"I can't, what, ogle him, that would be completely inappropriate!"

"Besides, it wouldn't even be informative, espers are hot, that's how espers work..."

"What did I ever do to you?"

He laughs. "See, the fact that you can't ogle him because it's inappropriate is exactly the kind of thing I'm talking about that makes him go, even if Haru could in theory like me it could never possibly happen because it would be inappropriate so I'll just sit on these feelings forever and pine.

"But also it's not even ogling, you're just too quick to catch the impulse to look, if you ever feel it, and fold it away before it actually affects any of your actions and body language, so it doesn't look like you're even, like, theoretically interested even if all of the facts of the matter didn't conspire against it."

"- it would be inappropriate for me to initiate but we're espers, not - a doctor and a patient or something where it'd be more categorical."

"I thiiiink my Jaeha's trying to initiate on his alt's behalf? In... advance?"

Eheheheheh he's Haru's Jaeha.

"Yeah, basically. Like I am not joking about how much he'd like you to read his mind, if slash when it ever gets to it, because he wants you to know he's interested but not in a way where you could explicitly reject him with words because that would be mortifying and really ego-dystonic. He wants—would slash will want, I mean—you to say nothing if you reject him and you to give some indication even if nonverbal that you could maybe be interested if you don't. 

"And again I am not claiming you shouldn't reject him, the facts of the matter do kind of conspire against it, but to the extent I can help it be only the facts of the matter and not also the fact that he has the communication skills of a particularly dense turnip that conspire against it, I want to do that."

"So if he has a breakthrough and achieves the heights of an unusually gifted courgette you recommend that I... discernibly check him out."

"I feel like he can eventually do better than that! But something like that, yeah. Or, I mean, something like that if..." He pauses, trying again to find the right words. "I think the thing that would be healthiest for him personally would be just if you didn't really filter your actions through the question of, is it okay for me to do that to or at or around someone I have this much power over?"

"That's a hell of an inconvenient way to be!"

"I mean, there do exist people who I wouldn't be giving this advice to, it's just—it being you, there isn't actually anything you could or would do that'd... be an issue? Like, he's... not going to feel pressured—or, no, that's the wrong framing. He's a people-pleaser. We are, I mean. We want people to like us, or, if they don't, we want them to hate us in exactly the ways we want them to hate us. So regardless of whether you do or don't do the kinds of things that could be pressuring or whatever to someone else, he will be trying to figure out what you want and how to make you happy and do that.

"And since he's going to be doing that anyway, no matter how little you try to pressure him—and, actually, that's part of the problem with the, like, being, how did he put it, mass-market considerate? A big part of the problem there is that he has so little signal to figure out how to please you that he starts reading signal in the noise.

"So, since he's going to be doing that anyway, you might as well just act like how you normally would? Then rather than trying to be the perfect prisoner or whatever he's going to be trying to be a good friend."

"I guess that's not obviously inconsistent with how he is..."

"I do aim to have models of people that aren't obviously inconsistent with how they are."

"You have presumably noticed that I - we - get really huggy on backlash, if I'm not suppressing that then..."

"He would find it really ego-syntonic to be able to clearly, obviously provide you with value, and that could be a way in which he does that. Personally when I was having my own personal little crisis about how Haru—Persimmon—is perfect and there's nothing positive I bring to the table being reminded that that was something I brought to the table did actually help a lot. Then I went and found or invented new positive things, but that one was a very concrete, obvious one that my badbrains couldn't argue against."

"And you don't think it'll be a problem that this is a major sudden change in how I interact with him - I guess 'we talked to our alternate universe selves about it' is a pretty good explanation -"

"Yeah. If it happened overnight with no explanation he'd be looking for the catch, but this is a pretty good explanation, yeah."

"What's he doing in the other room, notebooking?"

"That's what he was doing when I left, yeah. First time I did notebooking I was at it for, what, two hours straight? Three?"

"That's a lot."

He knocks the side of his skull with his knuckles lightly. "There's a looooooot of accumulated cruft in here and I can't imagine those seven years of his have made any positive changes in that regard. It was quite jarring to notice the extent to which my thoughts liked to change out from under me."

"He let me read some once."

"Whoa."

Well that's because Haru gets root access to his brain. He is not going to say that in front of other Haru because he is being nice and not rubbing it in but it's true.

"Anyway, is there anything in particular about my alt you're curious about? I think I've said everything I had to say."