❤️‍🔥Azkalita: yeah i fuckin bet he does
❤️‍🔥Azkalita: won't even train with me yet bc it's ~up in the air~
❤️‍🔥Azkalita: like i can't tell who "Esper with versatile elemental manipulation, powerful shielding and durability enhancement. High-percentile endurance and strength. Emotionally intense backlash with physical correlates; strong compatibility likely." is

🧋youngwoo: he owed prez a favour and prez called it in for this
🧋youngwoo: well, it's more complicated than that, but sunbae considered himself to owe prez a favour, and this is the kind of situation that that favour fits perfectly so
🧋youngwoo: idk disclaimer that obviously i'm biased, he's one of my three favourite people in the whole world and he's not doing ok and i think you could help him do ok
🧋youngwoo: yoo-min-sunbae at least seemed to like you and unfortunately and tragically you're right about his broken clockness
🧋youngwoo: so

❤️‍🔥Azkalita: he is super not doing ok
❤️‍🔥Azkalita: my initial hope was that if somebody was a huge bitch to him about it he'd go "golly gee, i guess i was just ignoring my friends because they were being nice and letting me make my own decisions instead of committing olympic-level emotional blackmail against me"
❤️‍🔥Azkalita: unfortunately it turns out it just results in him thinking i'm a huge bitch
❤️‍🔥Azkalita: however he literally does not need to like me at all in order for me to sit on him while he does one-handed pushups or whatever will keep him from letting his internal organs individually roast like pork sausages
❤️‍🔥Azkalita: so that's like fine

🧋youngwoo: also i guarantee you his friends are not and have never been above emotional blackmail
🧋youngwoo: but he is the olympic champion of self-abnegation and denial
🧋youngwoo: i think he'll like you though
🧋youngwoo: he's a sweetie and he needs someone telling him what to do and he will often say 'no' but having someone do it anyway is good for him
🧋youngwoo: but also let us know if you need support
🧋youngwoo: ...mostly me, don't let other people know whatever you've figured out about his backlash, it's like a state secret or something

❤️‍🔥Azkalita: literally how
❤️‍🔥Azkalita: do people like just not look at his face
❤️‍🔥Azkalita: is this the secret of why he has those flashy model abs
❤️‍🔥Azkalita: so that people do not look at his face and see him being
❤️‍🔥Azkalita: uh
❤️‍🔥Azkalita: backlashed

🧋youngwoo: i am pretty sure the gods have personally placed you in his path
🧋youngwoo: like, not just literally that one time you bumped into him but also the insane compatibility you guys have?
🧋youngwoo: when he is not bumping into girls with backlashes so compatible with his they turn his brain to mush just by being within a ten-foot radius of him he is usually pretty put together
🧋youngwoo: actually i should reinforce that
🧋youngwoo: the majority of people including in this guild have literally never seen him express backlash symptoms ever

❤️‍🔥Azkalita: ah.

🧋youngwoo: have you never seen him on the news or in videos stepping out of dungeons?
🧋youngwoo: there's not a single other esper in Korea who can exit a dungeon they just cleared looking like that

❤️‍🔥Azkalita: who watches the news!
❤️‍🔥Azkalita: now that everybody's talking about ltg all the time i remember my roomie thought he was sexy but honestly she was more into uhhhhh who's that dude from red pines group
❤️‍🔥Azkalita: oh this is gonna BUG me
❤️‍🔥Azkalita: he's got like this very slightly shiny skin and i'm still not 100% if it's an esperbio thing or he's just into body glitter

🧋youngwoo: probably the latter
🧋youngwoo: here's a video of what I mean though

❤️‍🔥Azkalita: oh
❤️‍🔥Azkalita: yeah i think i saw something like that on the lobby tv
❤️‍🔥Azkalita: he looks dumb like that
❤️‍🔥Azkalita: like dude i get that you're so pleased to be of assistance today and can citibank help with anything else this afternoon but
❤️‍🔥Azkalita: you are a demigod like unto gilgamesh????
❤️‍🔥Azkalita: your manager is not going to yell at you if you allow yourself to have facial expressions other than dazed friendliness
❤️‍🔥Azkalita: ...actually wait i just paused on the exact face that induced me to start fucking with him in the dunj
❤️‍🔥Azkalita: so uhhhhhhhh yeah i guess people are generally cowards who don't want to deliberately piss off the superhero who is physically carrying them away from certain death

🧋youngwoo: no uhhh i mean
🧋youngwoo: here's a video of what other espers typically look like straight out of dungeons

The video he links shows a pair coming out of the portal, trying to smile for the cameras but looking visibly tired, flushed, and, well, backlashed.

🧋youngwoo: you're not wrong that it's a TV smile sunbae is doing
🧋youngwoo: but that he can do TV smiles like that while under however much backlash he's in is
🧋youngwoo: kind of unique

❤️‍🔥Azkalita: yeah
❤️‍🔥Azkalita: i know
❤️‍🔥Azkalita: it pisses me off

🧋youngwoo: amen
🧋youngwoo: but it does mean that there are a single-digit number of people who know what his backlash is even including you

❤️‍🔥Azkalita: no, yeah, i do actually appreciate the gravity of the situation
❤️‍🔥Azkalita: and i appreciate the heads-up too
❤️‍🔥Azkalita: it's a better reason than i thought he had to not partner with me in dungeons
❤️‍🔥Azkalita: it isn't one for avoiding a noncombat guiding arrangement but
❤️‍🔥Azkalita: maybe he doesn't think it could help enough, and obviously he'd rather cut his own dick off than put himself in a situation where he feels that way around somebody he doesn't know
❤️‍🔥Azkalita: i don't know his life
❤️‍🔥Azkalita: but like
❤️‍🔥Azkalita: if you made the choice to save the world, fuck everything else, i'm a boddhisattva of violence now, etc
❤️‍🔥Azkalita: and it turns out you need to cut your dick off
❤️‍🔥Azkalita: you take the knife

It takes Woo-young a little bit to respond to that.

🧋youngwoo: sunbae doesn't know what he wants and doesn't want to cut off future options
🧋youngwoo: and i don't just mean his dick
🧋youngwoo: i guess what i want to say is, and forgive me my bluntness, you don't have the full picture and it's not as simple as that

Hm.

Did she just try to tell a man she does not know that his best friend should grow some balls and re-traumatize himself about something she has literally no context on.

❤️‍🔥Azkalita: yeah. thanks for being blunt actually
❤️‍🔥Azkalita: i don't know basically anything about him even if i do feel like he's really easy to read
❤️‍🔥Azkalita: and i keep trying to say things that make pretty pictures instead of trying to find out what's actually going on
❤️‍🔥Azkalita: so. thanks for the callout
❤️‍🔥Azkalita: genuinely

🧋youngwoo: cool i'm glad that landed hahahaha
🧋youngwoo: and yeah sunbae's emotions are often easy to read
🧋youngwoo: especially if you're familiar with the trajectory map of those eyebrows
🧋youngwoo: but he's got layers. like an onion.

❤️‍🔥Azkalita: inshallah he will be sautéed soon

Marza's house and silo requisitions go well, that is to say normally, that is to say, she gets a nice little cottage on the outskirts of Seoul with a silo in the basement. The silo is mostly just a big heated saltwater pool with voice-activated massage jets, plus a little electrotherapy station that can help her through the home stretch once she can mostly see and hear and move again. In addition to this, she had somebody work out a Braille reader that uses needles – mostly blunt, like tacks, just enough to prickle – because it turns out that even numb, she can feel pain, and anything's better than nothing. She'll need to learn Braille, but she's a fast learner.

(Probably she won't usually be returning home completely deaf, blind, and numb, because if she reaches that condition in the field, she'll die. But it doesn't hurt to be prepared.)

yoo-min-max: marza-senpai
yoo-min-max: how come I don't have your number 
yoo-min-max: do u hate me

❤️‍🔥Azkalita: that's definitely an illegal suffix but i like it
❤️‍🔥Azkalita: anyway i hate you WAY less than i should
❤️‍🔥Azkalita: it's medically amazing, you're like one of those cats we invented to be bald and ugly so people who die about cat hair can still have cats even if they suck
❤️‍🔥Azkalita: if you wanted my number you could've texted mimi, i did call her on your comm
❤️‍🔥Azkalita: i gave you all the clues mr policeman

yoo-min-max: it would be extremely creepy for me to try to get the phone number of a female hoobae nearly ten years my junior from her roommate

❤️‍🔥Azkalita: huh. well i don't give a shit about any of that but fair
❤️‍🔥Azkalita: anyway you can send your precious message to #legitimate-korean-phone-number

She gets a text!

hello hello, I sure hope this is the real phone number of one María Esperanza Ricardo y Belleza otherwise i am about to make a fool of myself