"I thought about games, but I don't have a computer and my mind immediately went to those brainrotting gacha RPGs and I don't think I need my brain to rot any more than it already has. Musical instrument... maybe, I've never been too musical but it's a possibility. I think if I did volunteer work I might beat myself up about being the most wretched of sinners at all times and not do it very well but perhaps that is no reason not to try, God knows I like to suffer. Working languages with you would need to rely on you being around, and... I forgot your other suggestions."

"Books and TV, were the others. You can get a computer but if you are trying to avoid gachas then possibly that is not the thing to do. I'm not sure I get why volunteer work in particular would have that effect?"

"Who do I think I am, trying to help other people? Would they even want my help, if they knew? Should I inflict my presence on them, when I ruin everything I touch and poison everything I interact with?"

"Wow! Okay, uh, I wasn't imagining anything super people-facing, I was thinking, like, cataloguing dungeon survey responses or something. They do at least two people on all of them when they can possibly afford it so they get corroboration."

"Huh. Well, I suppose that'd be doable."

"I can send you links once I can read!" He picks up his phone and says, half to Jaeha, "Remind me to send you links to DDSI volunteer stuff!" and the phone bleeps in response.

"The data science org?" Ah, fuck him, honestly.

"Yeah, they're great! They say international in the name but I don't know how much presence they have in Korea specifically."

Well he can't say that they do because maybe they don't and he doesn't want to be caught in a lie but then he'd have to admit he heard of them elsewhere and if Traceless asks he's gonna have to fess up which would be worse.

"Is there an obvious place on their website to sign up for this kind of thing?" Nailed it.

"I think it's pretty navigable from dungeondata dot org, but when I can read I'll be able to dig up a direct link for you." Om nom nom this salad is great.

Now how is he going to get out of doing it. He refuses to get a hobby that Traceless recommended him, especially a prosocial one that would benefit people other than him. 

ARGH.

"How about you, how was your day?"

"Saved nine people and caught a cool bug monster, want to see a picture of it?"

"Yeah!"

"Let me just," attention, phone, "pull up my photos!" And there is the bug monster, it's got eight dragonfly wings on a six-segmented body and a double stinger and it shines like the inside of a seashell. "If it survives and doesn't shrink too much it's gonna be the star of the bug building, I had some really promising butterflies but we couldn't figure out what they ate in time."

"Do all of them definitely eat things? I'd be kind of surprised, it seems like it would be a waste of a dungeon's energy if they could get away without... Actually aren't there butterfly species that literally can't eat?"

"That's one candidate reason we couldn't feed the butterfly monsters, yeah, if they just didn't eat anything and were designed to starve to death. Most monsters will eat something, though - or, consume something, we've got a robot bird, he talks and he lives off electrical charge."

"...a robot bird. I assume he, uh, hasn't let people... look inside?"

"No, but his conspecifics were valuable for parts so there's disassembly photos of those."

"I'm more thinking about... I mean, if he works outside the dungeon and it he isn't being animated by magic—I guess he might be—but the advances in the field of artificial intelligence..."

"The other ones didn't have, like, circuit boards in them, if that's what you mean, but yeah, I don't think he'd like it if I suggested taking him apart to see if he sprouted some when his dungeon bit it."

"...what'd they have instead?"

"Uh, let's see if I can - phone's a little finicky about a lot of stuff - can I pull up photos of Clockwork Aviary - that's an unofficial name but I can't remember the numbers without looking them up -" The phone can in fact pull up Haru's Clockwork Aviary pictures and he can flip through them for Jaeha till he can see dead robot birds in various states of disassembly.

Blink. "So dungeon magic, then," he concludes.

"Seems like it. Mori - the bird - is neat, though, he's really into art, he makes a living selling commissioned drawings and stuff to the zoo-goers and he can do it while talking philosophy, he's got two trains of thought at once. There's an interview with him on my blog, he remembers more than Cricket does about being a dungeon monster."

"Oh?"

Wait shit fuck he forgot to stay mad argh. Mad! Mad again!