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Ah, the libarary! The one place where Alex could go to find peace, quiet, and solitude. The place where he could absorb himself into the mysteries of the world, leaving the real world and all of it's problems behind. He shuffled in behind the pink haired ghoul slowly, his skeletal leg dragging a little behind him. His boney foot was fitted with a sock to keep it from scraping noisily across the floor, leaving his movements in relative silence. He was incredibly eager to sit down with a hefty stack of books and spend the next several hours reading them until he was either kicked our or got too hungry to continue, though if the latter happened he'd likely just go and find a snack and then make his way back again.

The pink haired ghoul was not too far ahead of him. He'd seen her turn into the library from the hall, after picking up a piece of paper that had been stuck to her foot. He wasn't following her or anything though, it had just happened that they were going to the same destination at the same time, and was about to turn down an aisle of books when he heard a noise that gave him a start. He jerked his head up towards the source. It seemed that the ghoul hadn't been paying much attention and had wandered into a collision course with the bookshelf. How had she managed to do that? They weren't exactly small or easy not to notice!

He stopped himself from turning, changing his course to shuffle towards the ghoul from behind, his hands shoved deep into the pockets of his black pants. "Are you ok?" He asked nervously, leaning forward a bit, and eyebrow raised in concern, even though she couldn't see it from this angle.

The ghoul was much easier to recognize from the front then from behind...though he didn't actually remember what her name was. He could have sworn that he had seen her somewhere before....oh right! The school play!

Except that Alex was trying really hard not to think about that day and the events that occurred immediately following.

"Alexander." He supplied, happily pushing his thoughts to the back of his mind and putting on a warm smile, taking her hand in his gently so as not to accidentally crush it and giving it a small shake. He was glad to see that she hadn't caused the books any damage by running into themharmed herself from running into the bookshelf. "I'm still pretty new to the school.." he shrugged, as though giving her an out for not remembering his name, though he figured it was only fair since he hadn't remembered her's either.

He nodded at her amiably enough, but his smile faltered a little when she asked how he was liking the school so far."Yes, well...I do like it here, though there have been some uh...interesting moments that I wasn't entirely expecting?"

He rubbed a hand through his hair, pushing it back out of his eyes and blinking at her. "Ah, I thought I recognized you from the play. Don't worry, I'm not sure what I was thinking either." He chuckled. "Thought it might be a good way to make friends, I guess, though that didn't pan out so well for me." In fact, he had thought afterwards that he had actually lost a friend. But him and Yin had been able to patch things up, and were now doing as good as he could have hoped for.

He noticed that the ghoul was looking at the article in her hand, and he eyed at it curiously. Was it from the new school paper? He hadn't had a chance to read it yet...Oh, she was talking again!

Her words made him frown. Was it just him, or was she hinting towards some kind of double meaning? When she mentioned the rumors, he thought he knew what she was referring too, but how could he be sure? He didn't really want to start babbling about the things he had heard in such an open space....

Then he started to wonder if he could answer her question with a hidden meaning of his own.

"Wellllll, I'm new here and all but it seems to me already that things aren't always what they seem?" He lifted his eyebrows, not sure if she would catch on. He decided to add, "I already need to go to the Maul to get some new clothes. I might need to hunt down a new red tie." He grinned, but his eyes were pleading with her to understand.

Alex was smiling so much now it was making his face hurt a little. The petite ghoul standing in front of him seemed to have caught on, or at least, he hoped she had. If she was really just talking to him about tie fashion then he was going to be sooooo embarrassed later. But, she had offered to introduce him to others, and to help him make friends, and that made his chest almost swell with happiness. Totally worth any embarrassment now for a chance at meeting new friends later.

"Of course I would love to learn more!" he said as cheerfully as he could. "Perhaps we should sit down somewhere more private to discuss the finer points of...red tie fashion.." He had to struggle with that last part, as really, what was there to know? A tie was a tie was a tie. And Alex was already the expert when it came to that, anyways.

Ok, his face was really starting to ache now, so he let the smile fade a little at the edges, and stopped showing so much teeth at the ghoul. "Maybe we should go over there?" He gestured towards a table in the far corner of the library, where nobody else was anywhere near.

Alexander, of course, followed, but took a little longer getting to the table then she did. Once there, he folded himself down, stretching his long legs out under the table and setting his hands in front of him.

There it was, that article again that she had kept looking at when they were first talking. He tilted his head and looked at it from above, then turned it towards himself more so he could read it a little easier.

Huh, interesting.

" Is it fairly new?" He asked, raising his eyes to hers, then shaking his head "I'm afraid I hadn't seen it yet, no....It's a pretty bold statement though, very interesting..." His brows furrowed as he looked down at it yet again.

Alexander nodded. It would make sense that it had just come out, since he generally tried to keep up with these types of things, and this was the first that he'd seen of it. His eyes kept going back to different parts of the article, re-reading the words, before he glanced back up to Xui when she continued on.

He followed the tracing of her finger down to the message below the article, and looked at it with narrowed eyes. It was..a puzzle of some kind? Ugh. He really despised puzzles. He could never seem to wrap his mind around them and it was always very frustrating since he prided himself on being so book smart. Puzzles just made him look like, well, I a dumb zombie.

He was somewhat surprised at what she was saying about there being a secret site to learn about what he had only heard rumors about himself, and most of those had been second hand. But well...he'd be lying if he said he wasn't incredibly intrigued about said site.

He hesitated before speaking again, not at all sure he wanted to be doing this. What if he couldn't figure it out and she just thought he was stupid? "Well..umm..maybe we could work it out together? Though I confess I'm really not good with puzzles or codes..."

It hurt him just to admit that out loud.

Ok, so the ghoul wasn't good with puzzles either. This was good. This, he could handle, because it made him feel less like an idiot, especially when dealing with what was obviously a very intelligent ghoul (who incidentally, didn't seem to mind that Alex, was basically a walking, rotting corpse. Bonus points for her!)

The grin that appeared on his face came easily, as he thought about how this could be a good challenge for him, and how rewarding it could possibly feel at the end if the two of them could figure it out.

When she stood up from the table, he hastily tried to follow, but in his clumsiness managed to tangle his skeletal foot (always causing him trouble, that one) in the legs of his chair, and ended up nearly going face first into the library floor. By some miraculous act of arm flailing and general stumbling, he managed to keep his feet beneath him, and the chair itself went spinning off to the side.

He laughed nervously, hobbling over to the chair to pick it back up and place it back at the table, giving the ghoul a very sheepish look before asking.

"Do you see one that we can use?" and turning his own head to have a look.