"Assuming it was him." Woo-young starts serving himself some food and gets some wine, too, while he's at it. He doesn't want to get drunk but he likes the taste. "But if it wasn't him then I'm probably safe, it's unlikely that if there's some other person who wants Hye-jin dead they'd also want me dead."

“Right. In this case being overly cautious about it being Kang Jaeha is just - being safe, not potentially ruining someone’s life. But also, I don’t know who else would want me dead. My breakup wasn’t that bitter, and he definitely doesn’t have the connections - or money - for this kind of stunt.”

"Someone holding a grudge over Volcanic Range for some reason. Sapient monsters—those wouldn't have money, I guess, but just throwing ideas out there. Could be just the first hit of some larger more organised group that's targetting espers for some reason. Could be not the first hit, like that, and you just escaped because of unknown powers. Someone who holds you responsible for failing to save someone they feel you ought to have saved, a civilian."

"...those aren't all very plausible but you're actually convincing me that there's merit to other possibilities."

"Not all of those are personal, and if literally anyone else, outside this group here, is hit, then—that'll almost certainly mean it's not Kang Jaeha, right?"

"Unless he does that to cover his tracks, which would be like him."

"Why did you like that guy?"

"Do you want me to list to you all the ways in which I'd be horrible if I had all of my empathy and positive emotions purged?"

“Yeah. The person we’re dealing with isn’t the same one Tae-gun-ah was with. He just shares a lot of characteristics. Let’s not - pick fights over people turning into something else over time?”

She nibbles her food thoughtfully, then says,

“… I do hope he was responsible, though. Because - well, for one, no secret worldwide conspiracy to assassinate espers, just a bad backlash and breakup. Objectively, the former is worse for the world than the latter, even if the latter sucks for us in particular. But, two, if - the assassin is caught and can be traced back to him tidily, then. We don’t have to make it about his powers at all. Less fallout for innocent psychic espers.”

...ah, here are the feelings he'd been suppressing, aren't they. He's hoping for the opposite. On an intellectual level, Hye-jin is right. On an emotional level... Tae-gun wants it to not have been Jaeha. He wants Jaeha to not be that far gone, he wants Jaeha to be—redeemable.

He wants Jaeha to be happy.

Ah, this hurts a lot, actually.

"So, two things we want to protect ourselves, Kim Hye-jin and hyung and me, from: having our heads messed with, and being literally murdered. Hye-jin hanging out with Tae-gun makes them immune to the latter, basically, while I'm—a bad target for the former. There's no amount of illusion he can put me under that would make my power fail to teleport me where I want to go."

"The danger is in what he could make you do before teleporting away."

"And Hye-jin is definitely the one that could cause the most damage that way."

“Yep. Please don’t rub it in, I am aware. This is why the second time he messed with me I peacefully smiled and hummed the most ridiculous song I know.”

"...I wasn't trying to rub it in, sorry."

“Sorry. Just, uh. That is my actual worst case scenario. Being used as a murder weapon and causing massive destruction and pain. I am the one with the most power to prevent that scenario, and trust me, I. Am extremely aware.”

"Yeah. I getchu. 'S all good."

Woo-young gets his commscreen out and stretches it large into a blackboard-like surface behind himself to write into. He creates a two-by-three table with "attack vector" rows (mental and physical) and "target" columns (Tae-gun, Hye-jin, and himself), and starts filling it in. For the physical row, he leaves his own cell blank, writes "immune" to Tae-gun's, and "resistant w/ Tae-gun" to Hye-jin's; for the mental row, he writes "easy to escape" to his own cell and "body cam" to Tae-gun and Hye-jin's, then "high mobility" to Tae-gun's cell and "high firepower" to Hye-jin's.

"Let's focus on the mental vector because it's what we have most trouble with. Having people monitoring Kang Jaeha hasn't actually helped much since he can give us the slip very easily and the bullshit dungeon tech that enables our commscreen is still as far as anyone knows impossible to hack. We're pretty sure his partner Kim Insoo isn't getting the same treatment Tae-gun did, but that's all we got. And Hye-jin is right that adding more monitoring to her and Tae-gun's lives isn't—well, it's costly, and we should treat it as such."

Nod.

“… honestly, I think he’s a shitty tactician,” she muses, as she looks at this.

"Say more?"

“So, his actual counter is your teleportation, and how mobile we all are because of you. You’re why we can always escape him. But he hasn’t done anything to you. He went after me, the woman who could very definitely make him be dead, if I didn’t mind the gigantic body count and massive destruction I’d cause to do it. I obviously didn’t, but I could have. That’s a stupid risk to take. My point is that… This is not a man who is thinking tactically about how best to outplay his foes, I don’t think. That’s not to say he’s not clever, or incapable of hiring professionals - I really don’t think the person who shot me was anything other than a pro - but it’s. I dunno, it seems like he’s being… I want to say ruled by his darkest desires, not logically thinking what actions will get me to my goal. But I don’t know what to do with that, and in many ways it makes him more dangerous.”

"...I think... it might actually just be that he knows Tae-gun would be sad without me?"

"I'd be sad without Hye-jin, too."

“Send him an email saying that,” says Hye-jin, seriously.

...that sounds like it couldn't possibly work but "I can try doing that." It's not like it's costly.