"If you want to do another block today I have some monster captures lined up and will want guiding after, but I can sit with my regular partner if you'd sooner be overnights only."

"Whatever works best for you."

"Okay, if I don't come back I'm with her," he shrugs. Laptopping laptopping.

"Understood."

...but is he going to just stay here or...

Yup after a bit he bags the laptop and teleports away.

Okay cool. Now...

...he needs to buy ingredients because if he has a choice he will not be eating waffles for breakfast. He does not see what the big deal is about Canadian maple syrup, anyway.

Plus, he is extremely bored, and if he doesn't find something to occupy his time with he might go insane. He's not sure how he survived being in prison that long, but something about being out is making every aspect of his existence unbearable. Which is just deserts, really, but he continues to be a selfish person despite it all, so he will try to make his existence a little bit more bearable.

Traceless is back four hours later! He's got a bandage on one wrist and is, as usual when backlashing, on the phone. "All good? Yeah. - so, is enclosure eighteen still free? Double check the roof net but I think it's roomy enough. Try them in there and start rotating through the set dressing and see what they like." He waves at Jaeha once he's put his bag down. "And my guess would be that they'll be carnivorous but if we've got perytons that eat hay then we've got perytons that eat hay, try stuff and we'll figure it out. No, of course keep the shutters closed till - yeah. I'm going to ask Cricket to swing by, yeah, it's not going to work but if we skipped it and then it turned out it would've I'd feel so stupid. Yeah. Probably this afternoon but he's in the middle of some anime and might not want to interrupt till a season break or something in which case probably tomorrow morning."

Jaeha has made lunch. It is chicken picatta. He thinks he messed up the seasoning but it's probably acceptable.

Traceless sniffs the air and smiles a little. "Yeah, absolutely. No, of course you should call them 'perytons' in the copy. Anyone who knows what that means will be excited about it and anyone who doesn't wouldn't be more excited about the dungeon's ID number, come on. - wow, really, again? Okay, send me aquarium guy's number and I will personally hassle him, it's a disgrace that we don't have a saltwater setup yet."

What the fuck are they talking about.

...it doesn't matter. It's not any of his business, and he shouldn't be nosy. He can serve Traceless some food.

"- oh wow okay apparently there is catering here, I'll talk to you tomorrow but do send me aquarium guy's number. Bye!" He hangs up. "I was assuming that was all for you, you don't have to fix me lunch!"

"...I'll put it away if you've already eaten."

"I haven't, I packed a sandwich and was planning to just eat it in bed once I'd come down enough to be off the phone. This smells amazing, thank you!"

"Ah. Sure." ...be polite. "You're welcome." And he will also eat, yes.

Nomf. "Oh, it's yummy - sorry, I talk with my mouth full when I'm backlashed, I'm working on sign language but it's not fork-friendly and also would only help if you knew it -"

"I don't mind it. And no sign language, here," though maybe he should learn—Kang Jaeha your people pleaser tendencies. Chill.

"Sign's very linguistically interesting but I almost never run into opportunities to use it organically so it's harder to keep up with than the French and the Tagalog, and I'm putting off a deep dive into Korean for now, so we have some material when you're up to dungeons and I can't bother my entire contacts list with my chatterboxness. I probably already told you that, sorry."

...oh no he's cute and Jaeha is gay, that's a problem. 

"It's fine," he says, and that might be the first time he's told Traceless that and meant it. "You did mention wanting to learn Korean, yes, but I'm not sure I know why...?"

"Practicing a language is a sweet spot for my backlash, I'm an introvert underneath and can get pretty sick of myself about it so I turn as much of the socialization firehose on things I can agree with myself later are good uses of time as possible. Interviews for the blog, work calls, bothering the aquarium guy about why he can't keep an appointment, studying languages. It's never going to be Chinese because most of the difficulty in Chinese is learning to read and I really dislike the idea of learning to speak but not read a language, but Korean's got Hangul which is a real standout in terms of alphabet elegance, and once we're tromping around dungeons out of cell service range, if we have nothing else to talk about, I can start asking you for vocabulary and sentence patterns."