"...I'm starting to think there's some serious disconnect here. Sunbae, he mind-controlled you. He probably dictionary-attacked her. It's been over half a decade and clearly he's still not over you and if he isn't he's not going to play fair either. What he did to you wasn't just being a shitty boyfriend, sunbae, it was an actual crime, and we have no reason to believe he's changed."

"You said you'd keep an eye on him. You and the guild president. To see if he ever... did the same to someone else."

"He hasn't, as far as either of us knows, but it's starting to seem like the reason why is that he's still gunning for you."

No. No. That's enough panic attacks for one day. He's going to process that later. 

"I need to talk to Hye-jin about this."

"Yes! You do! And since we've got you back this far can we please wash this puke off us, I've been trying to ignore the smell but it's really getting to me."

...ah. Yeah. Right. He can—stand up, getting them into his bathtub was a great idea, good job Woo-young.

"...and by the way? Fuck this sunbae bullshit. From now on I'm calling you hyung. We've been well past that point for years but I think once you puke on someone the least you can do is let them do that."

"Yeah. Fine. You can call me hyung, Woo-young-ah."

"Let's not get ahead of ourselves, here, I didn't say you could call me that."

Tae-gun laughs and turns the cold water on directly on both of them.

"Ack! You're such an asshole, sun—hyung."

"Right back at you."

Hye-jin is still in her silo, systematically working through options for dealing with her latest, well, not dungeon, but. Threat. The security footage from the bookstore was a bust; she managed to check it with a combination of lying about losing her purse and bribery, but mysteriously, it was corrupted. Somehow. So. Damn it, he’s not stupid and he’s not careless. It has to be something the bastard doesn’t know about, and can’t get to first. That means private stuff.

She has a legal document sent to Lucid asking them to please leave her the fuck alone. It makes her look a little crazy, and it’ll probably end up public, but who cares, she’s looked crazy before. She orders little wearable microphones that can be used for recording audio, and sets up a server based in fucking America, so there’s no way he can get at anything she saves. She checks the security footage from her house, which she will still use for now but not plan to stay in long term. She’ll have to see about having a custom, secret house built somewhere, off grid, like some kind of madwoman. If she has to boil her own water for electricity every morning, fine. Maybe she’ll have it be underground. She doesn’t know. But that’ll take time, so for now she can live out of the house that has cruelly been stolen from her by her partner’s creepy mind controlling ex.

What’s next? Different locations across Korea to teleport to in order to check over her evidence? Yeah, okay. He can’t be literally everywhere at once, he’s as human as any esper, mind powers or not.

But this is all defensive, how does she kill him…? In a dungeon is the obvious location, but ideally she’d want to be out of range of his powers, and make it look like the dungeon did it. But she can’t just burn him alive if she sees him again, because he could trick her into burning someone innocent, because mind! Control! Is the worst! So it needs to be verifiable from an outside source, and….

Look, she’s got a lot to do.

She receives a text from Lee Tae-gun a couple of hours after her meeting with Min Woo-young.

Kim Hye-jin

Can we speak?

Yes of course

I'm in my half of the silo, you can come in whenever.

Or we could do a phone call

Whatever you'd prefer

In person, please. 

And a few seconds after that there's a knock on the door that leads to her half of the silo.

Well, there's nothing else to do but open the door.

"Hi," she says, softly.

He looks perfectly put together and composed and not at all like he spent an hour bawling his eyes out. 

"May I come in, or would you prefer that I not see your half of the silo?"

She gets another message thenabouts.

Hye-jin you will not believe what happened today

Tae-gun-hyung let me start calling him hyung!!!!!

His concern for her privacy elicits a little fond snort.

"Sunbae, you know my backlash is public, right? I don't care who sees my silo as long as I'm safe in it when I need it. Yes, come in."

Congrats!

thank you!!!!

He does walk in, then, shutting his own door behind himself, and—looks around. 

What! He's curious, okay?

It's a bit smaller than he might have expected, more like a cheap hotel room than a fully kitted out silo, but it's nice enough. The nice is admittedly more in the vein of 'impersonal luxury' than 'beloved home,' though. It's notably more colorful than Quasar's usual choices; the walls are a soft green and the lounge chair next to the (lewd) handholding wall is a deep maroon. A lot of things are within easy reach of the lounge chair; a pull out desk, a shelf, a side table, and it's adjustable to both sitting up and lying flat. There's an attached bathroom and a little baby kitchenette that seems mostly geared towards outputting hot drinks, but does have a mini fridge. A couple of portable space heaters are nestled by the door, probably for travel, and there are several hot packs and a heated blanket. It all feels very efficient and methodical; everything has a purpose and a place.

There is a little side couch next to Hye-jin's handholding lounge chair, though. Probably for exactly this purpose; receiving guests. Hye-jin herself will perch in her clearly designated chair.

"So..." She's tempted to say 'you win the crazy ex award' but that is probably a bit too flippant, so she skips it in favor of practicalities. "I've typed out a copy of what I remember from my interaction with Kang Jaeha, I don't think he actually managed to get much out of me, information wise. The best he could manage to do is get me to grudgingly tolerate and mostly ignore him. I tried checking the bookstore for security footage, the bastard beat me to it. Which is probably an actual felony but who can prove it, just something to keep a note of for later. Uh - I've set up a hosting server in America for data we want to save, I'll happily give you access and of course support you doing your own thing there. I figure mics are easy, body cam footage is possible but trickier to sneak by?"

She's babbling a little, but it's all very useful babbling.