Yeah. Yeah, she thought that was the guild president.

“Let me guess. Telling you to make nice with me for at least a little while, so you live long enough to make it to someone you like better?” she asks, looking, uh. Like she wants to burn this building to the ground a little. Because she does. Arson is unfortunately a crime, though.

"Yes. Something like that."

“Mhm. Didn’t seem to occur to him that this little stunt might piss me off, though, did it.” Her? Bitter? Yes. Yes she is. Same old games. New fucking country. She looks away, and consciously clamps down on her urge to make a little mote of fire to properly express herself. She’s being responsible with her backlash.

“Look. If you want to kill yourself with your powers in the longest, most indirect, and painful way possible, I won’t try to make you stop. I think you’re being a dumbass, but that’s your business, really. I’m not… whatever thing your guild is doing, I’m not a part of it. If you want me to stay and help you, I will, but because you want me to. If you don’t? I will absolutely burn every single bridge here on general principle.”

"It's complicated."

“Okay. Then I am going to stay here in this chair for now, and you can explain the complications to me, or not, or leave, or not. And you can decide what you do. Sound good?”

"No. Let's just," sigh, "get this over with. I'll work with you."

She doesn't love the lack of enthusiasm there, but, well. She was never expecting enthusiasm from him, and that sounds like actual consent. This is a step in the right direction, probably? It's hard to tell. She wants to leave South Korea and put this guild on her blacklist forever and never have to think of this again. But also, she doesn't want to leave this poor man to kill himself. So, yeah. It sure is complicated.

"... All right. Then what does working with me look like to you, ideally?"

"We go on missions together. We stay in range of each other. We do not touch. We do not share an isolation site. We are not friends, and we definitely do not," a flash of irritation, quickly smoothed over, "grow closer."

"That sounds perfect," says Hye-jin, nodding. "Strictly professional."

He's too jaded to trust that quite yet.

"Have you been assigned any missions yet?"

"No. I arrived in the country about an hour ago."

He nods. "Then I will see you when you are." And he doesn't wait for a response before summoning a holographic screen and pressing a button that makes him disappear in a localised flash of blue light.

That seems like a horrible waste of a teleporter esper's power and attention, but she supposes she just met the likely candidate who is responsible for it. She can understand wanting to tweak his nose a little.

She'll instead use her legs and go tell... someone... that, yep. She is compatible with Lee Tae-gun and is looking forward to working with him, and she will bottle up her anger at being dropped like a tactical bomb on a man who did not know she was coming without any kind of heads up. That'll come out later, when dealing with someone responsible for this fiasco, probably. But no, seriously, what the fuck, guys.

When she opens the door out of the room Min Woo-young is out there, looking like an anxious bee, leaning against a wall. He's not literally by the door but given esper senses he probably heard... most of it? Unless he just teleported there, after granting Tae-gun's teleport request, which is also likely.

"...hello," he says, looking awkward as hell. He was probably just caught between the higher-ups and Tae-gun and was almost certainly not involved in any decisionmaking, especially given that he called Tae-gun "sunbae" earlier. "How... did it go?" he asks, suggesting that he didn't actually eavesdrop.

She stares at him. It's hard to tell, from here, if he's one of those people responsible for this fiasco. But it's not hard to tell from where he's standing that: oh, yeah, she's. She's pissed.

"We have agreed we're compatible enough to work together in a professional capacity," she says, downright frostily. "So. Success for Quasar, really."

He winces and looks at his feet. "...I'm sorry. For the, for this whole—I swear we're not usually like this. It was—" It would not be a good look to blame it on prez even though it was prez's idea. It would also not be a good look to make excuses even if they're true. He can apologise for his own mistakes, though. "I'm sorry for not telling you in advance. I didn't mean to hide it from you, it just—slipped my mind." Because he was so frazzled and worried about Tae-gun.

Damn it, Woo-young, you're usually a lot better at this.

She continues staring at him.

"In the future," she says, still in the same frigid corporate tone, "I find it much easier to work in a professional capacity when I know what I'm getting into. This should have been explained to me at the contract level, before I met you." A last minute 'oh by the way, he doesn't know you're coming,' does not cut it either.

Another wince. "I know. I'm not trying to make any excuses, I'm just... apologising. This was a huge blunder on our part." He straightens his back and bows to her, really really deeply. "I hope we can have a productive partnership and make it up to you," he says, without rising from the bow. Why is he speaking on behalf of the Guild again? But clarifying it would once again sound like excuses.

He's going to yell at prez so much augh.

Usually one would say the mirrored version of this, something something, productive partnership, let's all work together, something something. She doesn't.

"Is there anything else Quasar needs from me for today, before I get to settling in?"

Woo-young finally stands up again. He was about to say that he doesn't actually know, which is half-true, but that'd make the Guild look even more incompetent.

Maybe we deserve to look incompetent.

"I believe there was some finalising of the contract needed?" he ventures, that being the part he does half-know.

"Oh, yes. There would be, wouldn't there."

Hye-jin is perfectly amenable to going forth and finalizing the contract. Well. In her own way.

"Sorry, I think there's a problem with this, actually," she says after she's sat down with the paperwork and a pen in front of her. Casually as can be, she picks up the contract and then incinerates it. "The relocation to South Korea has been more stressful than I'd anticipated, could I request a larger salary and housing stipend? I'm going to need a little bit more than I expected to get properly on my feet."

"—oh?" asks the bureaucrat she's dealing with, looking kind of baffled. The concessions already present in the contract are... pretty generous already.

(Woo-young, on the other hand, has to cover his mouth to hide a smile.)

No. They aren't. They should be more generous. By a large margin. But she understands if Quasar can't manage this, she can just go back to Japan, she's sure they can find someone else who is compatible with Lee Tae-gun-sunbae, who he has agreed to work with in a professional capacity despite having had no idea she was set up to be his partner at all.

She apologizes for the inconvenience. While smiling like some kind of carnivore. Seoul has just been such a cultural shock, see.

"I... I see. I can pass the request up the chain of command, then," as well as the report that she set the contract on fire what the f—