"If you want it you can have it. When I'm not about to prep for a dungeon."

"Yeah. It can wait."

Haru sighs and leans on him.

Jaeha—can probably—properly return the hug, right? He thinks so. He'll do that, he'll wrap his arms around Haru and just settle into it. 

He really, really wishes he were the man of Haru's dreams. He wishes it were possible for him to become that man.

When Haru's alarm goes off he gives Jaeha a peck on the temple and takes his teleport to the dungeon to get geared up and do heroics.

His Haru gets to be a hero. Jaeha is genuinely happy for him.

By the time he's out Yoo-min will have replied to his text.

Sorry, was in a dungeon. 

What's up? How can I help?

yeah I realized that after a minute, should have checked first. how does a conference call with me, Jaeha, and whatever we're having for lunch sound?

Yeah, can do 

Now?

give me five to teleport home and make sure he's ready then yeah

No he hasn't, he needs to have any semblance of ability to be a functional human being if he wants Haru to like him and that includes making them lunch.

"Yoo-min can hop on a call now," says Haru, dishing himself some of the lunch.

"—ah. Yeah, okay."

Not exactly enthusiastic consent but Jaeha didn't want to make decisions! Haru calls.

He picks up quickly. "Hey. How're you guys—" Then he takes one look at Jaeha's face and decides that's a stupid question. "How can I help?" is what he goes with instead.

"So, remember how Jaeha's been in a backlash hole that I was very restrainedly not suing anybody over? - Jaeha I'm gonna need you to, like, explicitly release me from the NDA, possibly in writing."

"Already done," he says, opening a file on his commscreen and mailing Haru it, with his digital signature. He realised he was going to need it earlier today while Haru was in the dungeon and decided to get it out of the way early.

"...okay, uh, emotionally preparing myself, here."

"Yeah, buckle up, it's not fun. His backlash eats his emotions, positive ones first. And he has been continuously backlashed since his awakening, with, like, a brief blip right as he was coming out of hell week for his asshole dad to show up and be an asshole, which was when he was seventeen. And as you might expect in a seventeen year old whose emotions are being eaten and whose dad is an asshole his conscience fell by the wayside somewhere in there and he's only just now coming out of it. His power's a lot more comprehensive than it looks on the record and he's been in the habit of abusing it in civilian situations. We are in progress on a plan to cut that shit out forever but I am among other things not immortal and the plan can't be 'I personally catch him at it every time'."

"...a lot more comprehensive..."

"It's not taking full complete control of someone's entire mind but if that's the target you're aiming to get just short of you'll land approximately in the correct description of it."

"—holy shit."

"He bounces off me - he's slipped and accidentally tried to empath me a couple times, passed it off till yesterday as a startle response, it ticks my backlash but doesn't do anything to me otherwise. Based on the description I can't imagine it'd work on recordings, and it doesn't alter long term memories. Range extent is also very scary - Jaeha, how scary exactly, do you know -"

"From the top floor of the Quasar building I can reach street level. —I haven't tried that specific thing, it's just a good order of magnitude ballpark."

"Holy shit," he repeats. The Quasar building is thirty stories tall!!!!