Terrence shrugs. "It's no issue. It's scarcely unheard of. What would you two like to talk about?"

Glance at Oscar. When she's brought up the King in Yellow in the past Terrence has tended to skate directly past it.

"I've been thinking about Jing Yi."

"Of course!"

"Yes. I'm glad to hear he's getting some space from that fiancée."

"As am I. I only regret that it didn't occur to me before." "Granted, I was a little overwhelmed by - other matters." He waves a hand again, to indicate everything that has happened.

"But I'm his roommate. We're friends. I shouldn't have been so slow on the uptake. But, well." He sighs.

Not an unfamiliar feeling. "You couldn't have known, could you? This type of thing is really subtle. But, um, Inaaya and I have actually been talking a lot about the broader subject."

Of mind control.

"Oh?" Terrence remembers himself and puts on some tea. (It's a small apartment, he's not getting away from them, he's still, like, right there.)

"Yes. Tea's nice, thanks." Terrence is so English. Perhaps the most English?

"Do... you remember when it was that your job started to seem less appealing?"

Inaaya does. Inaaya can pinpoint an exact week.

"My job? Um. Not exactly. Within the past few months, I suppose."

"You certainly had more things to say about your research when we met," Oscar says.

"I ask," she says, "because I remember when you stopped talking about your research. You got a lot more talkative, too, right around then, so it was even more odd that you stopped talking about your job at all."

Come to think of it, that's about when Terrence started coming across as happier, too.

Terrence frowns.

"Well, I was going to say that I could talk about it more - if you think the middle Platonists have anything relevant to say about the things we've seen - but I believe I see what you're driving at. Well, I make no secret of it. I had something of a philosophical awakening around the time. It's true. My work and many other concerns fell by the wayside."

He remembers distinctively wondering if he'd met someone. A girl most likely (admittedly his mind had drifted to the other option, once or twice).

"A philosophical awakening," says Oscar. Good Lord, his early speculations about Terrence had been as fervent as they were incorrect.

"Yes! I am - reluctant as I am to say it - continuously at a loss for how to explain it concisely. I think it's what historical accounts might describe as a mystical experience, though accompanied by fewer choirs of angels, visions of hell, etcetera, than are sometimes described." He laughs a little. What a funny joke! "But - um - yes. A realization that the way I had been going about my work, and I mean, not my work but my life, could be cast in alternate lights, seen more clearly from outside perspectives."

"I realize that this sounds like a great deal of mumbo-jumbo, said like this, but - I promise you, it is not altogether uncommon."

"The eastern tradition, for instance, is rife with it - although I know less about those. The thing that drives men to monkhood and the well-fed to asceticism. The call of the sea to leave one's comfortable estate and become a pirate, as the Gentleman Pirate felt. I think it is all related. It is a change of that nature."

"Nobody here thinks it's mumbo jumbo," says Oscar.

(Inaaya kinda does.)

Warm smile. "I appreciate that. I spend a lot of time composing explanations in my head."

"I know I've made a few dumb jokes about it," says Oscar. "But we're bringing this up-- not to mock you or catch you out-- because we're your friends."

"And we're worried about, uh... This situation. Does that make sense?"

"...Okay?" Terrence looks thoughtful, he puts some tea on the table. "What... about it?"

In some less-conscious part of his mind, he is trying really hard not to make the connection.

"Well," Oscar says. "You know how Evie is a really charming person... So charming that Jing Yi apparently fell in love, right away?"

"Right."

"And she's got mind control powers and it's made Jing Yi unpredictable."