"...I think tomorrow is a really good candidate for your day off but if you have other plans I guess?"

He's right, which is kinda upsetting, because it would in some ways be much simpler than to do a few dungeons tomorrow rather than the things she's promised to do on her next day off (find a time to meet up with Stella, have a long call with Aunt Rachel).

Well, choosing simple over obviously important has not been going great for her!

"I don't have other plans and taking tomorrow off makes sense," she says, a bit hollowly. "There's people I should catch up with." (It hurts, noticing how much she doesn't want to. This isn't who she wants to be...)

"...do you need anything with respect to that?"

Headshake. She still has Otto! on her both her phones and no plans to pick up any backlash, so... 

Ah, wait. 

"...I might be pretty sad, after? So snuggle guiding is fine, but if you need someone to chat with, maybe plan on doing that by phone?" (It feels bad to admit, but she's trying to be less of a fucking idiot, so -)

"By default I was going to sync my days off with yours since guiding is not really the same thing as free downtime."

"Ah, got it." He's an introvert and presumably wants to spend his day off doing introvert things. "That works for me too."

But, hmmm."...my aunt will probably want to meet you, at some point. I guess we could do a bit of that via video call tomorrow if you were cool with that, and she'd find that reassuring... but I will not be at my best as far as social facilitation goes, and you obviously don't have to if you don't want to."

"I can do that. I retain meeting-people skills even when I'm not driving myself flagrantly insane in that direction on a given day."

And he doesn't seem disinterested in the idea, anyways. They can do a short hello. (She should text both of them tonight, then...) "I'll text her about it once you're less backlashed?" 

"You can do it now, my magical brain damage is convinced it's about me and I'm not carrying too much now for that to suffice."

"If you're sure." She can boot up her personal phone and text Aunt Rachel back.

Yes, I'm sure I'm safe. 

I'm working with an esper who goes by Traceless now, a lot's happened. 

I can do a video call tomorrow, if that works for you? Catch you up on some of it, maybe introduce you to him if you like. 

Yes! I'd love that!! Does around noon work for you?

Love you so much, Carbar.

Worried about you, of course, but you know I'm proud of you for chasing your dreams and helping people.

Noon works for me! I'll check with Traceless but if that's not good for him I can always introduce you later.

Love you too! See you tomorrow.

She leans into Traceless. "Does around noon work for you?" 

"Sure, I can hop on a call during lunch tomorrow. Speaking of do you have dinner thoughts?"

She catches herself before saying whatever's good. "Korean?" (Not tteokbokki, though. She's waiting to have that with Tae-hwan.)

"I don't already know a place, I'll ask Tess." Text text.

"I know a few." The silo is near enough to the U that she knows most of the restaurants around here, actually, which she could say with her words if she wasn't being a petty littl-

...man. She knows a lot fewer of the places than she did three days ago, presumably. And more of them will shut down because their owners or critical employees were hurt and killed. New places will spring up, of course, but -

(She slumps, a bit.) 

"Bapbo and Mama Lee's are both good."

"I’ll have her see if they’re open. Bapbo spelled the obvious way or is there wacky romanization?"

"B a p b o."

Sigh. "Sorry. It's just - it's hard, thinking about - all the destruction." 

"Yeah. The museum getting hit really bothers me."

Cara gives him a squeeze. "Yeah. It sucks."

(...but...) "...we'll rebuild it all, eventually, and some of it will be better after, but - it's still hard."

"The museum had irreplaceable dunmat exhibits. I don't actually know how many got wrecked or whether stuff will be salvageable out of the rubble but I used to love the corner of the natural history section with, like, the levitating pencil and all that." Sigh. "But it's dead now."

"It's dead now, yeah." Oh, but - hmmm.

"...last I heard, they'd moved dunmat exhibit in the space crystal part, right? And I think that was the only part of the building that was untouched." She still has her phone out, and can do a quick search - "yeah, looks like it." 

"A weight off my mind. The levitating pencil is safe."

"A weight off the display surface beneath, too," she says, grinning.

(This is stupid. Why is she saying this. It's fun. Fuck off! Oh? Are you having fun, then? ...fuck off...)

"There were adjacent items that sat on the display surface. They were just a little less overtly magical to child-me. Lots of stuff lights up, less stuff levitates."