"I -" that sounds like magic and magic isn't real, but, but -

he doesn't seem like he's joking, and she really does not remember those things, and -

- she tries to think about what her life would be like, if that were her, if nobody was ever ever able to remember her -

And - she is no longer on her laptop and is now pretty close to him. "Do you want a hug?" she says, softly.

"I - um - yeah."

There are people in the world who will hug someone they just met. He's not starving. But it's nice to have a hug.

She wraps her arms around him tightly. "I'm so sorry," she whispers. "I - that must be so lonely -"

"You're taking this remarkably, uh, acceptingly."

"I - if it's true it seems really straightforward to test, and the preliminary tests that I didn't know I was running suggest you aren't lying, and I will want to run the more straightforward test but - I don't know, if the worst that happened here is you pranked me into hugging you I will be definitely kind of annoyed with you but also really relieved and if I tested it first and it was true that seems like it would be... cruel..."

(She isn't going to let go of him until he indicates he wants that.)

"I don't try to test it all that often. Sometimes people freak out really bad."

"...that makes sense, I guess. ...to be clear I'm not not bothered, like, my memory is bad enough without there being some weird curse in question, but - if this is real it would be wild to blame you about it, you're the biggest victim here!" Squeeze.

(Some part of her brain is running through confusing things that happened to her the last few days, and...) "...Did I make you spin poi with me?"

"You didn't make me. I was having fun with it till you, uh, left the room suddenly and then I had to put them down in case you were going to be like 'who are you and why do you have my poi'."

"Oh no, I'm sorry, I probably wanted to just grab something, and -" she pauses as she processes that, and then continues in a much more horrified voice "- me leaving the room was enough to make it happen???" She'd been thinking it was like, every day, not - 

"Yeah. Sometimes it doesn't even take that much but I can usually - keep - whatever's going on, if I keep up enough patter, short of that."

cliiiing. "I - that's so horrible - do you need anything? Can I help?"

"I don't really need anything. I get by. I didn't like, tell you this because I'm about to need a power of attorney, or anything."

She looks up at him, loosening her grip a bit. "Why did you tell me?" she asks, after a bit.

"...if you'd been like, 'yeah, right', it would've been pretty easy to play off without even having to run out of the room suddenly."

"But it was right there in my journal!" She frowns. "...I should take a bunch of notes, if you are done being hugged, if I want to even try and keep any of this..."

"Go ahead." He lets go. Sits down with his ramen.

She lets go of him. "Okay. Um, when you finish eating, I can get set up to run that test, if you're okay with it, but I can start writing down stuff now in my journal, and maybe I should actually just have a dedicated notes file for you so it all goes in one place, right," she's babbling a bit, words coming out too fast. She feels a bit lightheaded. How is he so calm about it - well, he's used to it, obviously, but - 

"You don't really have to go to the trouble, especially if you're - going to get really invested in it and have a problem, when you can't remember any of it -"

She looks at him sadly. "Do you - not want me to try? I - maybe it doesn't work, but... aren't you lonely?"

"I've been like this all my life."

She looks at him with concern, and doesn't immediately say anything.

"So like yeah but it's not an emergency."

Sheee is going to walk over to where he's seated and wrap her arms around him. "I feel like it kinda is," she says quietly, "but it's your life."