"That's good then. Let's see... this way." He checks his phone for map directions and they turn right. "I haven't actually been to this place before, I think it opened or moved or something recently."

"How often do you get hurt?  Is it mostly from dungeons?"

"I get hurt so much less often than I did before I awakened, actually, I had this balance problem awakening fixed right up and before that I had to be hypervigilant on stairs, I had a literal wheelchair mostly for use in the winter or if I'd wrecked my ankle recently or something. But yes, when I do get hurt it is mostly from dungeons."

"Do you know whether you get hurt more or less than most espers?"

"Well, a lot of espers don't dungeoneer at all, I get hurt more often than those. Per dungeon I think I get hurt way less, because I'm stealthing the whole time, and I've got my holdout power if something blunders into me."

"Is 'holdout power' a term of art?"

"Not really, I'm analogizing from 'holdout weapon' - I don't usually advertise it."

"I don't know what that is either."

"Oh, it's if you expect your weapons to be noticed or confiscated and aren't about not having one on you so you conceal, like, a tiny pistol or something."

"Ohhh.  And you mean - I still don't know which part of your power you mean."

"Going through stuff. It's expensive and threatening and risky to use."

"Yeah.  Sense.  ...Were you not fast enough with the guy who bit you or - was it a choice, to let him."

"I'm selective in terms of what things, not in terms of parts of things, so if I'd tried to stop him that way he would have fallen right through my arms onto the floor. Instead I didn't drop him but I had to squeeze him pretty tight to keep him from doing it again."

"Oh."  Leeeean.  (It was Haru's left arm and Julien's very definitely on his right, right?  Right.)

Right. Haru is perfectly happy to have him lean.

Hmmmm.

"Do you think I'm going to freak out in public and mess this up for you?"

"No, not especially. You seem very good at acting normal through backlash when that's what you're trying to do and I trust you to be trying to do it."

"Oh."  ...Walking at this much of an angle is pretty hard when his body feels as bad, generically, as it currently does.  He straightens up.  "It's a lot easier with you around.  Except for - I think I could have gone all week, at Starbucks.  If I hadn't decided everything was poisoned."

"Yeah, that seems like a pretty inconvenient belief to settle on, anything that directly interferes with managing your needs is."