...yeah. He, uh, wasn't really joking when he said Haru'd need to sign a contract over that. He feels kind of bad about it but they've only known each other a couple of weeks so he is going to make himself not feel bad about it instead.

Sure, what's the contract say and can he get a copy in English so his agency lawyer back in Canada can read it? Not that the guy's licensed in Korea but it's good to have a second pair of eyes on anything weird.

It boils down to, if Kang Jaeha's backlash is shared by Haru with someone who didn't already know about it prior without explicit consent from Kang Jaeha, Haru will need to pay a fine, which is the standard form the majority of espers who have such contracts at all use. The agency lawyer in Canada will almost certainly have run into identical ones before.

Wow, that's a hugeass fine. He is kind of making a skepticalface at Jaeha that this is necessary. But okay, he can keep a secret.

(Kang Jaeha is feeling particularly irritated that he has zero access to Haru's emotional state, right now.)

Yeah, sorry about that, he has his reasons, though.

Anyway, one other thing, they heard from Park Yoo-min-shi that Masaharu-shi's old guild was maybe threatening Cricket? Would Cricket and/or Haru want legal representation? Quasar has been trying to push through a law recognising reformed monsters as legal persons and this could help it go, or they could instead argue for Haru having full ownership of Cricket if both he and Cricket prefer this, or something else that worked better...?

"It wasn't an outright threat? Someone just - mentioned, at the wrong time, that the last time the government of Japan heard anything about Cricket, Hasegawa was responsible for him. Reformed monsters should absolutely have legal personhood, but if you have a test case who maybe speaks any Korean and can get through a conversation with the average person without telling them that they could costlessly be replaced with an equivalent volume of Styrofoam, Cricket is probably not the ideal show trial candidate."

That's... true... but Quasar will go to bat for either of them if they want. Option's on the table.

Anyway! If that's all squared away then they are both officially members of Quasar, now! Their comm systems should have access to the internal Quasar apps, including the one where they will be receiving their dungeon assignments according to their declared specialties and preferences, there's procedure for changing that if they want to, they've got a lot of leeway to figure out what works best for them during their first month, etc etc, welcome!

Hurrah!

They can go introduce Cricket to his wing of the house (Cricket requires a cozy catbed and a television with a large-buttoned remote) and Haru can do some unpacking - he's going to sleep in Jaeha's bedroom with him but there's enough space that he can commandeer a room as an office! - and Jaeha is firmly instructed not to read the spiral-bound notebooks that are to be shelved therein but if he wants to borrow the Shakespeare or something that's kosher.

"Am I at least allowed to know what's in the notebooks or is that a secret, too?"

"Lots of different stuff, I usually have one on me and if I need to write down 'pick up a loaf of bread' that'll be where it goes instead of my phone sometimes. But the reason they're private is that I do a lot of processing my thoughts in 'em, I like to have stuff written down where it can't move around and get all vague on me so I can decide how I feel about it."

...man why does he also find that endearing. He is starting to suspect foul play.

"Is that something you use to deal with your backlash feelings?" Does he write about Jaeha in those notebooks? Jaeha's desperately curious to know that, but—he's not going to read them. If the feelings aren't happening directly in front of him for him to know how to act they're less useful anyway.

"No, I can't do it while I'm backlashed, which is really really annoying, I have useful skills accumulated from the practice that I can still use when I'm backlashed but I can't sit down and write things to myself in private for long enough at a stretch when I'm like that. I have to do it all in retrospect. One of the many reasons cooperating with myself is so important."

"—huh. And why the—paper notebooks? I don't think I've written anything longform to any appreciable extent in years."

"I can do it typing, but I want a full keyboard, and that's a little more annoying to whip out in arbitrary locations. Also going electronic makes it a bit higher friction to switch languages, I don't really notebook in Korean unless I'm doing it as deliberate practice - backlash is good for making me do practice conversation but what originally drew me to Korean was the elegance of Hangul - but I mix Japanese and English and weird terms of art I made up symbols for in there all the time. And I draw diagrams and stuff."

"That sounds—fascinating is the word I'm coming up with but it sounds weirdly condescending if I just say it without any disclaimers. Really cool, maybe?"

"Thanks! Sometimes I do a similar process about things that aren't private, I can try to remember to call you over if it happens when you're around."

"I think I'd like that."

"I'll make a note of it." He does this.

Definitely foul play. There's zero reason why this would make him want to kiss Haru and yet.

He's allowed, though, right?

He's allowed!

"So that reminds me because of how you are carrying around an assload of it - is your backlash secret because it's private, like you don't actually want anyone to know and the NDA is a belt and suspenders thing, or -"

"—ah. It's—" He'd been tempted to tell Haru the first time he asked, so now he finally can. 

The abridged version, that is. 

"Yeah. It is that."

"It's anhedonia. Loss of motivation, apathy, an inability to want anything. When I manifested, I—didn't try to kill myself, not very hard, but it wasn't because I didn't want to."

"You do an awful lot of dungeons, considering, how d'you do that?"