Ailee looks at the book pile with deep suspicion. She's not touching [i]that[/i]. That's got mold. That's unhygienic. 

And besides, she's never given a single damn about first editions or figured out why some people go ga-ga for them. What a worthless hobby! You're getting the same book but with extra typographical errors, and often with the unspoken assumption that you'll never actually wind up [i]reading[/i] it. And a shelf full of lovingly maintained first editions provokes the same suspicion that this heap of moldering antiques in a stack do: this isn't for people who like reading. To go digging through this heap of trash for buried treasure is the act of a treasure hunter, not the act of someone who loves books.

There exists a middle ground. There exist bookshops where everything is dry and musty and just faintly yellowed, books with broken spines held together by tape, books where some sociopath might have written commentary in the margins, books that you might pick up to find a hidden letter drop out of. And even then none of that stuff is necessary, or even desirable in and of itself - they're just side effects. What makes a book valuable is the story inside of it, and any physical damage to the work itself is only valuable insofar as it means that someone loved the story so much that they tore apart the physical container trying to get more of it, trying to live it one more time. If the story was somehow detached from paper and placed in a realm where a little number incremented by one every time somebody looked at it that would communicate that same sense of love.

But she doesn't say any of that. She doesn't even let out an acidic quip at the professor, even though she's got an audience. She... knows she probably won't have time for any more books, and she's going to have to go to the Heart with the stories she knows already. 

"No," she said. "I just wanted to be dry."

But did she? Her eyes turn towards the doorway and it seems like the rain is calling to her. Melancholy swims uphill against emotions fixed in tattoo-fire, but she flexes her mind and tidies it all away. Then she glances at her new friend. "If you need to fight these guys, I can probably take the guy in the hawaiian shirt."