RPWP (6)

40)

It took Tomi two more sessions — a total of eleven hours and twenty-four minutes of footage over three sessions — to save the missing lovers.

It was someone trying to make a love potion and was using the emotions of people who loved deeply, helplessly, and unconditionally. They were locked into a tower on a mountain where a wizard once lived, but it had been abandoned for nearly four centuries.

Ynna delivered Eldrin to William (carried over her shoulder with absolutely no grace left for the stableboy) and, after a devastating die roll and oracle pull of “opportunities” as Ynna’s reward, received the hook of another quest from the Lord of the city she was in. 

This was going to turn into a longer campaign, clearly. He had to actually plan for this now.

41)

After writing his quest report in a blog post, he rubbed his chin.

The stubble scratched against his palm. He hadn’t cared enough to shave this morning. Or yesterday. Maybe he did the day before yesterday, maybe not.

He had put writing this post off for almost a week after he finished editing the footage, saying he was taking a two-week break now that he had finished the first quest.

He leaned back in the chair and considered this.

Should he roll for the Big Bad Evil Guy now?

Or leave it for later?

He should probably make at least a couple of rolls. There was the whole main objective of the campaign, and the motivation for why the BBEG was the BBEG. And he also had Trik Scarlet to deal with.

He needed a skeleton, or it was easy to lose track of a campaign that could end up lasting months or even years. His longest solo campaign had lasted almost two and a half years.

Back then, he hadn’t yet migrated.

Remembering that, he couldn’t bother thinking about it more. He’d think about the campaign and BBEG later. Procrastination a bit more wouldn’t hurt.

42)

He went into the messaging app to check his DMs.

He had like fifty unread messages. Most were probably spam he couldn’t care less.

However, nestled between two random accounts was a name familiar to him. He opened the conversation.

He had reached out about a week ago. He had considered it carefully, and then reached out with, “Hello! I don’t know if you have heard of The Solitary Paladin, but I’m the person behind it.”

What an opening line.

But it didn’t matter. If he was running a longer campaign, he had to do this either way.

The meat of the message was asking if it was possible to commission some character designs and character art, preferably prioritised. He’d happily pay a rush fee, but he needed two character designs at least.

He had the laid out his budget, the time frame, and the general scope of it, as well as what it was for.

Did he have to pay twice the amount of his rent for a digital picture of a faun shieldsworn and a questionable pyromancer known as Lady Scarlet? Yes.

Did he also pay a rush fee? Absolutely.

Would he be eating regularly this coming month? Questionable.

This past week, he had done back-and-forths with the artist. He was both heavily involved and let the artist take liberties. He had opinions on the faun part of the design. Colour of Ynna’s fur? Go absolutely wild. He was adamant that the armour would have signs that Ynna had worked for a noble, so it needed to have some decorations. How new it looked, that was up to the artist.

He hadn’t heard anything in the last couple of days.

Opening the message, he found that he was presented with a whole set of character sheets for Ynna. Absolutely worth paying for it. He looked them over, and wrote a list of nitpicks he wanted to get fixed before he was completely happy with it, but it could wait until Trik had a design too.

He began gathering references for his fire-loving, night-fearing “ally”.

He had his own poorly drawn idea from years ago. At the time, he had still been in school. He didn’t like most of it and so he needed to find references for what he wanted changed.

He also was terrible at drawing — wasn’t that why he took Media Production, and not Fine Arts, even if he dipped out later?

43)

When his phone rang out, he jumped from the fright.

Even though there was no one there to see the shameful display, Tomi’s cheeks burnt from awkwardness as he glanced over at it. He still had some dignity intact, although he rid himself of most of it in the past few years.

He expected to see a random number or even that he was a hidden number, but, instead, he saw a name.

Brow furrowed, he picked up. “On the phone,” he said habitually, then paused and added an awkward, “…Hello?”

“Tomi, right? It’s the correct number?”

“Mhm. It’s Palander on the phone.”

The caller could have texted to confirm first. Well, that didn’t matter now.

“I didn’t expect my former professor to suddenly call me up at…” Tomi squinted at the time on his laptop. “…five in the afternoon. How can I help, Mikael?”

There was a soft laugh. “I know this is a little presumptuous, but I saw you in the hallway two of three weeks back, and you seemed to be pretty free at the time. I thought that maybe it would work out to ask you. You can decline, obviously, but if you do have time, would you consider dropping by my office in the next few days?”

Tomi didn’t ask the obvious question, and just let out a questioning hum.

“I need a good videographer,” was the only explanation Tomi got. “For a small fee, naturally. The university can’t have former students work for free just because.”

“Oh. Okay.”

He needed money.

He was “on holiday” (which really just meant he had to do behind the scenes work).

Tomi opened up a notebook and flipped through the pages until he had a list of events he had to attend. No birthdays. No holiday for now. No convention inviting him over.

Yeah, he was free. Very free. Painfully free.

“How about I drop by your office on campus tomorrow? Should I come around this time, or earlier?”

“If you’re free just before lunch, that would be splendid.”

“Oh, okay. I’ll drop by around eleven, eleven-thirty or so.”

“Excellent! See you then.”

“Thank you, goodbye.”

“Goodbye.”

He had a feeling he could guess what this was about. But he also wasn’t entirely sure. But it was a side-gig that would at least pay decently. That was not nothing.

44)

Tomi found himself on campus right before eleven the next day. He had, in fact, shaved now, and even went ahead and had his hair washed and opted out of joggers, although he had considered it.

The sun was beating down from a clear sky, clearly doing its best effort to keep summer going despite it being well into autumn, and the jacket Tomi had grabbed on the way out, hung over his arm, unused.

Taking off the baseball cap when he stepped into the social sciences building, he ran his hand through his hair before stuffing the cap into his messenger bag. He trekked through the building to take the shortest possible route to the office of the professor that he had in his second year of media production.

He knocked on the door, feeling somewhat awkward about being there, knowing he truly didn’t belong visiting faculty in his position.

But he had been asked to go there, so…

The door opened a moment later and the familiar professor smile brightly at him.

“Tomi! It’s been a while! How have you been?”

“Alive,” Tomi replied as he stepped inside. “Surviving and working on the thriving part,” he added, to smooth over any awkwardness about his initial answer.

He took a seat without being asked. “You need a videographer? For… a documentary or behind the scenes shot…?”

Mikael Johansson sat down opposite Tomi. “We don’t need either of those at this time, but I’ll think of you if I get the request to find someone.”

Tomi nodded. He also didn’t think it was that prestigious work he needed to do.

“There are a lot of productions happening right now, many that already have started, some who haven’t quite got there yet. Some are first years, some are second years, and some are going the final projects.”

“The ‘little children’ doing their first or second term only have a small production requiring a few minutes of footage, so someone in the second year need help? Not enough videography students?”

“That’s not it. There are more than enough students.” The professor is silent for a moment. “There aren’t enough assistants to supervise. Two of my TAs are partially on parental leave and do their work remotely.”

“Ah.”

That was… somewhat what Tomi expected, actually. He didn’t know if he should be surprised by his own insight.

“There is a student production made by drama, and some of my students decided to help out with this. Most of them are in term two or three. You still do media production, yes?”

“Mhm. I have my own little business as a content creator, so I think it counts.”

“Would it be too bold to ask you to assist these children as a practitioner?”

“I don’t do a lot of videography these days. Most of my work is in post. But if that’s good enough…”

“You only need to assist them. The drama students can’t exactly toot their horns either. It’s also not exactly a graded project, even if the university covers the foundational costs for it. Just make sure they don’t damage the cameras if that’s the limit to what you remember.”

Tomi offered a smile. “I think I remember a little more than that. I need to re-familiarise myself with the equipment, though. It’s been over five years.”

“Not a problem.” Mikael reached for a business card on his desk. “This is the teacher in charge of the whole production. I suppose you can call her an off-hand producer. Give her a call or email and ask for their schedule and when you can go over the equipment. You can decide if you want to participate after you talk to her. I know she asked someone to help her supervise it as a favour, but she’s the one organising all the people and making sure all resources go where they should.”

“A resource… like me?” Tomi took the card and read the name on it. Unfamiliar. Not that he had associated much with the arts department during his time and five years was more than enough time to have teachers retire and get hired. “I don’t really know what to expect in compensation… I don’t want to be underpaid…”

“Don’t worry about that. Even if it’s just part-time, this is a public university. The pay isn’t amazing for a government-covered job, but a TA does get a decent salary. Just keep track of any time you work off schedule to get overtime compensation.”

Tomi considered this.

Any pay was probably more than his monthly income, anyway. He was just performing worry about underpayment, since he was underpaid already.

“Well, I’ll be in contact with her. I suppose you’ll notice if you need to find somebody else,” he said as he stood up. “I’ll get going then.”

“Wait.”

“Hmm?” Tomi looked at the professor.

“Have you considered graduating?”

“I have, five years ago. My decision is the same now as it was back then. If I ever get around to take some electives, I might eventually opt to graduate later.”

“There’s also the option to go abroad.”

“I’m already abroad.”

Mikael sighed. “Oh well, I tried.”

“You did. I appreciate it.”

45)

Once Tomi was back home, out of his jeans and back into joggers, he sent the “off-hand producer” an email. He mentioned he was referred to her by Mikael Johansson from Media Production, that he was a former student who had his own business, and that he would like to see the schedule before he committed to ensure there was no collision in production schedule and his own venture.

He also added that while he does work with filming as a minor part of his business, he hasn’t done any of it for the kind of camerawork they would like in some time, so if there was a possibility for him to familiarise himself with the equipment before committing as well, that would be useful.

After thinking about it, he added, “If there is a need for post-production assistance, I am continuously dabble in this.”

For good measure, he included his cellphone number.

It was around dinnertime when he received an email back. It was brief and included the schedule, both for the whole production, and when the students would work on it during a regular week.

At the end was the most important sentence to Tomi:

“Come any time you are available on Friday. You can go directly there during the scheduled hours, or drop by my office.”

Tomi looked at the schedule.

The Friday hours were in the afternoon and evenings. That meant he could, in theory, drop by the office in the morning, get to meet the teacher, check out the equipment and then check out the production.

He pondered it for s moment and then went into the car share schedule and booked the car for the whole day under his name and “work, interview”.

Peter would assume his “business venture” failed. Most of the other would just not really care much, probably.

In any case, he wouldn’t have to deal with public transport that day. Just a walk so he could get the car.

46)

On Friday, Tomi found himself outside Julia’s apartment to pick up the car. The door was opened by a very grumpy Peter, who just handed Tomi the car keys and slammed the door shut in his face, not saying a single word.

Clearly having been woken up for this specific purpose by Julia so she could do whatever women do at nine in the morning.

In fact, Peter probably got dragged over and knew he’d end up responsible of giving Tomi the keys.

Tomi took out his phone and texted Peter, “Good morning to you too, handsome. Kindly go fuck yourself. Tell Julia to hurry up if she wants a ride.”

He got the response, “Just carry the annoying bitch out of here, I’m dead to the world until noon.”

Having gotten enough permission, Tomi pressed the doorbell.

Twice.

Thrice.

Four times.

Five—

“Could you stop?” Julia asked.

“Not until my driver’s license is invalid.”

“And when’s that?”

“I got it eight years ago, so in another seven years.”

“You got that math wrong. A license lasts ten years.”

“Not mine. My foreign license lasts five years longer than your domestic ones. I can keep going for another seven years.”

“Ugh.”

“So, are you coming or what?”

“I’m only putting on make-up.”

“Alrighty then. I’m off.” Tomi turned on his heel and immediately left. He wasn’t going to wait for someone who wasn’t ready to leave.

When he wrote he’d be there at nine to pick up the keys, he also meant he was leaving at nine.

“Hey! Wait!”

“Nope. Have fun catching the bus! I don’t have a habit of being nice to women,” Tomi replied as he hurried down the stairs before Julia could think of catching him.

47)

When the office door opened before him, Tomi found out Birgit Bengtsson was a woman in her mid-to late forties.

“Yes?” she asked. “How can I help?”

“I emailed you the other day about the student production.”

“Right.” She gave Tomi a once-over before saying, “You look a little young.”

Tomi paused, then replied with a dry, “Only if I went to university at age ten.”

The woman narrowed her eyes slightly, but Tomi’s expression remained unchanged.

“You hardly look older than the students.”

Tomi remained unfazed. “Then I’m already aging with grace.”

“They won’t take you seriously.”

“That’s their problem, not mine.”

She raised an eyebrow.

“If someone doesn’t want to learn, I can’t force them,” Tomi added. “How about you tell me a little more about this production, while we head over so I can look over the equipment?”

“You don’t look like you’ve got the strength to carry anything but a smart phone to film.”

“I know what a camera used in professional settings can weigh. Anyone in Digital Media Production at this college should after their first three-minute production. More so later into their education.”

Birgit hummed with a nod and stepped out of her office. She motioned in the direction they needed to go. She said, “You’ve honestly come at the right time. The production students need someone with… some experience.”

Tomi pretended he didn’t notice she still doubted his capabilities. Fair, to be honest.

“This group has only just started. They kept delaying it, and I don’t have time to oversee it anymore. I cashed in on a favour from a good friend of mine I met some years ago. He joined the other day, which forced the students to actually get started.”

Tomi merely hummed, and the woman kept prattling on and on about how this friend of hers was really a heaven-sent. Tomi was of the mind that if this friend was so free that they could help students, they were probably recently fired from their boring job, or in dire need of money — plausibly both.

Tomi is about to meet Niklas. Definitely. Can’t possibly be anyone else. Only person plausible.