"...no."

Might help with the spring cleaning of the brain.

"...okay. I should try that. If it'll make me better for you, I'll do anything."

I think it might also, like, directly benefit you. Possibly.

"Maybe, possibly, it might, yes."

The teacher calls on Haru and he has to talk about the provided passage from an American newspaper for a bit before he can go back to not doing his schoolwork.

"It's so silly for you to be called on for this stuff."

I would have English class if I went to school in Canada too, it'd just be more literature and less reading comprehension, and I already read the kind of books they assign for that recreationally.

"That'd probably make them a lot more fun. I don't think there's, like, any class I like. Maybe maths."

Sounds like a boring way to approach school.

"Yeah. That's why I skip it to lie on the lap of the boy I love."

Yutaka's been talking to potentials and despite the... misgivings... about their ages, there's a basic utilitarian argument to be made about shutting up and multiplying. It makes him feel sick to his stomach to send children into the meat grinder like that. He doesn't like it, at all. But...

...anyway. They're meant to meet up with the kids after school today, to see if they can get the oomph up, and Yutaka's in charge of herding them, so he must regretfully part from his Haru to go do his duty and save Tokyo.

Yamanaka thinks she can cover some very low-magic-use non-hunting kids; she travels enough that temporary low witch supply doesn't usually affect her much and she's too lucky to have run into a lot of hostile magicals while hunting out of town.

The kids have school, and some of them have cram school too, or piano lessons, or other commitments, and will have to be convinced to let Yutaka in time stop sneak them out of their rooms at night - and isn't that sketch as fuck, but needs must - so they aren't meeting up until well after dark. Haru has some time to do homework and get his notes in order for... if it comes up, his future self.

Haru should probably tell Yutaka about the whole, chocolate covered crack, thing, it would probably... help, with that self-esteem mess Yutaka's working with over there, or whatever that is if it's not self-esteem.

What would it be like if there were two of him... they probably would make out but honestly there doesn't seem to be relationship content in "literally myself, but from a month ago, working on the same project with the same information", he can tell Yutaka that too. Maybe if they had any time to diverge something would change but right off the bat they would just be... Haru and Also Haru, symmetric in their completely sober and self-aggrandizing assessment of one another. That's got relatively little of what turns out to in actual practice turn him on.

The sex was shaping up to be really very good (he doesn't even really try to write out the exact qualia of it; you can't do that; it's a Mary's Room situation) before the cold-water-dumped-over-his-head thing. ...should he possibly clarify the spider analogy to Yutaka. Spiders Are Friends (Unless You Are In Australia), you just don't want them in your sandwich; the thing where Yutaka did shitty things and then gave them up in a fit of adoration is chocolate-covered crack, Haru just did not want to have to learn more about it right then while he was trying to get off. Would this clarification be better timed before or after they next try to bang. Is that even going to happen tonight, given that they were up really too late the night before and this evening's blocked out for trying the collective wish? Haru really can't be planning on things like napping in time stop if they're going to be trying to support a magical eight year old on what they can hunt as surplus. But they could go out to dinner and have a little time to kill before the kids are all in bed and they could kill the time with sex.

The little roses-are-red poems are cute, though not nearly as good as the sonnet, which stands to reason, the sonnet took, like, weeks. He's not going to wear the ring yet, but he strings it onto a friendship bracelet he made at summer camp one year in Canada and has lying around, so it'll be harder to lose.

Do they need to be more paranoid about empowering a bunch of random children... well, they need to be at all paranoid but they're going to take better care of them than Kyubey was likely to. Though Kyubey might have waited for them to get older, c.f. that none of them have in fact made their wishes yet. They need some kind of... presentation, to get everybody worked up about Tokyo going the way of Haiti. In particular they should not use that comparison because none of the kids were born when Walpurgisnacht happened to Haiti. Yutaka will have to give the first person account but Haru can at least confirm that he checked with magical hypnosis that Yutaka's on the level.

Then he'll make his wish, and... malaria will go on existing, but he can still be an epidemiologist.

But what if it doesn't work. If it doesn't work... he doesn't actually have another brilliant idea.

If it doesn't work, Yutaka's going to have to go back again.

Haru writes, and indexes more aggressively than he ever normally does so he'll be able to find things random-access without any actual memories of what there should be and where it might have been written, and he runs off copies.

Dinner plans? he asks, when it's coming up on five thirty.

You can safely assume that I will be always holding out hope that you will want to spend your time with me.

I do assume that, which is why I asked if you had dinner plans instead of microwaving myself a cup of ramen.

Are you raring for anything? I could throw some more money at a last-minute reservation somewhere extremely fancy but I seem to recall that even after I showed you the joys of really nice food you didn't particularly care for fancy.

Also my only buttondown shirt is in the laundry. What have you got in the ramen department, now that I've contemplated ramen I want, like, a nice bowl of it with tonkatsu.

I know just the place. Do you wanna go by car or be carried by a magical boy on a roof-hopping tour and potentially accidentally reveal magic to the whole world?

Not that it's not tempting but as long as I'm holding out hope that you will not have to go back to February again, let's reveal magic only on purpose.

...yeah. Yeah.

Let me know when to come down and meet you.

He arrives in fifteen minutes.

And there's Haru, dressed as down as he normally is.

Yutaka is waiting by the car, and when Haru arrives he opens the passenger door for him and helps him in.