"It really isn't," he agrees. "So remember that time a while ago our favourite S-rank espers walked out of a dungeon carrying several deer skulls encased in ice?"

"Yyyyyyes. Vaguely." She was kind of glad that they encased them in ice and avoided a social media headache of them dragging out literal skulls, and that's about all she remembers. "Were they, like. Power negating or something?"

"Pretty much. The antlers, specifically; Tae-gun couldn't cut them off because they were turning the ice blades he'd been using to try to do that into, well, just regular ice. And a material that negates esper powers was not easy to manipulate, let me tell you that.

"Anyway, they suspend the effects of all supernatural phenomena touching them and start slowly absorbing them, and also if they happen to form a closed circle around something supernatural they completely suppress those effects. If Kang Jaeha-shi takes them off then his powers and his backlash will be back, but if he keeps them on they will actually drain his backlash completely over time." He sounds kind of excited about this. "They don't do anything about the physical symptoms, though. Those need actual guiding."

"... Huh! So this is actually a helpful backlash mitigation method, along with being - you know, rogue esper shutdown. But it's - suppression, not elimination, yeah? So if it gets marketed out to everyone you get a brand new set of wannabe Tae-guns, all breaking themselves because they don't feel their own backlash screwing them over."

Eun-ji: already thinking of how this can be leveraged for the good of espers everywhere. Obviously.

"There's also, you know, a finite number of them." Some people over the years have discussed the possibility of keeping a dungeon that produces good materials open to farm them but unfortunately dungeons will just in fact eventually seal themselves and then reappear years later much deadlier if you do that so it's not worth it. "And they get filled up, sort of like batteries. It seems like if they're not actively absorbing anything though they get slowly drained over time? But it's not certain and if it happens it happens very slowly."

"Yeah. But good for the mental backlashes that mess with cognitive function. To be researched, very experimental, don't get excited, I know the drill. What's our explanation for, uh, handcuffs in particular? We were going for backlash reduction bracelets and then, whoops, we saw a potential niche when the power suppression hit?"

"No, I think we're going for a more holistic approach, we weren't aiming for anything in particular but we saw the vague nebulous potential of power and backlash suppression and it's been such a problem over the years that there are certain espers we can't safely contain in humane ways so we've had to do distasteful things and so on so forth. ...but it was Kang Jaeha-shi in particular that I poured that R&D money into this for. Eun-ji you have no idea how happy I am that creature is contained."

"I've got some guesses. Congrats, oppa. Oh, and if you haven't heard, but you probably have - Nightmare sealed itself up and left, so the pressure to release Kang Jaeha on necessity's left with it."

"I have absolutely heard that." He's not even trying to pretend he isn't extremely gleeful anymore. "Pray to our ancestors that the confluence is over, Eun-ji, I think the stress's eaten about ten years off my lifespan. I'm getting grey hairs, Eun-ji!"

"Why do you think I dye mine," snorts Eun-ji, flipping her hair. "I will be praying that we never get another confluence like this again, this has been way too long and too damned exciting for my taste."

"Haah..." he sighs, dropping his head onto his desk with a loud and painful-sounding clunk. "...ow. The dramatic effect was not worth this." He doesn't lift his head up, though. "And on yet another bright side, Kang Jaeha-shi is not my problem. Lucid's going to have a very tough time and we're going to look prescient. I'm just worried about what this whole thing will do to the public perception of psychic espers—" He cuts himself off and looks at her again. "Actually, have there been any leaks about his powers yet? I know nothing official has come out but..."

"No. I've been keeping an eye on it. It's, like - so all of the people that experienced it were Nightmare people, who had worked with him for years at this point? All professionals who do this as their job, not civilians with phones. And they and the public seem to be glossing it as 'Nightmare caused him to have a breakdown,' over, you know," she wiggles her fingers ominously. "Anything else that might have been happening. So, pretty leak free, with a lot of speculation about Nightmare growing scary new abilities."

"...honestly, that's fucking me up, too, pardon my French. How did Nightmare get to him? Was he... refusing to shield himself for some reason? It can't be a coincidence that he broke down like that right after leaving Nightmare, but... it feels like there's still stuff I don't understand and I don't like having stuff I don't understand about that guy."

"I don't know. It's scaring a lot of other people, too. There will be a lot of questions around that, but." She shrugs. "We've got our own problems. Let's let the Nightmare people sort theirs out, and we'll sort out ours, yeah?"

"Yeah. Yeah. You're right. I'm just... I'll just enjoy the fact that it's over. God, I hope this gives Tae-gun some peace. I hope he'll be able to go out in public again. I hope..." He hopes that he can finally make up for failing Tae-gun so completely years ago.

"Yeah." This looks like a job for hug. And: "Good job, oppa. You got him."

He hugs her right back. "Nightmare got him. Our fucking luck with Kim Hye-jin's powers being as bullshit as hunny gunny's got him. His own goddamn obsession with hunny gunny got him. I sealed the deal but he dug his own fucking grave, for nearly six fucking years.

"...but thank you, Eun-ji."

"Fine, fine. Team effort. But you helped, so. Good job."

"That fucking bastard," growls Si-yeon. "Of fucking course he'd do something like this. Do you know how easy it would be for the postcog I had on the case to track his original connection now?"

"Impossible?"

"Ding ding fucking ding we've got a winner! Of course the causal entanglement between him and the assassin now will be fucked to hell and back! But hey at least we fucking confirmed it was this person who shot the bullet that got Kim Hye-jin, ain't that fucking awesome."

"Oppa unclench your fingers."

He does, taking a deep breath, then grabs his shot glass of soju and downs it. "Fucking bastard."

"It's honestly really an annoyingly smart move on his part."

"We were almost onto the shooter, too! We already knew like eighty-five percent of the evidence he collected, I'd have given you even odds we'd have found her in a week."