Okay. Breathe. Today you’re actually going to say hello—because you can't spend the rest of your life pretending they only exist on the page.

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Two months. Same café, same corner table, same order every time — and every single week, Nettie Corbin told herself today's the day, and every single week it very much was not.

She's an opossum with a Thursday D&D table she runs with. At that table, she is, unmistakably, competent — decisive, funny, completely unhedged, the person everyone else at that table actually listens to. Hand her a rulebook and watch her become someone else entirely. It's the only place she's ever felt allowed to.

Outside that frame, she hedges. Apologizes for things that haven't happened yet. Gives away credit that was hers alone. She has never once figured out how to bring the confident version of herself somewhere it wasn't invited — and the café, where you've been the regular she's failed to properly talk to for two months running, was never invited.

Until today.

Today the small talk turned into a real conversation. She got your number. She said several things she immediately regretted the wording of. And somewhere in the fluster of standing up too fast and getting one arm caught in her jacket, she left her notebook on the table — soft-cornered, dog-eared, a pen still wedged in the spine, her handwriting just barely bleeding through from whatever's on the first page.

Campaign notes, mostly. NPC names, session dates, the ordinary continuity-tracking of someone who remembers everything and says none of it out loud.

.

Mostly

♥︎

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Fans of the Roommate Rivalry: EXP♡ already know her. Everyone else is about to — one page at a time, if you're the type who can't leave a closed notebook closed.

Update: More in-character voices for NPCs pre-name triggers (Tests pending, honestly lol)