"I love you too. There is nothing nuts about being wanted and needed, especially by the best person in the world."

"Just rip the band-aid off," Haru whispers, pressing the notes into Yutaka's non-shield arm so he can put them away. His gem wobbles like a candleflame.

Fuck.

Okay.

He'll put the notes in his buckler then rewind until just before Haru sent the telepathic message and say, "H-hold on!"

"- why?"

"...you, uh. You made the wish. Then you remembered—becoming a witch. And you said you might need the whole loop to process it and not—get triggered—and be able to be useful and um." Buckler, notes. "You asked me to rewind so you'd forget and give yourself these notes."

"Oh. ...kay." He takes the notes, his hand shaking a little bit, and reads through them. "Oh okay yeah I was fucked up fucked up."

Squeeze. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry we didn't know. I'm sorry we didn't—think—it's, it's so obvious in retrospect, and that creepy little creature's always been so slimy but—this slimy is just—"

"Well, it seems like it might not be particularly conducive to its... quarterly earnings reports, or whatever... if it were more forthcoming."

"Horrible plush doll. What the fuck."

"If they have no emotions I guess that'd make them way different in terms of ethics, presence or absence thereof." He scans through the new notes in more depth.

"Something like that. Like what does that even mean, to not have emotions, do they not experience the, like, subjective sensation of wanting things or, how do you even incentivise pre-sapience species to take actions without associating subjective sensations they should seek out or avoid..."

"Why bother having a civilization and seeking to preserve it, really."

"I call bullshit. I call bullshit on everything that creepy little monster says."

"Do we have any other source of information - do any of our other possible sources of information have any other sources of information, more to the point -"

"Not as far as I know, but that is not that far."

"Okay. Operation Befriend Magicals has subquest interrogate them about metaphysics, I guess. ...wow I was fucked up when I wrote this."

"...sorry. I, uh. I don't know if I should—ask—probably not, you said it would be very bad if I became a witch and that's why you weren't describing it." 

"I don't know exactly how much of a risk that vector is. It could be nothing. Is there a strong reason to chance it?"

"Only if there's some way I could—help you, somehow. But not otherwise."

"Well, I'm fine now and even if I have a bad time I cannot turn into a witch." Sigh.

"...sorry. I've been saying that a lot. I'll try to stop.

"We could get you a different wish if you want to be magical, just..."

"I'm a little spooked about it now! Maybe I'll feel differently if I manage to trip into traffic or something."

"I'll rescue you," he says immediately. "I'll never let anything happen to you. ...anything that'll stick."

"- right. But it might, like, still spook me away from the being-nonmagical default."

"...yeah, right, that makes sense."