...Jaeha really, really likes Haru. Quite an unreasonable amount.

"It varies a lot. For some dungeons I shield people outside and go on my merry way, but those are rare since most things don't need my caliber of shielding and those that do tend to require more field operations. Those will often have continuous effects on civilians that we need to wipe before rescuing them, sometimes literally physically like with Nightmare but sometimes just because the alternative would be knocking them unconscious or physically restraining them to move them despite their resistance. So my usual M.O. is going in with an esper with a mobility power and an esper with a defensive or offensive power, as the case may be, and getting people out of the effects they might be under.

"Some dungeons have more complicated effects, like being fully illusory such that if you don't perceive the illusions at all you fall into an endless void, or having monsters that can enter your brain if you see them and leave with you without being detected, or with more conceptual effects. Those are dealt with on a case-by-case basis.

"I can also often use my powers for stealth and for confusing monsters, which I tend to do as needed, and to reflect monsters' psychic attacks back on them, which is useful on occasion. And sometimes, the dungeon core itself is not physical, and I occasionally have needed to psychically destroy it. It's rare that that's something my particular powers can do, though.

"What I'd be tempted to do is just... keep my passive powers up, forget to stop using them once I'm out of a dungeon, forget to not target other humans with them..."

"Would you forget enough to - do you want to be having this conversation in the grocery store, actually -"

"—no, probably not." Argh probably no one heard him but he has no way of checking and he got so used to just him and Haru at home he forgot other people existed ugh.

"I don't think there's anybody in earshot, just, abundance of caution." Cheese curds go in basket, and cherry tomatoes. For pasta salad.

Okay, he is once again reminded of how much he likes Haru and how great it is that they're BOYFRIENDS. Possibly it's because this feeling is literally a day old. Possibly it's that. It might be.

Anyway yes groceries like normal people who weren't just discussing whether one of them might accidentally become a psychopath!

And then they can go back home. "So - what was I going to say, something about - oh, right. You'd gotten out of the habit of targeting me, do you think you'd retain the - presence of mind for that, or that you'd bump into my shields so I could catch you?"

"I think that—if you were around, it would feel... very embarrassing to fail at this. So there's nonzero effect from just your presence. The amount of backlashed I'd need to be to actually slip up and try to ping you would be—I'm not sure. The flip side of not being in the habit of targeting you is that that was just because I was seeing no one other than you on the regular and so I was just not using my powers at all. If I am, it's—not like I can't target, I can, but I tend to use them in almost a radar fashion, indiscriminately in all directions, so it's possible that I'd bump int you, too." Wow that was a lot of words and not very organised ones at that, huh.

"Hm. You'd suggested a check-in app for me, after my close call, would something like that work or would you ignore it?"

"—I think it'd plausibly straightforwardly work, yeah. At least unless I were so backlashed not to care at all but that would take some doing, I think."

"Cool, is that a native functionality the implanty things have or do we need someone to code it up?"

"Should be built in," he says, summoning his screen and looking into setting up alarms and notifications.

Haru peeks over his shoulder to get a sense of the range of functionality and then gets started on making pasta salad.

It's nothing really fancy, just various time-based alarms plus some bio stuff like for heart rate plus there's options using AI to try to infer things but they look complicated.

Jaeha sets a timer thing for every thirty minutes he'll enable when going into a dungeon and, "Maybe I could lock the alarm and only someone else," Haru, "can disable it so I don't feel tempted?" he suggests, going to work on the tteokbokki he planned.

(Haru was right that it's usually eaten hot, and if he wanted that the solution would be to buy it from a street vendor, but he thinks his tteokbokki is tastier than what you can get off the street and he can get it to taste nice cold, too. The trick is to balance the spice in the seasoning differently and make larger individual pieces and give them an appropriate filling.)

"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."