"Can you text Ren for me, she won't answer the phone during school hours," says Haru, passing his phone to Julien. "Just to tell her about your mother coming for dinner."

"Sure."  Oh god what if he says it in a wrong way.  How does Haru talk.  What if he does too good a job at impersonating him and - this is stupid.  "What phrasing?"

"Uh, 'invited Julien's mom for dinner, she'll eat whatever'."

Type type send.

"Thanks." He sits crosslegged in the air and adjusts the guiding position he's in accordingly.

"That's really cool."

"Flying? I like it! I wish it were less expensive, I basically only do it tactically. Do you know what powers you want? They'll be somehow sort of opposite to your backlash if you squint but sometimes you have to squint pretty hard."

"Something that... makes me trustworthy?  Somehow?  That would be nice.  Or is that twice opposite instead of once.  And how would it even work."

"That's a little bit twice opposite but not so weird that I'd urgently fact-check it if I ran into it on Wikipedia. It'd be a psychic type power, like my partner's, she makes monsters chase her and ignore everybody else."

"I wouldn't want to make people believe incorrectly that I was trustworthy!"  Cling!  "How often do people hate their powers -"

"Some powers are just objectively kind of disappointing especially after a hell week? I think it's pretty unusual to just hate your power even in principle but it's not unheard of."

"But psychics are really rare to begin with..."  But wouldn't it be just his luck.

"Psychic isn't a bright line natural category, like, me you could argue either way, I'm not invisible to cameras, only to senses that belong to a person or a monster or I guess an animal."

"...............What is your deal, actually?"  How embarrassing, how stupid, to have not at any point actually looked this up.  That kind of carelessness is going to get him killed.

"Selectively imperceptible, psychic dungeon and monster effects bounce off me, plus flying - when I'm trying to explain how that one ties in conceptually I land on 'if I really don't want a dungeon to touch me, even with the floor, it doesn't' but obviously I can still fly in other situations."

"Huh."  Heeeeee's going to get something awful.  Or something fine that pairs really poorly with paranoia.  And he won't be able to be careful enough forever and he'll hurt so many people.

"The likeliest way I go down in the field is if I compulsively introduce myself to a monster, probably."

"Oh no..."  But so much better to go down yourself out of friendliness than to hurt a bunch of people out of misplaced mistrust.  Really so much better.  "I think you should stop hovering.  I have - really a lot of reading I have to do if I want to understand - anything.  My classes really haven't gone into much at all about how dungeons and espers work.  Yet; I think there's a required class on it that I just haven't taken."

Haru lands. "They require classes on it? - why is it you want me to stop hovering, if it's just that you're not going to be able to talk to me while you read I can get Cricket."

"It's just that.  I don't know if I'll be able to read if there's conversation happening at all, though."

"Legit, in that case I should at least come down to the point I can get by on reading blog comments and texting."

"Thank you."

"No thanks are necessary, I actually just love being sane from a purely selfish perspective."

"Well then thank you for making yourself insane for me."  Wow he is going to owe SO much to Haru after this.  Also already?  Aaaaaaa what if Haru gets fed up with him and then takes him back to the hospital and he gets so much crazier without guiding and they don't know how to handle him and he does something really horrible.  Previously he wasn't really thinking about the hospitality aspect because when everything was fake - when he THOUGHT everything was fake, that's such an important distinction - when he THOUGHT everything was fake, then obviously they were using the same amount of stuff to make his environment pretty much no matter what.  Everything was already, he thought, for his benefit.  - Not for his benefit?  For his malefit? -  Against his benefit.  And now that he knows that things are real, it probably makes sense to try and at all keep track of how much debt, social and costwise, he's racking up.

"Eh, I do it all the time professionally, don't worry about it."