"But what if I want something complicated like you being psychologically stable enough to if necessary do this like fifty times."

"I'll. Probably learn to live with it. Eventually. It'll probably at some point become possible for me to spend a loop not stressing about the end of Tokyo and doing—something else with my time."

"I don't want to gamble Tokyo on that. I -

- okay, what goes wrong if I write the Bondi Beach letter but it's for all of me, you can hand it to me every loop, as soon as you save Tokyo I will simply go on from there and it's not specifically Bondi Beach."

"...I don't want to be with you if you don't want to be with me? I don't want you to—notebook yourself into wanting to be with me. ...I know that makes it harder. I, I know. I, I can make myself functional. I can. But not by—giving me a temporary thing, being with some—version of you that—isn't going to be there after everything, or who was—put there for the sake of Tokyo. That would not make me functional. That would make me depressed and like I'm hurting you even more than I already have."

Haru draws up his knees to his chest and rests his chin on them and wraps his arms around his legs. "That is so reasonable and yet."

"I wish you were the one in the loop, not me. I, I wished that so many times. I wished you'd just tell me what the right thing to do is, so many times. You'd do so much better at it than I can. You'd—you wouldn't have to deal with me. Let me be a mistake you made once.

"I can be functional," he repeats, more forcefully. "I just—lost you yesterday. I saw you d- I saw it happen. I was next to you." His hands are shaking, and he's keeping his gaze firmly locked on the floor between his feet. "And I th-thought it was for real, at the time. I thought you were g-gone. And—you're alive, and that's, that's the most important thing. There's nothing more important than that. When I woke up yesterday morning in my bed I cried with relief that you weren't gone.

"But I still lost—being with you—so I just. I need to grieve. I need to be sad for a while. Maybe someday I'll get inured to you dying, hopefully I'll be able to deal with not being with you—by the end of this loop—but I can't do that in a day and a half. I'm sorry."

"- that makes sense, this is really - fast - I've been - I - shouldn't - ugh." Which is worse, functioning with no hope or functioning with uncertain hope. He can't tell Yutaka "maybe" and he absolutely extra definitely can't tell him "maybe, if you continue to make a really convincing demonstration of having given up manipulating me and doing mind control", talk about self-defeating. He could offer him another hug but maybe that'll make it worse.

"How about we just go over the rest of what I've forgotten for now instead of making longer term plans now, then."

He nods to his shoes. "Sorry. I wish I were easier to deal with.

"When were we, Friday, right..." That's the day he got the lead on the yakuza that he never followed up on, and also the day they met the 13-year-olds. In retrospect they were kind of surprisingly mature for their ages, especially compared to the 11-year-old he met earlier today. They couldn't find a witch in their territory so instead they went on their first movie date and watched something that made Yutaka terrified and cling to Haru. Yutaka can go over the plot of the movie or not, Haru's choice, though he expects Haru to not care so much. That was also the day he told Haru that he'd really like it if Haru were really selfish in bed. He mentions the expression in English that Haru used to explain his confusion, "like to have their own way". He doesn't belabour the point, though, it's just that from the way human memory works he has most resolution on memories that were emotionally salient and that was one of them.

Haru doesn't need the movie plot. He can extrapolate what he probably said about liking to have his own way.

Saturday is when Akira texted him. He doesn't remember exactly how he explained the Akira and Toshiki situation to Haru the first time around but he remembers that he did so he can just reexplain it here.

(And... look kind of extra miserable while he does. Or, more like differently miserable? Like a different aspect of the situation has been made salient for him to be miserable about in a different way.)

Haru fails his will save and hugs him.

This kind of miserable doesn't make him cry, but it does make him hug Haru back just as tightly. "There won't be any point in me trying to fix that until I know I'm out of the loop, will there. I'll just be—hurting myself, and finding new ways to hurt them as I do that. But if I wait until the end of the loop then that in itself will hurt them. They'll both be very upset with me if I don't talk to them for a month."

"You could tell them what's happening, get them to write themselves letters. ...I sure seem to want to solve everything with people writing themselves letters."

"...yeah. Maybe. Something to try at least once, I suppose."

"And if it works the once you have the letter indefinitely, if I understand correctly how your buckler works."

"I'd need to create lots of copies of it, I don't just have a letter generator, but yeah, it could be indefinite."

Haru taps his pen on his notebook. "Then what."

The first selfie Haru sent him was that day, in response to Akira. Some of the other candids Yutaka took were also from then, just before Yutaka went out to have lunch with Akira. He... will not recount the very upsetting conversation he had with Akira. Later that day Haru told Yutaka he liked him, and after that they talked to some more lukewarm magicals. Same level of detail for Sunday, and then on Monday Yamanaka introduced them the misandrist magical girls and they gave the girls the seed they got from the witch they killed in their territory. And after that they fought the origami witch.

Haru writes this all down in his ungodly linguistic mishmash ("oりgaみ" appears as a penstroke-minimizing measure and it's not the worst he's willing to do to write efficiently).

Tuesday is when he has his conversation with Toshiki, which he also doesn't go over. That's also the first night Haru slept over. 

At the end of that it's probably late enough he should go home.

"Good night. See you tomorrow."

"Good night, Haru," he says in that way he has of saying Haru's name that sounds almost like a prayer. "Sleep well."

hnnnng

They're in a bit of a holding pattern while various potentials, one of whom is a respectable fifteen but one of whom is eight, are met. Haru gets in touch with Yamanaka and calls Yutaka over to her apartment, which isn't as swanky as his but is a lot more charmingly decorated by someone who cares about it a lot more.

"Apparently you need my lie detection services, is that right?"