"Not quite up to harassing exactly. It's just really creepy to be followed to my place of residence and have surprise conversations with people who have ulterior motives." Mocha sip.

"Yeah, no shit. —pardon my French." Pause. "Oh, I bet I'm coming off just like that, aren't I, damn, I didn't—realise. Ah, I'm so sorry." He should've just apologised and walked away in the bookstore, but he was curious, and he didn't think... "Sorry, I didn't—I should get out of your hair. I'm definitely going to have words with some people at the guild, though, you should hopefully not hear anything from them again."

He finishes his coffee, pushes his chair away, stands up, and bows. "On behalf of Lucid Guild, and, also, on my behalf, I deeply apologise."

"Apology accepted." It isn't, really, but she knows how to play this game. "But Lucid's gotten the best answer it's going to get from me, I'm afraid. I should head out too, actually, I've got mission prep to do. Lovely to meet you, thank you for showing me the bookstore. It's very cute." She will resolutely not let this asshole ruin this cute bookstore for her. She would have found it eventually.

Then she would like to teleport the fuck out. To her silo. Mocha, muffin, and shopping bags of books coming with.

...haaaah.

He's going to need to kill her.

Hey so on a scale of 1 to 10, how alarmed should I be that sunbae’s old partner Kang Jaeha ran into me in a little out of the way bookstore near where I live.

Because I'm at about an 8 or 9 right now.

It takes a couple of minutes for him to see the message but then: 

58

are you available to chat in-person right now

Yes

I'm in my silo, you can just teleport in.

He does. 

"Cancel your next dungeon, I'm messaging sunbae to do the same, don't message him yourself, tell me everything."

She's looking pale and kind of shaky. There's a coffee cup and an untouched muffin nearby, and she's picking nervously at her fingernails. A shopping bag from a bookstore is set carefully nearby.

"Right. Um. He literally bumps into me, trashy anime style, at a bookstore. He - I don't know, did some kind of bumbling innocent idiot thing but, it's, it's too fucking convenient and - sorry, I'm still freaking out a bit. Um." She pauses, takes a deep breath, and then carefully and methodically goes through what happened.

He doesn't interrupt her and just listens to the whole story, but once she's done with it he asks, "Do you want a hug?"

"I - don't know, I'm still out of sorts. Answer hazy, ask again later. Um. He's the one who fucked up Tae-gun, isn't he."

"Yes. Big time. And he's dangerous and—I'm of half a mind to ask you to stay here for the next week or so. Fuck I thought we'd seen the last of the bastard."

"Oh, good, he knows where I live, that's great, love that." She's tempted to snap and go 'And why didn't anyone tell me about Tae-gun's creepy stalker ex?!?!' but she knows the answer to that. And the answer is Tae-gun, who probably desperately wants to forget everything associated with this person.

Instead of taking out her fear on one of her precious allies she is going to instead fix the root problem of not knowing enough about what she's dealing with. "Dangerous how, dangerous like he will kill me where no one will know, or what, what am I dealing with here?"

"He cannot, as far as I know, get you anywhere you don't want to be, and in a direct fight you can burn him to ash, but beyond that I can't tell you. Fuck. I can't tell you, I legally can't tell you, I'm under a confidentiality agreement and I can only break it if I suspect a crime and I don't think he's committed a crime, but I am going to really get someone to look into it."

She stares at him.

That is so supremely unhelpful.

"... Fuck legality, he'll dance around every law in the book and get away with it, I need to know specifics on how he works in order to make myself safe!"

"I know. Hye-jin, I'm not your enemy here, I swear I'm going to do my best to help you, just give me a few seconds to think about how to do right by you and sunbae. Please?"

Shit, is she not getting any help at all, is she going to be alone again, but this time with a more literal monster instead of just her own personal one, is it a mistake to trust anyone at all anywhere because they will all let her down -?!

"I need to -" Pushing harder after a refusal has never gotten her anything she ever wanted before, why would it start now. "- Okay."

But if she's not going to start yelling at him then she's going to start crying instead. Not again not again why won't anyone trust her fucking intelligence she's brilliant-!

No that is literally exactly what he's going to do, actually.

"He's an A-rank mind esper. His powers on record are mental shielding, erasing mental influences, and illusions. His backlash is not on record." He squeezes his eyes shut. "Fuck, I'm sorry, sunbae, this isn't about just you anymore."

He opens his eyes again. His lips are trembling, his hands are trembling, his heart is hammering in his chest, and he is fighting to keep his breathing as even as possible.

"If people knew the extent of his powers, he'd be S-rank, if they weren't too terrified to let him keep operating," he says, trying to keep his voice steady.

"He can take full control of your senses. If this were an illusion by him, you would have no way of telling. His influence is undetectable by any other mind espers. His influence is undetectable in retrospect—the only way you can ever tell something you saw or felt wasn't real is by it being something that doesn't fit what you'd do. He can erase short term memories as they form, if he catches them fast enough. He can get some feedback on minds he's affecting, though not full mind reading. He does not need to do all of his detail work, and he can make your own mind fill in the gaps in experience in ways that would make sense. He cannot directly erase, replace, or implant complete emotions, but he can dull them, push against them, enhance them, even slightly modify them around the edges.

"When he partnered with sunbae over five years ago he already had five years of experience and practice with his powers."

"Fuck," says Hye-jin, very quietly.

The deluge of information took long enough for her to stop crying and wipe away her tears. As if they never happened. It's fine, she's fine.

He takes a deep, steadying breath. It doesn't work. "May I smoke?" he asks, hands still trembling.

"Yes, though I might catch and burn off the extra smoke you breathe out because I'm - some percentage of bullshit," she says, also trembling.

But also, she's a combat esper, and she can listen to an alarming threat be explained to her and immediately start trying to figure out weaknesses.

"- He has a range limit, doesn't he, he'd have to, that's why he showed up in person."

"Yes," he says, grabbing his pack of cigarettes and lighting one. He's sure the calming effect of the first drag is pure placebo, but he'll take what we can get. "Though—it's not like we know how far. No one would be able to tell, if he'd been faking his limit. And it's not—in person, face to face. He can affect anyone in this building from anywhere in it. We don't have any proof but I suspect it extends a couple of blocks away. It—" Another drag of his cigarette, because this is hard. "I'm going to stop using caveats. Everything could be faked. But. It seems like he needs to be aware of a specific target's presence and location to affect them; he can't do anything to you if he doesn't know you're there, and he can't find out you're there without using his regular senses, seeing you, hearing you, et cetera. It also seems like his effectiveness drops off drastically with distance, and he can't do proper detail work from far away.

"But that means that it—probably wasn't just that. That wasn't why he showed up in person."

"Oh, he wanted to talk to me and - empirically see what I was like in real time," she murmurs. "Fuck. I was getting - dictionary cracked." She feels sick. "Okay. But he can't do - technology, right, if I obnoxiously livestream myself all the time he can't do shit to that, correct?"

"As far as anyone knows that is correct, yes, but he could fake something like your phone ringing for a dungeon emergency or—what I mean is we should not underestimate him. He's had a decade, I don't think I could outsmart him at his game, the winning move is to not play." Drag in, puff out.