He sighs, then pushes himself up and hops onto his feet. "Thank you. I'll think of something, eventually. I'm sure I will."

It copes with this transition in a way that leaves it sitting on his shoulder. I think so too. You definitely have the potential.

"Glad to know I have some kind of potential, at least," he grumbles. "...I'm gonna go take a shower."

It hops off of him and curls up on his pillow to nap adorably.

Yutaka pets it a bit before going to take his shower because. Look. It's just so cute.

It opens one eye and flicks the very tip of its tail and then goes back to sleep.

Adorable.

Anyway, yeah, shower now. He wants this day to end.

It's cloudy on Sunday, but on Monday it's raining buckets, again, to continue this unseasonal streak. So even though it is, in theory, getting warmer, that just means that this rainstorm isn't a snowstorm. It's still a storm.

Yutaka had a shit weekend and is having a shit start of the week. He still doesn't know what he wants to wish for, and he has to drive in this fucking rain, and then he has to go to school and see Haru's insufferably cheerful face again to mock him for being messy and stupid and fucked up.

Blink.

Okay? Maybe he's not insufferably cheerful today? Unfortunately his relationship with Haru was one of the ones he irrevocably fucked up so he can't even ask.

...or, uh. Maybe he can? He can at least say, "Good morning," and see where that gets him.

"Good morning."

"How was your weekend?" he asks, and only realises belatedly that this invites the mirror question and he is going to have to lie.

"...could have been better. You?"

"...yeah, same." Do you wanna talk about it? he offers because he can't learn his goddamn lesson, he is not Haru's friend and he shouldn't be trying to do, uh, whatever the fuck this is. You don't have to, I mean. Obviously. Just.

Nearly got into a straight up fight with some other magicals. Kind of thought a self-selected superhero population would suck less.

Uh, wait, what? I—thought so too??

I mentioned the witch population's spiky? Apparently this makes some people territorial. I was in Harajuku with Ren and dowsed a witch and there were a couple who did not think I should be hunting in Harajuku, never mind that I got there first and those things fucking eat people!

I. What?? But that's so stupid??

It's selfish and shortsighted. It's not - insane? We rely on the seeds.

I guess, he says, suddenly seeing the logic and the way the incentives line up like a switch just flicked in his head.

I figured, like, there's got to be people dying in the line of duty - Yamanaka-san's seen it happen - but ultimately if we got our collective shit together, we could drive witches extinct, and then we'd all die but what a way to go? And if that happened to take a long time, well, I could be eternally youthful till then, sweet deal, and if it didn't happen to take a long time, I'm at peace with that. But it shouldn't be taking a long time because of people being territorial.

'And then we'd all die but what a way to go' is, uh. Uh.

Man. Yutaka keeps having the fact that this guy is just, like, better than he is along every axis rubbed in at all times, huh?

I just had a thought. You said they—bud. That's the—familiars?

Yeah. But the familiars don't drop seeds. They need to eat a few people before they're big enough to do that.

So. Start with a witch, let it bud, keep watch over the familiar, wait until it grows nice and plump, whoops you have a new witch with a new grief seed. Rinse and repeat.

How sure are you that the problem is that they're territorial?