Haru is so cute. And Yutaka gets to keep him all to himself whoa there, tiger, chill. Maybe he should keep Haru in his thoughts while he takes care of some business and goes to recover some of the sanity he's clearly lost alongside the bloodflow that's been redirected from his brain.

He can't wait until Haru forgets himself.

Morning, handsome.

Good morning, I continue to be alive.

To my continued delight.

Has Yamanaka-san replied to your text?

Yeah, she said she'd mark up a map for me sometime today with who's there and what their attitude is.

Okay, cool, that works. And did she say if she got anywhere with her diplomacy work?

The range of attitudes that might appear on the map ranges from "categorically hostile" to "tentatively friendly"?

...'categorically hostile'. Wow.

She didn't sound like she'd had a particularly close brush with death but I guess a lot of people interpret this kind of overture as like, I don't know, a scam?

I suppose that makes sense. Well, we have, he checks the calendar, twenty-six days left to get everyone on board.

It's such an awkward amount of time, if it were longer I'd feel like I had a lot of luxury to plan and be incremental and if it were shorter we could go around yelling that the sky is falling but -

Yeah. I dunno. I'm really not any good at this kind of thing.

What kind of thing? You seem good at - talking to people, but I guess this is not a conventional subskill -

At—figuring out what the right thing to do is? Coming up with ideas? I could probably go talk to some magicals if that's the thing we're doing?

I mean, like, if that were the thing we were doing, like if Yamanaka gets super busy or something, how would you approach them?

I'd, hm. First try to get to know them? At least a little bit? I don't think there's just one answer, it depends on what they're like. When Yamanaka calls them 'completely hostile' is that in a shoot-first-ask-later way? If so, I'd probably stop time and try to find them and plan around a hostile interaction that I might need to rewind or flee to survive. But what we want is just to get them to believe us, right? Or, at least, the main thing we want? If people know witchzilla is coming in three weeks it is clearly in their selfish interest to do something about that.

Get to know them like how?

Like, hi, how are you, I'm Iwasaki Yutaka, I'm a new magical boy and I heard this is your territory, do you have ten minutes to chat, maybe? And—everyone has something they want. "Not dying to witchzilla" is a big thing that probably everyone wants but it might be possible to sweeten the deal, get them something else they want so they'll be happier to listen, and so on.

I guess that makes sense as far as it goes. Though like all these people already got a wish.

Yeah, but people wants lots of other things even if the thing they want most in the whole world is already theirs. There's always a second thing they want most in the whole world.

Like eradicating ANOTHER disease, or is that just me.

I think that might be mostly you, not everyone can be as cool as you.

I would be so disappointed every day if I expected it. Though you're gonna save Tokyo, that's a good several million people there.

...you make me sound like a much better person than I actually am.

What, you're not planning to save Tokyo, population fourteen million?