"I usually don't just go with 'say something cool', I go with 'say something that communicates this but which comes off as cool'. But no, I don't get precise enough feedback to know exactly what it is that I was meant to have said. Occasionally this has involved me having to use my powers a bunch to cover myself while I try to infer what it is I'm saying in real time. 

"That's when I care to. I could just let a conversation play out for them while I'm doing something else with my time."

"Right." Sigh. "...I want to figure this out but I don't know if it's realistic to do it tonight. Any chance you'll be able to sleep now?"

"...I don't know. I can try." Not on his own. "I want to flag that I think going within-industry public with at least my backlash is likely a good idea." And most importantly it's a concrete step that might get Haru to stay. He's mostly been running on that, on his words working towards the goal of getting Haru to stay. 

He thinks that once he stops saying words he's going to break down again, though. He still hasn't actually looked up at Haru's face even once.

"Okay. Do you... want to sleep here, or were you just trying to give me space?"

"I was trying to hide from myself, the world, and you." Seems like he's just given up on ever not sounding whiny and pathetic to Haru so he's just failing with abandon now.

"Do you still want to do that? You can come to the usual bed with me. If you want."

Okay maybe he hasn't given up because he does sit on the pathetic whine that's threatening to come out. "I'd—like that, yeah."

Haru untucks him from this bed to take his hand.

He can get up but he's still not entirely sold on this "look at Haru's face" idea.

He doesn't have to.

They can go to bed and curl up together. No point stopping three days from the finish line.

That was probably an overestimate.

He wants a good night kiss. He's pathetic. He's just going to snuggle. That's good enough.

If he doesn't ask for a kiss he's not going to get one tonight.

Yeah. He's not gonna ask. He'll just... try to sleep.

Jaeha fails to do much of that, until much much later that night. He needs to make 100% sure that Haru is still there and hasn't left, and every time he starts to fall asleep he has the beginnings of a nightmare that Haru's leaving and he immediately jolts awake. 

On the bright side, he discovers that Haru talks in his sleep, which he feels blessed to know, and finds extremely endearing. He might've found it less endearing if it were sentences explaining how much Haru is going to leave him but it's just random (as far as he can tell) nouns so it can just be cute instead.

Even after he finally succeeds at getting to sleep, though, he sleeps lightly, and the minute Haru stirs awake so will he.

Haru remembered to cancel his first dungeon for the day (and mark himself tentative on the next three) and turn off his alarm, so they can sleep in a little bit. He does eventually open his eyes.

"Morning."

"Morning H—" He can't say "Haru-ya" but he's going to feel like shit if he calls Haru "Masaharu" once more. "Haru."

Haru repositions a little. "Straight into it or should it be a post-breakfast conversation, d'you think?"

Please stop asking Jaeha to make decisions.

..........

"I—know this may be a lot to ask, but—I'd kind of—prefer—if you didn't ask me to make decisions."

"...no, that's fine, I can handle that. Up you get."

They can have a quick low-effort breakfast - Haru does occasionally import Cheerios with which to take advantage of esper lactose tolerance, but doesn't have any right now, so it's the contents of the rice cooker with kimchi and eggs, and then they can retreat somewhere Cricket's not likely to interrupt them.

"So an order of operations thing I'm confused about is - guilt is a negative emotion, would in theory have been around for kind of a while, and the list with the words 'scrupulously ethical' on it was a while ago too, but the actual trigger here was Tae-gun being guidey at you, nothing particularly related to your history of power use being wrong, and I want your model of... why that might be."

"I've... been... trying not to think about how something like this was going to happen... for several days now. So guilt's been back online. And I think it was just—being guided. I—think I knew it was going to happen yesterday, actually. Even before we went out. Or today at the latest. And I was trying to—escape from my responsibilities. Leave it for future Jaeha, guided Jaeha who would be more able to deal with the fallout. In theory." A theory which has been conclusively disproven. "Lee Tae-gun was just—a trigger for—reinforcing how much I want—need—you in particular."

"Mkay.

"What's your model of why using your power on people is wrong?"

"People... have a basic right to be correct about reality? Or—if you mean the receptive part—people go into interactions with a basic model of what others are able to know or infer about their thoughts and feelings and intentions, and receptive psychic powers—especially undisclosed ones—break that model, and—people might not have consented to interacting with someone if they knew what that someone was getting out of it and thought it was more than they were willing to give."

"...yeah, that's not how I would have put it but it's mostly right. I would have said something like 'have the tools they use to understand reality uninterfered with' or something, obviously people manage to be incorrect about reality under the most supportive conditions all the time but mind-controlling them about it is still fucked up if you manage to make them more correct in so doing."

"I... think there's an argument to be made," and goddamnit why is he making it why can't he just shut up and be meek, "that there's an extent and—kind—of power use—for personal expression—that isn't different from being better at social skills due to explicit practice and grinding, or just inborn talent. But I'm not sure I can trust myself to—limit myself to only the kinds of power use that would match just that and nothing more—especially since I clearly slide down the slippery slope really easily."

"...I guess in the degenerate case, in principle you could use your power to be kind of in effect a functional copy of mine, just erase yourself from a scene so nobody can see you, and I don't think it's morally wrong to be invisible as long as you aren't, like, spying on them in ways it would also be wrong to do with a camera, but the route by which you'd do that is alarming, and, yeah, you might need a bright line."