"Sorry, Tae-gun-ah. I don't. I really, really don't think you're real."

"...okay. We can... figure this out later. When we're outside."

"Sure."

He is starting to get a very visceral understanding of why people hate this fucking dungeon so much.

The esper suddenly yelps, pointing at what looks like someone impaled on a tree.

What the fuck—who—

Who indeed.

Jaeha covers his mouth to try to stop himself from throwing up and erases the image and memory from Yoon Chul-san's mind. He did not think seeing that would mess with him so badly.

"Hyung what—oh. Hyung, I'm fine, I'm here, I'm alive—"

"You're fine and you're alive, Tae-gun-ah, but you're not here."

He's still having trouble looking away from, from—

Nightmare reaches into your mind to draw out your nightmares, but it gives them solid form; looking away or knowing it's false doesn't make it go away. The only thing he can do is keep going. 

And that is not the only Tae-gun corpse Jaeha will run into today.

Fuck, where's that fucking civilian, can they get attacked by a fucking bear or something already? Fuck this fucking dungeon.

"Hyung..."

"Stop calling me that," he snaps. "—why am I even bothering to say this, you'll do whatever torments me the most."

There is literally zero reason for him to react to that so he won't. Even though it hurts.

And what torments Jaeha the most right now, obviously, is the fucking uncertainty, is the way this—version—of Tae-gun is actually indistinguishable from the real thing as far as he can tell to the point that he doesn't know if he may instead be imagining Yoon Chul-san because it would be just like Nightmare to make him backlash himself to hell and back by using his power on someone that doesn't exist while hurting the person that does exist, who loves him. And the version of reality that torments him the least is the one in which this isn't the real Tae-gun because he doesn't want his Tae-gun to see him like this, so out of control, without an ounce of composure, using his power much more than he should to protect his pride and his secrets, on an innocent person.

(He wouldn't cry if Yoon Chul-san got mauled by a bear, though.)

Nightmare will drag this out, too, obviously. It'll make it take longer to get to the victim, taunt Jaeha some more. It can't literally prevent them from getting there, the other esper's power wouldn't allow that to happen if nothing else, but it sure as hell can make the path more treacherous and thornier and more zigzagging so that he has to see all of the myriad creative ways it's come up with to kill Tae-gun. Thankfully he doesn't need to pay all that much attention to it to erase it from Yoon Chul-san's awareness but—not much is still some.

They do eventually find the victim. Their nightmare is a memory from a time when they got lost in the woods for two days and thought they would die.

He's happy for you and/or sorry it happened.

Can they leave now?

Yes. They can.

"...hyung..."

"What. What is it now."

He smiles. "You know this won't last. You know I'll get tired of you. I'll get bored of how you never do anything, you have no friends, you don't care about your family, you've got nothing going for you. You just cling to me and it sure feeds my ego but it's not, particularly, fulfilling. You know that, right? You're boring, hyung. What do you have to offer me, that I don't already have?"

"Took your sweet fucking time, asshole."

The portal's in sight, so of course it couldn't keep the pretense going for that long.

(He's so, so relieved.)

"Relieved? Why would you be relieved? You're coming back here, hyung. You're coming here eeeeevery day, for many days in a row. Who knows when Nightmare's going to leave? So you and I, hyung, we're going to be having some fun here. Or, well, I am, at least.

"And then, once I'm done having my fun with you, I'll just throw you out like the bland trash you are."

"I like you, hyung. I like you a lot.

"But I won't like you for long. Goodbye!"