Encounterlogs
Rogiers Odd Encounter Sr Neha 241108
Late at night in the Pigment and Paper Studio, amidst the usual suspects of night owl artists, Rogier finds himself working on commissioned pieces, notably adjusting a character's proportions as per the client's increasingly detailed requests. The quiet in the studio is briefly interrupted as a young woman, disheveled but engrossed in her painting, takes a seat nearby. Her work – a disturbingly vivid and seemingly alive portrayal of a monstrous creature – garners Rogier's attention after she solicits his opinion on the piece. With expertise and a gentle demeanor, Rogier offers constructive feedback, focusing on the peculiar lighting and reflections depicted in her art, showcasing his professionalism and observational skills despite the growing oddity of the evening.
As the night progresses, an uneasy atmosphere envelops the studio, emphasized by the sudden arrival of several cars outside. Rogier, curious and perhaps a bit concerned, decides to investigate, leaving the safety of his art behind. Upon encountering nothing but silence and a fleeting, unsettling glimpse of a man in a bulletproof vest, he returns inside, only to find the young woman, now visibly shaken, requesting an escort back to her college. Obliging, Rogier becomes unwittingly wrapped up in a series of events that see him navigating the unknown territories of kindness, protection, and the unexplained. Their journey culminates in an invitation inside her dorm for coffee, a conversation about art, and an unexpected delay. Returning to a deserted studio, Rogier discovers the young woman’s canvas, now mysteriously smeared with blood – or perhaps paint, a chilling conclusion to their odd encounter, leaving Rogier to ponder the reality of the night's events and the true nature of the art that bridged their connection.
(Rogier's odd encounter(SRNeha):SRNeha)
[Thu Nov 7 2024]
In the Painting Room within Pigment and Paper Studio
This bisque painting studio is filled with natural light pouring in from large skylights. The studio is filled with long tables spread throughout the room, providing ample space for customers to sit and work on their projects. The walls are adorned with colorful posters that showcase the available paint colors and techniques that customers can experiment with. There are examples of techniques such as sponging, marbling, and glazing that customers can try their hand at.
The archway to the west leads to a bisque shop, while the archway to the south leads to a cozy coffee shop. Towards the back of the studio, an archway leading to a coffee shop can be seen. The entire space is warm and inviting, with a creative energy that inspires visitors to tap into their artistic side.
To the north, an open archway leads back to the bisque shop. A colorful archway to the east leads to the Brush and Brew Cafe where customers can purchase food and drinks.
It is night, about 44F(6C) degrees, and the sky is covered by dark grey stormclouds. There is a waxing crescent moon.
(Someone in Haven has found out about the supernatural and is freaking out about it. They're at risk of exposing the secret, hurting themselves, or hurting others. Your target and their allies are tasked with containing the situation.
)
Late, late night might be the time of the day some artists feel the call of their muse most; the Pigment and Paper Studio isn't as dead during these hours as one might expect from a sleepy town like Haven. A low level of hustle and bustle remains, ever-constant, ever-present, of people shuffling around and the strokes of brush against canvas and low, murmured conversation going on in the cafe nearby as Rogier works on commissions.
Rogier's table is empty for the time being, but it's not too long until someone takes a seat at the next table over; a girl, looking barely out of her teens, with sleepless bags under her eyes and a tangle of hair wrapped up in a messy bun, wearing a pretty, pastel yellow dress. She sets up her workstation nearby - traditional oil on canvas, instead of digital like him - and, without much of any attention paid anywhere else at all at her surroundings, starts to pull out her paints and brushes, all of them going on the table. The art soon follows; she seems to lose herself, as many have, in the process of creation, brush strokes upon canvas flowing, little thought put to her movements as though they come as second nature. She's got something very specific in mind, that's for sure.
Silence sets in. Not a talker, it seems. Or, perhaps, just doesn't want to lose sight of what she's making.
"Hey," Rogier says, so eloquent and word-laden. "Cute dress." He's not flirting - it's just a nice thing to be able to say before he turns his attention back to his own work, a little despairingly. He'd done a pretty good job of this latest piece; someone's Dungeons and Dragons character, an elven draconic sorcerer with silver scales. A cool action pose, some fancy magical doodads on her belt... He looks over the commissioner's notes for the drafts he's sent in so far, sighing a little at the exchange. 'Yeah, wonderful!' it starts out, then quickly cuts to, 'Could we make her boobs a little bigger?'
'A little bigger?'
'Could we go up just a little more and maybe highlight some kind of bulge in her shadows, hinting that she's packing?'
'Okay maybe a bit bigger.'
Rogier reaches up to pinch at the bridge of his nose and rub at the corners of his eyes at the same time. He wasn't a porn artist... but hey, this guy was paying two and a half hundred dollars, so the boobs would be as big as they needed to be.
As big as they needed to be turns out to look something like 'giant watermelons, each one twice the size of her head', in most cases, so Rogier can only hope the commissioner won't go that far. He can hope against hope... (They always go that far.)
The girl at the table next to his doesn't seem to have recognized that she's being talked to. She seems as though in a sort of daze, just slapping paint onto canvas and spreading it around almost aggressively. There's a lot of dark grays and browns, some inching close to black, a purple so deep and dark it looks bottomless, going on the canvas as though pulling shadows in towards itself, a red so deep and rich that blood could only hope to compare.
It's a whole twenty minutes later that the girl pulls herself out of it, snapping back to the world and blinking at what she's created. "Hey," she calls out softly to Rogier, voice a little hoarse from disuse. She doesn't seem to have registered his earlier compliment - if he'd said anything about her or her dress, it's gone way above her head and out the window. "Do you think I got the claws right? There's something off, right?" The canvas is inched, just a little, his way.
There's something off, alright. There upon the canvas is what can only be described as a misshapen blob of a monstrosity. It's got too many teeth, all stained with rust-hued blood, and too many fingers - AI nightmares might be the real horror - all ending in dark claws, black and gleaming in the light. And speaking of the light - it seems to flow weirdly, as though the painter couldn't quite figure out where the source was coming from. The monster upon the canvas casts no shadow, perhaps the eeriest part of all, and the floor beneath it is too-clean, considering how bloodied it looks, as though it's not a part of the world around it, floating in a void of its own. Artistic choice, or inexperience? The background behind it looks familiar--
It /is/ familiar. It's the corner of this very room, right there, what might have been in direct sight of the girl while she was painting. She still glances over there now and then, and then glances away just as quickly, as though pretending she's not looking at all. Her gaze turns, tired and expectant, onto Rogier.
RogierRogier works here as an instructor in the meantime, so this sort of question isn't entirely unusual for him. He lifts his eyebrows at what he's seeing, exactly, before letting out a little hum.
"Well, I'm more of an illustrator than a painter, but this is pretty good. I mean, if this isn't a creature you've come up with yourself, I don't recognise it, so I can't help with that... I think maybe the lighting could be at play, if you feel like something's not quite right?" He gestures to the sourceless lighting of the entire composition, continuing, "Rim lighting's fun. There are times where you want to say, you know, 'fuck it, we'll do rim lighting' rather than a distinct source of light... but where the whole piece follows its own lighting, these claws are all very reflective, right? And they're showing an angle of the light that doesn't match the rest of the piece."
He leans back in his seat, locking his tablet before the poor girl is exposed to the real monster in the room - the back pain of the poor elf he's been drawing. She must need fifth level spell slots to cast Reverse Gravity to handle those thangs.
It's a good thing she wasn't nosy - the back pain of the poor elf (and the humongous tatas of the poor elf) go unnoticed. Rogier is safe this day - though surely any artist worth his salt knows there's no avoiding those sort of commissions. In fact, that guy over in that corner might just be drawing softcore furry content outright. What pays well, pays well.
"I didn't come up with it," she says, quite simply, only half-certain. "I don't know who did." Her look at Rogier seems to ask 'that's fine, right?' even if she doesn't say those words out loud. The girl's eyes crinkle just briefly with a smile at Rogier's compliments, even if her lips don't quite quirk up all the way to make it be considered as such. She just listens to him closely, letting out a soft 'mhm' and a 'hmm' here or there, her eyes going back to the canvas and then at the corner of the room every now and then.
"They /are/ off," she agrees. "That's the problem with these things. I know they're not there, because they don't cast a shadow, but they're still visible, so they're reflecting light. But they're not reflecting /this/ light, they're reflecting... something else? Maybe it's the..." she trails off, murmuring lowly under her breath such that Rogier can't quite catch her words. Whatever it is, she's quite pleased with the feedback she's received, and she turns back to look at the canvas with a fresher gaze, head tilting to a side to consider it.
Outside, there seems to be some sort of hustle and bustle going on, surprising considering the time of the night. Rogier can hear the sound of a car pulling up, and then another, and then a third, right at the entrance of the shop. Maybe they're going to the college, and happened to park here? The studio never sees that many visitors.
The rate of weird people in the art community has a pretty noticeable uptick compared to The Normies, so Rogier's more than willing to file away the girl - who he might be viewing as more of a teenager than a twenty something, admittedly - and her eccentricities away as just another late night art shop encounter. He'd be doing these commissions at home, but he can make more money if he does them on the clock at the shop... so lo and behold, weirdness.
He frowns at the sound of three cars pulling up, though. This had better not be a group trying to fill up the kiln as soon as it's emptied again. Entitlement like that really pissea him off. He hadn't worked in a ceramics shop before, but you get variations on that theme wherever you go. And even if he's only really an instructor, he /is/ an employee of the shop, so he flashes Monster Girl a little nod before he stands up, leaving his tablet on the table for now. Hopefully the guy working the cafe just over to the north would not let his shit get nicked. He wanders over to the entry room, waiting to greet the newcomers.
Rogier might not be all wrong when it comes to filing the girl away as a teenager. She's got a feeling of youth around her, even if it's diminished somewhat by the way she seems as though she's seen too much, the bags under her eyes speaking of sleepless nights that have to stem from a chronic problem. She doesn't try to engage Rogier in any further conversation as he makes his way over to the front of the shop, instead just staying where she is to try and fix the lighting issue with her painting.
Out front in the entry room, Rogier finds silence. The sun is still far from the horizon, the sky above darkened, a few even darker storm clouds floating their way heavily across, muting the dim light from the waxing crescent moon overhead. In front of the shop are three cars, as expected. They're parked right at the entrance, so maybe not someone who wanted to go to the college? It would be strange if so.
There's nobody to be seen here, aside from one guy just closing up the trunk of one of the cars. He's wearing a bulletproof vest and holding a gu--
What was Rogier going to do here? There's nobody to be seen here. Not a single soul. All is still and silent.
If he turns back around to get back to the painting room, he's going to come face to face with the girl from earlier. She looks a little shaken, a little paler than before, and she's left her canvas behind, her fingers stained with paint. "Oh-" she says, almost bumping right into his back, as though she'd been too distracted looking elsewhere to really pay attention to where she was going. Her haunted eyes look up at Rogier. "Sorry- I- um. Could you... walk me back to the college, please?"
There's /some/ sort of ulterior motive there, even if Rogier can't quite figure it out. Maybe the ulterior motive is she doesn't want to get murdered walking back at three in the morning, even if it's relatively quiet and a five-minute walk away at most.
It's not that Rogier is some perfectly good, kind hearted, heroic individual... But he'd grown up on that kind of thing, with comics and stories and all that fuss about doing the right thing. He'd heard how scary it was for women to walk American streets at night, too - this place was no better than A-Word. Worse, probably, but no Rotterdam-born man could really admit that anything was worse than A-Word. Or A-Hole, if he was feeling funny. He clears his throat as his mind drifts, nodding down at the young woman.
"Yeah, no problem," he says. "I don't actually have any students in at this hour anyway." He raises his voice a little, calling back into the cafe, "Hey, could you keep an eye on my stuff for five, ten minutes? Just helping a customer."
With his own imagination playing tricks on him about gunmen - probably due to that sniper-toting cop who'd barged in the other day - his hackles are up enough that there's really no thinking needed for him to walk her back. He has no nightmare charm, no insight into the nightmare, no knowledge of what deadly conflict might be taking place right next to him. He's just a guy willing to look out for a customer.
The girl's eyes widen, just a tad, as Rogier calls out to the guy in the cafe. "I-It'll be fine! Don't go to the painting room!" she calls out right after him, as though she's got some sort of sixth sense to tell her when Rogier's shit is or isn't about to get stolen. What's wrong with the painting room anyway? Rogier definitely didn't hear anything at all. Nothing is going on.
And, anyway, more importantly, the girl's also left all her supplies behind for some reason - she's not carrying anything with her that she had when she got here, and she now moves on to hug Rogier's arm close to her chest, both of her arms wrapping around his as she all but drags him onwards and out to the street so he can walk her home, as promised. Her eyes are a little wide, and- is she trembling? She might be, just a little bit. Maybe she has a crush on Rogier which she's trying and failing not to be extremely obvious about. That's the only explanation, surely. And like this, he'll have to take care of her canvas and paint and brushes and she'll have an excuse to talk to him again - smart, right? Very smart.
Anyway, onwards they go, to the college, where she insists that he walk her all the way to her dorms as well, because you never know what might happen. Once they're there, across the walkway and to the entrance of the sorority house, it's then about how he /must/ come in for a cup of coffee, if he's not planning to go to bed anytime soon, she insists, it's the least she can do to repay him for all his help, and then, would he like to discuss his current projects, what he's working on, while they /slowly/ sip at the decent-ish coffee - he's had better, honestly - and then, finally, a whole half an hour of being side-tracked later, he's free to go back and see what's become of his belongings. It's definitely way longer than the promised five-ten minutes. Hopefully his tablet is still there, because that's going to be real expensive to replace, otherwise.
Everything is still and silent in the painting room of the studio when Rogier makes his way back, finally. The front door is ajar, for some reason, and the cars in front of the studio are all gone by now. Inside, his tablet is still there, and the guy running the cafe hasn't seen anything out of the ordinary. The other guy who was drawing furry porn is gone too.
The girl's canvas has been knocked over, somehow. Maybe a stray gust of wind. If Rogier goes to straighten it, he'll find the front drenched in blood, slowly dripping down the canvas from an unseen source. Maybe it's just paint. Yes, paint that got spilled. Unfortunate. It happens, surely. It happens. Rogier will just have to explain it to the girl when she comes back to get it. Good luck, Rogier.
As the night progresses, an uneasy atmosphere envelops the studio, emphasized by the sudden arrival of several cars outside. Rogier, curious and perhaps a bit concerned, decides to investigate, leaving the safety of his art behind. Upon encountering nothing but silence and a fleeting, unsettling glimpse of a man in a bulletproof vest, he returns inside, only to find the young woman, now visibly shaken, requesting an escort back to her college. Obliging, Rogier becomes unwittingly wrapped up in a series of events that see him navigating the unknown territories of kindness, protection, and the unexplained. Their journey culminates in an invitation inside her dorm for coffee, a conversation about art, and an unexpected delay. Returning to a deserted studio, Rogier discovers the young woman’s canvas, now mysteriously smeared with blood – or perhaps paint, a chilling conclusion to their odd encounter, leaving Rogier to ponder the reality of the night's events and the true nature of the art that bridged their connection.
(Rogier's odd encounter(SRNeha):SRNeha)
[Thu Nov 7 2024]
In the Painting Room within Pigment and Paper Studio
This bisque painting studio is filled with natural light pouring in from large skylights. The studio is filled with long tables spread throughout the room, providing ample space for customers to sit and work on their projects. The walls are adorned with colorful posters that showcase the available paint colors and techniques that customers can experiment with. There are examples of techniques such as sponging, marbling, and glazing that customers can try their hand at.
The archway to the west leads to a bisque shop, while the archway to the south leads to a cozy coffee shop. Towards the back of the studio, an archway leading to a coffee shop can be seen. The entire space is warm and inviting, with a creative energy that inspires visitors to tap into their artistic side.
To the north, an open archway leads back to the bisque shop. A colorful archway to the east leads to the Brush and Brew Cafe where customers can purchase food and drinks.
It is night, about 44F(6C) degrees, and the sky is covered by dark grey stormclouds. There is a waxing crescent moon.
(Someone in Haven has found out about the supernatural and is freaking out about it. They're at risk of exposing the secret, hurting themselves, or hurting others. Your target and their allies are tasked with containing the situation.
)
Late, late night might be the time of the day some artists feel the call of their muse most; the Pigment and Paper Studio isn't as dead during these hours as one might expect from a sleepy town like Haven. A low level of hustle and bustle remains, ever-constant, ever-present, of people shuffling around and the strokes of brush against canvas and low, murmured conversation going on in the cafe nearby as Rogier works on commissions.
Rogier's table is empty for the time being, but it's not too long until someone takes a seat at the next table over; a girl, looking barely out of her teens, with sleepless bags under her eyes and a tangle of hair wrapped up in a messy bun, wearing a pretty, pastel yellow dress. She sets up her workstation nearby - traditional oil on canvas, instead of digital like him - and, without much of any attention paid anywhere else at all at her surroundings, starts to pull out her paints and brushes, all of them going on the table. The art soon follows; she seems to lose herself, as many have, in the process of creation, brush strokes upon canvas flowing, little thought put to her movements as though they come as second nature. She's got something very specific in mind, that's for sure.
Silence sets in. Not a talker, it seems. Or, perhaps, just doesn't want to lose sight of what she's making.
"Hey," Rogier says, so eloquent and word-laden. "Cute dress." He's not flirting - it's just a nice thing to be able to say before he turns his attention back to his own work, a little despairingly. He'd done a pretty good job of this latest piece; someone's Dungeons and Dragons character, an elven draconic sorcerer with silver scales. A cool action pose, some fancy magical doodads on her belt... He looks over the commissioner's notes for the drafts he's sent in so far, sighing a little at the exchange. 'Yeah, wonderful!' it starts out, then quickly cuts to, 'Could we make her boobs a little bigger?'
'A little bigger?'
'Could we go up just a little more and maybe highlight some kind of bulge in her shadows, hinting that she's packing?'
'Okay maybe a bit bigger.'
Rogier reaches up to pinch at the bridge of his nose and rub at the corners of his eyes at the same time. He wasn't a porn artist... but hey, this guy was paying two and a half hundred dollars, so the boobs would be as big as they needed to be.
As big as they needed to be turns out to look something like 'giant watermelons, each one twice the size of her head', in most cases, so Rogier can only hope the commissioner won't go that far. He can hope against hope... (They always go that far.)
The girl at the table next to his doesn't seem to have recognized that she's being talked to. She seems as though in a sort of daze, just slapping paint onto canvas and spreading it around almost aggressively. There's a lot of dark grays and browns, some inching close to black, a purple so deep and dark it looks bottomless, going on the canvas as though pulling shadows in towards itself, a red so deep and rich that blood could only hope to compare.
It's a whole twenty minutes later that the girl pulls herself out of it, snapping back to the world and blinking at what she's created. "Hey," she calls out softly to Rogier, voice a little hoarse from disuse. She doesn't seem to have registered his earlier compliment - if he'd said anything about her or her dress, it's gone way above her head and out the window. "Do you think I got the claws right? There's something off, right?" The canvas is inched, just a little, his way.
There's something off, alright. There upon the canvas is what can only be described as a misshapen blob of a monstrosity. It's got too many teeth, all stained with rust-hued blood, and too many fingers - AI nightmares might be the real horror - all ending in dark claws, black and gleaming in the light. And speaking of the light - it seems to flow weirdly, as though the painter couldn't quite figure out where the source was coming from. The monster upon the canvas casts no shadow, perhaps the eeriest part of all, and the floor beneath it is too-clean, considering how bloodied it looks, as though it's not a part of the world around it, floating in a void of its own. Artistic choice, or inexperience? The background behind it looks familiar--
It /is/ familiar. It's the corner of this very room, right there, what might have been in direct sight of the girl while she was painting. She still glances over there now and then, and then glances away just as quickly, as though pretending she's not looking at all. Her gaze turns, tired and expectant, onto Rogier.
RogierRogier works here as an instructor in the meantime, so this sort of question isn't entirely unusual for him. He lifts his eyebrows at what he's seeing, exactly, before letting out a little hum.
"Well, I'm more of an illustrator than a painter, but this is pretty good. I mean, if this isn't a creature you've come up with yourself, I don't recognise it, so I can't help with that... I think maybe the lighting could be at play, if you feel like something's not quite right?" He gestures to the sourceless lighting of the entire composition, continuing, "Rim lighting's fun. There are times where you want to say, you know, 'fuck it, we'll do rim lighting' rather than a distinct source of light... but where the whole piece follows its own lighting, these claws are all very reflective, right? And they're showing an angle of the light that doesn't match the rest of the piece."
He leans back in his seat, locking his tablet before the poor girl is exposed to the real monster in the room - the back pain of the poor elf he's been drawing. She must need fifth level spell slots to cast Reverse Gravity to handle those thangs.
It's a good thing she wasn't nosy - the back pain of the poor elf (and the humongous tatas of the poor elf) go unnoticed. Rogier is safe this day - though surely any artist worth his salt knows there's no avoiding those sort of commissions. In fact, that guy over in that corner might just be drawing softcore furry content outright. What pays well, pays well.
"I didn't come up with it," she says, quite simply, only half-certain. "I don't know who did." Her look at Rogier seems to ask 'that's fine, right?' even if she doesn't say those words out loud. The girl's eyes crinkle just briefly with a smile at Rogier's compliments, even if her lips don't quite quirk up all the way to make it be considered as such. She just listens to him closely, letting out a soft 'mhm' and a 'hmm' here or there, her eyes going back to the canvas and then at the corner of the room every now and then.
"They /are/ off," she agrees. "That's the problem with these things. I know they're not there, because they don't cast a shadow, but they're still visible, so they're reflecting light. But they're not reflecting /this/ light, they're reflecting... something else? Maybe it's the..." she trails off, murmuring lowly under her breath such that Rogier can't quite catch her words. Whatever it is, she's quite pleased with the feedback she's received, and she turns back to look at the canvas with a fresher gaze, head tilting to a side to consider it.
Outside, there seems to be some sort of hustle and bustle going on, surprising considering the time of the night. Rogier can hear the sound of a car pulling up, and then another, and then a third, right at the entrance of the shop. Maybe they're going to the college, and happened to park here? The studio never sees that many visitors.
The rate of weird people in the art community has a pretty noticeable uptick compared to The Normies, so Rogier's more than willing to file away the girl - who he might be viewing as more of a teenager than a twenty something, admittedly - and her eccentricities away as just another late night art shop encounter. He'd be doing these commissions at home, but he can make more money if he does them on the clock at the shop... so lo and behold, weirdness.
He frowns at the sound of three cars pulling up, though. This had better not be a group trying to fill up the kiln as soon as it's emptied again. Entitlement like that really pissea him off. He hadn't worked in a ceramics shop before, but you get variations on that theme wherever you go. And even if he's only really an instructor, he /is/ an employee of the shop, so he flashes Monster Girl a little nod before he stands up, leaving his tablet on the table for now. Hopefully the guy working the cafe just over to the north would not let his shit get nicked. He wanders over to the entry room, waiting to greet the newcomers.
Rogier might not be all wrong when it comes to filing the girl away as a teenager. She's got a feeling of youth around her, even if it's diminished somewhat by the way she seems as though she's seen too much, the bags under her eyes speaking of sleepless nights that have to stem from a chronic problem. She doesn't try to engage Rogier in any further conversation as he makes his way over to the front of the shop, instead just staying where she is to try and fix the lighting issue with her painting.
Out front in the entry room, Rogier finds silence. The sun is still far from the horizon, the sky above darkened, a few even darker storm clouds floating their way heavily across, muting the dim light from the waxing crescent moon overhead. In front of the shop are three cars, as expected. They're parked right at the entrance, so maybe not someone who wanted to go to the college? It would be strange if so.
There's nobody to be seen here, aside from one guy just closing up the trunk of one of the cars. He's wearing a bulletproof vest and holding a gu--
What was Rogier going to do here? There's nobody to be seen here. Not a single soul. All is still and silent.
If he turns back around to get back to the painting room, he's going to come face to face with the girl from earlier. She looks a little shaken, a little paler than before, and she's left her canvas behind, her fingers stained with paint. "Oh-" she says, almost bumping right into his back, as though she'd been too distracted looking elsewhere to really pay attention to where she was going. Her haunted eyes look up at Rogier. "Sorry- I- um. Could you... walk me back to the college, please?"
There's /some/ sort of ulterior motive there, even if Rogier can't quite figure it out. Maybe the ulterior motive is she doesn't want to get murdered walking back at three in the morning, even if it's relatively quiet and a five-minute walk away at most.
It's not that Rogier is some perfectly good, kind hearted, heroic individual... But he'd grown up on that kind of thing, with comics and stories and all that fuss about doing the right thing. He'd heard how scary it was for women to walk American streets at night, too - this place was no better than A-Word. Worse, probably, but no Rotterdam-born man could really admit that anything was worse than A-Word. Or A-Hole, if he was feeling funny. He clears his throat as his mind drifts, nodding down at the young woman.
"Yeah, no problem," he says. "I don't actually have any students in at this hour anyway." He raises his voice a little, calling back into the cafe, "Hey, could you keep an eye on my stuff for five, ten minutes? Just helping a customer."
With his own imagination playing tricks on him about gunmen - probably due to that sniper-toting cop who'd barged in the other day - his hackles are up enough that there's really no thinking needed for him to walk her back. He has no nightmare charm, no insight into the nightmare, no knowledge of what deadly conflict might be taking place right next to him. He's just a guy willing to look out for a customer.
The girl's eyes widen, just a tad, as Rogier calls out to the guy in the cafe. "I-It'll be fine! Don't go to the painting room!" she calls out right after him, as though she's got some sort of sixth sense to tell her when Rogier's shit is or isn't about to get stolen. What's wrong with the painting room anyway? Rogier definitely didn't hear anything at all. Nothing is going on.
And, anyway, more importantly, the girl's also left all her supplies behind for some reason - she's not carrying anything with her that she had when she got here, and she now moves on to hug Rogier's arm close to her chest, both of her arms wrapping around his as she all but drags him onwards and out to the street so he can walk her home, as promised. Her eyes are a little wide, and- is she trembling? She might be, just a little bit. Maybe she has a crush on Rogier which she's trying and failing not to be extremely obvious about. That's the only explanation, surely. And like this, he'll have to take care of her canvas and paint and brushes and she'll have an excuse to talk to him again - smart, right? Very smart.
Anyway, onwards they go, to the college, where she insists that he walk her all the way to her dorms as well, because you never know what might happen. Once they're there, across the walkway and to the entrance of the sorority house, it's then about how he /must/ come in for a cup of coffee, if he's not planning to go to bed anytime soon, she insists, it's the least she can do to repay him for all his help, and then, would he like to discuss his current projects, what he's working on, while they /slowly/ sip at the decent-ish coffee - he's had better, honestly - and then, finally, a whole half an hour of being side-tracked later, he's free to go back and see what's become of his belongings. It's definitely way longer than the promised five-ten minutes. Hopefully his tablet is still there, because that's going to be real expensive to replace, otherwise.
Everything is still and silent in the painting room of the studio when Rogier makes his way back, finally. The front door is ajar, for some reason, and the cars in front of the studio are all gone by now. Inside, his tablet is still there, and the guy running the cafe hasn't seen anything out of the ordinary. The other guy who was drawing furry porn is gone too.
The girl's canvas has been knocked over, somehow. Maybe a stray gust of wind. If Rogier goes to straighten it, he'll find the front drenched in blood, slowly dripping down the canvas from an unseen source. Maybe it's just paint. Yes, paint that got spilled. Unfortunate. It happens, surely. It happens. Rogier will just have to explain it to the girl when she comes back to get it. Good luck, Rogier.