[Adelie]

[CLAN] Gumiho: summer event summer event summer event !!!
[CLAN] Gumiho: https://elysi.um/news/7092
[CLAN] Chi Squared: Holy.
[CLAN] Chi Squared: So this is why we haven't been getting any new content recently.
[CLAN] Gumiho: ugh the tanabata outfit is cash shop only :c
[CLAN] Mischief Managed: there's factions? i love this event already.
[CLAN] Chi Squared: ooh, guild leaderboard too.
[CLAN] Gumiho: you're missing the important part
[CLAN] Chi Squared: ?
[CLAN] Gumiho: swimsuit alt npcs !!!

A few years back, when she still had the heart and the attention span to attend college socials, someone - perhaps inebriated, perhaps just socially inept - had stumbled up to her and asked, in lieu of an introduction, What's your favorite season?

Summer, she'd replied absently. Then, since it seemed good etiquette to offer something to continue the conversation - and the other party wasn't coming through with anything of their own - she added, Uh, I like the warm weather. It's perfect for going to the beach, and well, the university's right next to the ocean so I like to take advantage of that.

[Adelie]

Of course they say, wisdom comes from experience. If someone asked her the same question now, a few years out, she'd say the exact same thing - but for different reasons.

The hallmarks of summer - sun, surf, and fish tacos. Overrated.

Sun? Too bright for eyes adjusted to hours of late-night exam marking and homework grading.

Surf? Fun, but not fun enough to make up for hours of shaking sand out of her clothes, her bag, her every possession afterwards - and certainly not for the sunburn and frizzy hair she'd have to deal with.

And fish tacos? Apparently only one person in the entire city of Jawan knew how to make a proper taco, and even then, the art of crispy-yet-flaky filets of fish - so common in her hometown - seemed lost to him.

[Adelie]

No, the real reason why she liked summer was simple - there were no students in town.

No papers to grade. No scheduling an hour to listen to increasingly flimsy excuses as to why they did poorly on their midterm and that they deserved free points to make up for it. No awkward conversations in the coffee shop, when all she wanted was some caffeine to make her functional in the morning, because some student felt obligated to her time.

And with that newfound free time, she could devote herself to important things - like the inevitable flurry of summer-themed events that her favorite MMORPG put out to attract those aforementioned students, now that they had been freed from their regular schedules of schoolwork and bothering graduate student instructors.

[Adelie]

In that respect, perhaps she couldn't say her summers were free from students. It was simply a different kind of interaction.

People came to her discussion sections because attendance counted for points; people asked her questions and sought her out because they were at risk of losing their scholarships and not making their major declarations if they didn't pass. Sometimes she'd run into the rare student who actually, genuinely enjoyed the material - but this was basic college calculus. Most anyone who liked math would've tested out long ago.

But players who visited her help site, who pored over her pages upon pages of carefully-written guides and spreadsheets, who inundated her with DMs and questions - they were interested. They looked for information because they wanted to; they sought her out because they wanted to; they looked to learn for sake of learning. As an educator - even a reluctant one - she could appreciate that.

[Adelie]

And thus, Chi set aside her vector geometry textbook - it wasn't like she was going to get any work done on her thesis this summer anyways, not while the weather was so warm outside and her computer desk so inviting - and scanned through the news announcement for any hints as to what upcoming content she could expect.

There wasn't too much. A lot of teasers for new item drops, a few sneak previews of new NPCs and what was apparently a new raid boss - something massive with tentacles, in true summer event style - and a metric ton of new costumes. Guess the dev team knows what makes them money.

There were a few comments about the gameplay, too - something about faction ranking determining the outcome of the event - but not enough to actually say what they'd actually be doing. Still, she'd played enough summer events to know she'd likely be pleasantly surprised.

Full details would likely come out with the event patch, in twenty hours or so. If she hurried now, she could probably run errands and still get a good night's sleep in before it started.

[Adelie]

[CLAN] Gumiho: chi
[CLAN] Gumiho: chiiiiiiii
[CLAN] Chi Squared: What?
[CLAN] Gumiho: you're not answering your doorbell
[CLAN] Gumiho: let me in!
[CLAN] Chi Squared: ...
[CLAN] Chi Squared: Ugh, is it broken again?
[CLAN] Chi Squared: i'll be right there, let me get out of bed first.
[CLAN] Gumiho: wtf
[CLAN] Gumiho: chi it's 6pm

Another reason why she'd never be entirely free of students - Ven.

It had been long enough - or perhaps she was just getting old and forgetful - that she couldn't really remember how they'd found out they were at the same university. Maybe it was Chi mentioning some student activity in their clan chat that Ven had recognized, or maybe it had been Ven who'd spotted Chi's custom-made keychain while listening in on one of her seminars.

Whatever it was, the girl had summarily invited herself into Chi's life and Chi's apartment so they could play together, in person.

[Adelie]

She couldn't say she minded, not really - it was just a little surreal.

Inherently, a MMORPG was a social activity; it was even in the name - massively multiplayer. And certainly there was an illustrious history of in-person meet-ups for other kinds of video games - she was old enough to just barely remember the heyday of LAN parties, and young enough to witness the impending rise of esports - but she'd never expected Ven to make a habit of turning up on her doorstep during big events, laptop in hand, wanting to come tap and click with a friend.

I just don't see why, she'd thought to herself, the first time Ven'd showed up. There's nothing she can do here that she can't do at her own house.

She'd thought the same thing every time, after that, as she reluctantly let the other girl in. But honestly, she didn't mind. It wasn't exactly nice - she'd never admit it was nice - but it was enough, she supposed.

[Adelie]

A knock sounded at the door.

"Okay, okay," she shouted ineffectually at it, pulling on a rumpled skirt with one hand and trying to smooth down her hair with the other. "I said I was coming! And remind me to fix the doorbell too!"

A muffled sound replaced the knocking, but she couldn't exactly make out what was being said. Knowing Ven, it wasn't likely to be important anyways - probably just some kind of unwarranted concern, again, that it was practically evening and she hadn't even gotten out of bed yet, much less eaten a meal.

Sure enough, that was the first thing she said when she came in. Ven swept her gaze across Chi's room - an absolute mess, since her roommate had gone home for the summer and thus, there was no one else here to judge her - like a queen surveying her domain and pronounced, "My god, Chi... you live like this?"

[Adelie]

"Yes." Lacking a better retort, she transitioned smoothly to making excuses for herself. "C'mon, it's not like it's the first time you've seen my place."

"True," Ven allowed, deftly sweeping aside a small heap of crumpled graph paper to make a place for herself on the couch. Having settled down comfortably, she pulled her laptop out of her backpack and started looking for an open outlet to plug it in. "So, are you excited about the new events?"

It was the kind of conversational shorthand Chi hated. Ven knew she was absolutely beside herself at the prospect of fresh event content, and since there were hints there'd be a new raid boss, she was definitely eying the prospect of claiming another first clear record for herself. Ven knew this because she knew Chi, but she was going to ask a question she already knew the answer to as a way of starting a conversation.

[Adelie]

Unnecessary questions; ungenuine conversation. She had enough of that during the school year, thank you very much.

But try as she might, she couldn't hold it against Ven. Conversational shorthand or not, it always came from a place of genuinely wanting to talk - and real talking too, not just the loop of listening just enough to translate the conversation into an opportunity to brag that so many of her fellow graduate students seemed so adept in. "Yeah, I can't wait," she admitted. "Did you see the part about factions? We haven't had a faction event since two years ago, and that one was really, really fun so I'm definitely looking forward to it being brought back."

Besides, if she only answered questions people didn't know the answer to - well, she'd just be answering questions about her favorite season.

[Hunt Complete]

[Adelie]

"Oh, really?" Ven said, putting her laptop - now plugged in and slowly booting up - on the coffee table while fishing her mouse out of her backpack. "I played that event, but I, uh, was too much of a noob to know to join a faction. Missed out on some cool stuff, I guess."

Her words almost seemed to trail off at the end, and Chi elected not to pursue the subject further; there was always something sentimental yet reserved about how she referred to her days before joining the clan, and even when Chi had been motivated enough to inquire further, she hadn't gotten anything but intentionally roundabout answers. Instead, she fell back on another rule of hospitality - that the host should offer the guest something to eat or drink. "Do you want some tea? White or green?"

"Oh!" Ven's eyes practically lit up. "Do you still have any of that peach tea blend you got me last time? That tasted like a dream."

[Adelie]

"Absolutely." Truth be told, she only had one tin of that particular tea blend left, and she was a little loath to drink it since it was a twenty-minute drive to the store that sold it - but she couldn't exactly turn down her friend, could she?

Besides, now that Ven'd brought it up, she kind of wanted to fix herself a cup, too. "Let me go make us some tea, and feel free to help yourself to some snacks!"

While she was busy in the kitchen, Ven clearly busied herself with hunting down those aforementioned snacks. From across the room, she heard, "Oh my god, Chi! How many snacks did you buy?"

[Adelie]

"Enough," she yelled back, but she couldn't hide her amusement - she knew exactly what Ven must be finding right now.

"Are you expecting to live off pocky and shrimp chips for the next week?" came the answering reply.

"Of course not! That's why I also brought fruit gummies!"

It was a pity the walls in her apartment were fairly well-insulated, because Chi was pretty sure that Ven, right now, was making some kind of dramatized sigh of disappointment, which was both purely performative and also completely unheard by its target audience. "God, Chi, you eat like a six-year-old."

"And you love me for it," she responded, walking back with two cups of tea wafting hot steam into the air. "Besides, it's not like you're planning on going home tonight, are you? We're going to need plenty of snacks for the long grind ahead of us."

[Adelie]

"Oh, about that!" Ven said, graciously accepting a cup of tea before hurrying back to her laptop. "Data download's out for the new patch already - better get started on it, because it looks pretty big."

"Really?" she responded, trying her best to rush to her computer without spilling piping hot tea on her hands. "Huh, they don't usually do that. I wonder if there's anything we can datamine from the patch before it goes live."

In her excitement, she fumbled over her password a few times before she managed to unlock her computer and take a look at the download she was so anticipating. "Oh, it's 3GB. Yeah, I can see why they pushed this early, since it'll probably take a good twenty minutes to download it."

"Twenty minutes?" Ven groaned. "My download's telling me it's going to take an hour."

[Adelie]

"Huh?" she asked. "Mine's only saying twenty minutes left - actually, it looks like it's even speeding up. Are you on my wifi network?"

"Let me check," Ven said, followed by a bit of flurried clicking that seemed far excessive for checking what wifi network she was attached to. "Yeah, I'm on ACK Lives Matter. I think my laptop's just old and decrepit."

"That's weird," she said, queuing up her download and coming over to fiddle with Ven's laptop. "How old your laptop is should have nothing to do with it since download speed's just based on your network connection. And considering how much I'm paying this stupid ISP for internet, it'd better be able to handle us both downloading the patch."