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Gen leaned on the railing next to him, looking out into the distance "Maybe you don't have to study this one at all? I know you like to but you already figure out so much else and I don't think it'll be...useful?"
He frowned, not knowing what he was doing was considered as didn't sit right. "Isn't it useful to see what this stuff I'm feeling entails and what the differences are?"
"Well remember how I grouped it all under partner in crime feelings? Because that sorta thing is difficult to set and there's overlap."
Ah that made sense. "Like how its complex what exactly a fish is."
Gen turned his head to blink at him, he shrugged.
"Its a paraphyletic term."
"Hm?"
"The term fish gets used for Actinopterygii like tuna, Chondrichthyes like sharks and Sarcopterygii like lobe finned fish but Sarcopterygii also contains Tetrapoda which are vertebrates with four limbs like a house cat. so saying fish doesn't contain everything in the clade that being all the descendants of a groups most common ancestor and that's called paraphyletic. And a cat isn't a fish of course that'd be stupid but it would be if you used fish as a clade."
Gen listened with interest. "Huh who thought... yeah like that. I don't think its that useful to sort like that"
Senku had to squint at him, following the metaphor, Gen helped him along. "It's still partner in crime feelings rather than romantic because it's you, even if people do it romantically, wouldn't it be nice to just do something without worrying" his voice grew warm at the end if they were two other people this would be flirtatious but that's what he was saying. Hm.
It was rather more fair that he was the one who got to decide what he felt and most of what people did around relationships was inconvenient and unnecessary and yet what he had was neither of those things already. Overlap and paraphyletic terms. He could really just ignore all of it.
Well what did he want to do right now then?
"I like you mentalist"
Gens cheeks flushed immediately. Heh.
He took time to observe his own reaction. It didn't feel bad it didn't feel romantic it just felt like something true he could say.
He'd spent a long time being stuck on nonexistent barriers, re-checking old data was something that needed doing once in a while.
Gen had started looking like a smug cat by now, raising his eyebrows when he saw Senku finish his introspection.
"Very much a returned entiment-say Senku-chan."