get pretty much as close as he wants to -- or, alternatively, watch him for at least several seconds at the distance he chooses. But //eventually//, a little shiver runs through him and he straightens up quickly, then turns around in a sharp half-circle to look right at him. For a second, he looks ready to do...well, something. Get mad? Ditch the book and run? Surely not. What could go wrong in a library in the middle of the day? But it's quick, because he recognizes Ji-Ho almost immediately. "Oh, hey." It takes him one more second to come up with the name to match the face, but he does eventually. "Ji-Ho, yeah? 'Sup?"
"It's a letter," he clarifies as he grabs the next one. "Says 'Beth' on the envelope." It's //something//, but the feeling he's giving off while looking for it isn't particularly harried, or //extra//-focused, like it might be if it was actually a letter he'd written. He's methodical, but not concerned.
"So here's the thing," he says after a few seconds' thought. Definitely longer than it should take someone to answer those very easy questions. "Sometimes people ask me to help 'em out with shit, you know? Guess I got one of those faces." He turns toward Ji-Ho with another wide, open grin, which suits him very well and also has the effect of making him look like someone potentially very helpful. "But not all of 'em are, like...all there." He gestures to the side of his head with the book currently in his hand, wiggling it a little bit. //You// know what he means, Ji-Ho, surely. "So this dude knew kinda where it was, but he didn't remember the exact book. Just the section." Theoretical Physics, apparently. "So yeah. Gotta just check 'em all. We'll get it eventually." But not right now, because it's not this one, either. "You a student here or something?"
However, he's distracted by the end, and a laugh escapes him. "Well, yeah," he concedes, "I don't //have// to. But I like helping people out. Don't have a whole lot else going on today, I was gonna go to the library anyway. Just, like, a detour." This time, the glance he casts over his shoulder at Ji-Ho is a little more pointed, maybe in response to that talk about contracts, and deals. "It ain't like that. Just a nice thing to do, that's it." Unfortunately, Ji-Ho's book is not the one yet. But maybe soon!
Very reluctantly, as if parting with a secret, Ji-Ho admits: "Or out of curiosity."
He nods slowly when he finally gets the answer. The first part, anyway. But it's that last secret offering that pleases him the most. His eyebrows raise, and a moment later the smile on his face gets, if possible, even wider. It's like it suddenly can't be confined just to his face, spreading outward to light up his entire affect. "See?" he replies, gesturing toward the other man with the book in his hand. "You get it." And almost as if on cue, one of those books in Ji-Ho's hands pays off, dropping a small-ish envelope onto the floor. 'Beth' is written on the front in a neat hand, and it's not sealed, just tucked into the back. Practically //begging// to be opened. Ji-Ho pauses mid-waggle as the smile lights across Javi's features. His eyes narrow: just a little, just a bit. He watches the way the smile transforms Javi's features as though he is watching someone pulling a mask, and suddenly wary of what might follow. WATCH OUT. HE'S SMILING. As the letter falls, Ji-Ho immediately opens it. Was there ever any doubt? He slides the books back onto the shelf, picks up the letter, and then begins to open it right in front of Javi's nose with a sense of relief. At last: being nosy. That's so much easier to deal with.
He doesn't try to grab for the letter, either; maybe he accepts the other man satisfying his curiosity as payment for services rendered. Inside the envelope, Ji-Ho will find a card, not a folded one but just a single thick piece of paper. One side is printed with a couple of paragraphs, entitled 'You Want a Physicist to Speak at Your Funeral' and attributed to Aaron Freeman. There's a handwritten message on the back, though, in that same neat hand from the front of the envelope. //I love you.// //-Harry// "Anything good?" Javi asks after giving Ji-Ho a chance to read it. Hey, he's curious, too.
Ji-Ho hands the letter to Javi. "The person who asked you to find this: do they go by Harry?" he asks, watching with an unusually sharp attention.
He refocuses his attention once the letter is passed back to him, taking it and flipping it over to look at the back first. His smile softens as he reads it, and he nods once before his gaze lifts to Ji-Ho again, just in time for the question. It has him studying the other man right back, his head tilting to one side as he weighs some decision or other. But eventually, the smile tilts a little crookedly to one side, and he spreads his hands out wide to the sides with a shrug. "Yep," he confirms. "That's him. Now I just gotta go deliver it." He slips the card back into the envelope, tapping the name on the front to indicate who. Beth, not Harry. "No hurry, though. Appreciate the help, man. You want a coffee or something? My treat." Just in case they're not quite square. Javi won't leave a potential debt undischarged.
"Cool," he says, "no worries. See you around, yeah? Take care. Thanks again." He smiles, lifting his hand in a brief wave of farewell before he turns, starting out of the stacks and toward the exit.
It's in the dim-lit shadows of the antechamber that leads out into the brighter daylight that Ji-Ho turns away, or -- maybe? Turns away? +---------------------------+ Ji-Ho rolls 10 Dice +----------------------------+ Roll: Dexterity +Stealth.Camouflage +1 Result: Success (4) -- (2 4 1 5 3 8 9 1 8 8) +-------------------------------------------------------- success (public) ----+ +----------------------------+ Javi rolls 6 Dice +-----------------------------+ Roll: Wits +Composure Result: Success (2) -- (9 9 3 5 3 3) +-------------------------------------------------------- success (public) ----+ Javi may appreciate that they aren't going to have a weird pseudo-together walk to go outside -- of course, maybe he would have just made conversation! He does seem perfectly willing to do that, even if he was a little evasive about certain questions. However, now he doesn't need to, so that's fine, too. He heads out of the library, stepping out of the way of the door and fishing in the pocket opposite the letter until he pulls out a little slip of paper and looks down at it. Maybe it's an address, because after he reads it he turns left, heading away from the building and toward off campus. If Ji-Ho is planning on following him the whole way, he'll get in a rather pleasant one. Javi continues along, hands in his pockets, mostly looking ahead of him but sometimes off to the empty air on one side. He also seems to be talking to someone at certain points; and if the other man is close enough, he may catch little snippets of it. Though it's in Spanish, so he may or may not understand it. "...probably, yeah. ... I don't know, man, how'm I supposed to figure that out? ... Right, yeah, okay. Let me just do that next time." Like that. But he does it relatively quietly, probably so as not to attract too much attention. He's probably not the only person who talks to himself in Chicago, but if that's what he's doing, at least he's with it enough to realize that it's weird to walk down the street doing it indiscriminately.
Javi's a weirdo. Ji-Ho trots after Javi with a bit more interest at that point, sticking closer to see what weird trick he will do next.
It's about a fifteen or twenty minute walk, but eventually Javi starts looking more carefully at the buildings, probably for a number. It doesn't take him long to find one, and so he heads up the stairs, looking at the names on the buzzers to ring one before he steps back to wait. The building he's picked is a pretty classic brownstone, maybe not quite as nice as some of the most expensive units in the city, but nice. Upper-middle class, for sure. Eventually, the front door opens, and a woman steps out. She looks to be potentially in her middle fifties, dressed neatly, and really quite beautiful. Judging from her expression, she definitely does not know Javi, and the curiosity shifts to vague suspicion at whatever it is he says to her. But he does have a very friendly face, and he does not look particularly threatening, and so when he hands her the letter, she only hesitates for a few seconds before she takes it, and opens it to read it. Even from a distance too far to hear what's said, the way her expression shifts is obvious to someone who's observing it. She looks like she's sucking in a sharp break, and her empty hand lifts to her mouth as her eyes widen. She flips the card over to read the back, and that's when she seems to be overcome. Her head lifts to the messenger, who's actually not looking at her anymore, but in a way that might be giving her privacy while she feels those emotions that will come with a letter like that when it was written for her. She then leans forward impulsively to hug him, and while his posture may give away that he's not quite comfortable with it, he accepts it without jerking away. He lets it go on a couple of seconds, even giving her a slightly awkward pat on the back at the end, before he pulls back and says something else. Probably 'you're welcome,' or at least, 'good bye,' because he doesn't stick around any longer than that, turning to start down the stairs again and sliding his hands back into his pockets.
But he lingers. It's too complex a blend to be so simply labeled as sadness, but her emotions are rich, _intoxicating_, and this is it. This is why he followed like a creeper. Ji-Ho draws upon the moment, draws in the moment, and he's probably at least a little distracted from his business of looking very sneaky as he does so.
However. Now that Javi is no longer intent on his mission, he's looking around again as he makes his way back down the street. Those quick, sharp movements of his head are back, and his eyes sweep back and forth, watchful for potential danger. He doesn't seem to think it's //imminent//; it's just a habit. But between that, and Ji-Ho's slight slip in the wake of the meal he just had, he catches sight of the other man again. "What the fuck?" Now it's //his// turn for suspicion, and he takes several quicker steps over toward him before he loses sight of him again somehow. "You seriously just follow me all the way over here?"
He picks: flight. "Sorry I had a really good reason gonna have to tell you later I'm already late here you dropped this," says Ji-Ho in a blur of sound as he basically throws a handful of dollar bills at Javi -- POCKET CASH -- and books it.
Eventually, all he can do is pick up all the money before he goes back home. He earned that much. | |