"How can you be sure he's not about to recidivize? We haven't exactly had a live fire test yet."

"...that one's kind of hard to answer concretely. I guess—in the more, uh, 'micro' level, so to speak, I have infected him with a mind virus that makes him allergic to using his power as a social crutch. —not a literal one, I don't have that ability, I just made him have the same realisation I did that made the idea feel suddenly and irreversibly toxic. So that's a start."

"That's good but I'm more thinking about dungeons than social situations."

"...dungeons?"

"...as the most salient example of when he'd have the bracelet off and be around people and using his power."

"Oh. That... kind of doesn't matter to him? I—so, social situations are the single most important trigger, here. The way it all started, the way it went downhill, was Nightmare making him feel insecure in his relationship, and then him getting paranoid about social situations. We used to use our power constantly, me before Persimmon and him before Lee Tae-gun, all the time, on everyone, to know what they're feeling, to come off as charming, as nice, as funny, as interesting, as insightful. All the time. That's where the danger lies. And if he feels as repulsed by the idea now as I do, then he just... won't."

"You were using your power on him, though?"

"With his consent. And not for that. I was using my power on him because he knows he's prickly and has a bunch of triggers and latches onto things in unhelpful ways and he doesn't like being that way and doesn't want that to get in the way of other stuff he wants but just not wanting it doesn't make him actually able to stop."

"And the power use did... what about that exactly?"

"Skipped over the triggers, found better ways to tell him things that would make him understand them rather than get hung up on specific bits of phrasing or find ways to make it about how much he sucks and doesn't deserve anything good in his life, figured out the right order in which to present facts and arguments..."

"Do I need to be worried about the bits of phrasing and triggers thing?"

Wobbly hand gesture. "If you do choose to follow my advice about skipping past the 'wait hold on I'm his parole officer' barrier it will be a lot less of a problem because you're really quite expressive but the only thing that'll get it to be zero a problem will be quite a lot of notebooking. He's got undiagnosed social anxiety on top of everything else and it often feels safer to pick words apart in his brain than engage with whatever it is that he's avoiding engaging with at the time, but once he puts it on paper he can't escape the fact that his feelings do not match reality and that's cringe and there's nothing in the world that is worse than being cringe."

"That's... hm."

"So dysfunctional, but he doesn't want to be rude."

"So dysfunctional! But it's dysfunctional in a very fixable way, at least if you consider me to be positive evidence in that direction, which when I'm feeling like flattering myself I like to do."

"Persimmon seems extremely fond of you."

"And that is even stronger evidence."

"...oh, I wish I had thought of this kind of situation in advance of it becoming relevant. Nothing to it, there's something I kind of want to say but I'm not sure if it's a good idea to say it and I'd like Persimmon's opinion on both that and phrasing but I recognise that me having said this would make you curious about what it is and I don't have a good procedure for it."

"Just subtitle it at me?"

"Can do."

("What I want to say is that my alt would feel really strongly motivated to fix himself for Maple in sort of but not exactly the same way I did for you, which I expect Maple would find romantic in theory but I'm not sure my alt would go to the same lengths I did and I also don't want to lay it on too thick even if I ship it.")

Haru subvocalizes back - "Maybe frame it as, rather than a prediction, an existence proof of dating-a-Haru being really good for a Jaeha by way of personal anecdote?"

("I'm not sure I understand what you mean. Maybe you could say it? Or coach me.")

"I can't say it, it's encouraging if you say it, it's bragging if I do it. Just like, the - story of your self-improvement project and how I motivated it."

("Works.")

"Alright, sorry for the break. So the thing is, I guess part of my optimism is that, uh, having Haru—having Persimmon around and—falling for him was really strongly motivating?" He considers then discards the idea of mentioning The List specifically because his alt will almost certainly not go that far and he doesn't want to spoil their chances by raising the bar that high. "I wanted to be, to become someone he'd be proud of, and someone who was actually worthy of him. And that was a really important component of—well, going from dysfunctional to not that, at least, but quite a lot more than just that."

"More than that?"