He finishes pulling the T-shirt on and turns around to look at Haru.

Seriously. Is he serious. Is he actually, for real serious? So now he wants to—

...hmm...

"...I think we may have miscommunicated something. My problem isn't and has never been mentioning it."

"...oh. Okay, what... is it?"

How the fuck does he explain this. It feels so obvious. 

"It's that I... want to know how to act. What my role here is meant to be. And if you—call this place my house, that's false, but we can pretend it's true. But if we're pretending this is my house then the—mass-market considerateness clashes with that, because, why do I have a bank teller spending time with me in my house? And if we're not going to pretend then let's not pretend even a little bit, let's not pretend you're not my," jailer is a bad word, "my parole officer, and let's not pretend we're friends, and let's not pretend I have much of a say in what happens in the future."

"...huh. I mean, I'm trying to act less like a bank teller, though I keep not being able to tell how it's landing, but the obvious reason for me to be in your - house, your silo, whatever - is that I'm here for guiding purposes and incidentally it makes logistical sense for me to eat and sleep here some? I guess I have no idea what the standard range of ways for partners to act is in Korea, is nobody ever kind of - stiff and awkward with a new partner who is compatible and who they will be spending a lot of time touching for professional reasons but who they are still getting to know? ...also I think you actually have quite a lot of leverage over your future, like, not terrorizing-the-populace amounts but within responsible confines, I admit I'm not sure what it is you're thinking you'd say if you had more of a say but I'm willing to hear it."

"Well I have no idea what the standard range of ways for partners to act in Korea is because due to who I am as a person I was in bed with every one of my partners the day we signed the contract, sometimes earlier, but then they eventually realised I'm uninteresting and unpleasant to be around and left." Which he's already told Haru about. "And I'm not—sure either, what I'd want, since apparently the answer to that question stopped being 'to die' at some point over the past year while I wasn't looking, but—you have to see that the fact that I still have to run it by you means it's fake, right?"

"...it means it's... mediated? Which is its own kind of burdensome, I get that, but like, part of what the responsible-nice-considerate thing I was doing was trying to signal to you was that I don't mean to be any more high-friction about that than was already guaranteed before I came on the scene, ideally less. And everybody has some mediated-ness, if I want to remodel the kitchen in my house I have to run it by Ren, if I lived alone I'd still have to find somebody to hire to do the work, and if you want to remodel the silo kitchen the person you have to run that by is me but..."

"And if I want to go on a walk in the park it's also you. ...which isn't worse than being in prison, I know it's not, I'm not trying to—make you feel bad or something, but... in prison I knew what I was meant to do and who I was meant to be, and that was nothing and no one, and here I don't."

"It'd be something of a production to find a suitable park but I'm more likely to pull it off than jail is, yeah. This is something you need - externally supported? You can't just decide you're going to be a survey-data-sorter-and-... uh... -violinist-and-later-again-a-dungeoneer and get on that? I don't think I natively understand... that."

"I mean, I can be all of those things and also on parole, and I can be all of those things and also free, and if I am all of those things and also on parole then I—can't really put any weight on them. Can't really put any weight on them regardless, I guess, but—I can pretend that I can. If that's what we're doing, is pretending."

"I think you're seeing this as more of a - binary, than I am, where you're... perceiving an attractor state between either complete unmarked pretense, like we're actors on a TV show where your character just happens to not leave this house for unspecified reasons and I must create a character who is here to visit you for purely social purposes, or else, not only do we not pretend this is anything other than a work-release custody situation, we also - inhabit roles that would be one-dimensional even if we were on a TV show about that."

"I mean, maybe, but if nothing else there is no version of our—relationship, interactions—that isn't all about that. Either we're ignoring the—situation—and pretending there's literally any reason beyond the practical for us to spend more than five seconds in each other's presence, or we're not ignoring it, in which case all we are to each other is parole officer and their charge, and so you don't actually have any reason to not go live your life where it actually is. And I know you said you're one of the two steps between this and solitary confinement but if we're not pretending then you're—not, actually."

"Ouch."

"—I didn't mean that as anything about you specifically. Your friends are lucky to have you, you sound like a pretty great guy all-around, you're probably one of the coolest people I've ever met, just—it has to be real to count. Or at least look real enough to, like, fool my subconscious brain or something."

"Cricket doesn't have a legal identity. He's not a citizen, or even a resident. In order to get him a regular vet instead of just the research guy that the agency had X-raying him to see how his wings connect to a cat skeleton, I had to low-key claim that I own him, because that's how you establish that you can make medical decisions for any creature that sees a vet, a process that did not actually consult facts like 'can he talk' or 'do I care about him'. His bank account has my name on it, even if I never touch what he earns from his dungeons and also don't charge him rent or grocery money. And in fact I boss him around a fair amount. If he's going to be in any sensitive situation or around anyone particularly vulnerable I tell him to be nice or to just keep his mouth shut, and he does it. I don't think this is because I have legal power over him, I think it's because he - respects me - but both things happen, at the same time. And if he were still the size of a bear and would rather be hunting toddlers than pigeons, I would have to exercise a fair bit more of that power, even if he planned sincerely to give up the most dangerous game, because I'd have obligations to all the toddlers in Toronto and their families.

"He's my best friend. He is really my best friend."

Jaeha blinks slowly and tries not to have a stupid slack jawed look on his face but he doesn't actually... get... what Haru thinks the relevance is? He just said a lot of words so he must logically believe that those words are connected to the subject but the only theory that's rising to mind is that he's trying to rub the fact that Jaeha will never get that in his face and Jaeha thinks not even his backlashed self would be able to believe that one—it's just completely incongruent with who Haru is—but he doesn't have an alternative.

"My point is that I can and have become friends from a nonnegotiable position of power. It's weird but I can do it anyway."

He blinks again, this time several times in a row, rapidly. "Are you saying—what are you saying? You—what? Why?"

"Isn't... trying to be friends... what the conversation yesterday ended up at...?"

"...no! It ended up at me realising that was my brain trying to do something that is monumentally stupid and me deciding to stop it from doing that!"

"...oh."

"Why... would you want to? There is absolutely no reason to do it and every reason not to, I—you have your own life and your own friends, I'm a criminal, I'm your charge, I'm—" Boring, insipid, unappealing, unpleasant to be around. "I'm not going to hold you to stuff you say while backlashed," especially when it's so clearly a bad idea, that's, like, not even just dickish it's evil.

"I mean, if you don't want me to then I don't have trouble occupying myself, or anything, that just - I think some of that conversation that you experienced maybe did not happen out loud?"

He's just been standing there a while, maybe he should sit down again and lean against the headboard. "I—I mean, I said that I was—pathetic for wanting it, and you said—something, I don't remember what exactly, in response to the fact that I'd hid my eyes in embarrassment, something about how friends look each other in the eye? And I kind of," assumed he was just saying whatever would get him a little bit of reprieve from the backlash, not anything with content.