"- No, I just ate not that long ago, with the other you.  See?"  Where's the water bottle that Svetka left for Haru while he was alone there it is.  Julien will drink from it!  And grab a bag of cheese things while he's down there.

"Oh good. Please don't die."

"Okay."  Snuggle.  With his face on Haru's shoulder.  And specifically his mouth.  It's not a kiss!  But it is wet; he was just drinking water.

That's so fine though actually. "And I will try to also not die and I guess this time next week I will be able to fly - it sounds like you are maybe a bit ahead of me on the awakening timeline?"

"When did you say you started?"

"Well, it was like two a.m. on September eleventh when I got going but reference to external calendars then suddenly got a lot harder. I'm not sure exactly what time it was when I got yoinked because I was by then trying to go back to sleep. That's why I'm not sure if it's my birthday, my birthday's the thirteenth."

"...I think I'm probably more days in than you, then, yeah.  - What sort of things have you already written about in your blog?"

"It's about espers and dungeons and stuff. Nothing you'd need, like, access, to know, I just put together stuff from articles and sometimes I get an answer to a cold email. Sometimes I translate it into French."

"That's cute.  ...You're a good esper."

"I always wanted to be one, just, you can't enter an essay contest about it. ...I told Ren it wasn't worth it but that was when I thought I was the only person in the universe so I am pretty sure I will be pro this development overall when I'm done."

"Yeah, I think you are.  ...Mmmmm."

"We will be stopping at a hotel for the day and moving out of the city overnight," Svetka declares.

"What exactly is the holdup on the halls of Parliament."

"The portals to send you home do not yet exist.  The government is scrambling to collect new arrivals as they appear.  I will be better able to protect you while you wait out the research."

"Okay. Hotel sounds fine."

....In light of this Julien will tear into the cheese things.

Haru starts his pretzels. While Snuggling At All Times Maximally. "Are the hotel chains also different in this universe," he says vaguely into the silence.

"I do not know this.  Blue Door, Tipton, Hilton, Churn Dash, Outin' Inn?"

"We have Hiltons! I don't recognize the others though if they're just smaller I might have missed them. Except Outin' Inn which I would expect to have memetic Internet presence for the name alone."

"Strange."

"Yeah I'm sort of curious when all these chains were founded. The point of departure can't be any later than 1971 but it might be earlier than that. Or, like, it has to be because of the nonmatching countries, but."

"What countries don't match?"

"I forget the names of them. The Christmas themed one doesn't match."

"Aldovia?"

"Christmas themed?"