❤️‍🔥Azkalita: 100% fine and did not at all just zone out in front of jeong seo-ah-nim for like 10 minutes while i was supposed to be doing paperwork bc i am way too distractible to be trusted with cybernetic groupchat

yoo-min-max: LMAO is that true @SeoAA?

🆘SeoAA: I cannot confirm nor deny it

🆘SeoAA: not anybody!
🆘SeoAA: some people don't use chat at all
🆘SeoAA: anyway back to work with me

❤️‍🔥Azkalita: ...i do have to ask if ltg is among the persons i can gossip/rant about without summoning him
❤️‍🔥Azkalita: for legal reasons

(It's moderately annoying that he was able to go from "completely unknown local celebrity" to "subject of at least two rants" this quickly, but she isn't going to pretend she doesn't have the rants.)

...she feels a little bit better able to navigate while still using the screen. And walking along a flat surface is probably the one way to get better at it, right? Even if her feet are still a little numb, and her vision's weirdly blurry and her ears ring a little because she didn't quite zero out her backlash before it turned chronic, she's a dancer, she does this, she has –

no, it turns out that even a semi-professional dancer can, in fact, take an absolute pratfall if some asshole leaves a wall cord extended and it gets caught on the carpet. Who does that. Absolutely villainous. And she is perfectly positioned at a blind corner, so whoever's coming around can kick her in the face!

The person around the blind corner is none other than Lee Tae-gun, a man who has good enough reflexes to not only not kick her in the face, but also gently hold her to stop her fall.

Had she ever asked herself the question, "What happens in the story of Marza's life right after she trips and falls while not paying attention walking in Quasar HQ's hallways?", she would've been able to predict this.

yoo-min-max: he's, like, in the chat, but he never reads it

Oh! Fantastic! This sucks!

"...sorry."

Something... is up with him.

He closes his eyes...

...then looks at her.

Oh so the porn is right sometimes.

And this is is why people's backlash is confidential information.

Cool cool cool cool cool.

She twists and then flings herself out of his arms, landing in a tactical crouch three feet away.

And by the time she looks at him again he's schooled his expression and folded his arms behind his back. "Marza-shi," he says.

"...Lee Tae-gun-nim. My sincerest apologies."

(She can get it right, when she needs to apologize. She can be serious enough to give a shit. Helps that that one's always -nim, though.)

"No apology is necessary. Are you here to... sign up for the guild...?"

"Indeed, I have signed. I have yet to choose my lodgings or silo."

She feels kind of slimy saying it. But she needs to get him in a room if she's going to actually communicate with him, and it's not like it isn't true, so...

"Are you busy? I imagine you have some experience with such things, and I have never attempted... real estate. Or, you know, whatever this is. My time in this nation has exclusively been spent in hostels and university dormitories."

There is very little he wants less than this.

"You're my hoobae, then," he says, switching to informal language. "I think I'm not the best person to help you with that? I've been in the guild for eight years, I wouldn't know what the current procedures are." Which... is true assuming that the current procedures have changed, which he's assuming for the sake of getting the hell away. On the other hand he was homeless prior to joining the guild, so, he actually does have some experience with that. Which, again, he's not going to use at all, due to all of the getting the hell away from here he's about to be doing.

"Okay. That is not actually what I meant. Cards on the table, sunbae, it is absolutely understandable to request a teleport to Mongolia after what just happened, I considered it myself, and if you need to go – take a bottle of guiding pills and do an inadvisable amount of yoga – I will absolutely not stop you, but if it is even distantly possible that this could happen again, perhaps right before a dungeon, then we need to address it sooner or later, and I would very much rather it be sooner."

"'This'."

"Coming into physical contact with me, or possibly just being too adjacent, and then going catatonic until I physically removed myself. I doubt very much that you missed it."

"I would've stepped away. And now that I'm prepared for it to happen, it won't anymore."

"My acute backlash includes, at its extremis, full-body paralysis. If we are ever in a combat situation wherein you are best positioned to rescue me from the consequences of a major assault, you will not be the only one at risk. Will you please allow me to talk to you about potential solutions, you –"

Deep breath.

Deep breath.

"I am going to continue apologizing throughout this conversation," Marza notes. "I feel passionately about this, but I do not need to subject you to... undue... verbal abuse. Sorry."

He twitches at the outburst and is about to say "no" more firmly when he recalls Yoo-min's request. Just hear her out, Yoo-min said.

"Fine," he sighs. "Come with me." He spins on his heels and starts to move away with purpose, opening his commscreen as he does to check something.