"Emily, you were timesliding by talking to Pierre.  I'd gotten to talk to her for maybe thirty seconds before I got your emergency summons."

"Oh," she says.

Oliver gives a quick hug to this young girl who likes him, in distress, before he's actually had time to think about the implications of that.  Stupid malebrains.

Emily sniffles a bit more but this hug sure does feel good.

Maybe her new life is not actually crumbling around her. Maybe Leah didn't steal her boyfriend. Yet, anyway.

"I can give you some time to recover," Oliver remembers to say, before seven full seconds have passed, "but we do need to keep talking if we don't want Leah to notice the pause.  You could just count, like, one, two, if you can't think of other things to say."

Emily tightens her grip around Oliver and counts softly under her breath.

He'll throw in the next number himself now and then.  He's not sure if it still counts as Time-Pausing Conversation if he doesn't.

Emily's sniffles space out and she seems to be breathing more easily.

She loosens her grip and pulls back a bit so she can look at Oliver.

"Thank you," she manages, with a tiny smile.

"I want to say it's okay, but I don't actually know what happens to the interrupted interaction with Leah."

"Emily, you know, right, that--actually question not statement.  My understanding of how awake people work suggests that you were feeling jealous and afraid of Leah making moves on me, does that sound true?"

"Yes? I think? Feelings are confusing."

Emily bites her lip and thinks.

"I know I just didn't like it that she seemed so fierce and like she had the right to just tell you what to do, and that I wasn't supposed to come along."

"I figured.  My telling you to bail me out if you got the 5G signal was also meant as emotional reassurance that we were still on the same side that way."

"Yeah. I did like that you said that before you left. But then... well... you know. It felt like almost an hour."

He's going to avoid asking any dumb questions about how a Pelican Town native even knows what an hour feels like.

"Leah didn't make any moves on me in the half a minute that passed for me."

"...We probably need to talk literally at all about what happens if she does."

"Can you just tell her not to? That it's not welcome?"

If he was sure it was unwelcome, then yes, that would be a very straightforward solution!

What Oliver actually says is, "I wish I'd been smart enough to discuss this earlier before it became an immediate issue.  But, Emily, there's a very real sense in which you're one day old, and deciding who to be and what to make of yourself.  I don't know what sort of person you'll become because you don't know either.  My life up until this point has made me scared of rushing right into things.  If you decide to go on the glorious adventure of falling in love with me much faster than I'm courageous enough to let myself fall in love with you, that does run the risk of my having not decided on you at the point that you've decided on me.  I have my own equivalents of daffodils and it would not be fair to ask you to cough them all up to me immediately while you're one day old."

(To be clear, Oliver totally would ask her to cough them all up on day one if Emily was the prettiest girl in town and looked somewhat older.  Furthermore his daffodil list would include him being allowed to sleep with other women, although Emily would be allowed to sleep with them too.)

Emily's head is swimming. There's a loud rushing sound in her ears and her stomach is in knots and WHY IS HER BODY HAVING ALL THESE FEELINGS she forcibly turns off the sensory processing again. Why does it keep flipping on when she's not looking?

She kind of didn't hear all of Oliver's words, because there were a lot of them and she couldn't figure out where he was going exactly but it sure sounded like he was saying I DON'T LOVE YOU which, okay, that's okay, it's been one day, it wouldn't be fair for Emily to expect Oliver to love her already, but she did kind of wish that, more than kind of, and...

She's going around in circles.

"I want to give you daffodils!" is all she manages to say, in a strangled voice.

"In the land of sort-of-awake people it's widely considered a good idea to know who you are, before you consider changing that for someone else's sake.  They'd probably look at me at least a little sideways if I told you everything about who I wanted you to be, before you knew who you already were."

(Though this is not something Oliver would say if Emily were much prettier; he'd try just telling her who to be.)

NO STOP IT STOP HAVING A BODY IT'S NOT HELPING

Emily squishes herself back down into low resolution mode, and then squishes a little more, until she feels much steadier again.

"So... what are you going to tell Leah, then?"

"Only had thirty seconds, but Leah was shaping up into a possibly weird issue, and one that didn't look so far like she was about to try to steal me from you... actually, can you possibly do the counting thing so I have some timeslide time to think about the Leah situation, like, at all."

Counting, Emily can do. That requires very little resolution or cohesion on her part.

"One, two, three..."

And Oliver thinks.

And then thinks some more.

Oliver has not, at this point, mentioned in front of Emily that Leah was awake.  Even without the jealousy thing--and Leah being awake and coming from Oliver's own reality would obviously make Emily even more worried--Oliver wouldn't just pop out with that fact, because Leah asked for a private conversation, and by default, you don't repeat facts from private conversations.  Oliver might, but he'd need a reason.  Oliver prides himself on being an unusually honest and exceptionally ethical human being that way; he'll only do unethical things for reasons, or by accident because he didn't notice, which he's pretty sure puts him in the top 5% of all human beings ethics-wise.

It's like how Oliver didn't just lie to Emily that he wouldn't sleep with Leah.  Leah is pretty and looks older and also is the other person here who's already a complex realized adult.  Oliver might, in fact, hit that.  So Oliver will only lie about that to Emily if he decides to.  He's a great human being that way!

...but before Oliver hit that, he'd first consider the question of whether he was sticking his dick in crazy.

"Stop.  WAKING THEM UP!"

Now that Oliver thinks about, somebody who is otherwise leading a really comfortable life that they want to keep... is a pretty good candidate for somebody who'd go to very dangerous lengths to preserve that very comfortable life.

And if Oliver goes back and tells Leah that he has been getting what look like the start of quest chains, that his coming here coincided with JojaMart opening and the bus breaking down and the Mayor giving him the Community Center to repair?  That this world may be a game, and with Oliver here, that game is starting and may not have a keepable status quo?  Well, Leah could easily be the sort of person who tries to shoot the messenger about that, and just refuses to believe that it's not Oliver's fault, because Oliver is right there to be blamed, right.

Stop waking them up...

"Emily.  How long ago did Leah come to town?"

Emily stops counting and looks up at Oliver and thinks.

"Time and memory are fuzzy, but I think it was around the same time my parents left to tour the world, so about two years ago I guess? It was right around when Haley was graduating from high school. My parents decided I was old enough to look after her, given that she was technically all grown up... emphasis on technically."