buying books (adventurer route)

A week had passed since the email. Claire still had a hard time believing that she was actually going to this school. It wasn't that she lacked the talent for it, it was the drive that she had none of. Too late to complain about that now, she thought, sitting in the back of the family car, a Renault Clio. Her parents were bickering again, mom was driving, which meant dad had to comment on every little detail she didn't execute to the finest degree.

Luckily for her, they were only going to drop her off. They wanted to spend a bit more time with Claire before she headed off to the dorms, of course, this had to happen in their own bickering way.

Claire was going through her phone again, opening the email to find the attached file. It was there that she found a list of everything she needed, mostly books and some specific formal clothing. Books? Claire thought to herself, were they seriously still using books? She had the ability to conjure a fireball out of thin air, and they wanted her to buy books? All those mages, and they still treated a laptop like it was more magical than actual magic.

When they reached the parking lot at Twelve Oaks Mall in Detroit, Claire quickly got out of the car and leaned back in to kiss her parents goodbye through the window, already bracing herself for her mom to turn it into a whole production.

"Come on, Ma, I'm still gonna be around for like a week," Claire said, resting her arm on the window frame as she peeked her head back inside, expecting another session about keeping her feet on the ground and not doing anything stupid away from them.

"Mm-hm. Go on then, get your stuff." Her mom was already reaching for her phone, barely glancing up. "Dinner's at seven," she said before driving away.

Claire blinked. That was it? She turned around with a mental shrug. Can't complain about that.

As she walked into the mall, she noticed it was incredibly busy. With an annoyed sigh, she realized complaining would be hypocritical, everyone here was after the same thing, no matter which academy they were headed to. Seriously, this is why we need laptops, she thought, mentally cursing whatever ancient mage had decided books were still the way to go. She pulled up the list again to figure out where she actually had to go.

Navigating the crowd, she ended up at a small bookstore tucked at the end of the ground floor, right next to the restrooms. The store looked old, disheveled, and incredibly dusty. Great.

She walked in to find a young store clerk behind the counter, a guy with short blond hair and a couple of earrings, completely absorbed in his book. He doesn't really look like the type to read, she thought, before letting the observation go and continuing further inside.

Appearances could be deceiving. Unfortunately for Claire, this one turned out to be spot on.

The store looked like a library that had given up on itself years ago. The floor was made entirely of oak planks that creaked with every other step, and the shelves, dark, heavy things that looked older than the building itself, weren't sorted by anything Claire could identify. Worst of all, she could see the dust sitting on top of the books in a thick, undisturbed layer, like nobody had touched half of them in years.

She walked back to the counter, where the clerk was still lost in whatever he was reading.

"Ahem." Claire faked a cough, hoping it would get his attention. It didn't. Annoyed, she rolled her eyes and leaned over the counter.

"Hey, uh, I need your help finding these books."

He finally looked up from his book. By the looks of it, he was a few years older than Claire. He studied her with an intense gaze for a moment before his expression shifted into a half smile.

"Let me guess, Terra Nova?"

Confused, Claire turned her head slightly. "How'd you know?"

He laughed. "Well, they're one of the only schools that actually buy their books from here. That's also how I got this job. "