Yeah, it doesn't seem like it's bothering him.

And she thinks she'd notice? Probably. (Ugh. She misses - what, being overconfident? no. Trusting herself. Being someone she likes)

-oh look, food.

Indeed food. Mmm blue cheese burger. "How'd they do? I've never had the veggie."

Huh. 

Flywheel shrugs. "I can only notice the difference between fake meat and actual ground beef if I'm paying very close attention? It just tastes like a burger to me." She pauses. "Could be a bit spicier, I guess. I used to -" 

She sighs and looks away. "- I miss being good at things besides killing dungeons," she says quietly, instead of finishing that thought.

Hey, don't be so hard on yourself, she thinks viciously. You're great at ignoring your problems, and you were great at getting Tia to ignore them too! Something to be proud of!

"...espers, even high-power dungeoneering espers, are allowed to and should have other things in our lives."

"...I know." She turns back to look at him. "It's not that I wasn't taking days off from doing dungeons, once I started? Just - we travelled a decent amount for her clients, and there was always more useful training I could be doing, and..." it made Tia happy when she did extra training, and she'd cared a lot about that. (Selfishly, of course.)

"Training really hard in all your spare time that you aren't spending in transit might make you more effective in the next year but it makes you non-negligibly likely to burn out in the next twenty."

"If I could redo the last year of my life I would probably do some things differently," she says with a paper-thin cheerfulness, and takes a large bite out of her veggie burger.

"Even during confluences I take a day off a week and Paula's not supposed to ask me to reschedule those on short notice more than once a month. What do you like to do, or did you, during downtime?"

Look at her social media feeds without ever posting or interacting. Compose messages and then delete them without sending them. Make up fake people to tell Aunt Rachel about when they called, and make up reasons why she hadn't visited. Scroll news feeds listlessly. 

"...mostly I spent a lot of my free time on my phone? Not especially effectively, either." She sounds embarrassed, and seperately is embarrassed.

"Is it at least restful?"

"...sometimes." She finishes her burger and takes some of the fries.

They're good fries. He orders a fair amount of delivery and has assessed many restaurants. "I usually read books or do research but that's because I'm a huge nerd."

"I used to be a people person," she says, quietly. "...maybe I'll get back into the habit, after the confluence." (...she's not sure why she's saying this. ...for accountability, maybe?)

"...seems like a good idea, yeah."

"Yeah." Sigh. "...sorry." 

"What for?"

She shrugs. "You didn't sign up for this."

"Sure I did. Under emergency conditions but still. Also now I get to be about twice as effective."

Huh. "Fair enough." (Hey, dipshit, if you want to be a people person again someda- yeah, yeah.) "Um. Thanks."

"You're welcome." Phone noise. "Kittycat incoming if that's still all right."

"Yeah, that's fine. ...anything I should know?"

"He's a huge jerk to most people, I tell him to cool it at times including this one but he probably just wants to sleep anyway. He's a cat with wings from a 4D dungeon. You can pet him if you do it in the correct direction." Typety typety.

She's a huge jerk to herself too. Maybe they'll get along. "Got it."