[RDMgryphon]

(Encrypted e-mail)
From: Taki Shimiru
Date: late night of Tuesday, March 16th
Subject: That didn’t go as well as I’d hoped.
To: Haruko Kinsha

Thanks for calming down Katie,

So, before I mentioned a name I shouldn’t have three times, I maybe realized 
something in the book, and I’ve got a question: What’s it look like from the 
outside when I Go someplace?

Semi-related, but I’m pretty sure we can cross Saki’s group off the list of 
suspects for the Auditorium Fire Fight. Even if the mysterious swordsman is 
supposed to be Ryuji, there are too many other people in the fight and none 
of them have either of Saki’s card’s powers. So either Aka’s confused about 
who was working with who, or that’s somebody else.

-Taki

P.S.
I need a way to apologize that doesn’t involve groveling and/or throwing 
sweets at Katie.

---

[Grysar]

(Encrypted e-mail)
From: Haruko Kinsha
Date: morning of Wednesday, March 17th
Subject: Re:That didn’t go as well as I’d hoped.
To: Taki Shimiru

You're welcome.

That's a good question. The short answer is that you completely vanish or 
reappear in toto. If you'd like, I could probably set my webcam up to capture 
it sometimes, but I suspect all that you would see is all of you and then an 
empty frame. When you're trying to put up a field by teleporting in place, 
you flicker in and out, but I think that might just be the fact that there's 
a small lag between your disappearance and when you arrive. (More thoughts in 
the post script).

Your analysis makes sense. We could perhaps expand our search to a degree. 
Given that the figure is cloaked in shadow, they may be using a wider range 
of techniques to summon a blade. I do remember stories where someone creates 
a blade using ice or the like, and while thankfully the time frame is wrong 
for that sort of thing, maybe there's some other power that we aren't 
thinking about because it's disguised.

You're right to reject groveling, she wouldn't care, and throwing sweets, 
which are terrific but don't get to the real issue. So first off, 
acknowledging my real limitations, I have two pieces of advice. 
1) Anything meaningful will require hard work in a domain where you aren't 
really comfortable. You had some good thoughts today and often the easiest 
way to dispose of bad ideas is by talking them through with other people. I'm 
here for you as a sounding board and I think Wataru probably is too.

2) It will involve paying attention to her, the person she is now, both in 
terms of what she needs and what she'd like from you. She cares a lot about 
honesty and doesn't want people keeping secrets from her, but even that is 
not a universal truth as one of the times I caused harm was by sharing a 
secret that she wasn't asking me to share. Attention isn't the same as 
admiration or affection, it's harder and sometimes will mean noticing things 
you don't like. However, without that, it's far too easy to tell just make up 
stories about what other people want or feel. This is a struggle for me too, 
as you could no doubt tell on danger roof where I often was throwing the 
wrong challenges at you.

I could make a few suggestions here, but it's not really about fixing this 
single mistake, despite the fact that if you're anything like me it's now 
playing on a steady loop in your mind. I think this is one of those zen 
things where explaining more makes it harder to reach enlightenment. Instead, 
just please remember that you have friends that will listen to your ideas and 
help you refine them.

Haruko

P.S.
We could always figure out some more properties of your teleporting. Like 
testing whether it the brief period you vanish for becomes longer over 
greater distances. That would probably require some sort of high speed photo 
sensor. Perhaps more important, I think you've told me that you conserve 
momentum, right? We should figure out a way to set up a safety net or the 
like so that if you're falling, or catching someone that's falling, you have 
a way to land safely. We could test whether you can actually go directly into 
water, which would kill momentum fast, but I'm not sure if that counts as 
empty space. Something to think about.

P.P.S.
I will never forget the number of times that you have outright saved my life 
or put yourself in danger for others' sake. You have been a boon comrade, and 
I think that often gets overlooked because sometimes you give so freely that 
it becomes easy to forget the value of the life you are putting on the line. 
We are all the sum of our mistakes, but we are also the sum of the good we 
do. They don't cancel out, instead we live with both.