"If I'm not on hand for whatever reason, like if a monster that doesn't know I'm there nonetheless manages to step on me, then I worry that'd backfire. Maybe someone else can turn it off but it will also work to just go be home alone? How much are you comfortable with Cricket knowing? I don't actually know how good he is at confidentiality."

"Being home alone is... probably sufficient, yes. I would not be that against Cricket knowing if he could keep confidentiality."

"Unfortunately if he can't that could fail catastrophically. I can maybe just tell him you're a bummer to be around backlashed and he should be out hunting pigeons."

"I don't expect I'd use my powers on him if I got home. I empirically was perfectly able to refrain from doing so under quite a lot of backlash, if I got reminded that I shouldn't I don't think I'd start."

"And he's not overwhelmingly likely to hang out with you anyway, just - he's my best friend."

...that's making him have some kinds of feelings. He thinks he's—feeling more genuine affection for Cricket than he'd been? Or, like, any? He hadn't really put it like that, in his head, even though it's obvious.

"I guess telling him that I'm a bummer to hang out with while backlashed works well enough. Though if—you got stepped on by a monster—I imagine that he'd, uh... have some kind of reaction to that." Amazing words you're using right there, Kang Jaeha.

"I'm not actually sure how hard a time he might have with talking his way into a hospital where I was getting a broken leg set or whatever. He'd probably try."

...that was. Not. The image he'd had in mind when Haru said "being stepped on by a monster".

"I—am I meant to not go see you in the hospital myself if the only problem you had was something like that?"

"Plausibly? I don't have an entire example scenario because the point is to come up with plans that are robust against unforeseen events, 'stepped on by a monster' is here standing in for lots of possible things not all of which we'll think of today."

"No, I mean—the only reason I see to go home and, uh, isolate myself would be if you were—substantially more incapacitated—otherwise I'd want to be by your side."

"Okay, I guess in any situation where they let Cricket see me they let you too, fair point."

"And in most of those you can get my alarm to stop beeping regardless." It's so good that he can now stop thinking about Haru dying which he had been—not thinking! Because thinking about it would be bad! But now he's definitely extra not thinking about it.

"Speaking of covering for unforeseeable events has anyone talked to Tae-gun for you yet - or were you going to do that yourself - if there is a situation where I can't see you -"

"—ah. I ought to, oughtn't I. I—forgot to think about that." He opens his commscreen to write "figure out what to do about Lee Tae-gun" down.

Pet pet.

"I'll leave that for the next time I schedule myself to think about things though because I think I have some feelings to untangle about it."

"Totally legit, you've got like a day and a half till I start doing dungeons again and I don't think you're even thusly committed - actually it might make sense to schedule me along with you all the time. Because you're a specialist and I am mostly capable of operating in those specialist dungeons but am not in my own right worth calling across international borders for most of them, and you are, so I think I'm going to wind up functionally your sidekick."

Okay the idea of doing dungeons with his BOYFRIEND sounds incredibly appealing.

Except...

"I would love to have you with me but I'm not sure you're best positioned to go to the majority of the dungeons I'm usually sent to?"

"No? I mean, maybe not in the ones where the floors are illusions, that'd be a lot of flying for me, but I think even if you need to shield me from something because it goes around my own defenses the marginal cost of one shield'd be offset by the backlash efficiency of working with a partner..."

"I'm more thinking about the more unique cases. I suppose if you came with me to literally just hang out with me while I dealt with, say, a monster waging war inside someone's brain and guide me? But that feels very—wasteful, your powers are useful."

"They're fine, they're just kind of generic, for dungeon purposes. Well, I guess we can present these cases to the guild and leave the scheduling to the professionals, just means we can't plan on me being your external conscience."

"We should see how I do without you at least a couple of times for stress testing anyway, but given how long it's been since my last dungeon it might be a good idea to start small, do a couple of dungeons with you next week, see how that goes, then try one without..."

"Yeah, that sounds right to me."

"Are they generic, though?" he wonders. "It seems like you should be useful for scouting many kinds of dungeons that sensors have trouble with, and the combination of stealth and mobility ought to be pretty good for rescues, too..." Have people considered that Haru is perfect and good at everything. Just a thought.