"Lucy? It's Traceless."

She ignores him, continuing to fiddle with her puzzle.

”She hasn’t been responding when we try to talk to her,” the nurse supplies.

"Okay, well, she doesn't strictly have to -" He reaches out and touches her hand.

Oh wow that’s nice!!! She drops the puzzle and immediately attempts to plaster herself against Traceless’s side.

"- yes, she's an esper. Uh, I assume based on the wrist restraints there's something more complicated going on than that she won't talk to anyone?"

“She’ll try to grab things out of people’s hands and won’t listen to ‘no.’”

Cricket, draped on Haru's shoulder, jumps down to the floor when the plastering attempts begin.

"Okay, uh, do you have next of kin info to talk about whether I should... bring her home with me? We're compatible and if I get her farther down the backlash scale maybe she'll have some words, but without it I'd want to talk to her parents or whoever." He will hug her though.

“We have her phone—well, we have her roommate and her roommate has her phone—presumably her parents are in the contacts—” 

The nurse nips out to fetch the roommate. The roommate has the phone number for a mom but not a dad.

"Hi, Lucy's roommate, I'm Traceless, can I get you to extract Lucy's mom's phone number from her contacts and get her on the horn for me?"

“Yeah, sure.” She calls Lucy’s mom and hands him the phone.

He pets Lucy's, uh, hair, that seems minimally weird to do in front of people. Pet pet. Ring ring.

Cricket figure-eights around his ankles.

“Hello, love, how’s it going?”

"Hi, Lucy's awakening and can't talk right now, I'm Traceless, I'm an esper, Lucy's roommate asked me to come by and check her and I thought you should have this information."

“—Traceless, huh? How many pictures did Lucy take when the the dungeon took her?”

"I don't know if she took any stills, but if she did she didn't send them to me, I just got video."

“No, it was a trick question. Awakening. Is she alright?”

"She is... calm. I don't know why she can't talk, but she's compatible enough with me to be" trying to climb me like a tree, "positively responsive in that direction and I might be able to get her to a level where she has some words with more time, I called you first thing."

“Thanks, I appreciate it. She’s not having any dangerous medical problems?”

"No, the medics say she'll try to take things out of people's hands but she hasn't tried to grab her phone so far from me."

“Okay. Well. Thank you for being there for her. I didn’t know guiding worked before you were done awakening but it seems, uh, preferable.”

"It works, but it works as though she were constantly using the powers she doesn't have yet at an unsustainable rate, her backlash will keep pulling up to awakening levels any time I'm not holding it down." Does he have to say "so it might be medically indicated for me to carry your daughter off and sleep in the same bed with her for a week" or can that be subtext.

“…I don’t know how much time you have to devote to the project, or what it might entail…”

"Uh - well, awakening lasts a week. She's calm when unguided so I wouldn't consider it necessarily urgent to supervise her twenty-four-seven - I had to have company twenty-four-seven and it was my parents, not even guiding company - but, like, twenty-three-seven, maybe. The reason people espers don't routinely poke everyone in the emergency room is because it'd be overwhelmingly false positives and where it was a true positive it would almost never be a compatible person, not because we, like - we've all been there."