“Absolutely. Gods, I don’t want to know what I’d end up sharing there otherwise. I’m very glad you found me before I started posting things.”

She nods. "Yeah, I can imagine that would suck. Telling me may be embarrassing, but at least I can keep the backlash down to a dull roar and keep you from telling everyone."

“And that’d be without people asking things. It could get even worse if they did. I doubt I can refuse to answer any questions-”, and he’s going to stop there before he comes up with examples of bad questions to get asked and feels like he should answer them.

"Yeah, definitely you're gonna be the 'sequester with your partner and filtered comms' kinda esper. And keep the media well the fuck away from you on your way out of dungeons, if you wind up doing those."

She starts taking notes on her phone with her free hand. Gotta get all these concerns down, he'll wanna remember them when he's going agent-shopping.

“It’ll be soooo appealing to go to the media but non-backlashed me will agree with the plan of hiding from everyone. If my power’s useful for them, I’ll certainly do dungeons.”

He can respect other people’s privacy, so he’s not going to try to read over her shoulder and will let her have a moment of (fidgety) silence to write. 

"Oh, I'm just writing these ideas down, by the way. Wanna make sure I don't forget anything. You'll probably wanna keep these things in mind once you know what your power is and start making plans."

She hums. "I'm still figuring out good opportunities to test how useful I can be in dungeons. I think I'd be good for rescue targeting, at least in spatially-consistent dungeons, but I haven't had a good opportunity to test properly."

“Thanks, that’ll be useful. By the way, what’s your power? I’m also curious about your backlash but don’t feel forced to tell me, I’m the one who can’t keep a secret right now.”

"Power's sensing minds and reading goals, and as for the backlash," she scratches the back off her head sheepishly, blushing a bit, "it's not really a secret, it's not like it's something that could be used against me. I just don't like it. I lose the ability to understand all the non-text parts of communication, a piece at a time. All the richness and tone and emotional context goes away, until all I've got left are the words themselves."

She shakes her head.

“I’d honestly,” wow, that’s everything you’re saying right now, you don’t need to mention it, “really prefer that.”

She laughs and smiles lopsidedly. "Likewise. I don't mind sharing things with people, just don't take my emotional context away."

He nods, “Anyway, I don’t know how to continue from that and I’d usually shut up but the backlash demands that I tell you what I’m thinking.”

They keep walking. It's not far now. "What sort of things do you like to do in your spare time?"

“Going out for a walk or a run, that’s what I was up to before this all started. I make do with going to the park but I really prefer being out in nature. I’ve got plants in my apartment and I take care of those. I’ve been wanting to get into making bonsai but I also really like how they look when left to grow wild so I haven’t done more than watch some documentaries on it so far.”

"Sounds like fun," she replies with a smile.

"Oh!" She realizes something suddenly. "I forgot to introduce myself! Sable Meyer, somewhat newly awakened esper."

“I also forgot to do that. I’m Eliel Denver. I don’t think nice to meet you quite cuts it in this circumstances but, embarrassment aside, I’m glad you’ll be helping me avoid making a bigger mess for future me during this week.”

"Glad to help how I can, and very understandable for things not to quite count as nice." She reaches a medium-sized house, and leads Eliel around to a door at the back, which leads down to a cute studio apartment in the basement. 

There's a reasonably big bed, a kitchenette, a couch with a desktop computer set up in front of it on a coffee table, and a bathroom through a door.

"Shoes off, feel free to sit wherever," she says as she closes the door. Her laptop bag goes beside the couch, her shoes go into a little row of shoes by the stairs, and then she gestures grandly. "And welcome to my home, humble though it is."

He takes off his shoes while talking about where he got them and how he usually prefers black or grey shoes but once his parents got him ones in bright green and they never looked good with anything but he actually found it kind of funny.

Once the shoes are part of the row, he’ll head couch-wards.

She giggles at the shoe story, then flops onto the couch with him, still holding hands. Her headphones come out of her purse and go into her ears, and she queues up a few songs. "So, I'm going to put on loud music and read some manga, and you call Leo, and get my attention when you're done. A tug or shoulder-tap or something should do."

He nods, taking out his phone and forcing himself to not open any social media because it doesn’t matter what he currently thinks it’s not a good idea to share everything on the Internet.

Instead, he’ll call Leo (he has the contact saved as ‘Leo Fletcher (Chem. 1)’ ), place the phone on his lap and sit on his free hand while waiting for Leo to take the call. The public-ness of the Internet is still way too tempting.

The use of speakerphone will get an arched eyebrow from Sable, before she says, "Might wanna use headphones? Or something? I can loan you a pair if you need, I'm just worried that I'll hear the whole conversation over the music if you're on speakerphone. Up to you, though."

“You don’t want to hear it?”, is his first answer, then his thoughts catch up purely backlash-based reply gets amended. “Sorry, still confused on what should or shouldn’t be private. I think I have my headphones in one of my pockets, let me just grab them.”

"I don't mind hearing it, and I always love having more context, but I strongly prefer not hearing things unbacklashed Eliel would rather I not hear when we can reasonably control it. At the very least for this conversation I shouldn't be listening, most likely."

That’ll get a nod from him and somewhere during talking he found the headphones so he’s going to put them on (and hope that Leo answers soon because otherwise he’s going to make bad decisions).

Leo was out with some friends. However, Eliel calling him is weird enough that he’s made his way to somewhere more private as soon as he’s noticed that he was being called.

Now he takes the call, speaking quickly with concern obvious in his voice. “El? Are you alright? You’ve never called me before.”