"I win, motherfucker," she whispers.

She pushes on the lid, to see if that's also going to move. Wasn't worth trying when the dungeon was in control, obviously.

Nope, that one's being held down by the ordinary physics of thick stone coffin lids.

The fight ends, though, and the random esper walks over to her.

"Can you hear me?" calls a calm, firm, and loud voice. "I'm here. You'll be alright. Hang in there, I'll get you out."

"If I couldn't hear you, I wouldn't hear you," she points out, possibly too quiet for him to hear. (Though maybe not.)

There's another pause. "Right. I'll be just a moment."

That's followed by the sound of rock being punched until it breaks, directly above her coffin's lid, and then by someone's fingers being directly shoved into the gap between the lid and the coffin like they're made of gravel. Then heeeeave and the lid is lifted up.

Thankfully, the crypt outside her coffin is not very well-lit, so her eyes don't have to do too much adjusting before she can see that her saviour is Lee Tae-gun, Korea's most famous esper and its only S-ranker.

"Are you alright?" he asks as he offers her a hand.

"Yes! Thank you, random – eh, it feels mean when I can see your face. Thanks, man."

Yeah, hand is good, she hasn't volitionally moved anything below her neck in not fewer than six and a half hours. Clasp and –

– she's suddenly drowning in sensation. She can feel everything.

There's a bone-deep ache in most of her muscles. That happens when you stay perfectly still. Some of her skin is touching the cold stone, indifferently polished, home to a dozen textures from mirror-smooth to sandpaper. Most of the rest is covered by cloth, and she could count the stitches if she had the time. Even the parts of her that aren't touching anything are reporting on the minute currents in the air.

You know what is touching something? Her hand. Her hand, which is touching this man's hand, is sending her the most urgent sensory data she's ever experienced. She got a second-degree burn once, grabbed the wrong end of a soldering iron. This isn't like that. This is more than that. She thinks she's feeling more in that skin-to-skin contact than she would if she rubbed the iron on her eyeball.

What the fuck???

He doesn't drop her, because he's a professional with years under his belt, but as soon as he manages to get her out he takes a step back and folds his arms behind his back. "You're—an esper?" Dungeons almost never grab espers. Never, actually, as far as he knows, but he doesn't want to make any confident statements.

"Nnnnnno? You're an esper. Is that what touching an esper is like, is that why there are so many chasers – honestly that feels way too intense for the average chaser, that was fucking scary –"

"Ah.

"I believe you may have just manifested as an esper. What you felt was—" How the fuck does he explain guiding to her. He's got a script for rescuing people and it does not include exceptions for people suddenly manifesting while he's rescuing them and it is especially not made for them to be so compatible with him that he can feel them from where he's standing!

Zanna had a friend back home who manifested. There was a party for him, cake and sushi platters and whatever.

She'd visited him the week before, when he was strapped down because otherwise he'd scratch every inch of his skin off, crying like a little boy how much it itched, how it hurt, how it felt like something was inside him.

"...does the magic at least come before the hospital visit?" she sighs. "I'd like to get to play superhero a little before they hook me up to a heated IV or a ventilator full of steroids or a dialysis setup."

"...no, I." Wait, public face, come on, Lee Tae-gun, you know how to do this. "I believe you will be skipping that part. Come with me? There are still some people I need to find, but then my guild can get you resources to help with anything you need."

"Oh! That's, uh, good."

Follow follow. "I'm Marza, by the way. What do you call yourself?"

........is she. Serious.

"Ah, sorry, that was very rude of me. I'm Lee Tae-gun. It's a pleasure to meet you."

"Nice to meet you too, mister* Lee Tae-gun-nim. Am I special because you're bringing me home to meet your guild, or is Customer Service Tae-gun pleased to meet everybody?"

*(There is not actually an honorific prefix of this nature in Korean. She just said "mista" out loud with her face mouth.)

He is extremely ill-equipped to deal with literally every aspect of this situation.

He may perhaps be grateful for the appearance of a skeleton, then?

Yes he is thank you skeleton-nim.

He grabs two blades made of pure ice which had been sheathed by his hip—which is to say, they had been floating next to him pretending to be physically attached to him—and goes into melee with the skeleton.

That's really just overkill.

Marza leans theatrically against a wall carving. Men will literally swordfight skeletons instead of

oh god DAMN it of course there was a ghost in the wall

Of course there was.

There's no hesitation, two ice blades appear under his feet to carry him faster than he otherwise could and he pulls her away from the ghost—