"That's so intriguing, I'm so intrigued."

"What's your new phone's number?"

She checks and then rattles it off. 

"- give that to me again slower and I'll send it to Paula."

"Sorry--" she repeats it slower. 

"Sent. She might not be super on top of her texts, I didn't make it a priority alert."

"I'm curious what you've told her about me."

"It says, 'the boss monster I told you about is not a boss monster, she is a magical girl who comes with her own pocket dimension and cool extradimensional magic, do you have room for another client'."

"Let me rephrase, I am also curious about what you told her about the boss monster you thought I was."

"I told her the boss monster walked out of the dungeon, that I needed her to make the call on whether I should let myself talk to you, she gave me the go-ahead, then I said 'she seems chill' and 'I think maybe not a monster at all'."

"So there's leadup on the not a monster thing and it doesn't look totally like I mind-controlled you or something. I mean. If you were mind-controllable."

"Yeah, I really do not trust my backlashed self to decide to talk to things that are at all odd."

"That's so reasonable. I'd've wanted to talk to me too, but that's just because at baselne I'm an incurable optimist. Which has gotten me killed fewer of the times I've died than you'd think. For sure some of them though." 

"Is it rude to ask for Times You Died Stories?"

"Well, you've already told me one. Obviously I'm not going to be able to give gory aftermath details, at least not until I wake up some people who outlived me, but..."

Most of the stories she gets into involve her doing Incurable Optimist things, but some of them are just bog-standard accidents. 

May's questions come thick and fast at first, but gradually drop off to lower and lower frequency.

"I'm glad you're feeling better."

Snort. "Me too."

"Well. You would be."

"Conceivably someone with my backlash could relate to it like people mostly relate to, say, alcohol, the things it instills in me are not exclusively vices."

"My limited understanding of how backlash works suggests that such a person wouldn't have gotten yours?"

"People do hate them different amounts? But - powers usually oppose backlash and people are usually really fond of their powers, so that would be shockingly convenient, yeah."

"Yeah, I don't think you've got the worst possible one for you--oh man, you know what would be a terrible backlash, illiteracy." 

"I think that might be strictly less bad than mine? Like, it already locks me out of most literacy-based activities except for specifically texting people and even that is only possible up to a point."

"I think I would find the sensation of looking at text and not comprehending it more disconcerting than not having the attention to look at it much but fair enough."