"What I mean is - I'm planning to get back to dungeoning day after tomorrow, I got more downtime than I budgeted for during your awakening, and I can just go sit with June like usual but if you're up for it you'd be a lot more efficient even if you don't wanna kiss me."

"...but like it's okay if you want to take a long vacation or if it depends on what your powers are or if you're sick of me, of course."

"Uh, bwuh, I - hi.  I just went from remembering that I also have real social anxiety underneath the fake mind control social anxiety, to - I'm not sick of you."

"Glad to hear it."

"I'm trying to figure out whether I could have predicted this in advance... and I think the answer is just - yes, oh my god obviously?  And yet."

"I mean, I didn't want to make it a thing while you were under a whole pile of psychological awakening backlash, that would have been fucked up!"

"You did say you weren't going to make it weird.  And I would say succeeded."

"Yay for me." Why is his thinky face so cute. It's because they are thinking about kissing each other probably good job Haru answering your own question.

"I think - the correct and necessary amount of 'no' needed to shut me down at the beginning was just, really quite a lot, and - lingered..."

"I think I said 'next week'!"

"Wait really??  I legitimately, literally don't remember that.  I guess there was a lot going on."

"I wasn't transcribing the conversation or anything but I'm pretty sure! Something something you can rack up stupid amounts of backlash next week if you want to then?"

"I sure can, probably.  - I should go get my thinking out of the way.  Hug?"

Haru is wearing a shirt today but he will totally hug Julien, yes.

Just a regular fabricked hug!  Like they're normal people!  Wow.

"Okay see you in a bit -"  And he scoops his laptop and heads back to the guest room.

Okay, how does he go about this.  He - puts on a shirt, first of all.  To be normal with.  And he opens up a new document and starts making a bulleted list.

What are all the things that made him think something was off, initially.  His bus being on time, people looking at him or not on the bus, his coworker being excited about her vacation?  His bus is just, yeah, sometimes on time.  He examines the memories of the people on it and compares it to other bus rides he remembers and yeah, that's just the same.  Aliya's usually grumpy but the thing is that vacations are exciting and cheering.  The customers were pretty normal too, except for muffin guy who was in fact insane, but the thing is that one does occasionally get the insane customer or two.  There are just a lot of people who patronize Starbucks and some of them are bound to be weirdos.

Nobody killed or tortured him on the street, and somebody called an ambulance for him and then to a first approximation the result of the ambulance was not torture, and then - Haru.

If things had gone even slightly differently about him thinking the universe was pressuring him into sex, that might have been some evidence, but in fact the shut-down was incredibly effective and none of the framings that assume that was what was going on hold any weight without snapping.  So - yeah, obviously he was just fucking awakening and everything is as it was, and he knew that already but now he knows for sure that he knows that.

Emerge.  "Okay, I'm done considering evidence that I actually did get sucked into a simulation a week ago!  Guess what, I didn't."  Hug again?

Hug! "I can't claim to be shocked. I didn't realize that needed reassessment, my delusions dissolve as soon as I get ahold of reality again - is the idea it'll be useful to consult your reasoning again in the future?"

"Maybe that also!  But like, it just seemed like I should run my big assumptions about the world on thinking instead of purely on embarrassment."

"Valid. - so do you have any inkling what your powers might be, it's often possible to feel out the edges without using them."

"Hm..."  He closes his eyes and thinkingly pokes around at different things inside his head.  There's - it seems like if he wanted more of something he could have it, but it's not immediately clear what.  Eyes open.  "The thing is that I spent all week being intolerably curious about this, and now I'm like.  The thing is that it's so good not to be backlashed.  Or, it's not that I'm not still very very curious, but -"  ...Oh.  Oh, it's that he's afraid to find out because what if it's bad.  He's being avoidant.  "Yeah."

"I'm right here, and guiding'll stick, now, but - yeah, understandable to wait."

"No, I'm totally gonna do it, I just..."  Should he kiss Haru first??  Probably he should ask this with his mouth words but in order to determine that he should look at Haru's face and determine whether that's the vibe.  It would actually be really great if he could get a really, really super confident guess about whether that's the vibe, first, before deciding to ask.