"No. No I—I'm almost done, actually. I honestly think—three days, maybe. If that. I would only need three more days of this before everything was back. Most of it's back.

"I told you I'm a coward, Haru-y—" He can't say that. "Masaharu-shi. I am starting with the easiest things to say."

Okay we're back to being braced for worse. Haru nods.

"I lied to you about what my powers are, too. ...I lied to everyone about what my powers are. No one knows the full picture, except me. I'd—demonstrate, but actually I oughtn't. I'll just describe."

"My illusions are all-encompassing. Everything you can feel, I can fake. I can fake your proprioception. I can fake the feeling of using your powers, the feedback. I can fake the feeling of backlash." He's sure the way his voice sounds hollow to his ears is just a projection of his emotions but it still feels like someone else is talking. He's started so now he can't stop. Whoever's puppeteering him is going to keep going, keep the show running, and he'll just let it happen. "I can make you feel like you just woke up. Like you're out of breath. I can make you think you can't move, because even though you're moving your nerves are telling you otherwise.

"You have no way to tell. There is no mind esper who has any way to tell, because my illusions don't change anything in your mind, they change what your nerves are perceiving in the first place. There's no difference between you seeing something that's actually there and something I made you think is there. The memories of perceiving my illusions are as real as those of perceiving reality. You can't tell, even in retrospect."

"This is the generic you, right."

"I am not, as far as I am aware, able to penetrate your shields—but I haven't really tried. I don't want to try."

Haru relaxes, mostly, at that. Nods.

He takes a deep breath, then continues. "I don't need to do my own detailwork, either. I can let your brain do it for me. I can make you believe you're holding a conversation with me when you're not, the contents of which your own brain generates. I can tell your brain to believe that I said or did something with a given character, I can say I was charming or funny or sexy, and you'll come up with it for me.

"I can't fake emotions directly, but I can mute or highlight ones you're already feeling. Mostly but not exclusively by focusing on their physical correlates."

Another deep breath, and onto the scariest part. "My receptive power isn't just empathy. I can't directly read anyone's minds, but I can perceive their feelings, I can know if they're talking to someone they know or a stranger, if they're feeling claustrophobic or comfortable, if they're somewhere familiar, if they're near an animal and what animal it is, if they're alone—the big things that human brains can do, instinctively, deeeply.

"And then, if I have hold of a mind, I can also watch your memories being formed. And I can grab hold of them and erase them. Once it's properly recorded in long-term memory I can't, anymore, but memories take much longer than people think to do that. I can do it selectively, only erasing parts of a memory. I could touch another esper, notice that we're not compatible, and replace the part of their memory related to feeling that incompatibility with new feelings of compatibility. I can say something, see that it didn't land well, erase it, and try again. I can repeat interactions, find the perfect ones. Over and over and over."

Haru has not quite let go of him yet but he's got goosebumps now.

Keep going because once he stops he's not sure he'll be able to say any more things.

"I can't pick out minds using my power. I need to know where they are, through non-powers means. Reasonably but not completely precisely; knowing you're in a room isn't enough, knowing you're in a room and having access to its CCTV feed is. My range is very extensive, but I lose precision fast with distance; this matters less for me than it would for others due to the aspect of it I mentioned of being able to rely on your mind to figure it out for me."

He's braced. He's soooooo braced. Jaeha did not figure out the limitations of his power by meditating alone in a room somewhere. He didn't keep it secret by asking nicely. Haru is braced.

"It's... a self-perpetuating problem, isn't it. I use my power, I get backlashed, my backlash makes me care less about everything, my empathy is one of the very first things to go, it's so much easier to slip into it.

"When I manifested, my father forbade me from working as an esper, from doing dungeons. He said he was going to disown me, cut me off completely. And now here I am, working as an esper, doing dungeons, and still using money that comes from companies controlled by Kang Jaehyuk.

"I use my power all the time. Constantly, on everyone. I micromanage their reactions, I make sure to come off flawlessly, charmingly, interestingly. I make sure to say the right things, to be seen in the right ways. I make sure to pull on the ways people like me, the ways they think I'm cool or fun or hot or impressive, and I downplay the ways they dislike me, the ways they think I'm arrogant or overconfident or mouthy or irritating. I find the right things to say, every time. The right things to do. No one, before we became partners, had ever had a negative interaction with me, or at least they didn't have the memories of any. No one'd ever seen me commit a faux pas, no one'd ever seen me be rude or obtuse or clueless."

"They'd... seen me be passive. Apathetic. Callous. Since right after dungeons, when my backlash is at its height, I don't even manage to care enough to want to manage their impressions of me. I'm boring. I don't have a personality. My old partners could barely deal with it, if they wanted to have sex with me they'd need to be the one providing all of the enthusiasm, at least to start off. And it wore on them. It wore on them that whenever they saw me, I'd be this empty husk, and they'd need to fuck me for half an hour for me to have any semblance of humanity. I couldn't give them what they needed, out of a partner. I don't actually know if Wo Do-in—if my old partner—I don't actually know if he found someone else, or if he just decided that he was better off alone than with Kang Jaeha. He might have. He wouldn't have been the first."

There was one last thing.

"I knew about Sparkler before you told me about him. I know his secret identity. I was so jealous I wanted to make sure you wouldn't ever be with him so I wanted to find out—why he was with you. See if I could figure out a way to—give him what he needed. Find him someone else, something else, so that he wouldn't see you anymore. And then I learned that he has groupies. He's just some fuckboy. That—calmed me down. And that was before I asked you about it. Because—because everything good about me—or at least everything that isn't wretched—is gone. It's just the jealousy and the petty pride left. I can't let myself be seen as—weak, vulnerable. I couldn't have asked you about it, because if you knew how desperately jealous and needy I was you'd leave. You'd find it offputting, aggravating, pathetic. I failed, I failed really hard, but I also tried really hard, I tried really hard to be cool. To not be so whiny and needy. To stalk Sparkler until I found his full name and more details about his family than he probably wants me to have, rather than ask you."

Haru is still hugging him. He's not sure why. He's trying not to think about why. He knows it will be for the last time. He knows there's no Autumn wedding waiting for him. And he shouldn't—feel—he shouldn't cling. He should let go. He should, should, should let Haru find someone who isn't so—monstrous. He can't actually be the man of Haru's dreams, because the man of Haru's dreams wouldn't have done everything he did.

"That... that was all."

"You're very sure that was all?"

"Y—hang on." He will actually think this through. Was there anything else...? He'll spend at least thirty seconds thinking about this because he cannot get it wrong.

Haru waits.

After the thirty seconds are up he nods. "Yeah. That was all."

"Cricket?" he asks. "Anyone else I've met?"

"Not Cricket. Yes the—people who were at the same dungeon we were at, when we met, but not in any—specific ways? Just generally. And the waitress at the restaurant you took me to, she was feeling homophobic towards us so I made her not direct those feelings at us. And... there might have been other people, just generally... You should assume I was using my powers on everyone all the time until the day you moved in with me. Except you. And Cricket."

Well, Haru guesses he's glad he never got around to introducing Jaeha to Ren.

"Why not Cricket?"