"Sure, what's up?"

"As I am new to this idea of, you know, ethics, I'm trying to think about what to do about everything I have due to my father. Case in point, that house at least half of which I never spend any time in, which could be sold for a ludicrous amount of money and then that money could do something better than 'be a house I only use a small fraction of', but I'm not sure if I'm not overcorrecting and if this is even the right kind of thing to think about."

"Hm. I've mostly focused on not developing extravagant tastes in the first place, since I didn't come into money with any of them already installed. The sprawl is serving a function in keeping Cricket out of your hair, though probably a smaller place could do that too if it were laid out supportively..."

"Mmhm. But that's just a—particularly emblematic example. I am a partial owner of a number of companies under the Kang Moon-il Group umbrella, and my father wants me to inherit the majority shares for most of them, if I'll be able to have an heir of my own. Those are sources of income, not just wealth, that I wouldn't have if it weren't for my father. I have quite an absurd amount of both income and wealth that I wouldn't have if it weren't for my father."

"Yeah. Uh, what happens if you indicate that you're never going to have an heir of your own - do you even want kids in the abstract -"

"Not particularly," but in the specifics if Haru wanted kids Jaeha would be up for that. 

...

Bruh.

"And I've—told him that in so many words already. I think he's really hoping against hope that something about me will change as I get older. Either that or he's trying to convince my mother to go through one more pregnancy for him, which I'm not sure she will, she's got the heir she wanted already and I would not be surprised if she thought I was my father's problem."

"Have you tried talking to your mother about it?"

"I have never had a conversation with her in my life. I'm... not actually even sure how I'd go about contacting her, without asking my father. Maybe if I tried contacting her office the fact that I'm legally her son could get me somewhere?"

"...wow. It might accomplish nothing, but if it did accomplish something it would plausibly be worth it? If it doesn't sound too awful."

"It doesn't sound particularly awful in principle, I actually just do not have any idea who my mother is as a person. For all I know she's actually lovely and has correctly concluded Kang Jaehyuk is not and if I try to reach out to her everything will work out fine."

"And even if she's not lovely it sounds like she's... mastered keeping him out of the way with, uh, the methods available to her."

"Yeah. But also, what kinds of things could she tell me that would change what I ought to do? I suppose if she says she's pregnant that means my father is imminently not going to care about me," though, fuck, could he actually condemn a dongsaeng to the shit he's been through? He might need to raise the kid himself.

"Yeah, I don't know; if I knew what she could say I'd just say it, save the trouble."

"Mm, but I mean more—what kinds of things could I learn that would affect whether I should get rid of all of my stocks or not? Whether I should sell the house and get a new one with esper money? Would anything change if my father did versus did not have another heir planned?"

"I'm getting the impression that having a sibling you've never met doesn't weigh particularly heavily on you, so maybe another sibling wouldn't either? I think... unless he won't take 'I'm cutting you off going forward' for an answer without a really big financial exclamation point, I think you don't need to return the money, so whether you want to liquidate anything is kind of a separate question from how you terminate what little exists of the relationship, and it's not time-sensitive, I don't think the house or the stocks are depreciating particularly fast. I think if I were talking to her I'd mostly want to know how she arranged never to speak to him that thoroughly, whether there's anything she'd be interested in contributing to a project to flip him off..."

Ah, fuck. He hangs his head. "It's—starting to weigh on me, actually, never having met my sibling, and it's—I would not want to condemn someone else to the fate of being raised by my father."

"...well, then you might need to coordinate with your mother about her custody plans."

He runs a hand through his hair. "Seems like I ought to talk to her regardless of anything, if those are the feelings I'm starting to have now that I care again."

"Sounds like it, yeah. Uh, if you're going to start doing dungeons again soon I want to flag that you have to schedule emotional processing accordingly, that's probably obvious but you won't have any habits about it."

"Mm. Yeah, probably. 

"...I should get back to dungeoning, right...?" He's not really sure what to do with himself otherwise.

"...well, I thought that was the plan but if you find yourself reluctant by all means spend more time with your entire brain reporting for duty thinking about it first?"

"No, I—the opposite. I want to. I'm just—nervous, I suppose."

"You could like, walk me through your usual dungeon procedure and we can see if there's looming pain points - do you even ever do normal dungeons that have normal toothy things and pit traps and stuff or are you forever being sent abroad to the spooky ones?"

"Only the spooky ones, there are enough of those in need of psychic espers at all times that it's pretty much never worth it to send me to toothy ones. As for dungeon procedure... I'm not sure what you mean?"

"Like, you show up, you get your briefing, probably you shield some people, in how many of cases do you need to go in yourself, are you ever doing the mobility-oriented rescue stuff or do you hang out near the entrance, who are you going to encounter, what might occur to you to do during those events that you should not, will I be able to be right there at your elbow the entire time to keep the backlash on the ebb or will that sometimes be infeasible. - ooh, they have cheese curds."