He makes an inquisitive noise.

"- oh, just - people. Can't live without 'em and yet. I'm gonna go hit my notebooks." Kiss.

Kiss! "Have fun question mark?"

"I will have ego-syntonicity, which is better than fun."

"That it is."

And up to his office goes Haru.

The next day Jaeha doesn't have any dungeons scheduled, since they're taking it slow at the beginning, but what he does have is his first therapy session. Remote, naturally, because he doesn't want to run the risk of feeling tempted to mind control his therapist, that'd be wholly counterproductive.

His therapist has a minor technical issue with her microphone and then comes in on audio fine. "- me now? Okay, good. Good morning, I'm Dr. Park Areum, it's good to meet you."

"Good morning, doctor-nim, good to meet you too."

"So, Kang Jaeha-nim, do you have any questions for me or should we start with what your goals are here?"

"Hmm I have one main question, I guess: what are the limits of your confidentiality? Under what conditions will you break it?"

"With esper clients, very few. A court order could compel me to speak but they're reluctant to issue those; and I am also allowed to call an ambulance or your partner for you if I think you're having a medical emergency even if I can't explain to them why I think so. If I suspect child abuse I am allowed to report that."

Hm. The legal mandate thing is... troubling... but realistically, if the government asked him to disclose his powers, would he... refuse? 

"Are there any circumstances under which you'd need to disclose information related to past actions without ongoing effects, if they don't involve child abuse? Would you need to report it if your patient was the one abused in the past?"

"I not only don't need to but must not report if a client was abused in the past, if they don't want me to. If a client came under suspicion for... a reopened cold case, I guess I'd have to comply with a court order about that, but it's never happened to anyone that I've heard about; I can't think of anything else where it might come up if it's all in the past."

...yeah, alright. Leap of faith, here. 

It's what the man of Haru's dreams would do. 

"I think those were all my questions."

"All right, then. What can you tell me about what brings you to therapy?"

Man he has no idea how to answer this question. Or rather, he's scared of answering it completely honestly, especially when he barely knows this person.

"Is it alright if I don't give you a full answer? I'd rather..." How should he put this. "...build a rapport before I'm fully comfortable?"

"Of course. Is there something you would like to talk about first, then?"

No, not really. 

Uhhhhh.

Should he maybe have prepared himself better. Maybe he should've. That would've been smart. He had been kinda treating therapy as this black box into which you insert broken Jaeha and out of which you pluck fixed Jaeha, maybe with a training montage in the middle but uh. That was. Perhaps. The wrong move. 

"Probably, but I'm kind of drawing a blank now that it's time to actually do it."

"Hm, would it help to imagine what other people in your life would say to explain it if they were the ones I was asking?"

"Huh. Probably." What would Haru say? Well, obviously that they should figure out a sustainable way for Jaeha to not slide back into casual mind control, but he's not getting into that today. He doesn't think. What would Haru say under that constraint, then? 

"...I have control issues. In the sense that I always want to be in perfect control of—stuff. My image, mostly. How people perceive me, how I come off. But also my actions, I don't want other people to—ever be able to tell me what I can't do."

"Hm, can you give an example?"

"...right now, I'm having a lot of trouble coming up with things to say in large part because lots of them feel embarrassing or vulnerable and will make me look weak and pathetic to you." Including this sentence but he will be a big boy and not freak out about it.

"And I suppose you already know that this is my job and I'm specifically supposed to be able to hear vulnerable embarrassing things without judging you for it, but that's not helping?"