"Who's the other one?"

"June and Sparkler and Sparkler's partner Arctic all go around wearing tinted glasses and goggles a lot."

"That's a lot of nickels.  I'm kind of hoping I'll be able to develop better control and won't need to for long, though."

"I wish you luck. I think those three all do it for backlash management reasons from the other end, but I don't have a whole lot of details."

"Mm.  I think I'll try and practice some more once I'm zeroed out?  ...Also, the way I'm imagining this going is that if it works, I might want to pick up a lot of backlash listening to the dungeon, and we should still probably keep to makeouts until we've had a chance to try sober sex."

"Yeah, makes sense. Uh, is there a complication where you might pick up backlash during attempted sober sex and if so would you just figure it'd be gone soon enough or want to back up?"

"I think...  I'm fine with incidental amounts, but if I'm picking up a lot something is clearly going wrong and we should stop and troubleshoot that."

"Okay. Do you see that happening before or after my next dungeon, not counting the one they're logging that we're visiting now?"

Annnd that's zero.  Hand back to himself, eyes open.  "Before?"

"Like tonight? Another sleepover or nah?"

"Sometime today or tonight seems good; it seems better to unlock the option sooner than later.  And then we can see where we are time-wise, whether I want to make my way back across town."

"Sounds like a plan."

"It'll be nice to sleep in my own bed again.  ........It doesn't seem obvious whether I should drop out of college, at this point?"

"Your call. You don't need it to land a job."

"Yeah, I'm just like, if I can advance the field of materials science by knowing more about it when I go into dungeons, and like, can look at the floor materials really closely or something, and have a better shot at figuring out what's useful....."

"Is that the kind of thing that's usefully done in the field?"

"I mean, people are doing tests to determine how to prioritize excavation for sure.  And if I can do that on the fly somehow, to lots and lots of specific materials, then - that seems maybe big.  ...But not bigger than being able to listen to dungeons; if I can do that I should probably just drop out immediately and spend all my time on that."

"Yeah. Maybe ask your professors or advisor or whatever if there's a course of study that'd work well toward that?"

"Yeah.  ...Man, I could plausibly meet Levity now, if I wanted to, thinking about espers with mat sci contributions.  I've always felt that, uh.  - Never mind, actually."

"The... gravity guy?"

"The gravity guy!  Yeah."

"It's not always trivial to get an introduction to a specific esper even if you are one but it does help."

"Makes sense.  I just think he's really cool, even though powers are all just luck.  But like it still speaks well of him that he does as much as he does with them."

"Yeah. I don't think his operating area's nearby, though."

"No, he's in like New Mexico or something.  But I think he travels a lot?"