"You DO like me!" "I don't think 'like' is the right word." "You tolerate me." "Maybe." one on one

"Yeah. I prefer Pac-man to rigorous exercise any day, though."

"I guess that makes sense." Lin sighed softly as he stared at the game over screen. "I don't mind working out a bit though."

“Eughh. I hate sweating,” Orion said, wrinkling her nose.

Lin shrugged. "I don't normally sweat all that much. It's good for you, anyway. Keeps you cool."

"But it's gross and sticky," she objected mildly. "Blehh."

"I guess so. What do you want to do now?"

"Hm. Well, there's the Tower of Tickets, but that's really hard. You wanna give it a shot?"

"How do you do it?" He asked curiously. "I don't think I've heard of that before."

"There are little sweeper arms and you have to time it right so it knocks tickets out for you. It's hard to explain. It's mostly timing."

"Weird… you said it's really hard, though." Lin hummed thoughtfully to himself.

"It is!" she protested. "I suck at it."

"Well, I probably wouldn't be any better at it then… but I can try if you want me to."

"Oh, I'm sure you'll be fine at it. You seem to be good at a lot of things."

Lin shrugged again. "I've done harder things in my life than a dancing game."

"Well, sure, but you're always underestimating yourself."

"I suppose so. Video games just aren't something that I've trained at."

"Well I have religiously 'trained' at video games and I still suck."

"Hm… maybe you haven't been training properly. What have you been doing?"

"I play them for a while every day. Look up cheat codes. Etc."

"Hmm… is there a different way to do it that's more effective? I'm not super familiar with training methods."

Orion smiled slightly. "I was just kidding, Munchkin."

"Oh… don't you want to get better at the video games, though?" Lin asked.

"I do. I just meant I was kidding about the training part."

"Oh…" Lin was quiet for a moment. "How do you get better without training?"

"Oh. I wouldn't exactly compare video games with training. That was the joke."

Lin paused before nodding, still a little confused. "Alright… sorry, then. I'm not good at jokes." He laughed softly.

"No, don't worry about it." Orion put a hand on Lin's shoulder gently.

Lin nodded again. "Right… what was the game that you wanted to try?"

"Tower of Tickets." She led Lin over to the machine and offered him a coin. "You wanna go first?"

"Uh… sure. How do I play this one, again?" He asked.