PersonS {A Rejected Title and a False Explanation}

Ignore the text file fairy's advice. Refuse to open up.

Letting him know he's right will make him feel good and thus be more disposed to answer your questions. No harm in people knowing that stuff anyway.

((p.s. hoping for specific questions to ask as well))

Try to make him admit that he knows how your parents died. Gotta find out if that shock value is still possible.

Why did Nene get a whole dorm building to herself? What did she do?

Is Lea... uh... you know... seeing anyone? with her tits?

((i wish i could come up with questions that are actually serious but i'm not serious enough as a person to do that))

((Introvert and high-functioning autist here. Social questions are not my forte. Sorry.))

Anything not-obvious about Wisteria I should know? This is my first time attending a magnet school, and my first time living in a new, planned city.

((here we are all autistic. that includes me. i am lower functioning than you because i can't drive a car. i don't appreciate your functioning levels. they offend my politics.

i've been on tumblr for way too fucking long.))

Making friends is good, but I'm not sure if OJ here really wants to be your friend or if he's just fishing for gossip. If you're going to do this, quid pro quo. Ask him something about himself, first, like... I don't know...

"Orion? That's an unusual name."

Ignore the text file fairy's advice. Refuse to open up.

Letting him know he's right will make him feel good and thus be more disposed to answer your questions. No harm in people knowing that stuff anyway.

Try to make him admit that he knows how your parents died. Gotta find out if that shock value is still possible.

Why did Nene get a whole dorm building to herself? What did she do?

Is Lea... uh... you know... seeing anyone? with her tits?

Anything not-obvious about Wisteria I should know? This is my first time attending a magnet school, and my first time living in a new, planned city.

Making friends is good, but I'm not sure if OJ here really wants to be your friend or if he's just fishing for gossip. If you're going to do this, quid pro quo. Ask him something about himself, first, like... I don't know...

"Orion? That's an unusual name."

You feel a little suspicious of his motivations, so you elaborate on your answer in a way that tends to draw sympathy. "Yeah, my last family said they were gonna keep me through next summer and then decided they didn't want to."
"Aw, man, that sounds rough," he said. "Well, at least the program they put you in for this won't run out until after you're legal, right?"
Instead of tell him that is also true, you ask him about himself. "How did you get named Orion?"
"Hm? Oh, well, y'know how my last name is Jones? My dad had a boring first and middle name too, so he wanted to name me after a constellation instead of doin' the same thing to me. Uh, my mom thought people would tease me for it, but nobody really does unless you count the nickname 'OJ', an' I don't."

"So, how did Nene get a dorm to herself in the first place?" you ask.
"Well..I think it was just random luck. Some people say it's 'cause she's buddies with the librarian, but I don't buy that. I mean, since when did a librarian have any power in what the school does? It's pretty much just a retirement job to keep busy from what I hear. Anyway, she was only there alone for a month before Leatrice moved in."
"About her..." you decide to see how he'll react to this kind of question. "Is Lea single?"
"Yyyeah, but..." He looks around as if checking for anyone else listening. "Dude, I know and you know she's prolly the hottest girl goin' to Wisteria, but I'm not sure she knows? Like, whenever someone asks her out she just acts confused and then says she's too busy. Well, I mean, anyone but me."
"What happens when you ask her out?" you ask, since he seems to be begging for that question.
"The same thing that happens when I ask any girl out. 'No, go 'way'." Orion laughs. "Nobody's int'rested in me, an' they all know I'm harmless." He doesn't sound upset about that at all. You get the impression he's either accepted this situation at some point or somehow manufactured it on purpose, though you can't imagine a reason for the latter.

"...Anything you think I should know about Greenhaven? I've never really been through here before."
"Well.." He appears to be working hard to pick out important information from a flood of ideas on what to tell you. "You can get, like, anywhere in town on the trains, and students ride free all day, but there's a midnight curfew on weekdays. Uh, there's this cool place called the Retrocade, you pay ten bucks for admission there and they have this huge collection of old arcade cabinets you can play as much as you want. Uhh, you sound kinda like you're from the north, you ever had tex-mex?"
"Once or twice."
"Aww, man, you gotta try it 'round here. Nothin' like it. I could show you a couple good places later on if you want. I mean, y'know, if I'm not just botherin' ya here." So Orion did notice your generally standoffish tone, which implies he's not entirely oblivious. He's just not shy about wanting to talk.
"We'll see," you shrug.

The train comes to the stop the school is at, and both of you get off and head inside, Orion saying "See ya later, huh?" before running off down the halls.

Wisteria Academy is enclosed by a fence, with the name of the school in ornate lettering above the presently-open gate. Just behind the gate there is a courtyard area with trees and grass, a few benches, and a collection of tables near what is probably the cafeteria. The school itself seems to consist of about three or four buildings connected by sections of sidewalk with metal coverings built over them.

The building nearest the center looks important and old enough to be the administrative one, which is where you'll probably need to go to figure out your classes. But there are still a few minutes before school starts, so you could probably wander around and explore a bit first if you wanted to.

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SpoilerI did find pretty much all of the questions posted to be useful, so you know.

>A few minutes sounds like just enough time to find out what and where your classes are. You can explore with a map and a set of destinations just as well as without.

>Realize you supposedly have superpowers/magic/something-like-that now. At least the having of it is discreet. Any idea what it might be? Any well of power within you? Resolve to experiment when you find some true privacy.

E: accidental premature posting

I'm wondering if this adventure will have quantifiable relationships like the Persona 4 game.

I don't have a preference to where alvin goes

I'm still secretly rooting for suprise genderswitch upon use of powers.

Also, look for the bathrooms.

I'm still secretly rooting for suprise genderswitch upon use of powers.

Also, look for the bathrooms.

a gender switch that doesn't transform the body. now alvin has gender dysphoria and she has a sudden urge to stuff her magic dress with toilet paper because that's all she can find on short notice.

> Come on, a few minutes? How long do you think it will take to find your way around an unfamiliar building? Best head over now and try to get everything set up with administration first, than be late because of unfamiliarity.

>A few minutes sounds like just enough time to find out what and where your classes are. You can explore with a map and a set of destinations just as well as without.

>Realize you supposedly have superpowers/magic/something-like-that now. At least the having of it is discreet. Any idea what it might be? Any well of power within you? Resolve to experiment when you find some true privacy.

I'm still secretly rooting for suprise genderswitch upon use of powers.

Also, look for the bathrooms.

> Come on, a few minutes? How long do you think it will take to find your way around an unfamiliar building? Best head over now and try to get everything set up with administration first, than be late because of unfamiliarity.

You decide to head into the important-looking building. It's predictably fairly easy to find bathrooms once inside, not that you need one at the moment. At any rate, you find the main office before too long, confirming that your guess on which building this is was correct.

The secretary in the front looks very tired, about ready to fall asleep. "Hello, how can I help you?" she says wearily.
"I need to know what my schedule is," you say. "I'm Alvin Perell?"
"Perell..." she thinks for a long several seconds. "Oh, right. You'll have to see your advisor about that. Doctor Shoseki...he'll, uh...he'll be in the library pretty soon." She digs around a drawer under her desk and pulls out a small pamphlet, handing it to you. On closer inspection, it's a map.
"My advisor is the librarian?" you ask.
She nods. "He's a teacher too. Everyone else is booked up by this time of the year and he volunteered. If you don't like him you can take your pick next year after all the seniors leave. Ah...don't worry about being late to class today, your schedule's not even set, y'know?"

You nod, and head out to the library. On the way, you pass a short, very pale-looking guy walking backwards down the hall, full-speed. He grins and gives you an army-esque salute as soon as he can tell you're looking, but otherwise continues on his way without slowing down. Your only real impression of that event is that it was strange.
Eventually you reach the library. It's a little bigger than your average school library, but not unmanageable. There are a number of older-looking books in a room with wide windows on every side that you can only assume is someone's office.

Nobody is here yet, and the office is locked. This seems like a good time to figure out if you have any superpowers.

Well, you don't feel any different. You try making a few vague gestures as if to activate your supposed powers or just immediately use them, but you just feel ridiculous and generally glad nobody is looking. You give up on that after a bit. Presumably since the person who lent you their "power" intended them to protect you from a murder attempt they'll manifest only when you really need them to. That sounds reasonable, and lines up with Murphy's Law a lot better. Of a multitude of rules and suggestions other people have given you, Murphy's Law is one of a very small list of things you've found to actually be dependable.

The first-period bell rings, but your advisor still hasn't shown up quite yet.

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Spoiler

I'm wondering if this adventure will have quantifiable relationships like the Persona 4 game.

That depends on what you mean by "quantifiable." I don't feel it's much of a spoiler to say that relationships are important, since I used that word in my brief signature-description of the adventure.

like as in "level one social link. level seven social link." that sort of thing

>Browse the stacks and keep your ears open for Dr Shoseki. What kind of books do you like to read? Or perhaps try to research the town, or even see if you can find the "really obvious" attack on the one "they" already killed in the news (assuming you can access internet from these computers).

> Look around; they may just be buried in book somewhere and are actually here.

>Browse the stacks and keep your ears open for Dr Shoseki. What kind of books do you like to read? Or perhaps try to research the town, or even see if you can find the "really obvious" attack on the one "they" already killed in the news (assuming you can access internet from these computers).

> Look around; they may just be buried in book somewhere and are actually here.

Your choice in books has generally been limited to whatever was actually available, when you even felt like and felt safe enough to read in the first place. You've learned to appreciate what you can have, more or less. A few books here seem like they might be interesting, but you guess you're already getting a pile of them from Nene whenever she gets around to that anyway.

This doesn't seem to be the kind of library that has general-use computers in it, but it is the kind with chairs, and you happen to have brought your own. The file from this morning hasn't changed since then. The school network is password protected, but you guess what said password is in two tries.

You try looking for anything unusual that's happened in Greenhaven recently. It seems judging by headlines that a little over a month ago there was a strange murder, which catches your eye initially. But the more reputable news sites have articles so banal as to make you wonder why they bothered reporting it at all, much less with a title suggesting it was unusual. An elderly man died of multiple wounds late one night, and it's been ruled a likely robbery gone wrong. However, there's a little more to it...

Digging a little deeper into the story by looking it up just by its title, you find a few conspiracy-theory-centric sites claiming to have the "real" version of this story, which was at some point rescinded by the original source. They don't agree on what was changed, only that something was changed. There are claims that the wounds were unusual somehow, but exactly how is muddled. It seems many of them agree that the man in question was decidedly seen alive a few minutes before he was found dead, but the coroner's report placed his time of death at least an hour earlier. There is no indication in these versions of the article of even the possibility that it was a robbery, and a decent number of them quote evidence that nothing was stolen.

Your laptop actually doesn't have the best of batteries, and you were unable to find any accessible outlets in this room either, so you have to turn it off for now. It's just as well, as you can see through the window someone finally walking toward the library. It's a tall, trim man in nice but what you would generally classify as "old person clothes," white, with completely white hair, no facial hair and no evident bald spots. Your first thought on seeing him and guessing that he's the librarian is to wonder why he's supposedly retired. He looks like, you guess, a very healthy 50-year-old? Anyway, he notices you, looks a little surprised at first, and hurries the rest of the way in.

"Hello there, sorry I'm so late," he says cheerfully, walking up. "You wouldn't be..Mr. Perell, would you?"
"..Right." He offers you a hand to shake, so you stand up and shake it.
He nods. "Well, I am Dr. Shoseki. Pleasure to meet you." His speech is a little...strange. There's a trace of a southern accent there, but it seems like it was originally much stronger, and was deliberately trained out over time. There's also the fact that he seems to insistently use last names rather than first, which strikes you as a generally older-person thing to do. He starts toward the office after the handshake, retrieving a set of keys from his pocket. "Pardon me. I thought since your flight was so late you would just opt to sleep in this morning and come in Monday."

There are two desks facing each other inside the office, one a regular "teacher"-style wide desk with a rolling chair behind it, while the other is a smaller model with a more rudimentary wooden chair. Dr. Shoseki gestures to offer you the latter, while heading straight for the former and taking a seat, leaning back a little bit. You take the indicated seat, and briefly notice a framed doctoral diploma on the wall behind him which reveals that his first name is "Kain." So...neither of his names seem to match his accent or appearance at all. The dates on it look strange...but, he's started talking.

"Well...I got a chance to take a look at your transcripts on..hm..last Wednesday, I believe it was? Since we are so close to the end of a semester, I will just sign you up for the same level required courses--Math, English, Science--you were taking at the last school. Shouldn't be too hard to catch up on a few days or so. For the others...this also allows you an opportunity to try out some of the more advanced or extracurricular courses without any long-term commitment if you'd like. If it's too late for a proper grade in one of those courses, or you don't do too well, they can just treat it like it never happened anyway."

"We have..." he thinks for a moment. "We have a lot of classes here. It's probably easier to just go from what you'd like to take than list them all out. So..what sort of classes are you interested in, Mr. Perell?"

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SpoilerHooray, his text color doesn't look awful here!

like as in "level one social link. level seven social link." that sort of thing

Oh, okay. I'm planning to avoid doing that. Thinking of the adventure as a "game," I want to present information in an intuitive sort of way, and not tell the "player" anything the main character wouldn't reasonably know. So, there will be narration resembling "so-and-so likes you a little more now" and "so-and-so trusted you with an important secret," but it'll never display as a number exactly. I mean, when was the last time anyone could quantify how much another person liked them with a number and know it was accurate?

After the "true" reason relationships are important is revealed there will be a way to more or less directly check how strong a bond is, but it'll also be in a more qualitative way.

Computers. You're pretty good with computers.

> Something esoteric.

Computers. You're pretty good with computers.

> Something esoteric.

"Do you have a computer class?" you ask first.
He thinks for a second. "Well, we've long since ditched the 'this is what a mouse is' class, but Mr. English teaches a course on basic programming...yes, I know," he adds, apparently anticipating a comment about the name. "It's an at-your-own-pace class, so it'd be good for starting this late. Just be warned that kind of class will fail you if you decide your pace is sitting around and doing nothing all period."
"How esoteric do the classes here get?" you ask.
"Well, not too far out. There are a few things we have that you wouldn't normally get a chance to study until college, like logic, philosophy, sociology, psychology, literary analysis...so on. Most of those would be difficult to impossible to pick up at the end of the semester, but I could make a note of them for next year if you are interested.

"Do you want to take any sports or artistic classes?" he asks after a brief pause in which you don't suggest anything else. "Your transcript doesn't look particularly like you know any instruments, but we have a choir, piano basics, drawing. We're not in any large conferences or anything, but we have a few sports not usually on offer, like archery." He shrugs. "You do have four slots to fill, after all."

>

> Archery sounds fun, if there isn't anything more off-the-wall.

> Programming is an increasingly useful skill in this era. Psychology is a good class and usually fun. A sport and ... piano.
> Do you feel up for a bunch of AP classes?

((this brings us to three for what remains of this semester))

> Archery sounds fun, if there isn't anything more off-the-wall.

> Programming is an increasingly useful skill in this era. Psychology is a good class and usually fun. A sport and ... piano.
> Do you feel up for a bunch of AP classes?

You think about it for a moment. "I think I'll take programming, archery, piano. I'm interested in psychology, but I won't really learn anything at the end of the semester, right?"
"Right," he nods. "I suppose you could more or less audit it to make sure you get along with the teacher if you really want to. I could also just put it down as something to look into for next year."

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SpoilerI want to get on with this because the rest of the school day should go by fairly quickly but I'm looking for either a final confirmation of these four things or something to replace psychology with that he might learn something in.
I'll hopefully just post the last of the scheduling business as early as tonight or tomorrow morning, assuming one or two such commands go through by then.

> Sure, sounds great.