When Lee Tae-gun walks into the room, he has a perfectly placid expression on his face, but when he looks at Kang Jaeha the thing that flashes in his eyes isn't placid. It's a moment of calculation, of quickly analysing Jaeha to determine whether he's a threat. 

It's disconcerting to him that the answer he arrives at is "unclear".

Jaeha is smiling when Tae-gun does look at him, and is feeling... something. Something strange, something—

—guiding? That makes no sense. From this distance?

"Good morning, Kang Jaeha-nim," he says after the split second of assessment. "It's a pleasure to meet you."

He's on his feet already and striding confidently towards Lee Tae-gun. "Good morning, Lee Tae-gun-shi, and likewise." He extends his hand for a shake.

That's what they're here for, isn't it?

He shakes—

He has the absurd thought, suddenly, that he might actually take it personally when Lee Tae-gun decides to leave him. 

"Wow, he breathes," pulling his hand away. "I was not expecting that."

Yeah. Him either. 

He's not straightforwardly happy about it, even if he mostly is. Now is not the time for an erection.

"What's your backlash like, Lee Tae-gun-shi?" He knows it's rude to ask, but now he's desperately curious.

That snaps him out of the daze. "—I'm afraid I oughtn't tell you."

"What, never?" he asks, half-joking. "Did you hate it that much?"

"N-no, just, until the contract is signed."

Which is to say, until it is the case that if Jaeha shared it with anyone else it would ruin him. Lee Tae-gun is very guarded, and not stupid, but that stammer there... Whatever it is, he's not only scared of it getting out; he's embarrassed by it. But the kind of embarrassed where he'll be okay sharing it once he's convinced it'll be fine—although that part could just be pragmatism.

"Makes sense. Is there anything you'd like to talk about, then? I usually would have some things but with this much compatibility I kind of want to make sure you won't escape."

"—I understand where you're coming from but we probably should ascertain we're compatible in more ways than just that," he replies, not smiling even a little bit at Jaeha's joke.

Jaeha is sure he can be someone Lee Tae-gun is comfortable with, once he's got a better bead on who Tae-gun is as a person. He won't be able to be very creative about how he discerns this, as there is a camera in this room, but he can learn from more than just body language. For example, he didn't miss the way Lee Tae-gun is currently concealing a fairly strong level of physical attraction for Jaeha, and it's occurred to him that it could be related to Lee Tae-gun's backlash, though it could just be that he's a 21 year old who's attracted to men and who has made the obvious observation that Jaeha is both really handsome and really hot. 

"Well, let's sit and chat, then," he says, gesturing at the sofas.

Sure. He came here prepared for that. He sits.

Jaeha wonders if he should sit next to Lee Tae-gun. He can't ascertain this empirically but he still considers himself pretty good at reading people.

...Lee Tae-gun would not appreciate this, on net, so he sits on a different sofa. 

"Why don't we start with what's publicly known to everyone and you tell me more about your powers?"

Oh that's a subject he's perfectly comfortable elaborating on at length.

"The basics are ice conjuration and self reinforcement." He extends his hand out, palm up, and summons a double-sided ice blade floating and slowly rotating above it. "I have full control over the shape of what I conjure, where I conjure it, its density, and the rate of conjured mass per unit time. For as long as the ice I've conjured is within my range I can prevent it from melting, move it in all three spatial directions, control its specific heat, and unconjure it. If it leaves my range and later enters it again, I can regain control over it. It is possible for me to gain control over ice I haven't conjured by conjuring some of my own, having a bit of it melt over the existing ice, then solidifying it again; this is by and large inefficient and I don't do it. I have yet to run into any limitations to any of these aspects of the power, other than backlash accumulation rate. 

"My self-reinforcement powers can range from it being kind of hard to scratch me to me becoming both an immovable object and an unstoppable force." That much is inference, not exactly completely known, because the backlash accrual rates get unmanageable really fast. "They can be leveraged for something like super strength, and include things like temperature changes and electrical charges. They have not been extensively tested against other espers' powers." And that part isn't exactly public but it doesn't really matter, he also expects he's sufficiently resistant to espers' powers that enemies underestimating him works to his advantage.

It's interesting that Lee Tae-gun got sufficiently excited for that subject that his background lust went away completely while he was talking. "You seem to mostly focus on blades," he observes.

"They're most useful for directly engaging enemies," he explains, "but dungeon situations do actually often involve me needing to use my power more creatively than that." Should he say it...? Hmm, nah. Maybe once they've signed the contract.

"How about your powers?"

"I can completely shield someone's mind from external influence, and erase any that exists in its entirety. I can also project fully immersive illusions, and not even monsters are immune to those. Or, at least, there exist some monsters that aren't, I can't rule out the possibility that some are."

Tae-gun has heard that Kang Jaeha is one of the few people who can definitely eliminate the influence of Nightmare from someone, and he's the only esper known to be able to prevent it from marking someone again at least until they leave the dungeon. That's fairly impressive on its own, but also, "I've heard you can also reflect psychic dungeons' attack somehow...?"