Shrug.

"I guess I'm not really - imagining myself needing to interact with people very much.  And that's most of what he minds."

"Minds being visibly an esper to people?"

"Yeah?  It sounds kind of awful."

"Huh. Why?"

"It's... like when we met in the dungeon."  (Is this secrets?  No, this is just the correct way to act.)  "Julien tried to take up as little of your time and attention, until it came out that you wanted conversation, and then he tried to be as convenient as possible in a different way, because - other people mostly don't do that, I think.  Maybe I'm wrong but it kind of seems like being an esper is like doing customer service, except that instead of physical objects and politeness and sometimes subservience, the thing everyone wants from you is - well, it's that people want things from you, all the time.  I was going to say, 'to be your friend', and I think that's also probably true a lot but it's maybe less the thing that everyone wants from you."

"In a dungeon the thing they want is mostly to be rescued, which is why I go in there in the first place."

"Right, but if you have the obvious esper look then you have to take steps to not have this happen everywhere."

"That's true. I'm not sure I'd mind it but at any rate I can go stealth."

"Yeah, you're also, uh, advantaged.  Backlashily."

"...eh."

"For this?"

"I don't... go out and run errands, backlashed? I run dungeons while it goes up and I sit with June while it goes down. Sometimes there is an awkward interstitial period where the dungeon's over with or I need to quit and June's not available yet and then I hang around talking to reporters and calling everybody I know while I wait for her. But it doesn't strictly speaking advantage me, it just disadvantages me way more at some things than at other things."

"Hmm yeah.  ...My nurse only called you because she knew yours was that, though.  But maybe that's not an advantage."

"I mean, I'm glad she called me, but Paula screens out most random people who are calling me."

"Maybe this is a useless line of conversation.  I'm not going to figure out how I feel about this until I know whether I'll ever have to deal with it," or if he'll die first "and Julien also probably won't have any very productive relevant introspection until he's saner."

Nod.

"Howww was your not-a-nap?"

"Queued a blog post on dungeon response in Egypt, guy finally got back to me about it the other day."

"Nice.  Spoilers?"

"They have really strict gun control and they don't like compromising on it for dungeoneers. They're an exceptionally urbanized country because of how they concentrate along the Nile and they seem to be enjoying decent luck with dungeon sirens."

"Ooh.  Do they sub out explosives for guns or just use magic or what."

"They have guns but there's a special agency that handles them, somebody can't just have a shitload of munitions in their garage like I do."

"- Oh!  I wish I didn't know that.  They're like, really locked up and not going to affect my life at all, right?"

"Sorry. They are super locked up and will not affect your life."