"How about you simply don't do any terribly unethical abuse of esper powers! You're on the wagon!"

"—it was joke. I will use my powers on him but it'll be fully consensual."

("Who does this asshole think he is.")

"You, but better adjusted, happier, kinder, and a lot less traumatised besides."

"Oh, in that case sure, I'll be on hand."

"Thank you, Haru-ya." He gives his Haru one quick kiss, the other Haru (?????) a wave, then drags his alt into a room.

He supposes this might as well be what happens next.

"Come on, Jaeha, sit," he says, switching to Korean, "don't just stand there, that looks exhausting."

"...wow."

"Hmm?"

"If I'd known how much I sound like Father I'd have offed myself a decade ago."

("What does 'ya' mean?"

"Korean endearment."

"Oh...")

"Oooh, burn! Unfortunately I know for a fact I sound substantially more like Nam Hee-seo."

"...w...what?"

Hmm.

"How do you feel about undos?"

"...what? No, hold on, about Nam Hee-seo—"

"I'm going to tell you about her, don't worry, but I don't like this conversational branch."

"...wow." Better? Kinder? He's exactly the same horrible monster after all, just better at hiding—

"As I'm sure your internal narration would eventually get, I am asking for consent here, and the end result is gonna be better by your own lights, but since I don't want to wait until you get there on your own can we just skip it?"

"I GUESS."

"Thank you! It'll be worth it I promise." Oh boy he hasn't done this in forever he's excited. 

Undo.

"Sit?" he says, switching to Korean. "I'm going to yell at you but there's no reason for you to be uncomfortable throughout."

Wow, did he always sound this smarmy?

"Sorry, can't really help it."

...well, he could, if he used his powers, which he's—currently not? Even though he said he was going to? Not that Jaeha would be able to tell, obviously, but...

He sits down.

"So. ...you've really been through it, huh?"

He scoffs then sighs. "Tell me about it."

"I'm so, so sorry."

Another scoff. "Yeah, I'm fucking sorry too that all it takes for me not to abuse a kid and stalk him for five years and try to get his partner killed is having the right fucking Canadian dropped on my lap at the right fucking time."

"Yeah. I... gotta say that's scary to look at. And I can see how it happened, too, how all of those tendencies in me would end up like that in those circumstances."

"It was fine! It was just fine! He loved me, I loved him, he wasn't about to leave me, wasn't, wasn't—"

"Jaeha."

He stops.

"It wasn't your fault."

"Oh that's bullshit and you know it. It certainly wasn't Lee Tae-gun's fault. Or Nightmare's." He made the choices he made. He did. While clear of backlash.

"Fine, it was proximally your fault. You did make the choices you made, and you were clear of backlash when you made them—"

(How does he know exactly what Jaeha's thinking? Is he using his powers? Or is Jaeha's more well-adjusted self just a lot more able to understand him than vice-versa? He supposes he just cannot imagine being this—together—whereas it's not like his current state of mind was unimaginable seven years ago.)

"—but you still slid down the backlash slippery slope because of a much smaller mistake, and you—Jaeha, we're fucked up."

"No shit we're fucked up."

"Not like that. We were raised by a neglectful, overbearing, controlling, homophobic sociopath who was incapable of love, into a toxic environment where we had to be constantly on the lookout for people trying to hurt us, use us, or both, where no one was ever truly genuine, where we had no possibility of real human connection and no opportunity to learn to recognise it even if we saw it.

"Yes we were filthy rich, so we didn't lack for material comfort, but it turns out humans are social animals and we needed more than that. Hell, maybe we needed more of that than other people to, but that doesn't make us weak. People are different. If we'd been raised in a more normal environment we might still need some therapy but we wouldn't be the control freaks we are, we'd have had more ability to deal with all of the shit we've had thrown at us without completely breaking down the way we're wont to do."

"Wow, did you write that speech in advance or did you erase my memory until you got it perfect?"

"Not telling! If I erased your memory I assure you I got your consent for it."

Smarmy asshole.

"But the more important component of that speech was the therapy, both external and internal. My first therapist was alright if a bit homophobic, but I eventually found someone I vibe with a lot more. Plus, I'll need to tell you about the joys of notebooking, which I assume your Haru hasn't told you about yet."

"He's not my anything," you simp.

"...Jaeha. Look at me."

Fine. What.

"I forgive you."

oh

"I forgive you," he repeats. "You did some absolutely horrible shit, you went through a nightmare the magnitude of which I can't even begin to imagine, you caused so much suffering—and you're not going to do it again. Not just because of the bracelet and house arrest, and not just because of Haru. Even without the bracelet, you wouldn't have wanted to touch your powers ever again, would you?"

"No. Never. I—but I'm still the same—"

"And so am I, and I wouldn't do that. Like you said, a Canadian was enough. Circumstances and experiences affect us, sometimes permanently, and not only in negative ways. 

"You don't need to atone. You're not religious, the concept doesn't make sense anyway. And you don't deserve to suffer—no one does. Suffering is never a good thing, no matter who's doing the suffering. And you also don't need to be on your guard for when the next time you'll be a monster will happen. It won't happen. You're a person, and you deserve compassion, too."

"You're such a condescending jerk."

"I'm being genuine, Jaeha."

"That doesn't change anything."

"I forgive you, so you can forgive yourself, too."

That's extremely easy for him to say—

"That's extremely easy for me to say, I wasn't there. I wasn't the one who abused and traumatised the man I loved out of petty jealousy and insecurity, who gaslit him and isolated him and made him paranoid about ever trusting anyone but me. I wasn't the one who listened, who believed it when Nightmare lied to me again and again and again, the one who never told him I'm not immune to Nightmare after all even after I realised it was wronging him to omit it. I'm not the one who got home after a dungeon, backlashed, saw a message from Tae-gun telling me to never contact him again as well as official notice that I was fired from Quasar, and immediately thought that confirmed my fears, rather than being my fault. I wasn't the one who stopped every single possible other partner of his from ever meeting him through extensive use of my carefully-crafted information network. I wasn't the one who abused some completely unrelated kid, an innocent boy who loved me and whom I didn't need to involve except for convenience, who played him and his anxieties to make sure he'd never ever leave until I grew tired of him. I wasn't the one who obsessed. I wasn't the one who saw someone who could finally heal the man I loved and hated her. I wasn't the one who tormented her. I wasn't the one who tried to get her killed. It wasn't me. None of that was me. That was you.

"I wasn't there, I can't understand the, the size of it. The magnitude of how horrible it all was. It's just a story, to me. It happened to someone else, but I can't really understand. I can definitely never, ever understand what it felt like after you woke up. What it felt like with the backlash gone, the sudden weight of it all hitting me all at once. The horror and disgust, the revulsion at remembering the anger I felt when I saw she had saved his life, or the glee I felt when I thought she was dead. At remembering how much I had hated this woman who was nothing but good to him. At remembering how much I had hated Min Woo-young, who was better for him than I could ever be. I'll never be able to understand that. I'm not a monster; you are. I got myself fixed; you didn't. You're still the same small, pathetic little thing that did all of that, the same scared, selfish, self-centered, cowardly little worm that did all of that. I did all of that therapy? Well fucking good for me, isn't it, now I get to be with my boy, I get to live an unbroken life, I get a fucking autumn wedding in fucking Canada and I get to be happy, forever, because I never got that broken.

"And now that you're that broken, there is no coming back. It doesn't matter if I forgive you, I wasn't there, I didn't live it, any of it, what right do I even have to forgive you? What power? And why would you deserve it anyway? You're still broken. You've always been broken, and you're never not going to be broken. You're useless, and the best anyone could ever do with you is make you useful, make something out of you that'll be good for the world, because you can't trust yourself, ever. You can't trust yourself to ever make a good decision again. You're tainted. You're wrong. Forever and ever."

He takes a deep breath.

"Is that about the size of it?"

nod

"I forgive you anyway."

Twitch.

"...but also that? All of that? Is ridiculous."

He flinches and looks up, eyes widening at the unexpected tone shift.

"You know what's pathetic? What's really, really pathetic? That you somehow manage to produce all of that, all of that pile of complete, utter bullshit, and you eat it all up like it's fucking ice cream. I can't understand it? None of it? Kang Jaeha, stop feeling sorry for yourself. Yeah, you're a fucking coward, and you play that whole thing in your head and pretend it's courage but it's just hiding again."

"—hey, fuck you—"

"No, shut the fuck up. You? Are an idiot. You're the biggest idiot I have ever met in my fucking life, and I'd know, because I'm you. I mean, oh my God? Can you even listen to yourself? Were you trying to garner sympathy? Get points with the audience? Maybe if you're sad and pathetic enough you get to exist a little? Grow the fuck up, man."

"I—"

"Which part of shut up did you not get? I said shut up. I'm the one talking now. Yes, yes, I was the one talking then, too, but we both know we were just listening to you talk. Now it's my turn. You're a drama queen. You're not pathetic; you're cringe."

Ow.

"You wanna get roasted? Really get roasted? Not just in the safe little self-effacing mouselike way you're always doing, in the way that hurts? This is it, then. You're cringe. You're incapable of controlling how people see you and it makes you look bad. You're desperately looking for validation from one guy and you keep self-sabotaging because you're terrified of—what? Absolutely fucking nothing is what, because you've got nothing. You've got nothing! And you've got nothing to lose! Haru could send you to prison with a phone call? Well boo fucking hoo, your life is so great now, wouldn't want to ruin it, right, except oh wait, you can't even appreciate the beautiful cottage you got given because you're too busy feeling sorry for yourself and trying to make him agree with you that you're an irredeemable piece of trash in turns. You're tying yourself up in knots because that's easier than figuring out how to communicate effectively, and you invent bogeymen in your head to stand in for Haru because it's easier to picture him as some masked evil stranger than someone who could genuinely look at you and actually judge you. It's better, safer if you just pretend you already know his judgment, and that his judgment is exactly the judgment you want it to be, than to actually find out what it is, except, wait, here's another knot, you're also desperate to know it anyway."

ow ow ow ow ow ow

"So, yeah, Kang Jaeha, I've looked at you, and I've judged you, and I don't judge you an irredeemable monster, I judge you funny. I judge you laughable. I judge you undignified. You're ridiculous, and you're over-the-top, and there is no world where you come out looking good. You've already lost every single shred of respect I could hold for you. Funny little man."

why is that the shit that makes him feel like crying

"Now I'm going to tell you a couple of secrets.

"Number one: using your powers is a crutch and it doesn't make you good at social skills, it just makes you mask it and then never get good at social skills. That's also kinda cringe, thinking about it, right?"

"...what?"

"Now do you feel tempted, at all, to use your powers in any social situation? I know you already felt like they burnt your skin; but do you still feel tempted, knowing that every time you do, you're being kinda cringe and just generally bad at stuff?"

"You motherfucker."

"You're welcome~

"Anyway, number two: Haru is like the only person in the world I would trust to be able to actually do the thing he's doing right now, including the part where he can have a mostly-normal social relationship with you despite, yes, being your parole officer."

"You're just a simp."

"I'm being objective about this. Like, actually. You've met a lot more people than me, obviously, but you'd already met lots of people seven years ago and you know I have, too. There is no one I have ever met who'd be able to pull this shit off better than him. He can and he will be your friend if you want him to be."

"Why would he—"

"—want that? You've got nothing going for you. Objectively speaking, you suck. You're boring, you've got no hobbies, you're a literal criminal, he is literally your parole officer, he has a billion other friends, even if he's under some insane delusion about your suitability as a social peer while he's backlashed that doesn't make it okay for you to take advantage of him that way. It would in fact kind of qualify as abusive on your part to manipulate his backlashed self into spending more time with you by playing the emotionally wounded card, even though you recognise you've kinda been doing exactly that.

"Kang Jaeha? That. Is. Cringe. Listen to yourself for ten seconds, for God's sake."

Well he's kinda being forced to do exactly that isn't he!!!!!

"As for the actual answer, he'd want that because... it turns out you're pretty cool, actually? You're smart, and you learn things quickly, and when you acquire opinions they're often good ones, and you have quite a lot of skills he doesn't that he finds interesting. You two vibe. Or you could vibe. Like, yeah, I am a simp, but it turns out? Our personalities are pretty compatible. ...well, I did do some surgery to mine—"

"Is that why you sound like a fucking nerd?"

"Sure is! But I think honestly the trauma from breaking out of your backlash might've done a lot of the necessary editing. And Haru will find it so flattering if you become more interesting for his sake, that's also a good solid leg a friendship can stand on."

"...that's cringe."

"...hmm. You're right, it is." Undo.

"Sure is! But you don't need to make yourself sound like a nerd or anything, it just kinda happened. Regardless, it will turn out by God's providence that you guys will vibe pretty well. And it will work better rather than worse if you're honest, actually one hundred percent honest."

"I've been honest—"

"Bullshit. You've said some things that felt scary to say but were still less scary than the things you didn't say, and when he didn't immediately follow up on the things you kind of implied you just assumed he thought the worst of you and didn't care anyway and you went to bed like that."

"Number three! Write shit down. Where by shit I mean whatever passes for 'thoughts' and 'feelings' inside that stupid idiot head of yours. You saw how stupid it sounded when I told you all your thoughts out loud? Writing them down works just as well, it turns out, and then you can stare at the words you somehow produced and realise how cringe they are and decide to instead become someone who is not that cringe. I kid you not, that's, like, eighty-five percent of what I mean when I talk about the therapy I've been doing. I have benefitted from an actual therapist, a bit, but this kind of self-analysis? Works wonders with the insane bullshit we've both got going on in our heads. I know you feel like no one should waste a therapist on you and that's, like, fine, you'll get over that eventually I'm sure, but while you don't, weaponising our overactive sense of mortification and embarrassment to become good functional members of society who can effect positive change in the world is," he kisses the tips of his fingers, "mwah, chef's kiss."

"...that's cringe."

"No, it's not, you're just saying that because you know that when you start doing it you will feel cringe at yourself. Rip the bandaid off, Kang Jaeha, it'll be easier that way. Or don't. It doesn't matter, I know the curiosity will eat you alive and even though you feel spiteful of me saying this right now you'll still do it because you don't want to be broken."

"You're not really selling the 'better and kinder and more well-adjusted' thing, you know."

"You're funny, little man. It's funny how you're trying to deflect. And, God, you're so bad at lying, you really should stop doing that. You're trying to feel mad at me because if you feel grateful you might start crying."

"Number four, and I think this is the last one: stop reading and inserting subtext into everything. If you want to talk about something, talk about it. If you feel like there was a conspicuous omission, bring it up, it was almost certainly not on purpose and it was certainly not trying to manipulate you or make fun of you or any of the myriad other things you thought."

"Just how many times did you replay this conversation until you got all of that out of me?"

"Not telling! But if that did happen, I assure you I got your consent to do it."

"...did you."

"Yeah. Now come here, you're touch starved and need a hug, I'm going to tell you all about how cool our mother and younger sister are."

Meanwhile the Harus are (from a safe distance) plotting. Mostly this is taking the form of the older one passing on lots of future information, his smugness about his various accomplishments tempered by how graciously the younger one is failing to bring up his superior romantic situation.

And eventually Jaeha the younger re-emerges and homes in on his Haru via some combination of ineffable body language perception, being able to tell ages apart, and remembering where his Haru had been seated earlier. He will plop himself onto a seat next to his Haru and await a moment of less active conversation to say things.

His Haru smiles at him in a confirmatory sort of way but is not as demonstratively affectionate as he normally would be. Maybe to avoid exacerbating the other Haru's wistfulness.

"I think I may have gotten my alt to become substantially less of an idiot and then I taught him how to do notebooking so he's doing that now. Presumably when he's done he'll show up here to offer you," older Haru, "an apology and an explanation. Also I'm making facial expressions and tone of voice manually right now so if I look or sound bizarre it's the backlash." Speaking of backlash, he does kind of want some physical proximity even if he is going to follow his Haru's lead and not be as sickeningly sweet as he normally would be.

They can hold hands and put leg to leg, they just have to be polite about it.

"He doesn't really owe me an apology," says Older Haru.

"Hmm, maybe not, but it'll be healthy for him to do it anyway. If nothing else he was certainly adding a lot more words in your mouth than you actually said, and there are quite a lot of things you think you communicated to him that he misconstrued into something quite insane in order to appease his sense of self-loathing and need for flagellation."

"I did notice that some of the conversations he experienced us as having were not taking place out loud."

"He is almost constitutionally incapable of considering himself a moral patient at this moment and so he is interpreting everything you do through the lens that you agree with that assessment, except whenever he puts it in so many words in his head he realises that's insane and immediately covers it up with rationalisations that eventually melt back down into the first thing when he's not looking. That's part of why the notebooking will help, is it'll make him have to actually put those thoughts where they can't change while he's looking away and he'll have to confront the fact that they're nonsensical. I'm not sure if that'll solve the entire problem but I got him to feel embarrassed of everything he's done so far and avoiding embarrassment turns out to be such a good motivator for Jaehas all over the multiverse."

"...well, I'm glad notebooking'll work, I've never run into anybody else who picked it up and found it useful before."

"It's so useful. There was so much cruft in the corners of my brain I had to scrub off—still is, honestly, it would be very surprising if I were entirely done. And then there's maintenance, of course, I'm looking forward to when that's the main thing I'm doing with the notebooking."

"Sounds like it'll be good for him... obviously the material facts of the situation persist, but they can do so in an environment of better mental health."

"The material facts?"

"The incredibly cool alternate dimension situation notwithstanding I'm still his parole supervisor."

"...that's fair as far as it goes, but—he's not going to reincide, in practice he doesn't actually need a parole officer for the purposes parole officers exist, and while I'm of course not saying you should shirk your obligations I am saying that I think both of you would benefit from growing closer, even if it doesn't quite look like it from where he is. So... so I think there's more I want to communicate but the backlash is getting in the way of me finding the right words to say it so I'll get back to you in a couple of minutes once I figure that out."

"You guys can kiss, I'll survive the experience."

Younger Haru waits a beat, assessing the sincerity of that remark, then kisses his Jaeha.

!!!!!!

Oh okay cool he's all over his Haru then eeeeeeeeeeeeee~

"He said we could kiss, not -" whispers his Haru.

He stops and pulls away a bit sheepishly. "Sorry, got carried away."

"Later," his Haru whispers, and resumes kissing more decorously.

Decorous kissing it is. Even though his Haru is right here. He has self-control.

"Anyway," says Elder Haru when this is concluded.

He clears his throat. "Right, where was I, where are my cue cards...

"Okay, right, yes. I'm going to tell you some things that aren't true yet but they will be and that he'll have a lot of trouble telling you when they become true but he will desperately wish you could read his mind so that you'd find them out without him having to say anything."

"I wouldn't go around reading people's minds even if I could!"

"I know. But I would certainly love it if—you guys need disambiguating nicknames—my Haru could read mine. But in this specific case, well, you were saying you're still his parole officer, and I—forgive me if I'm misreading it but I think part of what you mean here is that you can't or won't be the one, say, offering to become his friend, or doing anything that might cause in some potential hypothetical scenarios a consent issue, right?"

"I did offer to become his friend, actually."

"I'll be Persimmon," says younger Haru after a bit of thought.

"I guess that makes me Maple?"

"...okay, now I'm curious, why?"

"Well, I could've gone with Sakura but that's a girls' name. He's a lifelong Canadian and I moved to Tokyo as a kid, that seems to be basically the single point of divergence."

"—oh, that's really cute." He is not going to kiss his Haru—Persimmon—on the cheek, but he is psychically beaming that desire.

"Anyway, uh," back to Maple, "so that was after he kind of asked, right, except he—didn't really perceive himself as asking, he perceived himself as self-flagellating about what an absolutely stupid idea that was and proceeding to decide to not do that at all because it would be such a stupid idea.

"But not for him. He wants it. He thinks it's a stupid idea for you, because he, like, insert self-flagellating bullshit here, but more to the point he is on board with the painfully ethical thing you've got going on and in fact a big part of the issues he's been having around the, how did he put it, the ankle bracelet situation, and the power differential between you two, was trying to not make this any harder than it has to be for you. He thinks you shouldn't be his friend because he doesn't want to burden you with navigating the ethical issues around having a friendship with someone you're a parole officer for. He doesn't want to cause you trouble."

"...I manage with Cricket!"

"I know. He doesn't. You might get some mileage out of telling him that, but—the problem is a bit broader here, see, because he—just in general he doesn't want to act in such a way that he... might cause someone who is less you than you to deal with uncomfortable internal conflict about their obligations. He wants to be, well, he'd love to be nice, but he's aiming for at minimum good, for a definition of 'good' that involves a lot of self-abnegation because he perceives himself as unable to make any choices that make his life better because when he had unlimited access to those choices he stalked a guy and tried to have his girlfriend killed.

"He is under a ton of learned helplessness about his own desires, right now, and having a lot of trouble even admitting to himself what he wants and needs, let alone telling you about any of it."

"...is this one of those things that is not true now but that you expect to be later?"

"No. That's true right now. What's not true right now but will be later, and which is related to all of this, is that once he's no longer waging a solo imaginary war against you in his head he is going to board the Jaeha bullet train to falling head over heels for you, and since he thinks it would be a terrible idea from your perspective to touch that with a ten foot pole he's going to spend a while lying to himself about it, then another while pretending it's not true, then an indefinite amount of time trying to not let on so that you don't have to deal with his issues, while still thinking you hung the moon."

"You realize it's possible you're overgeneralizing. Like, for one example of a disanalogy between the two of you, how do you know Jaehas have multiple train boarding opportunities, he did have this one relationship, it was a big thing."

"...well, I was in fact using my powers on him just now—I did get his explicit consent, to be clear—and he already does kind of have a bit of a crush. He thinks you're really cool and a great guy all around already.

"I... want to say 'but you're right, maybe I am being overconfident in my predictions', and—I'm saying it, I suppose, maybe I am being overconfident, but I get him a lot more than vice-versa. You'd think the seven extra years would make it work the other way around but it doesn't, he's very recognisably me but I don't think he thought I was very recognisably him. He didn't really get me. Looking at him feels a lot like looking at myself several months ago."

"Are we chalking that up to notebooking too?"

"There's... something you could gloss that way that I think is true but it's—I have a more mechanistic model than that."

"Well, it's plausible that you have that much insight, I think me and Persimmon are on at least three levels of meta at times and haven't dropped any packets, but. Grain of salt."

"Yeah. Uh—there was another thing, which is that—he keeps trying to read you and failing, you're really hard to read, you don't really do much somatisation of your thoughts and feelings, but rather than conclude that that means you're hard to read he instead concludes that the things he's trying to read aren't there. I think I managed to shake that off him at least to some extent, too, but that'll be another reason he will not want to ever tell you that he likes you, is that all of his tools for figuring out how doomed a prospect it is are returning nulls and so he'll just think it's entirely completely doomed and so he'll mope.

"—and I don't want to, like, say anything about whether it's doomed or should be doomed, to be clear, I get that from your perspective he looks like kind of a mess. I'm just saying, I think that's going to be happening, and he'll be—trying to clean up his act and be less of a mess, but he's going to have a lot of trouble ever communicating any of this, ever."

"I haven't actually been told before that I'm hard to read."

"He's got a deficit, he had a serious crutch for a long time."

"Hmm, that's true, but—you don't, really, show much of what you don't endorse, or the feelings you've looked at and decided to put away at least for the moment. Assuming you're like Persimmon in that way but I'd be surprised if you weren't? And now that I know Persimmon I can read him a lot better but I'm certain he's convinced you haven't just decided not to be but actually inherently aren't capable of being attracted to him, because you don't—steal glances at him when you think he's not looking, you don't exhibit body language that suggests you think of him in anything but the most platonic of ways. He might change his mind now that he's seen Persimmon and me but I wouldn't bet on it."

"I can't, what, ogle him, that would be completely inappropriate!"

"Besides, it wouldn't even be informative, espers are hot, that's how espers work..."

"What did I ever do to you?"

He laughs. "See, the fact that you can't ogle him because it's inappropriate is exactly the kind of thing I'm talking about that makes him go, even if Haru could in theory like me it could never possibly happen because it would be inappropriate so I'll just sit on these feelings forever and pine.

"But also it's not even ogling, you're just too quick to catch the impulse to look, if you ever feel it, and fold it away before it actually affects any of your actions and body language, so it doesn't look like you're even, like, theoretically interested even if all of the facts of the matter didn't conspire against it."

"- it would be inappropriate for me to initiate but we're espers, not - a doctor and a patient or something where it'd be more categorical."

"I thiiiink my Jaeha's trying to initiate on his alt's behalf? In... advance?"

Eheheheheh he's Haru's Jaeha.

"Yeah, basically. Like I am not joking about how much he'd like you to read his mind, if slash when it ever gets to it, because he wants you to know he's interested but not in a way where you could explicitly reject him with words because that would be mortifying and really ego-dystonic. He wants—would slash will want, I mean—you to say nothing if you reject him and you to give some indication even if nonverbal that you could maybe be interested if you don't. 

"And again I am not claiming you shouldn't reject him, the facts of the matter do kind of conspire against it, but to the extent I can help it be only the facts of the matter and not also the fact that he has the communication skills of a particularly dense turnip that conspire against it, I want to do that."

"So if he has a breakthrough and achieves the heights of an unusually gifted courgette you recommend that I... discernibly check him out."

"I feel like he can eventually do better than that! But something like that, yeah. Or, I mean, something like that if..." He pauses, trying again to find the right words. "I think the thing that would be healthiest for him personally would be just if you didn't really filter your actions through the question of, is it okay for me to do that to or at or around someone I have this much power over?"

"That's a hell of an inconvenient way to be!"

"I mean, there do exist people who I wouldn't be giving this advice to, it's just—it being you, there isn't actually anything you could or would do that'd... be an issue? Like, he's... not going to feel pressured—or, no, that's the wrong framing. He's a people-pleaser. We are, I mean. We want people to like us, or, if they don't, we want them to hate us in exactly the ways we want them to hate us. So regardless of whether you do or don't do the kinds of things that could be pressuring or whatever to someone else, he will be trying to figure out what you want and how to make you happy and do that.

"And since he's going to be doing that anyway, no matter how little you try to pressure him—and, actually, that's part of the problem with the, like, being, how did he put it, mass-market considerate? A big part of the problem there is that he has so little signal to figure out how to please you that he starts reading signal in the noise.

"So, since he's going to be doing that anyway, you might as well just act like how you normally would? Then rather than trying to be the perfect prisoner or whatever he's going to be trying to be a good friend."

"I guess that's not obviously inconsistent with how he is..."

"I do aim to have models of people that aren't obviously inconsistent with how they are."

"You have presumably noticed that I - we - get really huggy on backlash, if I'm not suppressing that then..."

"He would find it really ego-syntonic to be able to clearly, obviously provide you with value, and that could be a way in which he does that. Personally when I was having my own personal little crisis about how Haru—Persimmon—is perfect and there's nothing positive I bring to the table being reminded that that was something I brought to the table did actually help a lot. Then I went and found or invented new positive things, but that one was a very concrete, obvious one that my badbrains couldn't argue against."

"And you don't think it'll be a problem that this is a major sudden change in how I interact with him - I guess 'we talked to our alternate universe selves about it' is a pretty good explanation -"

"Yeah. If it happened overnight with no explanation he'd be looking for the catch, but this is a pretty good explanation, yeah."

"What's he doing in the other room, notebooking?"

"That's what he was doing when I left, yeah. First time I did notebooking I was at it for, what, two hours straight? Three?"

"That's a lot."

He knocks the side of his skull with his knuckles lightly. "There's a looooooot of accumulated cruft in here and I can't imagine those seven years of his have made any positive changes in that regard. It was quite jarring to notice the extent to which my thoughts liked to change out from under me."

"He let me read some once."

"Whoa."

Well that's because Haru gets root access to his brain. He is not going to say that in front of other Haru because he is being nice and not rubbing it in but it's true.

"Anyway, is there anything in particular about my alt you're curious about? I think I've said everything I had to say."

"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?"

"More than just 'not dysfunctional', I mean. I sometimes like to do humorous under- and overstatements but, uh, I refurbished my brain a pretty extensive amount because of Persimmon and it was really, really good for me."

"...cute."

He is not going to belabour the point.

"Back to the main question, though, he has—so, you know, he did that extremely thorough and detailed confession, right, and it's because being suddenly hit by a complete lack of backlash plus hindsight sort of... seared his empathy, and he has reorganised his internal image as someone who could never, ever recidivise, and I kind of wish I'd met you guys before he'd taken the bracelet off for the first time so I could get some points for correctly predicting the way he'd feel but it does feel very natural and obvious that now even under a ton of backlash he will still be extremely scrupulous about the ethics of his power use. It would feel like a deep betrayal of himself, and now also of you, if he ever fucked up like that again."

"- of me! As of - me getting him out of jail or as of you talking to him."

"I think as of a couple of days after you got him out of jail and it's been getting more cemented. You're this super cool esper who went and did something super weird completely on your own because it was the right thing to do and no one else was doing it and now you're being incredibly decent all the time about it and even if he is frustrated by the social problems you guys have been having he admires you a lot and wants you to not have been wrong to do all of this."

"Didn't you want me to be less incredibly decent all the time."

"I think it would be healthier in interpersonal terms but he still finds it admirable that you commit so hard to your principles."

"Huh. Would it still have been healthier if I'd been like that from the get-go?"

"...hm. Good question. I think it kind of depends on how he perceived your motivations. Probably the healthiest balance would've been something like holding the degree to which you keep to those principles more lightly and update them based on the circumstances of who he is but given that it's only been a few days and it's not like you've had a ton of time to learn who he is I'm not sure that'd have made much difference in practice. And I'm not sure that would've been on net better considering all axes rather than just what's psychologically healthiest."

Nod nod.

"Anyway, did that... help answer the question of why I think he won't recidivise?"

"Yeah, I think so."

"Good, I'm glad.

"So, uh, I guess now that this detour is done, what'd I miss, how are we using future knowledge for fun and profit?"

"I'm gonna copy his zoo. ...except I can't steal most of his org chart because his is in Canada. And there's plenty of dungeon material reverse-engineering data to be snagged."

"That zoo idea was so cool. I was also wondering, would Yamanaka want something like my alt's bracelet? Either Yamanaka, though I'm not sure if yours is also called Yamanaka?" He directs that last question to Maple.

"That is her last name but I just call her June, she doesn't have a codename. I think she might? I'd have to ask her brother but - it's a good idea, if the material's not too dear."

"Well, if you tell my alt his bracelet's needed elsewhere he'll stoically hand it over and tank the backlash, and I'm not sure he'd even be wrong to, given that I don't think he's a recidivism risk, but the kindest option would be giving him something else instead. A ring, maybe, if that works."

"I can call the folks in Korea, though I don't yet speak the language."

"It's the Quasar folks, right? They're probably all over it, honestly."

"I hear Cricket would like Yoo-min. Does he speak English, too, my Cricket speaks English."

"He does, yeah." And he got their Cricket to like him, he is not going to be loudly smug about this but he is SO smug about this.

"But he won't know how incredible a recommendation this is."

"Who, Park Yoo-min? I think he'll figure it out pretty quickly."

"I look forward to it."