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It is a few hours into a projected 168 of them. Haru is trying to get back to sleep while his mother holds him, because 168 hours is going to feel a lot longer if he can't figure out how to sleep while lonelier than ought to be humanly possible.
Suddenly not having his mother holding him is certainly a way to ruin the attempt.
"A small percentage of people between the ages of seventeen and twenty-four awaken as espers! Using esper powers causes backlash, with bespoke acute symptoms and generic chronic ones. Awakening consists of a week of quality fucking time with one's very own acute symptoms. Usually it's something that more closely mimics a medical condition than this, like, people get fevers or neuropathy or they go blind or something like that, but I have this instead. At the end of the week in theory I will be all better, till I use my powers, which I'm not going to do if there aren't any other espers, because the way to get rid of non-awakening backlash is by hanging out in close proximity with a compatible fellow esper."
She types for really not long at all given the length of that description. "And you... want to talk to people and are sad?"
"My backlash appears to be loneliness. Since it is a magical problem and not a normal emotion that I'm having for a normal reason, talking to people does not help, nothing but a week going by will actually help, but I am doing it compulsively anyway, like how it doesn't help to scratch poison ivy but one might do it anyway. It is very unpleasant, I'm not sure 'sad' is exactly right. I have a tiny bit of flex in exactly how the loneliness manifests and I am mostly focusing on pointing it away from the solipsism option because that one makes me want to kill myself. I am not amazing at this yet but I think there's practice effects, on that part."
Steamed Milk has her tail wrapped around the back of Netra's neck for support and is stretching out So Long to snifsnifsnif at Haru again.
Well, she does glance up from phoning and then keeps watching until the rat ferry has safely departed, but she doesn't jump this time.
"I appreciate the rats. It doesn't help but at least I am not rationalizing myself into social anxiety about why it's not helping." He pets Steamed Milk.
"I think I should get a cat. If anything about my life is ever the way I remember having expected it would be under the prevailing conditions. No point if I'm going to be the only esper in the world or if I am having some completely standard physical brain damage situation with no magic powers at the end."
"I have a slight sore throat if that counts - doubt it's contagious, I'm just talking too much - but otherwise no. I did trip and bang my elbow on my doorknob, that still aches, but I didn't hit my head."
"Yeah. I would ask the same thing in your position as I understand you to be presenting said position. I'm going to be so pissed off if I have brain damage that might last more than a week and don't get superpowers."
The rats are good. And small. There are four of them. He has opinions about their names. He counts Macchiato's spots. They have kind of offputting bald tails. Do they do any tricks? Can he feed them treats? Rats don't purr and he thinks it would be good if a cat were purring on him, for values of "good" that would not fundamentally alter the situation in any way.
Rats don't purr but they do chitter quietly and twitch their whiskers in what Netra taciturnly describes as a happy way. They'll turn in tight circles for Netra's "Spin!" and "Unspin!" but not his. And sure, she can fetch some frozen yogurt dollops from the fridge for him to give to them, which greatly increases the chittering from Double Double. The others are less noisy about it but Macchiato is very grabby. Haru was kind of wrong about them not having thumbs; their front appendages are much closer to hands than paws, and Macchiato uses hers rather than her mouth when attempting to steal yogis.
This will keep him unhappily occupied for a while. Eventually he is telling the rats the plot of A Midsummer Night's Dream.
After forty minutes of apartmenting Netra's phone dings and she announces that the assistant's on the way up.
"I - oh, right, my uncle gives accurate time estimates even when I don't. Oooooooohhhhhh you have scamperers! And also a problems guy? Hi problems guy."
"Hello, Haru, I'm Ari." She finds a ratless spot on the couch and sits there. Since Cortado has scurried off next to the arm to keep everyone else away from her treat and the other three are on Haru, this puts her rather closer to him than Netra seemed to prefer.
He is currently leaning on "everyone hates me" instead of touch-starvation because rats are very small and do not purr and are not much good for the touch starvation version, whereas as long as they aren't biting him they can't hate him that much. "Do you happen to know why your - uncle? - is a better place to stash a guy with a psychiatric emergency than a hospital would be, I'm still confused about that."
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