Haru apparently doesn't check his phone too frequently when he's not fresh out of a dungeon.

Yeah, legit. He feels a bit bad for scaring Haru away but he thinks it was probably good, overall. 

He's going to go work out, though, because this has been too many concentrated thoughts and feelings.

Don't worry about it on my account!

Is that Haru speaking or is it Mr. Traceless who's responsible for my comfort speaking?

?? I am one person with a codename.

Sorry, bad joke

Half-joke

I mean, should I not worry about it on your account because you would normally not want one to worry about it in such a situation or is it because you are approaching the situation as one where it is fundamentally wrongheaded to think that me suddenly and unexpectedly chasing you out is something that you might get to have opinions about due to your role in our formal relationship?

Huh

1. the exercise was explicitly experimental, having gotten any result that didn't result in, like, fisticuffs, doesn't seem within scope as something to apologize for to me

2. I was not particularly inconvenienced by... leaving your home to go about the rest of my day

3. but also yes within the context of our formal relationship it would be hideously inappropriate of me to cultivate worry-worthy emotional tendencies over you needing normal ass things like "alone time", like, what's next, glowering at you for restocking the toothpaste or something, let's not go there

...hm.

1. Legit

2. It seems like you and I conceptualise this location very differently 

3. When you put it like that it sounds crazy but I suppose we knew that

Your silo, is that better?

The part that's tripping me up is the possessive pronoun there

I tend not to conceptualize myself as having a silo, considering. I admit that I have arranged to purchase the building but I can refer to "my hotel room", say, without owning that building.

Haru, this cottage is lovely but it's not my anything, it's yours and I'm at the most charitable a guest and at the most straightforwardly factual a prisoner

Well, I'm glad you at least think it's lovely

Jaeha supposes he should really take the hint and just not ever go anywhere complicated or deep or raw, Haru—Traceless—has made it pretty clear that they're only ever coworkers and it's just Jaeha that's been trying to force anything beyond that due to his own Issues™.

Well, message heard loud and clear, Traceless. Jaeha's got the rest of his day to get to, too.

Jaeha gets a couple hours' warning that Haru's booked a dungeon before Haru appears in the living room, slightly damp and more than slightly backlashed. "Evening!"

"Evening. How was your day?"

"Okay. Dungeon was misty, I couldn't see for shit in there till I tripped over a victim, it was doing a ghosts thing so I couldn't even catch one."

"Did they manage to find the core?"

Here's dinner: sushi! Not a ton of variety, and Jaeha's sufficiently out of practice that he played it safe and didn't do anything particularly courageous, but he's got good fundamentals.

"Not yet. I bet you it's buried in one of the tombs in there but I wasn't on disinterrment duty. Oooooh sushi! I don't think I've ever had it homemade, it looks minimalistic but Ren - that's my mother, I don't know if her name's come up before - says that's deceptive and in fact it's fiendishly difficult to get right." Nomf.

"It's been a very long time since I've made sushi and I was definitely pretty conservative, here, better to get the basics right than try to do something I'm too rusty to get right and end up with just raw fish on rice."

"What in fact is there to it besides raw fish on rice?" Nomf.

It had never occurred to Jaeha that learning how to cook could end up being so useful as a generator of conversation topics but it does mean he can be a little bit interesting to pass the time while Traceless is very backlashed. He can have some sushi facts to go with his sushi.

yaaaaaaay

After pie (there is of course still pie):

"So it seems like maybe we can dispense with the handcuffs going forward?"

"—ah, yeah. Turns out that the thing I am now, while backlashed, is not in fact a horrible monster, anymore."

"- which is nice to know! - uh, also, unrelatedly, Cricket saw some of our texts over my shoulder, and made me promise to, uh, double check that you are aware that I did not personally arrest you."