"Sorry," says Haru, after thirteen seconds of silence.

"—you don't have anything to apologise for. I'm just trying to think how to respond in a way that doesn't get me misunderstood." Okay that's cool and mature and confident, good tack, keep going Kang Jaeha. "I mean that... we're in a partnership, yes, and the point of it is dealing with the—magical affliction, right? So it's—that's what I mean, when I say I don't have much right to ask for this kind of thing. If Sparkler will cure your magical affliction how could I object to that?" That was sooooo coooooool Kang Jaeha, even if it's 100% just lies it sounded really mature and self-aware and confident. You're acing this.

"I mean, the way you could object to that would be if you had monogamy-shaped feelings, we aren't partners at a law firm, we're shacking up and having sex several times a day, it wouldn't be weird to catch feelings about it. Esper partners do that all the time, if slightly less often than the fandom believes. Anyway, Sparkler will only be a convenient, let alone ideal, way to cure my magical affliction if I go to Canada, and I don't have plane tickets and don't plan to get any for the next few months. I don't expect to need anybody but you for the foreseeable future. It's just that the future's not all foreseeable."

It wouldn't be weird to catch feelings about it, it would just be pathetic to catch one-sided feelings and then demand that the other side behave as if you're in a symmetrical relationship. But Jaeha feels like claiming that he doesn't have monogamy-shaped intuitions would be the wrong kind of lie to tell even if the possibility of claiming that he hasn't caught feelings is ludicrous.

Anyway, it's all moot if Haru's going to leave after Jaeha's fully guided—or if they'll "see where they're at", anyway, whatever that means. That's still within the "foreseeable future" window, he's pretty sure.

...he really shouldn't hope. Hoping is how he'll get fucked over. He should just—work. Work to be someone Haru will like now. And maybe fucking kill Johnny that's just the jealousy talking and he needs to get over it.

"I suppose we'll see where we're at once I'm out of my hole." He needs a cigarette.

"Mm-hm." Snuggles make it difficult to go get a cigarette.

And he hasn't smoked this whole week anyway and isn't about to, not in front of Haru. He'll just deal.

"I'm really different to be around when I am and am not backlashed and I don't know if it'll be that dramatic for you, of course, just, it might be."

"...you're not, really. Or not in—the ways that matter, at least. You're—doing different things and—but it's still you. Maybe if you're really extremely backlashed, but not as far as I've seen."

"...aww. I think I've gotten better at balancing, since I awakened, but - it still feels really different." Snuggle.

"Yeah, I can see how it would. And I don't want to say that you're unreasonable to feel that way. But from where I'm standing, it's still the same person there, just—you know."

"My awakening was years ago now but it was - I didn't know how to lean on it then, so it was really really bad in the worst direction, I cannot begin to describe how terrified poor Ren was when she was like 'you'll be fine in a week and have superpowers' and I told her it wasn't worth it - and that still looms really large in my mind when I'm thinking about how to characterize - the backlash, myself under the backlash, etcetera, even though I have practice now and can mostly just be an illiterate chatterbox."

Jaeha supposes that not really remembering very much of his manifestation week—actually it was eight days for him, his family was starting to freak out that it wasn't manifestation, they don't usually go that long—he supposes that's a blessing.

"I'm glad you survived it, and I'm glad you—got something good out of it."

"Me too." Snuggle snuggle. Why are they wearing shirts. They should stop.

Sure! They can stop. They don't need to be wearing anything else either it's good to see that that incredibly stressful conversation doesn't stop him from turning on a dime like that, at least he has some stable traits.

And the durations of between-remark silences can get longer and longer, and eventually Haru needs to skip off to write down all his feelings in a secret notebook where Jaeha doesn't get to read them.

That's okay he's pretty used already to not reading Haru's feelings.

He's also incredibly stressed out and kind of needs a moment to himself, too, to searingly regret having that conversation. If he still had access to his powers he'd have deleted it from existence, that was the worst and now Haru knows what an absolute clown Jaeha is.

He's going to need to go to a dentist.

Haru has all the ingredients to have a very serious crush on Jaeha, but he took apart all those ingredients instead of leaving them where they could accidentally get melded into soup for a reason. He needs to be able to separate these things, he knew he was going to need it back then and he is turning out to need it now. It might be that in a very real sense he has barely met Jaeha. Jaeha puts on a very superficially convincing front as a person with a normal range of emotions, and he's very private about his backlash, NDA and all, and neither he nor Haru really knows what's under there after this long, and writing himself out of a serious emotional entanglement with somebody would be so much harder and more unpleasant than simply leaving the soup ingredients in their mise en place.

He's cute though. And very good in bed. And good company.

Sometimes after dungeons Haru snuggles up in Jaeha's arms and then hops on the group chat to see what's up there.

The current topic of discussion seems to be "who would win in a fight: someone with an immovable object power or someone with an unstoppable force power?"

yoo-min-max: ok but you guys are completely failing to consider that you can just move the ground they're standing on

🍸nomu?: no self-respecting "immovable object" power would just let that happen, come on

traceless: it really depends on whether they accumulate backlash proportional to force exerted, time the power is in use, or what. you wouldn't start calling a power an "immovable object" power if actually a truck hitting their immovable thing was noticeably worse than a mosquito, and by the same token you wouldn't call somebody's TK an "unstoppable force" power if they flinched when trying to yeet a battleship, so I think we have to assume that the immovable object guy is just racing the clock alone and unstoppable force guy may not be able to directly circumvent that. however, unstoppable force guy still wins because sufficiently extra kinetic energy can set everything on fire and even if that doesn't affect your immovable object it'll affect the air you're breathing.

yoo-min-max: ...shit, he wins

MODERATOR ANNOUNCEMENT: Please do not use profanities in chat.

🧋youngwoo: next time I'm just gonna @ you @traceless

traceless: yay I win
traceless: are the nickname emoji customary?

🍉 melonmelon: yes absolutely obligatory actually. moderator, slap this argument-winning esper with a warning