...he's being surprisingly chill about this.

"I can—perceive people's emotions. And some other states of mind."

"As... a feedback component of the illusion thing?"

"Yyyyyes but also as a thing I can do on its own."

"And you tried to do this to me... why."

"Because I woke up to the unfamiliar feeling of someone being next to me and—instinctively reached out."

"Are you normally doing this a lot? In - like - civilian contexts - like, I find receptive empathy sketchy and would rather people not do it at me, which, good news, they can't, but based on the state of the entire fantasy genre I think that's mostly a me thing, but separately from that you're in such a backlash hole, even if you don't feel right about taking a long break from dungeoneering the gratuitous power use can't be helping at all -"

"—no. No, not at all. Just—threat instincts? I don't usually tell people about this because—fantasy genre or not, it does spook them, but I don't use it except at work, and I reach for it on reflex when it feels like I'm in a threatening situation. ...which is not to say you're threatening! But—I haven't woken up next to someone in years."

"More things for me to not yell at your ex-partner about, I guess."

His heart is still kind of racing but, but, but it worked. It landed. And he has just come up with the excuse for why his heart would be kinda racing. And actually, "Hug me? I—was trying to play it cool but it did spook me a bit—this is embarrassing."

"Of course." Haru flops back down and rolls over on top of him for snuggles.

Oh this continues to feel so nice. So so so so nice. He closes his eyes and pets Haru—mostly to soothe himself—and waits for his heart to calm down.

All the snuggles he wants. Gotta work on that backlash backlog.

Yeah he does.

"So," he says once he is in fact calm, "how are you feeling about Quasar?"

"I'm pretty positively inclined. If Juno wants to keep you badly enough that they'll singlehandedly eradicate malaria and get started on yellow fever to get it I'll gladly lean more on non-guild connections for my compulsive chat, though."

"I somehow don't think they will. ...did you get an email from them, by the way?"

"Not that I saw yet." Where did his phone go. "Ah, here it is. ...well, that's, uh, boilerplate, I guess I should let them have an interview regardless."

"Park Yoo-min-shi was not wrong when he said that Korean guilds are very... Well, like that."

"Honestly I like the Western system a lot, if you wanna learn English and move to Vancouver speak now."

"I speak English fluently," he says, in English. He does have a bit of an accent, but not one where he's missing or mixing up any phonemes.

"Oh! Aren't you full of surprises," replies Haru also in English. "Vancouver's nice. I might have moved there full time years ago except that it's hours away from Charlie, who turned out to be more married to the itsy bitsy town he was born in than he was to Ren when it came down to it. The whole system is more - buffet style? Cricket hates my agent though."

"I would have assumed Cricket hating someone is not very indicative of anything but I suppose that would be the ego-protecting thing to believe."

"He actually hates her more than most people! I don't know how he has come to this attitude since I only talk to her in English and he can't speak it!"

"I assume 'you speak English with them' is not itself the reason?"

"Nah, he tolerates Charlie slightly better than he does Ren actually."

"Then I'm out of ideas."