"I don’t think so. I’m sorry."

"Okay."

Handsqueeze.

............Now that he's not sleep-deprived and just-came'd to the point of being actively dizzy and has put something resembling a proper meal in his stomach, some pieces fall into place.  "- Was it really bad of me to not keep talking to you, after the sex?"

"I couldn’t reach my phone but I wind up worse off in dungeons sometimes and might have regretted some of the texts I might have sent anyway, that’s not what's bothering me."

This is so confusing.

"I think we should stick together," Julien decides.  "Otherwise I would be asking whether I should leave.  But I don't think it's safe."

"By yourself, no, it’s not. I can drive you back to your place, if you want, or your mother's place, or the hospital, but you can also stay."

"For you either.  I know you don't believe in the danger that I do, but if it's real you're at just as much risk as me."

"...I appreciate the sentiment." He's not actually hungry, or rather, he's too stressed out to be hungry, but he should at least get some water; he does that.

The thing is, if Haru's real, then it's possible that more people also are.  He wishes there was some way to tell, but of course it would defeat the purpose if there were an easy way to check.  So the only way to evaluate it is people breaking away from the narratives that would be obvious for them...

"Can I invite people here if I want?"

"I am not very careful about my secret identity and Cricket is not very careful about the address but it might be better to meet in another location if you want to throw a get-together for some reason." Ren really likes this house and will be sad if she has to sell it when Haru goes to Indonesia he's not sure if that's a realistic concern.

The pastor was pretty on-rails for the purpose of getting Julien to go back to Haru, but if he were real he might really like to know that Julien made it here okay.

If there are more real people, they're probably around him.  You'd want to cluster them so that you don't have to run so much of the world.  But probably they're not people he already knew, because - why would you do that, give them a chance to collude, when you could instead use those relationships to manipulate your subject.

There's one person who he didn't already know and who acted really bafflingly.

"I got a phone number from the person I tried to hook up with.  And now I'm kind of worried about her."

"Do you need to meet her in person for some reason? - in the next couple days?"

"On the principle that you and I should stick together I think she maybe also should.  And I know you don't believe in that, but.  It would make me feel better."

"Uh, I very much doubt that a random person you almost hooked up with wants to meet up on the basis of beliefs she most likely also does not share, let alone stick together with us for any length of time, and separately I do not usually invite people I don't know to come home with me and the fact that you're awakening was really relevant to me deciding to do that."

"...And you think your money is real and so you don't want to get us a hotel room."

"It wouldn't be a major expense but I do not want to do that."

"Maybe I could message her that if weird scary stuff starts happening to her she should reach out and maybe meet up with us somewhere."

"I think that this will make her concerned that someone mid-psychotic-break has her number and considers her relevant to his interests. I'm not going to stop you, but I think you should not do this to someone you almost hooked up with."

She might think that until other scary things start happening to her.

...Hm.

"Haru, did I torture you?"

"I was not comfortable without my phone but I'd feel pretty dramatic describing it that way and it's not what is bothering me."

"But am I the cause of the thing that's bothering you."

"At high levels of backlash, like when I was awakening, I can have a symptom where I don't believe there are any other people in the world and everyone I see is some kind of robot or illusion or dream-character or something. I do not think that I'm competent like that to do - most things actually, but in particular I think it renders me incompetent to consent to sex. I am not having that problem today. But you - are, or were."

"You're upset because I wanted to have sex with you as a feature of the scenario when I thought you were being played by an actor, and you only want to have sex with people you know are real people and who know you're a real person," Julien puzzles.