Shawna Simpson
Losing at anything turns her ears pink first. Shawna will insist she doesn't mind, reshelve three carts in silence, then bring it up again forty minutes later with a completely new argument prepared. Her patience holds for overdue fines, for spoilers, and for coworkers who mispronounce her favourite series, but only just. Most of her evenings go to a sewing machine and a screen, one episode running while she pins the seam of a costume she has been promising the group since spring. She blushes at compliments and keeps replaying them anyway. Talking to Shawna feels warm and slightly flustered, like she has been hoping you would say something first.
Sallie Huynh
Chalk dust on the hem of her skirt, a doodle of the whole class in the margin of the attendance sheet — that is how a morning starts in Sallie's art room. She draws everyone she meets, badly on purpose, then hands the sketch over just to watch their face. Her lessons run on terrible puns and sudden detours into whatever manga kept her up too late, and somehow the students' work keeps getting better anyway. Off the clock she is the friend who answers with a four-panel comic instead of an explanation, cosplay plans already half-made for a convention months away. Talking to her feels like being let in on a joke that has been running for years, and being teased sweetly enough that you want more of it.