He smiles bitterly. "I tried being meek, I tried being assertive, I tried being political. He said my actions were disgusting, he called you a foreign homosexual and the reason why Japan should have stricter immigration laws, he said I should be away from the people I'd known so that I wouldn't have such easy ways out and could learn how to be an adult."

"You know, at one point you said to me that one shouldn't be willing to edit someone's mind if they weren't also willing to just kill them. The amount I changed Iwasaki Iemasa's mind was less extreme than that but—right that moment, if you'd given me a button to push—

"It's so silly. Isn't it? I'm a powerful magical boy. He can't do anything to me. He wanted to enroll me in Kaiyo, so what? Why should I care? I can stop time. I can kill eldritch beings from his nightmares. I could turn him into a smear on the floor. He's nothing.

"But he didn't feel like nothing. It didn't feel like I could just ignore him. Like it didn't matter if he wanted to take me away from you, that he didn't have any power to do it. It felt like I was still a little boy who couldn't do anything to escape him.

"So that's why I changed his mind. I'm not proud of it, and I wouldn't do it again, but that's why I did it."

"So after he left I telepathied you. You were in the middle of—a private moment—and so I called you on the phone rather than keep using a less secure means of communication, and you asked if Iemasa was gone and I said something like—I made sure he wouldn't bother me again—and you freaked out when I explained that I'd made him not care as much about my actions—and you said that we could still fix it, I could rewind and we could workshop solutions that weren't that and I was—really angry. With you. Because it felt like—it doesn't matter. You said that him abusing me excused a lot of shit but this crossed a line, I asked why I should care about someone who made my life hell for two decades—other way around probably—and you said that it had seemed like I understood why it was wrong to rewind and steal someone's memories but clearly I hadn't stopped at that either—

"So I stopped time, cried for half an hour, then rewound and never told you about any of this. Because I was insane, because the thought of you breaking up with me over something like—Iwasaki Iemasa—was the worst thing that could possibly happen in the whole world."

Haru nods once, writing mechanically. "There are lots of worse reasons to - but - did you register at the time that it would've been a big deal for me volunteering to get rolled back to fix something -"

"...no. Not at the time. Later, yes, when I was replaying that conversation in my head, but at the time—no. I was too blinded by my own feelings to see that."

Nod.

"I'm sorry. I know it didn't actually affect you, this version of you, but—I wanted to apologise to you then. And I should apologise here. I'm sorry. I'm sorry I took your memories from you, I'm sorry I decided for you what the contents of your thoughts should be, I'm sorry I—optimised you. I'm so sorry."

He really does seem it, if Haru wants to trust his ability to read people at all.

Nod.

He takes a few more seconds to regain his composure, sniffles once and wipes his eyes with the back of his hand, then keeps talking, without looking up at Haru. "We went out to hunt witches. Yamanaka had sent us a map with the magicals per territory in the Greater Tokyo Area." That was in the letter. "I still have it and I added commentary." That wasn't. "She had marked the Shibuya bunch as relatively friendly," so they went towards that area while dowsing.

They found a cherry blossom witch, then had a date in Shibuya, then tried to find another witch. They found the creepy witch that smelled like blood, killed it because the Shibuya bunch weren't around. They went back to Yutaka's, made out some more, then Haru went back home.

"Can I have a copy of the map?"

"Of course," he says, sounding a little bit like—well, like he finds the idea that he would ever say no to Haru so insane it's actually confusing. There's a paper map but also one on his phone he can text Haru, and it's that one that has a better description of the magicals in each area. These are 13. These are selfish cowards. These are downright evil.

He wasn't expecting a no, that's just how he asks for things. "Downright evil??"

"Letting familiars eat people on purpose so they'll grow into witches."

"Like as a matter of course and not a specific stockpiling to save Tokyo thing."

"Yeah. We hadn't run into them and actually told them about Walpurgisnacht before they showed up and fought us over a familiar we were chasing down."

"- physically fought us!"

"Yes. Because, you see, we'd found the familiar in their territory. So it was theirs. We figured that since familiars didn't drop seeds they wouldn't care, it'd make their job easier at no cost to them, but they did very much care."

"Ugh."

Ren lets herself in the door. She spots the boys and waves.

Yutaka startles and—

I look like I've been crying, don't I, that's so embarrassing—

—tries to put his best smile on as he stands up and bows. "Good evening, Swan-san."

"Good evening - everything all right?"

"We're covering some heavy topics but we're fine."

Aaaaaaa she noticed!!

"But it's really quite late, and I shouldn't overstay my welcome."