"Ah, I see. Would that remain true even if I had in fact commited any crimes? Not that I'm claiming I did, of course." Yet.

"Well, first, I would like to stress to you that I am not a lawyer, and this conversation is being recorded, so you should not be taking this or treating this as legal counsel. Second - we at Lucid feel that the situation after your latest foray into Nightmare is extremely extenuating circumstances, and you were almost certainly not in your right mind at the time, and cannot be held accountable for what was obviously a hostile attack on you by Nightmare itself."

"It is certainly understandable to not want to hold anything that happened then against me. I agree I wasn't in my right mind." Those statements are both true and mostly entirely unrelated to each other, of course.

"I'm glad you recognize that. So - on that note, is there anything I can speed up for your comfort? Having your partner visit, maybe?"

"I think Kim Insoo would prefer not to see me right this minute." He's going to ignore the painful pang of conscience he gets whenever he thinks about how horribly he's treated Insoo. "What you could speed up is me getting out of here, of course, but I assume I'm stuck here until Lucid has determined that I'm safe?" That might be illegal but he doesn't actually know what comes next instead.

"I'm afraid so. I apologize, but there's not much we can do. You're - in sort of a legal grey area of not officially being arrested, but nonetheless detained here for the foreseeable future."

"I'm certainly not in Lucid's custody, though. I'm sure there are other people who are going to be checking in on me, if nothing else to make sure I'm being treated according to the law."

"You're not in Lucid's custody, no. We have been advocating for your interests so far, and will continue to do so where possible."

"Mmhm. Then I'm not sure what it is exactly that you need from me. Tell me what the party line you want me to parrot is and I'll do that. It doesn't seem like I have any power here to make any choices."

"Sir, that's a very cynical outlook. I'm here to help you accomplish your goals." The addition 'as they coincide with Lucid's' is unspoken, but still very obvious to anyone with experience in these matters.

"Kim Su-bin-shi, you cannot do that."

She definitely can't if you don't tell her what any of your goals are, jackass.

She does not say this.

"... If it's all right with you, I'm going to request private sessions with a therapist," she sighs, instead.

"Kim Su-bin-shi, what I would like is to confess to a laundry list of crimes I've committed over the past six years including having been the one who called the hit on Kim Hye-jin, to make amends for those to the best of my ability, and then to die."

"... what," she croaks, a little hoarsely.

"So, as I said, there is nothing you or Lucid can do to help me."

"I can see you're likely still in the middle of some post Nightmare processing and potentially backlash recovery. I'll request that your partner come visit you. In the meantime I'm... going to go... send some emails. There - should be a buzzer available for you to press if you want anything? Please do if you need to."

And then she flees, because it is absolutely not her job to risk Lucid for this one guy, A-rank unparalleled mental esper that he is, and what the fuck.

Oh. Maybe telling her what he wanted is going to help him get what he wanted. Surprising! He's not going to complain.

Things are starting to go his way. Maybe he will soon be able to die.

It's only a few minutes later that the door to his room slams open. "Hyung!"

Oh. Oh no.

"Hyung what the fuck happened I got a message saying you're, you're, unstable and maybe I shouldn't come but maybe you're being affected by some experimental drug or something?"

He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath.

"Insoo."

"What? What, hyung? You don't look unstable but do you need guiding—"

"Insoo, stop talking."

"...well I guess you can't be that unstable if you're already back to being a dick—"

"Insoo I am so, so sorry."