Ben might have been finished with his classes, but he still had his job to do. After giving the shop a quick dusting, he sat down behind the counter with his favorite guilty pleasure: listening in on other people talking about Ender's life. The first conversation he clicked open seemed to be talking about Bean, and so yuck, and he fastforwarded past it, missing a few years of discussion in the process. The voices that came on sounded so urgent that Ben decided to stop here and listen, then go back to the other discussions later:
( Cut for teal deer, gratuitous smugness, and discussions of NPC death. )Ben took a deep, shuddering breath and clicked onto the final conversation between Anderson and someone he called Major Imbu, talking about Ender and Graff going back to Earth in a shuttle with Bonzo in a body bag in the back, and a quick discussion about the relative "scariness" of Ben's best friend. He'd listen to that one again when he could process more information.
Right now, he rested his head on the counter and tried to breathe, shoving back the waves of fury that were threatening to crash over him. The last thing he needed right now was one of the telepaths, or worse yet, a relative or Tahiri, to tune into just how dangerously angry he was right now.
He finally sat up, shooed the teal deer away from the window and found a Bluetooth to poke around on. Keeping his hands occupied was a good first step to getting his brain to stop replaying Graff's replies in his head over and over again.
Fixer-Uppers was open. And fine. Really.
[OOC: Content of recordings is NFB. Content stolen with love from Orson Scott Card and with the permission of Ender-mun.]