"Okay. Do you think that even when you're more backlashed you might be able to browse, like, shopping websites, and pick some out, and not buy them yourself since they wouldn't show up here but leave the information about which you like somewhere I can see it?"

“Hmmm. I think I can…leave myself an instruction sheet, for doing that? Worth a shot.”

"Sounds good. Texting me links works."

"I can work with that. Do you have, like, actual paper, and a marker would be better than a pen for this."

"Yeah - well, paper, yes, I'm not positive about markers - do you want to come with me to get it?"

"You can take a marker out of the bag in the backseat of my car if you need one!"

"Ah, okay, thanks Mom - yes markers also, why is a marker better than a pen?"

"More eye-catching."

"Gotcha. I do have a red pen, but apparently there are markers." Hup. Will she come upstairs to get a blank spiral notebook and then to Ren's car in the garage for a marker?

She sure will! 

Once she has both, she tears a page out of the notebook and writes, in red marker:

TO OBTAIN OBJECTS, GO TO: AMAZON.COM, ETSY.COM, 

INPUT ITEM LINK TO TEXT SCREEN WITH "ESPER AWAKENING"

And now dinner's on the table.

And Lucy has managed to get juuuust unbacklashed enough that, with some squinting around, she can tentatively identify twenty-minutes-saying-person and thank them!

"You're welcome, dear!"

Okay good now food eating. Yum. No offense to instant ramen but real food is tastier. 

It's flanksteak in a nice marinade and a side of roasted potatoes and bag salad.

Oh that's really nice. 

It's a little harder to keep high contact snuggling going while they try to eat but Haru will do his best.

Lucy is willing to go slightly lower contact temporarily in pursuit of appreciating this meal! Steak isn’t something she can afford to have often.

Haru's also sitting, entirely, in the chair; she will probably get more rather than less backlashed over the course of the meal, if slowly. He and Ren talk about Ren's stitch'n'bitch meetup.

She starts out half listening to this conversation and it rapidly progresses to zero. Partway through she gets out her phone and puts on a podcast about bugs.

...inconvenient for having a spoken conversation but he can text Ren, and other people he knows, while the backlash continues to drop, and then get back on the couch and snuggle up a bit more thoroughly when they've finished eating. Ren grabs the delivered bag of Lucy possessions from the doorstep, when it arrives, and puts it up in the guest room. Haru reads the comments and lets himself get back down to zero because it doesn't seem likely that Lucy's going to be very much conversational help with letting him sleep backlashed.

She would apologize for this, but, well.

Indeed.

He catches up on all his emails and brushes Cricket and then attempts to steer her through a bedtime routine without looking at anything he would rather she not remember him having looked at.

It is deeply fortunate that it’s not warm enough that she opts to sleep naked!

He can get a pretty good look at the contents of her care package while she’s going through it. It contains:

-A variety of clothing

-Miscellaneous hygiene items 

-Two brand-new smallish jigsaw puzzles, plastic packaging still intact

-A couple of fidget toys

-A roll of condoms and a packet of lube

............okay he's not going to text Rosy a lot of interrobangs and "I am not taking advantage of your roommate!", though he will think about it really really hard; but he is going to move those objects into a drawer without making it obvious to Lucy which drawer he has chosen because he doesn't really want her to think, while she is incapable of recalling that he's a person, that she should take advantage of him!