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The door creaked slightly as Dan opened it, and his chair creaked as he sat down. "What're you up to?", he asked, nodding at the PC screen.
Phil took a second to consider the screen himself, where his Final Fantasy character was standing in the middle of a random path in Gridania. "Making sure we don't lose the house."
"You're not at the house," Dan pointed out.
"Yeah, well," Phil said, "I already stopped by. I was doing some errands." They hadn't been playing nearly as much since they'd both finished Endwalker, but it wasn't
too
weird for him to log on occasionally, really.
"Mhm. What errands?"
For a second, Phil considered just not telling him, but he'd definitely find out anyway, so it was a bit of a moot point. "I'm trying to find... oh, I forgot his name." He opened his inventory and pointed to the relevant item. "The guy who'll give you a haircut."
"Jandelaine?", Dan read off the screen. "Doesn't ring a bell."
"Yeah, well. The token's meant to let me change my appearance for free, but I can't use it and I can't find the NPC anywhere."
"Which is why you're stood in the middle of Gridania?"
Phil nodded. "Yeah, I've checked all the cities. Even all the expansion ones."
"It's probably in the base game, but good thought," Dan said. "Yeah, I don't know."
On-screen, Phil's character had gone into idle mode, arms crossed as he stood still. "Do you think we should change the photo?", he asked.
"The one of our characters?"
"Yeah." The framed picture in question sat where it usually did, on the shelf in front of their desk. The glare from the lights wasn't too bad today, and Phil could make out their characters alongside Clint without issue. It was a pretty old photo, taken near the start of the game a few years ago; their gear reflected that, if nothing else. But it wasn't a
bad
photo, not really. "I don't know."
"I can't actually read your mind," Dan reminded him. "Do you need me to log in once you find this guy?"
"Maybe." He paused for a moment. "But not to replace it, I think. Just to go alongside it."
Dan nodded, though not before giving him a look that implied he was going to have some philosophical thoughts about this later, and took out his phone, apparently content to sit next to Phil and scroll while he played.
It was only about 5 minutes later, after Phil had thoroughly double-checked Eulmore in an unsuccessful attempt at vibes-based NPC location, that it became obvious what Dan had actually been doing. "Oh, apparently you have to get an inn room for some reason. Or there's a thing we could maybe buy for the house." He showed Phil his phone screen, where he'd pulled up a page from the wiki.
"Huh." Well, at least it was doable.
All told, despite the impressive variety of different light blond hair colors in Final Fantasy, it wasn't that long before they had a new picture of their characters, posing back to back in front of their house in a mirror of the old photo. Phil cleared the space for the new frame himself.