Page 14 of Pandion

“Should I ask everyone to leave?” Takazaki suggested.

“I don’t care if they’re here so long as no one wants me to do anything. It’d be a shame to ruin their evening.”

“I could take them over to my place next door.”

“Would you?” It wasn’t that much of a bother to have them stay, but Takazaki ushering them all out of the apartment seemed like a lovely idea.

“I’m sorry,” Satoru butted in and tried to sit up. “I tried to keep it together. I really thought—”

“It’s not your fault…” Kagesawa gave up on the rest of his sentence in favour of trying to dampen the link now that Satoru was too tired to manage it.

Harumine found himself able to sit up successfully. He glanced at Kagesawa, impressed. “You’ve improved!” he blurted out.

“Thanks, I guess.” When Kagesawa spoke, his concentration faltered. It made Harumine feel woozy for a moment, but thankfully that moment was brief.

“Takazaki-san was it?” Harumine turned to face Kagesawa’s friend.

“Yes?”

“It was nice to meet all of you, but as you heard, I’m completely wiped, and he’s not doing much better.” Harumine pointed his thumb at Kagesawa, who was currently laying face down on the bed. He was putting all of his effort into dampening the link, probably still sharing a good chunk of Harumine’s exhaustion because neither of them could suppress it properly in their current condition.

“I don’t know how long he’s going to last, and when he runs out of steam, we’ll probably both crash, and honestly, I don’t know what that’s going to look like,” Harumine warned Takazaki.

“How long can he…?” Takazaki’s brow furrowed.

“I have no idea. He’s pretty bad at what he’s doing.” Harumine tried to maintain a polite and unalarming tone but was forced to rush, not knowing how much time he had until Kagesawa folded. “If you could let everyone know we need to rest and guide them out of here, we’d greatly appreciate it.”

“Yes, of course. We did barge in uninvited. I’ll certainly let everyone know immediately!” Takazaki seemed to sense the urgency, gave Harumine a quick, apologetic bow and hurried out of the room.

“Thank you so much,” Harumine called after him.

He waited for the guests to make their way out of the apartment. When he heard the door close behind the last guest, he finally let himself fall back on the bed.

“Did you have to tell him I suck?” Kagesawa grumbled and rolled onto his side.

“Did I say that?” Harumine could feel more of the dizziness sneak back in.

“In so many words.” Kagesawa sighed. “I’m not trying to fake excellence, but I’d also rather not underline how much of a loser I am.”

“Yow’re not a losehr, but um, can you concentr-hate a while more, uh longer?”

Kagesawa made one more effort to dampen the link. Harumine used the moment of relative clarity to grab a blanket from the armrest of an armchair and to make himself comfortable on the bed.

“I honestly don’t know how you’ve been doing this for the past couple of hours… I’m not going to the sofa,” Kagesawa muttered.

“Yeah, that’s fine. Me neither.” Harumine was in no mood or state to care. “You can let go nowhh— Uhhh... This was worshe than I recalled.” Too tired to dampen it himself, the four something beers that Kagesawa had had hit Harumine with full force. “Why’re you so o-kay with—mmm, thish, uh?”

“It must have something to do with our link. It’s amplifying the effects. I used to drink a lot more than this, but nothing like this has ever happened before.”

“Ish-there sumthin’ wrong wiff me?”

“Nah, but how are you still awake? I think I’m about to pass out.” In response to his brain seemingly nearing an imminent shutdown, Kagesawa yawned so hard that for a moment Harumine thought he’d dislocate his jaw.

“Fer the record, damphning is eashy to maintain up to a cert’n point, yoreh jus’ crap at it.”

“Now you’re just being mean.”

“Nooooh,” Harumine tried to explain, but the handicap was too challenging. He made haphazard hand gestures, hoping that Kagesawa would catch his gist. It went right over his head, but the result was the same: he briefly dampened the link for Harumine to continue. “That’s not what I meant. I’ll teach you a more efficient technique later. There’s no reason why you should suck. You’ll pick it u-uhhh… an’ issbackh. Shhite…”

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