"No objections from me."

"You have more field experience, I bet we have a lot to learn from you."

She smiles and pulls her gem off her choker and starts dowsing, meandering away from Shibuya as they go.

"So how did the concerts go?"

"Sold out!" Little wiggly dance.

"You're so cool, Yamanaka-san."

"I know it." She walks on her hands for a few steps and then flips back over.

"You like being a singer including the part where you have a producer who doesn't let you date?"

"If I really wanted him to cut it out I could change his mind on that," she shrugs. "This one's nicer than my last one, that one I was managing a lot - or, well, getting my old partner to do it for me, she was better at it -"

"You... what?"

Ohhh Yutaka doesn't like where this is going. His stomach is feeling a bit unsettled. It's probably because he hasn't eaten in a while and that conversation was nerve-wracking.

"Oh I'm like really independent and unmonitored for an idol and that's not a coincidence, when I was starting out they were all over me and my partner helped me out with some mind magic, it was pretty fucked up I'm not gonna lie and I would not have done it if they weren't, like, controlling my schedule to the point that I would have been totally unable to go hunting and would've died of it. I... could definitely have kept it to a lower level than I did."

"I didn't - realize magic could do that, that's - so -"

"It is super spooky! My last partner was like a lot older than me and I was taking way too many cues from her but - yeah."

"I mean, I hesitate to say you should've rather died! But it - deserved a really thorough investigation of other options -"

"Yeah, my first batch of managers sucked but they weren't like evil it's just a hell of a business and they didn't know I was magically lucky. Also like I have no idea if my partner was mind controlling me before she died."

"Oh my god, I'm so sorry."

"I'm fine now!"

(...well Yamanaka is certainly a lot faster on the uptake of what to say to mollify Haru than Yutaka is. She didn't sound nearly so contrite when she told Yutaka about it. Yutaka's kind of judging her for it.)

(He should eat something after the witch.)

"Kind of surprised that actually worked... I guess J-pop managers are less draconian than K-pop ones?"

"Dunno, I haven't had a lot of contact with K-pop ones. I'm pretty clearly bankable now, though, that gets me some leeway. I could probably go cold turkey on the mind tricks but honestly I was so scared when I was starting out it does make me feel a lot better to know I can."

"I could've stood to not know you can. Or that I can, or that any of us can."

"Well, I assume you don't want to not know it badly enough to, uh, not know it."

"Yeah no absolutely never that it's just a figure of speech."

Yutaka feels like a different version of him might squeeze Haru's hand.

This version of him will also squeeze Haru's hand but it's because he thought that, not because he—felt it.