Oh no, her partner's very cute.

Hye-jin spent her day off leveraging the resources offered to her! By throwing money at them! She will have a realtor to go house hunting for her, and is figuring out which of the available independent companies for esper support she wants to go with. It's kind of difficult and not the work of a single day, but by the end of it she has a realtor that will be paring down possible houses, and a short list of companies to negotiate with. It's not done, but it's really satisfying progress that makes her feel a lot more in control of her own life.

She's down to meet and discuss their updated schedule! Where would he like to meet up?

...great question! For some reason he thought they'd go to her silo but, uh, it's her silo, they don't share it, and he doesn't want them to share it. Too much under her control.

Wherever works for you.

In the grand tradition of deflectors all over the world, he passes the ball to her.

Is my silo okay for you, then?

Yes, that should be fine.

May I teleport?

...? Yeah of course?

I wasn't there myself, I just teleported in. It's not where I'm staying, just isolating in.

Right. He knew that.

He requests a teleport and is there in a few seconds. His backlash feels... about the same as it did last time they saw each other, which suggests he didn't go looking for any trouble on his own.

Also, he forgot what it felt like to be around her. It sucks that his backlash keeps trying to make him lose control of himself and that being around someone compatible like this separately feels great, his powers are doing their best to mind control him into spending more time with her.

"Good evening, Kim Hye-jin."

"Good evening!" she says, sounding downright chipper. "I haven't had time to form tactical opinions about the schedule, do you have any to start us off with?"

"Yes." He summons his commscreen and sends her a request to share it but starts talking before checking whether she's accepted it.

"The first one isn't like the ones we've done together so far," he says, pulling up an incomplete map. "B-rank, technically, but borderline, and field reassessment may deem it A-rank." Which in theory would mean that it should be at the very edge of Kim Hye-jin's ability to handle solo, but... well, ranks are bullshit anyway, she's better than the stats think she is. "Very little monster activity, no kidnappings that anyone's aware of, but, here." He zooms into an area of the map that has a big question mark on top. "Lucid Guild's sensor couldn't figure anything out about what's there, even though the surroundings are open-air. There's no reason sensing should break here, and I suspect that's because the dungeon's geometry goes non-Euclidean." That would be exactly the kind of thing that might upgrade it to A-rank, if true. "Maybe not, but if you look here..."

He's not, quite, blabbing, the way he was yesterday. He's talking more than usual, but in a purposeful, logical way, trying to go over his reasoning for his analysis and bringing up comparisons to other similar past dungeons he's faced, graphs, energy assessments, and the like. It turns out he has saved tactical maps of every dungeon he's ever cleared, organised in an easy-to-search format. He's clearly not used to laying his thoughts out to others like this, and despite trying his best there are points at which he skips over steps or assumes things without explaining them.

But he doesn't just infodump. He asks her for her input, asks her to check his reasoning, marks the spots where he's less certain of his conclusions and requests her thoughts and intuitions. If you read between the lines, he sounds almost excited to have someone to bounce off of, and if she doesn't push him away he will spend a long time on this analysis.

She accepts it immediately, and.

And.

... He is a really good partner and she appreciates him very much. That she kind of wants to kiss him over it is clearly some kind of weird mental holdover from how things went with Hideyoshi. She vaguely remembers kissing him when she was pleased with how he was making an effort instead of coasting entirely on his amazing esper power. Instead of analyzing that urge too much, she's going to ignore it in favor of gleefully joining him in tactical talk.

So, he is more experienced than she is, but she has ever had a B-rank dungeon turn into an A-rank. The sensors in Japan are different - she takes a minute to ask clarifying questions about what the local ones do, and how they work, and then agrees that it's probably non-Euclidean geometry that's doing it. But there are some other holes she knows about, as Japan is bigger than Korea, and thus had more of a pool of dungeons to draw experience from, and offers some other (less likely) options for what could be going on instead. The most dangerous that she knows of would be a localized time slide effect - not because it'd necessarily hurt them, but because it might make them unavailable for other dungeon clears. The localizing effect of whatever-breaks-the-sensor does imply that it's probably what's holding the dungeon's core, or whatever creature contains the core, so she expects it'll be their problem.

She continues to respond to his analyses and conclusions even in places she's inexperienced, asks insightful questions, and offers tactical options where they'd be appropriate. There is no reading between the lines, Hye-jin is just obviously excited to talk about tactics with her partner and, furthermore, is delighted with all of his neatly organized data!!! Oh, it makes her so happy, can she get copies of all of these to review in her own time?

Stop smiling at him.

...of course she can. He's not sure how readable they are to other people, he's compressed them a lot, but he'd be happy perfectly willing to help her to through it. 

Anyway, this is almost certainly overthinking because even if this dungeon gets upgraded it's still the sort of dungeon either of them could clear on their own. The main risk point is the one unknown area, and they are both of them the kind of person who would be able to tell on the fly if they've misjudged the situation and it's actually a lot harder than it looked, and otherwise they've got enough firepower to curbstomp it. Even so, it's a sufficient step up from what they've been doing that it's probably going to be good practice.

Agreed! Both on that they're probably overthinking this and that this will actually be good practice. But she does consider this tactical talk to be part of the practice, and they've got a gap of experience to close. Also, she's having fun.

So is he he agrees that it's part of the practice. 

Now, for dungeon two...

Tae-gun stretches, more out of habit than because it actually provides any comfort or relief from the chronic pain, and finally looks up at Kim Hye-jin after hours of staring at the commscreen and talking. "I'm sending you my collection of past dungeon data, if you want to go through it later," he says, and she gets an information packet with it. It's very large and extensive, but it's accessible online so she doesn't need to download it unless she wants access to it offline. 

"Then I will see you tomorrow?"

"Yeah!" she agrees, beaming.

Then she pauses and looks at her commscreen mournfully. "I... am probably going to need to ban myself from reading this tonight because I should sleep."

...when she smiles at him, reality crashes onto him like a collapsing dungeon, trapping him and suffocating him under its weight. He hates that smile. He hates the way she's looking at him. It makes him feel like he's just drunk several glasses of molten lead that are slowly settling in the pit of his stomach.

"Yes," he says, distantly, trying to fight the way he was suddenly overtaken by a fight-or-flight instinct—mostly flight. This isn't safe. His whole body is screaming at him that it's not safe, not safe, he needs to go, needs to get as far away as possible, and it's all he can do to not break into a cold sweat and teleport immediately.

She... notices his reaction. It's obvious if you've spent a week working with him, and then several hours gleefully going through tactics.

The smile he hates being pointed at him disappears, and instead she's looking at him with concern.

"Is... everything all right?" she asks, hesitantly.

"Fine. Are we done?"

"Y...es?" she confirms, confused by how quickly he went from - cheerful companionship and teamwork to... this. Whatever this is. It worries her, but she suspects pushing further is just going to make things worse. He has boundaries, she's pretty sure he's had some kind of bad experience to make him twitchy, and so she will be very very dutiful about respecting his boundaries. Which means: yep, time to go, right now.

"Yes," she repeats, with more actual certainty. But more gently, she adds: "Have a good night," before she teleports away without waiting for his answer.

Oh good. He lets a breath out and also teleports back to his silo, then goes to one of his ensuite bathrooms, locks the door behind himself, gets in the bathtub, draws the curtains around it, turns the shower water on, and finally sits down and hugs his knees, not bothering to take his clothes off. He focuses on the water splashing him, on the thermal shock of the cold droplets against his warm skin, on the bright white light getting reflected off the tiles.

He's safe. He's safe, now. He is. He's fine.

It had been such a nice week even despite the easy dungeons, the minimal amounts of guiding he'd been getting and the relief from the backlash, he'd felt so nice that he nearly forgot. He forgot that it always feels nice, that it feeling nice is the bait of the trap, that his backlash is the bait of the trap. It's not just that it's insidious, it's that it's true, it's not a fake kind of feeling nice, it's his body demanding and healing. But it's not safe. Nowhere but here is safe. Nowhere but his own silo, its location a guarded secret, where if someone tries to come in uninvited—someone other than Woo-young—then if he impales them no one else will know.

But he can't even trust that it's Woo-young, can he, actually, thinking about it. If Woo-young shows up it could be anyone—

—no. He's safe. He is. He cannot be found here, and if someone finds him, it is Woo-young, because no one else knows, and he has to trust Woo-young, he has to. If he doesn't trust Woo-young then he can't trust anyone, not even himself, and since he can't live in that world, he has to trust Woo-young. So he does.

And he's safe. He's safe. He won't think about why he thought he wouldn't be, he will not think about the last few hours at all, because he doesn't want to associate the memory with the feelings. He's safe. He's safe.

He's safe.

He calls Woo-young.

He picks up after three rings. "Sunbae? What's up—" He pauses. "Are you in your bathtub?"

Tae-gun doesn't reply.

"...right." He hangs up and then appears in Tae-gun's bathtub, wearing only PJ trousers and a loose T-shirt that he clearly just threw on. He doesn't complain about the cold water, he knew what was happening the moment he heard the sound of splashing coming through the call. "Sunbae? What do you need?"

He still doesn't say anything.

"...alright. I'll just stay here, then. Let me know if you need anything."

He buries his face in his knees and nods.

We still on for our planned dungeon runs today?

Yes.

Okay. See you then!

Yeah.

He's already there when she arrives, and he doesn't seem to be behaving noticeably differently. Still keeping the same distance as before, still mostly quiet. "Ready to go?" he asks, summoning a palm-sized ice knife and twirling it in his hands in a nervous tick she'll be used to by now.

"Ready," she agrees, and in they can go.

"So, after I went home, an idea occurred to me on how to deal with that without going in," she says, outside of it. "How about, I burn the ever-living shit out of that mess of unreality with as much fire as I can manage until the whole nonsensical thing collapses into slag. Because it looks like thermodynamics seem to work fine in here."

He hums.

"The main risk with that would be in case there are people who got trapped there that we didn't catch, but in principle it should probably be doable. I also worry about the possibility that something like that could disconnect areas of the dungeon but I am not sure how well-founded that worry is, it might not even be something it makes sense to think. I don't know enough about the physics of dungeons to tell."

"Yeah. There's that. It probably equates to safer to us, but riskier to others. We don't want this thing to seal itself, go dormant, and reform a year or two later with better fireproofing or something. Especially not with us inside. Not to mention, we’ve got more dungeons scheduled for after this, and there's the risk of me burning myself out early so we can't do the ones later, even if it works. But, um." She motions to him. "I - would really rather take the brunt of backlash for big things on a purely practical level. More backlash to me, as long as it doesn't kill me, will relieve yours faster."

At the rate they're going it'll only take about two years to work through his backlog it's fine if it does. So long as she doesn't accumulate a ton, herself. 

"You shouldn't endanger yourself overmuch on account of me. I've held on this long, there is no reason to rush."

".... Yes there is??" she says, a little incredulously. "You're - no, we shouldn't have this talk in here. Sorry. You've convinced me that long range firepower is a bad solution to this problem. I guess we're going in, then."

...okay. In they go.

The area leading to the bizarro stairs was a very classic dungeon: natural caves and galleries linking together before opening up to an enormous grotto with holes in its ceiling hinting at the sky and open air above. The twisted passage is actually fairly hidden, an unassuming nook amongst several other unassuming nooks, the kind of place that would be very easy to overlook if you didn't know it was there and didn't have a lot of experience looking for such. But once inside, the scenery changes to manmade, the architecture decidedly medieval. They would be nearly guaranteed to get lost in this space, if it was just the two of them and nothing more.

Thankfully, they have modern tech to help. While it is impossible to connect to the outside network while in a dungeon, they still carry their own pocket devices that give them access to a reduced form of their commscreens, including something that keeps track of how far they've travelled in what direction and which generates a dynamic map of their surroundings as they go. There are dungeons that mess with electronics like that, too, and ones that do both that and non-Euclidean fuckery definitely climb very quickly to an S-rank classification, but are proportionally rarer. And this particular one doesn't even rearrange itself, so it is comparatively speaking a walk in the park for experienced espers.

The stairs lead up out of a hole in the ground, and once they're out the sight that awaits them is nothing short of breathtaking: green as far as the eye can see, lush hills and glades and a pine forest in the distance, a cool soft breeze carrying a sweet citrus smell like oranges, fluffy clouds lazily taking turns hiding the early afternoon sun. It's beautiful.

It's also deadly. Despite the openness, they can't help but feel a sense of wrongness that quickly resolves itself into the understanding that the non-Euclidean fuckery didn't stop at the stairs. Paying too much attention to any one part of the scenery is enough to notice that it's not all quite continuous, that occasionally there are more (or fewer) trees than should've been where they're looking, that those clouds that should be bumping into each other aren't. The hole in the ground leading back to the caves is also easily lost in the tall grass, to compound the issue. And of course, there are the monsters: not all that many of them, all things considered, and they look almost like regular animals, birds that happen to have two heads and wolves that are a little bit too large and have three eyes and deer the size of elephants with antlers the size of small trees. They're spread out, and seem to be mostly minding their own business, not having noticed the two espers, but it's almost certainly a matter of time.

...hm. Unclear if this will be upgraded to A-rank on the report, but still doable.

A three-stories-tall icicle emerges from the ground behind the hole to serve as a landmark, and he jumps onto a floating ice skate he summons out of thin air. "Interesting," he says, clinically. "Those antlers might be worth collecting."

Augh, these sorts of dungeons are always unpleasant to deal with. The scenic part of the dungeon is at least a nice change of pace, if filled with lies and death that will trap them the second it gets an opening. She is just about to remark that they should mark the exit when, of course, Tae-gun does. Good tactically, but, c'mon, Tae-gun. That's not going to help your backlash.

"Yeah, maybe. You okay if I burn the grass? I don't like leaving this much space for things to hide in."

"—yeah, good call." He rises up farther in the air because he is not immune to her fire and starts looking out at the monsters that will inevitably be drawn to the displays of power. He doesn't do anything yet, though, and just waits, because there's no point wasting power sniping stuff that Kim Hye-jin might well be able to one-shot with a single burst.

Tralalalala burn it all to the ground tralalala~

The slowly expanding ring of fire she causes is very deliberate and leaves little smoke; this is exactly the sort of situation that would cause the whole thing to go up in flames if she's not careful, so. She is. She's still clearly enjoying herself.

Okay, who's going to be mad at her for doing this.

The not-birds and the not-wolves are the ones that are immediately agitated by her, and the former are the more mobile of the lot by a long shot. Their screams sound surprisingly deep for their size, and harmonise and amplify each other in ways that regular physics would struggle to explain.

This dungeon is new, so probably the implied vastness is fake, but it can grow into it, if it kidnaps people. Tae-gun suspects the only reason it hasn't been actively doing that is that it doesn't have a handle on properly protecting its core—the way it's perfectly Euclidean until it suddenly isn't suggests it's experimenting with configurations and kind of confused.

(Does it make sense to think of dungeons as learning like that? He hasn't given it much thought. It is in fact the case that dungeons mutate over time, and if they aren't destroyed fast enough they vanish and reappear elsewhere later more powerful and deadly, so there's definitely some kind of updating process, even if it's not driven by a conscious mind.)

Which is all to say it's not super likely that the core will be hard to find, except that...

...he doesn't know how to coordinate this with Kim Hye-jin. If he were on his own, he'd be doing wide range exploration of the area from the air, leaving smaller icicles behind like breadcrumbs to complement his comm's tracking, and find the core that way, but there must be some way that being paired with her here should make this more efficient.

Fucked if he knows what, though.

Well, she does neatly crisp the not-birds into fried not-chicken, followed by the wolves, and having all of the grass burned to nothingness sure does make it very obvious where the exit is, and if anything is coming towards them.

Then she considers the circle she burned around them critically, turning slowly in place, then points, "I think the core's that way. See the way my circle is - wonky and lopsided? I burned the same distance around myself, but that side being squished means that the distance is longer in that direction. So." She smiles. "Probably that way."

...okay that is a way. He's going to want to do a postmortem analysis with her later so that they can figure out the most efficient things they could possibly have done but that's absolutely going to save them a lot of time, if she can reliably map out the non-Euclidean twists like that.

.......also she looks so weird from up here. The light is clearly getting fucked with too and it makes her look a little bit like she's reflected off a funhouse mirror and once he notices that he bursts out laughing.

"Hm?" She looks up at him, then snorts. He's similarly distorted. "Ha. That's ridiculous. Kind of disconcerting, but ridiculous. Onwards, plan to grab the deer-things on the way out if they'll let us, so we don't have to carry antlers for too long?"

"Sounds like a plan," he says, getting his giggling under control. He's not sure why he found it so funny. Maybe it was the juxtaposition of the controlled destruction and against the twisty smile? He's not sure, and isn't questioning it much.

(Also maybe the tiny amounts of backlash he's already started to accumulate are taking that shape, today. Unclear.)

"Lead the way."

Onwards, then! While burning a path through the grass to avoid having to go through something that could contain dangers. Conveniently, this also means that the path back will be extremely straightforward, even if they somehow lost mapping support. She doesn't expect they will, but it's the sort of thing you prepare for, just in case.

She methodically stops every twenty meters or so, repeats the circle of fire, and adjusts her heading accordingly to follow the side which is most spatially distorted. They should reach the area the dungeon is trying to keep everything away from without too much trouble, unless the not-deer decide to interfere early.

They do eventually start approaching, but Tae-gun thinks he might be the one best-suited for those: thin, incredibly sharp and dense needles going right through their eyesockets into their brains. The precision and sharpness and denseness all increase the energy cost, but given the not deer's relatively low numbers and large sizes, cooking them would probably be very energy-inefficient for Hye-jin. He can also melee some of the birds from his ice hoverboard, which is another way he has found to save on power: since the only expenditure is in summoning his swords in the first place and then the hovering itself, which is cheap, he can get a lot of bang for his buck.

In order not to interfere with Kim Hye-jin's own bird roasting he stays reasonably high in the air, though, correctly expecting the flying monsters to aggro on him.

After enough twists and turns through nonsensical landscapes that they actually can't see Tae-gun's landmark anymore, they find the monster containing the core of the dungeon: a chimera of sorts, two wolf heads and antlers and wings and... molerat teeth? Huh. Apparently Hye-jin has been inadvertently cooking molerat monsters underground too fast for them to actually show up.

Anyway the chimera is three times the size of the huge deer and its skin is armoured to boot, not to mention the regenerative properties it gets from hosting the core.

...this is going to be fun.

Oh, it is.

So, both she and her partner can get through its armor on their own, but it's really most efficient if they work together at it. After all, rapid temperature changes make many materials very, very brittle. Plus, Hye-jin can soften up key bits of the beastie to give Tae-gun an opening to slice through. He's more mobile than she is, but she's not immobile, and can in a pinch propel herself various directions with her own fire, but it's expensive, backlash-wise, so she tries to avoid it. Their strategy is therefore going to be 'he spins the chimera in circles from above, she steadily burns away at key locations until they break, and then Tae-gun swoops in for the kill'. Barring any weirdness, which: weirdness might occur. Weirdness might always occur, it's a dungeon.

But hopefully this thing will go down without too much trouble or trickery.

It does, in fact, go down without too much trouble or trickery. It does, in fact, lower the total backlash either of them would've caught from soloing this by more than half. This isn't one of the smarter kinds of monsters, which is again typical of newer dungeons, and they soon hack enough flesh off the creature that its regeneration can't quite keep up and once they find the physical core of the dungeon Tae-gun—

—doesn't immediately destroy it. Instead, he just cuts it off the monster. "The dungeon collapse will probably affect the geometry," he explains, "so we shouldn't destroy the core until we're back in the caves."

Very reasonable! She nods. Much better to start the dramatic dungeon collapse when they’re closer to the exit, to avoid having it collapse on their heads. It’s not clear what happens to people that are in dungeons when they close, but they haven’t been heard from again. Best to be avoided.

“Sounds good. Detour for the various antlers, see if anyone in research and development goes, ‘oooo’ over them? Maybe make us something pretty?” ‘Pretty’ is really not the thing that matters here, but it’s kind of hard to predict what sort of weird properties (either magical, or material) things found in dungeons will have. If this dungeon had something more obviously valuable in, say, the walls or foliage, then it might be worth the trouble of declawing and dragging in a full resource collection team. But it’s just a handful of strange antlers, so. This dungeon’s not worth the risk and is going to get summarily closed.

Definitely worth dragging notable stuff from it outside, though, if they can. The easier dungeons they’d been practicing with didn’t even have this much.

"Yeah. Starting with these..." Boss monster materials are often more valuable than regular monsters', too, so it's always good to check. Tae-gun will be carrying the antlers hooked onto a pole that he'll be flying with, for maximum power efficiency.

These antlers are... really hard to cut through.

Hm. So they are.

“Burn through the soft tissue, take the whole skull?” she offers.

"...yeah, that might be a better idea. R&D will definitely be interested."

This is kind of gross, but hey! She does this for a living. Well, technically this part is extra credit, and no one would be mad at them if they didn’t bring back strange bits of things they’ve killed, but still. This is her job, and her job saves lives, and if sometimes this means she has to burn through the viscera holding this chimera’s skull on its body, well. That’s just how it goes.

(She makes sure to burn out the skull cavity, as well. For the practicality of keeping it from being too heavy. The skulls are remarkably unburned by this experience, which probably says good things about them)

Now can they carry it off?

Yup! Time to go back along the burnt breadcrumb trail.

Collecting more skulls as they go! This would make for a very demented fairytale. As it is, it’ll just be awkward to explain to the media. She wonders if there will be another meme about this. Probably not, you can’t really beat the ‘I’m really enjoying Korea’ one. It’s admittedly pretty hilarious.

Korea himself has left plenty of dungeons carrying loot of various kinds, but he has to admit that the skulls are kind of creepy. He'll hide them in a hollow ice box when they're about to come out so the media and the public don't die of shock.

Awwww, but casually dragging out skulls would be funny!

Fine, fine. Responsible espers who are very media friendly, that’s them. Siiiiigh. (This sigh is not very serious.)

Due to the dungeons being harder and thus taking longer to complete, they "only" have four of them scheduled for today, with two-hour-estimated breaks between them for post-mortems and preparation. Since they already studied and prepared for the dungeons the previous night, it's mostly the former.

And over the course of the day, Kim Hye-jin will get a better feel for Tae-gun's backlash-reduction strategies, since now they actually matter.

In addition to often going melee against foes, Tae-gun tends to do a lot of battlefield control so that he can align monsters for taking out with few, well-aimed and -timed shots. He's also got his power expenditure calculated to hair-thin precision, like how occasionally his ice spikes are hollow but only when the reduced mass is enough to compensate for the added complexity cost. Everything he does involves very careful management of his resources, always keeping a wide margin of safety for the possibility that things go worse than expected and for his ability to manage himself until he gets to his silo.

His tactics also all assume he's going to be working solo. His next-to-last partner didn't usually go to dungeons with him because they were specced so differently and he only went to one dungeon with his last one, so he's actually got over half a decade of practice with this. It also explains why even for larger dungeons that he clears with a group he tends to solo entire sections; accommodating other people, especially people he's not going to be working with long term, is usually just not worth the time and effort.

She gets a very good picture of his backlash-reduction strategies, all right. They almost all come at great personal risk. Going into melee that often?? Without any kind of armor or shielding or esper support?? Why is he like this!! His method of avoiding killing himself via backlash is to kill himself via ever screwing up even a little! It's like his life is a logic problem. Not allowed to directly kill yourself? Let the monsters do it for you by getting up close and personal!

The careful battlefield control she's fine with, though. Even without a lot of practice with each other in higher-stakes scenarios, their powersets and skills dovetail well, and her finesse of her fire means that it doesn't need to originate from her person. As long as she's got a good vantage point she can absolutely set him up for precise shots. She also practices what she preaches when it comes to melee; if something gets close to her, her primary goal is to regain distance, and has lots of sneaky strategies for escape via application of fire and force. This has the obvious downside of needing space to properly work in, and being kind of weak in close quarters. Which means... she sometimes needs him to swoop into melee to save support her. She finds this very irritating.

"How are you still alive," she says mournfully, in their final post-mortem of the day. Dungeon four involved a lot of close quarters and there was a lot of necessity for swooping into melee. It was definitely better for her presence for more than just backlash reduction reasons, but augh.

He summons a sharp-looking knife and wordlessly slashes his palm in a quick, hard motion. It leaves his skin slightly reddened.

"I know my limits." Mostly. He's clearly under a lot of backlash now and waiting for the other shoe to drop. He thinks he can get it to not go the sexual direction but he's not sure what direction it'll go instead, and he'll need to keep an eye on that. "I've never gotten injured on duty."

She stares at him.

"Does 'injured' only count if you need to go to a healer about it," she says, having worked with him enough to understand the way he will fit technical definitions but avoid the spirit of them.

He'd already been not looking at her so it's unmarked that he keeps doing that. "I've never broken skin," he clarifies. He may have gotten a bruise or a dislocated something once or twice but he can set dislocations on his own and create his own casts and his healing is fast. Never bruised his face, though, that wouldn't do when he has to be seen in public.

(It's actually kind of hard for him to completely avoid injuries like those because the chronic pain he's carrying due to the accumulated backlash means that he'll occasionally not notice something went wrong until later when his skin looks nicely purple.)

"Yeah, I thought so. How are you still alive."

He shrugs. "I'm careful." If nothing else is true, that much is.

"In the most self destructive, you-are-your-least-valuable-resource kind of way, yes, that is true. It's like you don't even value yourself but for what you can do for the world." She pauses as she realizes just how... true... that might be.

"What else would I value myself for?" he half-snaps, with no heat.

He's not even denying it, that's. That's just a yes.

"Your intrinsic value as a thinking and feeling human being? Hobbies, friends, experiences of the world and the avalanche of little special things that come together to give lives meaning?"

"I don't have those." Not strictly true but it's what he felt like saying. "My whole life is this. It's what I'm good at. It's the only thing I'm good at." He's still not sounding angry or agitated, but he is talking somewhat fast, and in clipped sentences. "I don't have anything else."

She opens her mouth, then closes it, completely unsure how to... engage with that at all. It's just. It's just so itself. This man needs time off, therapy, and several hobbies. He's not going to give himself any of those things. He's the one who's hurting himself the most.

"Do you like puzzles?" she blurts, instead of directly engaging.

He blinks and does look at her, now, frowning slightly. "...like?"

"Like - okay so I actually tend to think of dungeons as puzzles instead of enemy strongholds to conquer? You have these specific resources available to you, these are the challenges in your way, some of the challenge is figuring out what the challenges are, now make it to the core and disable the dungeon and win. Puzzles are a really broad topic, but the way you think of - our job - makes me think there are some you'd be really really good at, and enjoy, and get good... mental practice from?"

The furrow on his brow remains there throughout this explanation but when she mentions it could be useful to him it deepens and his eyes narrow in wary interest. "That's kind of vague."

"Puzzle games are kind of broad? But I can recommend one that sort of plays like how I think of leveraging my power, if you're curious about the concept."

"...sure," he says, still looking suspicious.

She sends a link to the game over her phone.

And then she's... not sure what to do, now. He's. He's the most powerful esper in Korea, he's saved so many lives, and. He's treating himself like a robot that he can use until it breaks. She would like to hug him, but he wouldn't appreciate that, so. She'll. Just. Sit, she guesses.

He glances at the link but doesn't immediately open it. Instead he looks at her and squints. "You look like you're thinking something, and I think it's probably about me. I don't like that."

"Oh. Uh. Sorry." Deep breath. Back to professionalism, because despite her efforts to not think of it, she suspects that his backlash is something about magnifying emotions, and he'll regret being this candid to her. "Back to dungeon tactics? How cheap are your ice walls? I had practice thinking with walls of fire, but I can't really do that alone."

Most people don't have convenient units for power expenditure but guess what? Tae-gun does! Stuff isn't constant cost especially with the passive guiding but his calculation system was built with that in mind, and he has an app for that. He can compare it with other stuff he's done and also vaguely to amounts of backlash to give her an idea. 

Today the backlash on the menu seems to be: impulsively saying whatever comes to mind, reduced filter and inhibition, and slight hyperactivity. He's not babbling like the other day, and he's focusing less on thoughts and feelings and more on immediate practicalities, but it seems like a similar thing going on there. And on the bright side, aiming this in the direction of the postmortem does work very nicely.

Yep. She thought so.

On the new topic, though, she is outrageously jealous of his backlash calculator app. Can she get one??? She wants to do math about the most efficient way to use her power!! As it is, she just operates by feel!!!

...of course. He sits on the wretched way this makes him feel, reminds himself that her power is setting things on fire so he has nothing to fear from her being more efficient and actually a lot to gain, and sends her a link to the git repository with the code. "I'll show you how to customise it to match your powers and costs. There are some automated features to get you started but it only gets really good once you've gotten a good feel for how to update it."

Nod nod nod.

"Thank you!! Yeah, I expect I'll need to practice to get a good feel for it - and there will probably need to be different modes for if we're together or apart. So I'll need to experiment by myself and with you, I want the calculations for both."

"There's inputs in the calculator for passive guiding from being around compatible people as well as for accumulated levels of backlash and if you set the former to zero with the right parameters it should work fine. Testing using your powers without anyone else around will be the best way to properly measure things, though, you're not wrong."

"Right. Plus there really is a - okay so, realistically speaking, once we're out of the adjustment period of learning how to be each other's partners, the big dungeons that actually need both of us together are sometimes going to be sparse? Usually the problem is that there's a lot of little dungeons that are overwhelming the resources the system of espers has available, by sheer numbers. With our skill and powersets and how we're not really beholden to being a unit together, I think it makes sense if we are capable of splitting up to cover more ground. But my major concern there is your backlash and not wanting to make it, uh, worse."

"Yeah, that makes sense. Though some dungeons that don't need us together will definitely be more than twice as fast if we do work together, like our first one today, so for those we probably still want to team up? It'll be case-by-case, for sure. And my backlash is a lot better than it's been, you don't need to worry about it. ...you're going to worry about it anyway, though, aren't you. How do I get you to worry less about it?"

Aaaand now he's sliding into babbling again.

Oh no he's sliding to being CUTE again.

"I am absolutely going to worry about it anyway. Uh - I’ll worry less if both your backlash is declining at a steady rate, and if your backlash is under a level where if you have one bad day where you absolutely have to go all out without me anywhere nearby, it won't kill you. I'm not convinced you're meeting the second requirement yet, though the first is being met and is slowly calming me down. Just. It takes time to be sure it'll keep going that direction, on a data trend level. And, yeah, agreed, this is not a request to split up all the time or even often, I just kind of want it in our repertoire of potential options depending on the overall situation in Korea. For the sake of civilians."

"I can totally go all-out without it killing me! I've gone all-out several times recently! I have to go all-out at least once a month, I'm actually due right now I think. And I don't die at all. I just do or say or think things that I'll regret later. Like what I'm probably doing right now. Or was doing just before? I think I was being kind of snappish and said too much about things that make other people think badly of me. I bet it made you think badly of me. It shouldn't matter, but it does for some reason. Probably professional reasons? If you think badly of me you might leave and then it'll be so much harder to get guiding again. I do know, you know, that this is good for me, it's just also really hard.

"Oh, I'm doing it again, aren't I. I am absolutely going to need to figure something out for this because redirecting my backlash into this kind of thing when I'm around you is in the long run not sustainable, I cannot be like this on the reg, I'd much rather do the other thing, you know? Except you don't, because I haven't told you what the other thing is, and hahaha I am not going to. It's a secret. I need to shut the fuck up."

She wants to HUG HIM he's being SO CUTE, HELP.

"I truthfully find this very endearing, but yeah we might want to end our guiding session for the day for your sake. See you tomorrow, remember to turn your text app off too."

"Hmmm, don't like it when you look at me that way. It's kind of uncomfortable. Not the worst, though. I shouldn't say that. I just said that. Ah, crap. Did you know that I—nope. Nope nope nope. You said it yourself, professional distance. I said it myself, professional distance. This is one of the reasons, too, because I start feeling comfortable, and then what? It's been like a week and change and I'm already telling you stuff. This isn't safe, the other thing is safer, the one where I don't tell you stuff. Oh and there's one that's even worse but that one can definitely never happen. You know why, right? I barely know you. We barely know each other. We shouldn't be getting comfortable. I shouldn't be getting comfortable." He stands up and starts pacing. "Fucking backlash. I hate it so much. I hate the way it makes me do stuff I don't want to do. I hate the way it makes me look weak. If this got out it'd be as bad as that one Japanese esper. Hmm, maybe not this this but the other things, all taken together? Absolutely. This is awful. Why am I letting this happen again?"

"Because you haven't teleported back to your silo yet," she tells him, patiently. "Should I get Woo-young to teleport you back, or can you do it on your own?"

"Yeah, you know what, fuck this, I need to get away before the impulsivity kicks in. Don't worry, I'm good. ...I'll remember to say bye this time. Bye!"

And he requests a teleport and locks his chat app and writes himself a reminder to figure out some different siloing situation because this is not sustainable at all.

"Bye," she agrees, just before he disappears.

Woo-young's phone rings.

Well that kills the mood if anything does. "Really, hyung?"

Woo-young pulls away apologetically. "Give me a moment." There are only two people it could be, that go through his do not disturb mode, and he has a guess who. "Sunbae?"

"Woo-young. Are you busy?"

Ugh, of course it's Tae-gun-sunbae. The one person Woo-young will always prioritise. He sighs and starts to get up...

...but Woo-young tugs him back. "Kinda, yeah. Is it urgent?"

"...no. Just let me know when you're free. And, uh, tell Tae-hwan sorry."

...well now he feels like a jerk. "It's okay, sunbae," he says. They're both espers, Tae-gun will catch him through the speaker just fine.

"Alright, I will. But let me know if you do need anything."

"...right."

Click.

"Back to where we were?"

Woo-young calls Tae-gun back once they're done and just snuggling. "What's up, sunbae?"

"I need your help fixing my silo situation."

"Fixing it how?"

"Uh—can you come over?"

"Yeah, be there in a sec." He pets Tae-hwan's mostly-asleep form, puts some clothes on, and teleports.

Tae-gun is in his living room, not wearing any clothes himself, sitting on a floating ice hoverboard, looking at three commscreens one next to the other with recent data about some big named dungeons. He's not scheduled to go into them soon—most are dormant, even—but it's always good to keep one's knowledge fresh.

"Woo-young, the situation with Kim Hye-jin is not sustainable."

"'The situation'."

"The, the... the way I backlash around her."

"Sunbae that's the whole point of having a partner. —have you still not touched her, other than that one time?"

"What one—oh. I have. But..."

"...but?"

"But it's always a roll of the dice. And I always loaded it in the one direction, right, since if I'm a whimpering horny mess I can't make stupid decisions—mostly can't make any decisions at all, which is great. When I'm—like this, I just talk my ass off, and I've got no filter."

"Oh you're backlashing right now. ...I thought you locked your phone when this happened."

"I'm—not as bad. As I was earlier. But the point is that I just say whatever comes to mind, and there are things I can't say, and I can't trust her, not after so little time together, to not spread it around, NDA be damned. And there's—everything else. You know. You know. I can't be vulnerable around her."

"...but you're here?"

"...yes?"

"As in, you're not with her right now, even though you're actively backlashing."

"Oh. Yeah she told me to go back home."

"She... told you."

"When it started getting really bad and I started talking too much."

"She told you to come back home..."

"For my own sake, she said. She said that she didn't want me to regret stuff. Kind of the same stuff you say sometimes."

"She told you to come back home when you started backlashing badly enough that you might regret things, so that you... wouldn't regret things... and that's bad, somehow."

"...it sounds stupid when you put it like that and that's because that's not what I meant."

"No?"

"I can't trust her, Woo-young!" he suddenly explodes. "I can't just give people full access! You know this! You know what could happen!"

"Sunbae—"

"Don't sunbae me, there's no telling when one thing will lead to the other when I backlash! The common thread is that I lose my cool! I lose control! And if I don't have control then it's free for the taking!"

"...I see."

"Yeah of fucking course you see, I'm not fucking stupid, I know what I'm talking about!"

He's not going to take it personally. Backlashes suck.

"So I need—" He grits his teeth. "Fuck, the other thing was better, now I'm fucking—pissed off—I need your help."

"Right. Okay. What would the ideal solution look like?"

"I don't fucking know, do I? I want to get guiding without—this. Without subjecting her to this shit, or letting her see me like this."

"You want to get guiding without actually showing her your backlash."

"Ten points for Gryffindor!"

"I'm a—never mind. Okay. Got our work cut out for ourselves, then."

"Yeah, no shit, Woo-young."

Hye-jin meanwhile is distracting herself from her traumatized trashfire of a partner by attempting to put the shreds of her own shattered life together! She gets a realtor to narrow down her options, then looks at houses. She's been persuaded into buying instead of renting, because this means more options that she actually likes, and she has the absurd amount of money to just buy it outright, no loan required. This turns out to be much more simple than leasing. It'll be a bit of a pain for if she decides to flee the country, but, well. It could always just go to her aunt or cousins if she really and truly does not want to deal with that nonsense.

She's also looking into independent esper advocacy and support companies, but truthfully, the esper industry in Korea is... very guild based. Just like Japan. This is good for the overall peace of the country - guilds have a vested interest in systematically categorizing and closing dungeons, and cooperating and competing with each other as it benefits the whole, whereas an individual might not have the perspective to manage it. After over five decades of dungeons just being a fact of life, those systems have become very robust. Of course, she's personally experienced the downsides. Guilds advocate for the interests of the overall guild, which can often come at the expense of the individual esper. Suck it up for the good of the collective, and all that. Companies that represent and fight for the interests of a singular esper client, or multiple unrelated clients, are a Western invention, and accordingly haven't trickled over here in any sufficient numbers. That doesn't mean they aren't here, exactly, just that they're very small fish in a very large pond.

As an A-rank partnered to Korea's star S-rank, it really wouldn't be difficult to scoop up one of these small companies and basically turn it into the 'take care of Hye-jin' company. Really, it's more difficult to avoid it; many companies would see this as an opening to attempt to become proper guilds themselves, just structured around making the new half-Japanese resident happy. This would probably be very comfortable for her personally, but it isn't what she wants. She wants the thing they have in the West, in spirit and not just name, where an esper can pay the company money and trust that their interests, and only their interests, are being fought for. No inter guild politicking or power games or favored espers that everyone else gets shafted for. Just paying for a service, which they get, and which they can stop paying for at any time if it stops meeting their needs. No strings, no meddling. It's not really the thing she wants if it's just her that benefits, so. Picking a company that will not make her its number one priority is... tricky. She needs to be careful, and it'll take a while.

But it's a nice project to pick at, along with all of her other projects. Of which there are... admittedly many.

Kang Jaeha intercepts the Lucid Guild president in a hallway between meetings and starts walking with her.

"Guild president-nim?"

She looks at him and smiles. "Ah, Jaeha, good to see you."

"Ma'am, I assume you've heard of Kim Hye-jin?"

"Of course, hers is the name on everyone's lips nowadays."

"Are we looking into the issues she's been having with Quasar Guild?"

She lifts an eyebrow. "Issues?"

"It seems that they may have, ah, bungled hiring her."

"She's working with Lee Tae-gun."

"Yes, she is, but not with Quasar. They assign her dungeons but she doesn't use their silo or even go to their HQ at all."

The president laughs. "Honestly, Jaeha, sometimes I feel like I hired you for the wrong role, you're better informed than my team half the time."

He grins shamelessly. "But then who would take on the role of walking out of dungeons looking gorgeous?"

She slaps his shoulder with no force and rolls her eyes. "You're a bit too full of yourself, aren't you?"

Then she pauses, humming thoughtfully, and asks, "Why the interest?"

By which you mean, "Why are you looking into Lee Tae-gun's partner?"

"I'll readily admit that I was curious because of Tae-gun," he replies, rubbing the back of his neck, sounding a bit embarrassed. "I mean, he hasn't had a partner since, well, me." Aside from the one thing that lasted two weeks and didn't even properly make it to the media, which Jaeha feels doesn't count. "A guy's bound to be curious about what kind of person managed to get through his icy exterior."

"And what kind of person is she?"

"She has fire," he continues on his pun spree. "Very good at advocating for herself and going for what she wants. And, of course, an S-rank candidate after that stunt she and Tae-gun pulled the other day."

"A compelling case, if I've ever heard one."

"She's also currently looking for independent representation, like they do in America. I think—"

She lifts a hand in a "stop" gesture, and he shuts up. "You've convinced me. I've never had reason to question your judgment. I'll have my people look into it. Lucid could definitely use an S-ranker in its hoster, if one is up for the taking."

He grins again. "My thoughts exactly."

The next morning, Kim Hye-jin gets a notification that their morning has been cleared of dungeons and is instead invited to a meeting with Lee Tae-gun and Min Woo-young. The invite has a specific meeting room in HQ but Woo-young has added a note that that's just because it's the standard for their scheduling app and they can have this meeting wherever she wants.

Well, that's kind of a scary message to wake up to, sort of like the esper equivalent of 'We need to talk.' That doesn't mean she's not going to go, of course, it just means she's got some anxiety about it.

Meeting room is fine by her. Here she is, at the meeting room, trying not to overthink this. (She's pretty sure she's done everything right???)

Woo-young is already there and doesn't look particularly concerned. Tae-gun isn't. 

"Sorry I didn't include the subject of the meeting in the description, it's nothing bad but sunbae was embarrassed. He's on speaker by the way, say hi sunbae."

"...good morning, Kim Hye-jin," he says, his voice coming out of Woo-young's phone on the table.

"Good morning," she says, a little bemused. "It's fine, I was sitting on my desire to overthink it and I feel like that's a good habit to cultivate on principle. What's this about?"

"Sunbae wants to figure out a better way to silo that gets the benefits of guiding without the problems that his backlash poses." He's sure Kim Hye-jin has figured at least some of it out by now. "But he's too mortified to actually have the conversation himself and asked me to interface."

"Woo-young," he chokes out, sounding... well, mortified.

"Sunbae I have to say something and the truth is always the better strategy to actually solve problems."

"Oh! Oh okay. Yeah, that makes sense," she agrees, nodding. "So less possible interaction between us, while still being near each other?"

"Basically! And so that we can ground it, his—sunbae I'm not going to use that pretentious Western word—the best idea he's thought of that he could go with if we can't figure something out would be handcuffing and blindfolding and gagging him." Woo-young says that with a perfectly straight face.

The choking sound coming out of the speaker Hye-jin can only hear due to the audio quality and esper hearing suggests that a certain someone else does not actually have a perfectly straight face.

Hye-jin snorts, and is obviously amused, but doesn't actually laugh. Her expression makes it clear that she thinks this is very silly, though.

"I don't think we're going to need to go that far to get him the privacy and safety he wants." Okay, that one is said with a perfectly straight face. "If nothing else, our compatibility is good enough that we might be able to guide each other through sufficiently thin walls, or - walls that don't quite go up to the ceiling? I suppose that doesn't help with the soundproofing, does it, hm, and my sincere promise to wear earbuds and listen to music or something is obviously not good enough... Is there paper in here?"

Yeah, sure, he can get her some.

Okay it's drawing time!! She's going to start scribbling possible wall-between-them variations that might work.

"So I think the full wall that's made of a material that doesn't block guiding is clearly best, especially if we can set up some kind of soundproofing on top of that, but I don't know if... anyone has researched that. Do we want a hatch in the wall for potential handholding, or is that better if it's not even a possibility?"

"That one's for you, sunbae."

"...it's probably a good idea."

"Hmmmm, then maybe two thin walls, with a little cushioned handholding area between them, and hatches on either side." Hye-jin starts drawing little stick figures and little lines between them. "If we set it up so we're facing opposite directions with one side to the wall, with both of our arms reaching into the designated handholding space, we maximize closeness of our bodies while keeping our respective heads away from each other. ... Does a reclining chair work okay for you? Nevermind, don't tell me, I shouldn't know anything about what's going on in your silo, I'm just thinking logistics..."

She has been nerdsniped by an interesting problem, and is now going to get kind of into it.

...where did they find her??? She's from the same damn planet sunbae's from. He, like, knows that esper compatibility is also a function of personality match but he didn't realise it'd be to this extent.

Explains how they can passively guide each other from such a large distance, though.

They found her in Japan! Wasn't he paying attention? She came from Japan.

Anyway, she is happily going to work out a detailed, multistep double silo system with multiple layers of fallback, depending on how much wall and space they can get away with putting between them, with hatches for handholding on both sides of the wall and a Designated Handholding Space in the middle. She has this power. No one is going to be able to stop her. Also, no one in this room seems to want to stop her, so.

"Oh, but this might take a while to get built, even with throwing lots of money at it to make it happen quickly," she muses. "Uh, does both of us on either side of a locked door work as a temporary solution until it gets sorted out? Blindfold, handcuffs, and gag optional?"

"Oh we can get it done by tomorrow," Woo-young says, casually. "Will need to consult sunbae on specifics—"

"I'm fine with whatever you've decided," he interjects.

"—I guess not! So it's a matter of finding people and we can definitely get people." C- and D-rank espers often don't go into dungeoneering at all, unless they have very specific in-demand kinds of powers, and instead tend to do the superpowered version of mundane jobs, like construction work.

Nod! "Okay. Uh, for my side, a heated reclining chair, please. And a desk that can be pulled out. And other general hypothermia considerations. You're right handed, right, Tae-gun-sunbae? If so the handholding wall can be kept to our left for both of us, let us have our dominant hands free."

"He is," Woo-young says, nodding. "Write down a list of specific stuff you want? And I'll get someone to make a 3D blueprint off this," he taps the paper, "and share with the two of you so you can change anything you might want to."

"Mhm!" She happily gets to writing out a list. "Are you okay with doing the rest of our dungeons today with the current system, or the on-other-sides-of-a-locked door idea?" This is of course to Tae-gun.

"...locked door, I think," he says after a second.

"Okay. Let me know if you change your mind and need the day off instead. I will try to send you off to your personal silo if you start, I don't know. Yelling your secrets through the door or something, but. I'm not going to be offended if you don't trust that and want further safety measures for yourself."

"Okay."

Woo-young has some kind of facial expression. He's not even sure what it is, but probably some mixture of exasperation, fondness, disbelief, and humorous glee. "I think we're done, then?"

"I think so! Uh. ... Let me know if you want to another tactics talk for our dungeons today, we would probably be fine without it but," she likes them, "they definitely help our operational efficiency I think."

"—oh. Yeah. I'd like that."

Woo-young bites down on a joking remark about their relationship because neither of them would appreciate it and instead just rolls his eyes. They deserve each other, honestly.

"That'll be on the guild's dime," he says, standing up. "Hye-jin, we need to get drunk again sometime." He winks. "But for now I'll be off."

“Sure, thank you for being our intermediary. It’s appreciated. Now go forth, be free~!”

Light flashes and he's gone.

...along with his phone, so Tae-gun texts Kim Hye-jin.

Shall we discuss today's dungeons, then? 

I reviewed yesterday's performance again before sleep last night and I think I have a couple of ideas about efficiency improvements we could try.

Sounds good! Do you want to have this conversation in person? I kind of want to take every available attempt to chip away at your backlash without doing anything that actually makes you uncomfortable.

Yeah. I'm not actively backlashing right now.

I'd be kind of alarmed if you were tbh! My (still temporary, promise) silo for now?

Yes, that works.

He requests a teleport (off the guild's storage of Woo-young's power, rather than from Woo-young directly), and vanishes.

Then they can meet there! And have their tactics talk! Hye-jin is just as delighted by tactics talk as ever, and! And! She has figured out the program he gave her and and loves it very much.

...yeah, he's. Glad it's been useful to her.

... She notices this hesitancy and discomfort, and switches topics. Back to directly breaking down their scheduled dungeons and how their abilities can be leveraged to efficiently destroy them. That seems to be a topic he likes much better.

Yeah that is in fact a topic he is a lot less touchy about. If nothing else he can—

Both of their phones buzz at the same time with an emergency alert, and their commscreens get a notification.

Well. This was bound to happen eventually.

All right, where are they heading, and how bad's the damage.

A dungeon appeared in Busan, floating ten meters above the pavement in a hidden-away corner in Haeundae-go district, and started quietly kidnapping locals and tourists.

Woo-young video calls both of them on their commscreen.

He picks up.

"Hello, hello, this is the taxi service calling, I believe you've ordered a trip to Busan? The dungeon hasn't spewed out any monsters yet, but the number of kidnapped people is already in the double digits and Busan is busy this time of year, don't know if you knew that, Hye-jin. They're figuring high-B or low-A, but big. You in?"

"Obviously."

"Of course," she says, nodding. "We're tip off the spear to draw monsters away from civilians and rescue, yeah?"

"Unclear, we've only just barely got sensors on the ground, dungeon might be weird, but seems likely. Ready? Ready. Cool, you're on."

He teleports both of them.

The area has been surrounded by yellow tape as usual, but there's a lot more activity than Hye-jin and Tae-gun have seen in their dungeons together so far. The professional buzz surrounding the place seems oddly incongruent with the warm late-morning sun and the sea breeze. This being a popular touristic destination, there are quite a lot of people just beyond the yellow tape ogling and taking pictures.

As soon as Tae-gun and Hye-jin teleport in, people start calling their names like they're K-pop stars who just walked in on stage.

A tall, fit man with silver-green hair and pink irises, about the same age as Tae-gun, appears out of (not literally) nowhere to one-arm hug Tae-gun. "Yeowza, I wish they called my name like that! Must feel good to be on top."

Tae-gun pushes the man's arm away and doesn't reply, opting instead to look around for where they're congregating—oh. Right here. Good job, Woo-young, he doesn't have to walk at all and so has no excuse to escape Park Yoo-min.

Woo-young himself is sitting on a fold-up chair, holding hands with a younger-looking guy whose hair is a purple so dark you can only tell it's not black in direct light and eyes that can't decide if they're hazel or green, looking at three different screens and coordinating.

"Sunbae, we still have a few minutes before you and Kim Hye-jin have to go in, why don't you introduce her to some people?" he says, without looking up.

...ugh, he's using his professional voice, that means he's serious.

"Kim Hye-jin, these are Park Yoo-min-sunbae," green hair, "and Seo Tae-hwan," black hair.

"Yo!" says Yoo-min with a huge grin and a two-finger salute. "Big fan!"

"Pleasure to meet you all," says Kim Hye-jin, with a polite and extremely Japanese bow. "Despite the circumstances."

That being said, she's totally going to peer over Woo-young's shoulder and attempt to make sense of the screens, because she's a little workaholic snoop and wants to know all of the things.

He's looking at the preliminary map of the dungeon from the first sensor they sent in earlier as well as a tactical map of the locations in Busan people were kidnapped from, plus keeping an eye on a rapidly-updating public emergency chat channel.

"Park Yoo-min-sunbae is combat-specialised and has lightning powers, his partner Choi Seungjoo-sunbae is defensively-specialised and does momentum redirecting." He doesn't bring up their ranks at all, which is pretty unlike Kim Hye-jin's experience with guilds in Japan. "Seo Tae-hwan, ah..."

Tae-hwan, who had gotten up and bowed too (without letting go of Woo-young's hand), straightens up and says, cheerfully, "Today I'm useless! I'll be managing Woo-young-hyung's backlash while he plays rescue hero."

"Handholding is a sacred and important duty, it is known," agrees Hye-jin, a little amused, even as she's eyeing the preliminary map.

"Tae-gun-sunbae and I can safely split up, if you need this to be three-pronged instead of two," she then volunteers, because it's looking like it'll be relevant. "He'd be better at ranged attackers, but I can handle melee just fine."

"Waiting on Yun Minseo-sunbae's confirmation but it's looking like this one might be the type that likes to rearrange itself. Whether that means you two had better split up than stay together is not my wheelhouse. Incoming."

There's a flash of light and a man in his mid twenties with blond hair and salmon-coloured eyes shows up.

"Seungjoo-ya!" exclaims Yoo-min, running over to the new person's side and tackle-hugging him.

He endures about a second of this before pushing Yoo-min away and looking at Kim Hye-jin. "Kim Hye-jin? I am Choi Seungjoo. It's a pleasure to meet you," he says, bowing.

"Unless Minseo-sunbae reports a much more complex dungeon than we're expecting this should be the whole team," Woo-young says.

"The pleasure is mine," she says, bowing back. Then, back to business. "Yun Minseo-sunbae is the sensor esper that works spatially, correct?" This is directed at her partner, because she doesn't want to waste Woo-young's precious attention right now.

He nods. "Yun Minseo-sunbae's in a triangle with Kim Da-eun-sunbae and Baek Ji-woo-sunbae, shields and healing respectively."

"That's such a good triad of powers," sighs Hye-jin enviously. Look, being able to set monsters on fire is great and all, but sometimes she really wishes she had something that was practical for, you know. Other things. ... Technically she can boil water to produce electricity, but that's not a very interesting other thing, so it doesn't count. Her powers, her rules. "So we should be on the lookout for anything immaterial or mind affecting. Are the civilians ambulatory, being held somewhere, or something else?"

"Unclear!" says Park Yoo-min. He's now got one arm lazily draped around Seungjoo's shoulders, standing on the other side of Woo-young from Hye-jin, also looking at the screens. "No civilians have come out yet, and the first group didn't find any. Minseo's going to bring us all the info once she's out, meantime we're just chewing on our fingernails impatiently."

"Mm. Well, if they're tucked safely out of the way I can just set myself on fire for any incorporeal surprises."

She says this very matter-of-factly.

Tae-hwan looks up at her, blinking dumbly. "Wouldn't that... hurt?"

"She's probably immune to her own fire. But most importantly, does that—"

Seungjoo elbows him.

"Ow! What was that for?"

"You were about to say something weird, hyung," he sighs. "Don't say weird things to people you've just met."

"...yeah, alright, can't argue with that."

"What about your clothes?" Tae-hwan asks.

"The clothes I wear when I'm working are fire resistant, and I can mostly avoid setting them too on fire. But yes, that is why I don't tend to do this strategy if dungeons have had time to have a full recon. Just - rescue, knowing the bounds of the sensors we have available now, probably it's better to be on fire than not if it wouldn't put any civilians in danger."

"Huh. Makes sense."

"...so, how are you finding Korea? Glad you kicked that limp blob to the curb?"

Seungjoo elbows him again, hard. "Hyung!"

He yelps. "What! What! He is a limp blob!"

"Hyung you have no idea what their relationship was like! You can't call people limp blobs."

"Oh." He turns an apologetic smile to Hye-jin. "Um. Sorry if I called someone you like a limp blob."

"No, he's totally a limp blob," says Woo-young, without looking up.

"Ha! Vindicated!"

"And also I hate him. Limp blob is honestly too nice, and just implies a lack of initiative. Here, let me help. He's a self obsessed, showboating, sexist entitled twit with no talent, drive, or desire to improve, who would be perfectly content if most of humanity were killed in dungeons, so long as he could have his precious ego fellated regularly."

She says this all very brightly, but in a quiet tone of voice that would have a lot of trouble carrying to the (very far back) media. Look, she's careful, okay.

Yoo-min blinks a few times, his jaw slowly going slack and a goofy smile spreading on his face as she speaks. When she's done talking he turns to Seungjoo and says, "Seungjoo-ya, can we keep her?"

"One, she is not a dog, two, you've only just met her, three, you need to stop saying weird things," he says in the defeated tone of voice of someone who knows his boyfriend will in fact continue to say weird things forever. "Sometimes I feel like I'm the hyung," he grumbles.

"Do you want me to call you hyung?"

"No! That'd be too weird."

Hye-jin snorts, and looks very smug about having elicited such a reaction.

A pink haired woman in business attire pops out of the portal, and Woo-young's screen begins updating with new information.

"Preliminary recon's been completed, and the area around the other side of the portal is secure. My husband and I will head out in ten, we've got another recon scheduled. Report should now be on your system, short answer is the dungeon is close quarters and shifts, and your sensor has verified at least seventeen captured victims, but suspects there might be more."

"Roger that, thank you Han Ye-rin-shi. Will you be entering the dungeon again or waiting for Im Jae-pil-shi outside? And will Yun Minseo-shi and Kim Da-eun-shi be coming with him?"

("Im Jae-pil-shi has stealth powers and often uses it to help sensors in early recon," Tae-gun explains to Kim Hye-jin, "and Han Ye-rin-shi works with illusions and sometimes goes with him. They're external contractors, not part of Quasar.")

(Hye-jin nods and gives her partner a little smile of thanks. She appreciates these explanations, and will definitely remember powersets, even if she’s not going to remember names. Man… stealth and illusions, what another fantastic pair, she’s so damn jealous…)

"Waiting outside, I've got calls to make for our next appointment. From what I understand, they plan to remain inside, according to Yun Minseo-shi the dungeon is 'tricky,' and she was concerned about losing track of the victims she'd found."

"Yeah, I can see that. Thank you for the report, Han Ye-rin-shi, as always you and your husband do outstanding work."

“Thank you, it is our honor to work for the good of Korea. Good fortune and safety to all of you.”

Anyway, off to make a phone call, the next appointment isn’t an emergency like this one, but it did get shuffled back a little in order to accommodate this rescue….

"Yoo-min-sunbae, the floor is yours."

Park Yoo-min's been looking at the updated information and ignoring the conversation since Han Ye-rin stepped out, and once Woo-young calls him he grins widely, releases Seungjoo from his one-warmed hug, and claps his hands together once. "Alright, folks, listen up!" he says, stretching his commscreen wide and large enough for everyone else to be able to see. "It's not October but it's spooky times! The dungeon's theme of the day is: haunted gothic catacombs. Ooo, scary! Kim Hye-jin was right on the money when she was thinking about how we don't have good counters to incorporeal threats, because boy oh boy do we have those! Ghost-like monsters, shambling zombies, armoured skeletons, if it's spooky and it's kooky we've got 'em!"

He starts manipulating the updated map of the dungeon as he speaks. "It's a self-readjusting dungeon, everyone's favourite. Divided into modules, big collections of rooms, which change position with respect to each other at regular intervals." He triggers one such change on the map to demonstrate, various parts of the rooms moving around in all three dimensions. "The insides of the rooms are strictly Euclidean, but when the modules get shaken up they can go cuh-razy. Still unclear if a module can get completely cut off from all exits according to Minseo-sunbae so we should all proceed under the assumption that they can.

"But wait! There's more! If the spooky dearly departed were not enough, it looks like the dungeon is having a blast trapping civilians inside crypts. I don't know about you but that is not my kink, and I'm betting it's not most of these people's either. They'll be scared and confused, prone to lashing out, and might cling. Public faces, everyone! Remember to be calm and present a reassuring presence, we're all here to help and they'll be alright, on our honour as Quasar.

"Woo-young, explain your teleportation to Kim Hye-jin, won't you kindly?"

"It's reference-based," he says. "I can do 'the person next to that other person' or 'the green box in that room' or things like that, and likewise for the destination. I don't do distances and directions directly."

"Which is uh-mazing for rescues, especially in dungeons like this! Comms are working fine in the dunj itself, so Woo-young and Tae-hwan will be near the dungeon entrance and whenever we find civilians we'll shoot 'im a message so that he can fetch them to safety. Don't do them one by one, though, because they can feel overwhelmed like that; better to get a few and send them out in groups. Obviously safety comes first, though, and if they're at risk you get them out first, no matter what. Remember, this is Tuesday for us, but for them it may well be scarier than the Blair Witch movie!

"The medical team will be by the exit, too, to check everyone for injuries, monsters hidden in your jacket sleeves, et cetera, and I mean everyone, including all of us. I know this is standard, blah blah blah, but Da-eun-noona will not let me hear the end of it if I don't remind everyone every time! Better bored than exploded, is what I always say." Pause. "It's not, but you get me.

"If anything looks too out of the ordinary, report it at once. If you feel like you bit more than you can chew, there is zero shame in pressing the panic teleport button, it's there for a reason. Also a blah blah blah, especially with our two rock stars here, but, again, I do not want noona riding my ass if anything goes wrong.

"This should be straightforward for this team, but in case it is not, we can and will get more people in. First goal is rescuing all of the civilians, do not engage the boss mob or destroy the core until we are one hundred percent everyone is out." At least everyone who's alive, but he doesn't say that. Everyone here knows this, but they're not so far away from the yellow tape beyond which the media outlets are swarming that they can be confident they won't be overheard, and it's best to project a confident image. "And I thiiiiink... that's it! Other than the tac formation, I guess, but we'll go over that in a sec. For now, does anyone have any questions, concerns, opinions, or a sudden but urgent desire to punch me in the face?"

"Only every other day," Tae-hwan mutters.

"No desire to punch anyone present in the face, but I'm going to have trouble getting civilians out of," she peers at her own copy of the report, "stone coffins on my own safely, fair warning. Are the shields we have available effective against incorporeal monsters?"

"Nnnnope! But on the bright side the ghosts aren't that dangerous—in a fashion. They mess with your perceptions like woooooah, and they can get you real confused. Only while they're around, though! Oh, I bet watching Da-eun-noona find this out would've been hilarious. Ahh, we'll have opportunities to make fun of her in the future, I'm sure.

"Anyway! Got distracted. We suspect that AoE diffuse stuff can get them. That'd be heat, cold, spatial manipulation, wind, lightning, you name it. All of us, really! It'll be fine."

(...Tae-gun's power is shit at diffuse. He can do cold and freezing but it's incredibly inefficient so he mostly doesn't.)

"And if it's not fine, we can call backup," he continues. "That said, jokes aside, we should probably pair up. I know hu—I mean, Tae-gun's not so into the freezing thingy," so he does know, "and Joo-ya's power can't really actually do damage, so that'd probably work best, I think! Unless you all think you can deal fine on your own? I'm staying with my bae but as for the two of you I'll defer to your expertise."

So corny.

Tae-hwan makes exaggerated puking gestures.

"Pairing up sounds good," agrees Hye-jin, as if this weren't the most surreal briefing for a rescue she's ever had. When it definitely, definitely is.

"Awesome! Then, Woo-young, Tae-hwan, if you'd get us started?"

Tae-hwan hops to his feet and pulls Woo-young with him, using the hand that's not holding Woo-young's to hold onto his waist and pull him far closer than professionalism would dictate.

He rolls his eyes. "There are cameras, you know."

"I'm doing this half for their benefit," he says with a sharp grin. "Now let's go."

"Let's," he agrees with a fond look on his face, then follows Tae-hwan towards the portal.

"It's showtime!"

The inside of the dungeon is as advertised: cold dark damp stone, crumbling statues and gargoyles, an incessant sound like dripping water you can't quite place, a suffocating claustrophobic atmosphere pressing onto them from all directions. Like most self-shifting dungeons, the room the entrance leads to doesn't change, and it's been cleared of hazards and monsters. The medical team—mostly non-espers with mundane equipment—has set up a tent next to the portal and is sitting at attention when the party walks in.

Inside, they lose connection to the external network but get access to Yun Minseo's constantly updating map, though since Han Ye-rin walked out of the dungeon with a copy just a few minutes ago they're mostly up to date.

"The dungeon shifts every 467 seconds, give or take five, and the next shift should be in about three minutes," Park Yoo-min says, opening up his console again to look at the map. "Tae-gun and Kim Hye-jin, take the direction I'm linking to you now, and Seungjoo and I are going this way instead." He's adopted a much more serious and businesslike tone now that they're inside and actually working. "In addition to the automated pings I want active check-in from both of you every ten minutes, and we'll be doing the same on our end. I'm not going to waste time repeating what I said outside. Unless you have any questions, we go as soon as the dungeon shifts next."