Keep your boots laced if you wanna keep pace.

Graham had just gotten out of his last class of day and not feeling real up too buckling down into homework, the young man made his way toward the student lounge (instead of his room, for once). The room seemed decently populated with a few people here and there as Graham looked around briefly noticing an outlet near a table. Perfect, the young man thought to himself as he ambled over and took a seat. Pulling out his laptop he set the clunky technology on the table and then proceeded to plug his laptop into the school's power. A nice thing he had noticed about the school that they seemed to cater to the several different plug in's that various countries had, only one of the most peculiar quirks that he had been noticing about Foresta.

Changing his attention though, Graham glanced back to his laptop and waited for the sluggish thing to boot up. The only real reason that Graham's laptop was less than adequate was mostly because the young man focused way more time and attention on his desktop computer that currently resided in his dorm room.As soon as the machine was up and ready, Graham clicked on a little icon on his desktop background that appeared to be a block that was a mixture of dirt and grass. Just as soon as the game loaded up, Graham plugged his headphones in more for show than anything else. As the minutes passed by, Graham was soon immersed in a game full of blocks.

Sandra entered the lounge with her hand tightly clasped around her forehead. Her little project was proving to be tougher than she realised. While yes she knew that production and filming altogether was not going to be a simple task, but it seemed that nearly nobody was even remotely interested in pursuing her project with her. The ones that were seemed to be too busy during the break time so now she needed to figure out how to pull this together with the minimal crew they had. That wasn’t the only problem though, the cause of her current migraine was following directly behind her.

A brightly fashioned woman with a wheatish complexion trailed after the tiny girl, a script of some sort firmly in her grasp. Esha’s vision seemed to be faltering from the pages in front of her and back to Sandra. “I would jus- um prefer that my role be switched with one of the other campers”

“I told you I don’t care that you run around like you just got off of a Bollywood set, why does it matter which camper you play? They both end up getting killed and have a scene with one of our guys. What isn’t there to like and why does it matter”

“I don’t know Lester… I know Braedyn though. I would just be more comfortable.”

“What’s wrong with Lester? He’s the best drama major I could get my hands on.”

Esha went silent for a moment and pursed her lips while looking at the ground absently.

“It’s the were-rhino thing isn’t it? God damn it Esha, you don’t have to kiss him, in fact you can reject him on camera, I don’t care. I’m not going to give you more privileges than the other cast members, you already have your Bollywood shtick.”

“Why do you keep referencing that…”

“Because I swear to God you jumped right out of one, and it’s really starting to freak me out. Almost like some sort of shitty dance number is coming sometime soon and it’ll go on for twenty damn minutes too long.”

The two of them ceased at the center of the room, Esha appeared to be somewhat perplexed by the woman she was speaking to. It was difficult to tell whether she was just unable to process what she was saying or just didn’t understand the prospect of her words entirely. “That isn’t every Bollywood movie” she retorted in an innocent manner.

“Yes it is, I will bet you the position for camper #1 that any Bollywood movie I searched up right now would have a dancing segment that goes on for over twenty minutes”

Esha had to consider for a moment, but she eventually caved in and nodded. Besides the obvious reward she would win from the bet, she would also be doing some good to combat her country’s stereotypes when she ended up winning the bet.

Sandra peered around the room until her magnified eyes landed onto a boy with a laptop set up. While she could go back to her dorm, the boy was closer, and who knows perhaps he could get a bit of favour in her side of the argument from this guy. Besides, the guy looked like he needed some sort of wake-up call. He almost looked like he was going to be absorbed into the machine at any time. Sandra pointed out the boy to Esha and signaled to follow, afterwards she began to try and break the boy’s immersion. “Hey dude, can you search something up for us real quick?!” she shouted, not knowing what the guy might be blasting into his ears.

Graham's fingers faltered for a moment as Sandra's words came out loud and clear to him. Two choices quickly came to his mind, ignore or respond and the young man had a strong feeling that it would just be easier to do the latter. "No, go find a public computer or use someone's smart phone." Graham replied to the girl with a hint of irritation - only offering her a side glance before bringing his attention back to the game he was playing. It appeared that Graham was in a cave of some sort as he spread a few torches around fighting off the occasional mob.

It only just occurred to Graham after a few seconds of responding to the loud girl that she would probably suspect that he could hear her through his headphones, henceforth the whole point of them being ruined. Clicking away still on his game, the presence of the two girls only bothered him slightly. What was it with people bothering him at this school? All he wanted to do was play video games. Real life was just boring.

Sandra lurched backward at the man’s answer to her and rolled her eyes slightly. While the answer she had received seemed fairly obvious, his head phones being on and all, he probably didn’t want to be disturbed. Then again, if he didn’t want to be disturbed then why didn’t he just use his computer in his own room instead of sitting in the most public place in the school? The Wi-Fi in Sandra’s room was pretty decent so she saw no real excuse for his misplay. If anything he shouldn’t be that irritated, especially since a lot of the people at this school were fairly snoopy. “Psh, sorry you must be real busy” she answered in a sarcastic manner.

At that point, Sandra was ready to leave. The guy wasn’t going to be of any help to her cause and frankly she didn’t see a point in trying to egg him on since he was right, there were other platforms and plenty of other people that would be more inclined to help them. Frankly, she wasn’t going to waste her time with this guy.

Esha, however, peeked over the corner of his screen and shortly afterwards moved in closer to investigate. She was not much of a video game player, and a lack of siblings made her fairly clueless about the media form altogether. Her household was more traditional, lacking quite a bit of technology and with her father being a guru that was to be expected. That being said though, she wasn’t exactly alien toward the subject.

With a curious quirk of her brow, she carefully knelt down beside the guy so that they were now at the same height and continued to investigate his screen. She wasn’t entirely sure what she was looking at, everything was just really blocky. “Is this game old? It um- looks kind of ugly.”

Sandra was watching her cast member try to chat it up with the boy, clueless to why she was even trying. The guy obviously didn’t want them around. It was like watching a dog trying to get acquainted with a sleeping bear. Though once she mentioned some sort of game it made sense why he was trying to shoo them away. “Yeah, dude’s real busy. Can’t just open up Google to interrupt game time. C’mon Esha, stop sticking your nose in his computer”

Graham ignored Sandra's snarky reply, finding it useless to even try and reply. Instead Graham gradually became aware of another girl leaning in close to examine the game that he was playing. "It's only five years old, and it only looks bad because I'm playing the basic version of it. There's a ton of mods you can use for it too look a lot prettier, it's easier on my eyes though when I just do this version of it." It seemed as though Graham approached Esha with a completely different tone then he did with Sandra. Despite the fact that Esha did insult the game he was playing, the fact that she showed some sort of interest suggested to him that she was a little less hostile then her companion.

It was then that his suspicions were proved correctly as the louder girl had even more attitude when it came to what he was doing. Without realizing it Graham had turned her voice down in his mind, which resulted in him hearing it practically like a whisper. Just enough for him to hear what she was saying, but not really care if it was just more insults. "It's a casual game if you're wondering." Graham commented then to the girl that had showed interest in what he was doing.

Strangely enough, the boy seemed to have less of a reclusive attitude toward the debatably pretty girl. Not that Sandra was acting like she deserved a bit of kindness mind you, but Esha wasn’t acting all that nicer toward him either, though she only spoke a sentence to him, she got three in return though. Well, that actually got one monkey off her back, if the other girl became distracted by the guy and go deeper into conversation with her then Sandra wouldn’t mind it. In fact, that could get her off the hook and back to her room to work. Slipping away without comment would be kind of underhanded though so she stated “ah, never mind. I’ll just go get my laptop.” Sandra then waved herself off, returning to massaging her head. Something just felt so unnatural about her headaches recently.

Esha nodded at her acquaintance’s temporary leave, putting off her quarrels about the film for the time being. She didn’t know what it was about the guy’s screen that drew her in right about now. It wasn’t because she was interested in him or anything, he wasn’t exactly a memorable face. In fact, she might forget his face after this interaction depending on how long it goes. No, technology had its way of finagling itself into Esha’s life even though she lived quite well without so much of it back at home.

There were a couple words that flew over the girl’s head, not because he was speaking English, but because he was using English internet lingo. She went along with his words regardless, continuing to watch the screen and the relation between the button commands and what he was able to do on screen. Being that she wasn’t a frequenter of the virtual world, at least not for the purpose of video games, she didn’t really understand the appeal of what the man was doing.

“Oh, wouldn’t five years be a uh- long time for a game like this though? The um- causal kind? What do you do in this game anyways? I have only seen you put up those… um- lights on walls.”

Graham paid no mind to Sandra as she departed, instead continuing on with his adventure in the underground cave - chipping away at various stone and dirt blocks. Despite one girl leaving, the other one stayed and remained quite entranced with what he was doing. "It's an accomplishment for a game to last this long in my opinion, plus it's extremely popular." Graham replied to the girl easily, finally stumbling upon some iron blocks and once again chipping away at them. "Casual means that it's supposed to be relaxed and that there isn't a lot of rules to it."

"In this game you can do whatever you want. Right now, I'm exploring underground." As he said this, Graham finally glanced over at the girl that was so curious about Minecraft. With her dark skin and other physical attributes, the young man had to guess that she was Indian (or something close to that). It wasn't a complete surprise to see someone with a different shade of skin then white, the school after all had a few students that were blue and green - he just felt it was uncommon since a majority of the school seemed to have some sort of European roots. Not giving much change to his expression, Graham continued on with his game - stopping momentarily as he was digging a tunnel that opened up in an extremely large dark cave. The young man seemed surprised at this, but once more started to light up the place coming across a few zombies and skeletons.

Esha beat her forehead softly a couple times as the man explained to her what casual meant. It was times like these that she really wished that she was more proficient in English as a language. There were so many synonyms, different meanings, and loose rules that it was difficult to wrap her head around it all. “Right, casual, ugh.” He went on to talk about the popularity of the game, though she still didn’t know the name of it. She had heard the name Minecraft though. Here and there, mostly when her fellow classmates were whispering in the middle of class when they shouldn’t be, exchanging their personal feats in the game. She never had a clue what they were talking about, nor did she really care anyway.

The man explained that just about anything could be done in the game, and if that were true that did seem like quite the accomplishment. She took it more as it incorporated just about every game trope that could exist rather than imagining some sort of limit that any gamer would associate with the phrase ‘do whatever you want.’ Given that the guy claimed that he could do whatever he wanted, he seemed to be rather keen on placing torches on walls. A few times he stopped to fight creatures and soon after that fight the wall. The charm of watching him play was beginning to dwindle as he seemed to be doing the same tasks over and over again, despite saying that he could do whatever he wanted. Did he just find breaking walls fun? She supposed in real life she could see the appeal of busting down a wall, but the game didn’t really capture that.

“Do you always have to fight the uh- green skinned people? Can’t you have a um- truce peace? Peace truce… Treaty. Words.” she then glanced to the other end of the room noticing a green skinned man staring back at her. She awkwardly honed her vision back onto his screen and whispered “…Sorry.”

For just a few minutes after explaining some parts of the game to her, Graham started to zero in on what he was doing. For those few minutes, it was like Esha didn't exist next to him. After killing some more mobs, the young man made a mad dash for the outside world and in the background there was the faint noise of someone talking, but he couldn't quite understand what the person was saying.

"What?" Graham finally said as he caught the tail end of the girl apologizing. "What are you saying sorry about?" He really honestly hadn't heard the first half of what she had said and as he asked her he was finally back onto the surface making his way toward the house that he had made in the game. The house in question wasn't too impressive yet, since Graham had only joined the server a few days ago. Everything was basic for the most part and that was very easy to tell as he walked into his house to put some items into one of the chests that he had.

Esha’s vision returned to the boy, noticing the lack of attention he put on her. It was almost like the world of that video game he was playing was sucking him in, stealing his attention from her and in turn her words becoming null. It was somewhat concerning and she didn’t enjoy the fact that she was being ignored, though he at least picked up on one of her words. Unfortunately it was one that wasn’t meant to be directed toward him. “Oh, um…” her eyes glanced back at the oddly coloured person and then swiped back toward Graham while trying to come up with an explanation, though the appropriate words were escaping her. “Never mind” she brushed off to let the boy continue playing his game.

The girl wasn’t even certain why she continued to rest at the boy’s side, he obviously didn’t care for her company one way or the other. The game wasn’t getting any more interesting either, it was like watching someone do chores. His wooden box of a house was head turning however. Well, she had to assume it was a house that is, it didn’t look too much like one, but the chest and bed sort of suggested it. Her interest was pulled in as text popped up at the bottom corner of his screen. “Alan Smithee has joined the game” and a couple minutes after that, another little message popped up that read “Alan Smithee: Motherfucker, I’m gonna find you and your house.” Was this another peculiar quirk to the game? One of her dainty fingers pointed toward it and she asked “um, what’s that?”