After about two months of no power use, she gets sick of dragging her own brain away from the shiny thing she desperately wants, and decides that she is willing to beg. She calls up the esper matching agency to see if she can successfully pester them into finding her someone, anyone, to be her partner. Can they check again for someone who might've awakened recently or something, her backlash is public and really really obvious, it should be easy. She's perfectly happy to travel to places to meet them!! Actually, actually, do they even have to stick to Japan?? She's willing to go to Korea!! She has family in Korea and speaks the language fluently!!

Please???

Pretty please?????

She'll be good!! She won't get hospitalized again!!!

...Korea, she says?

Mhm!! Fluent in Korean, her father is Korean and married her mother and then had her. Do they want her to go to Korea?? She can get on a plane and go to Korea.

(Preferably to poke multiple people in one trip, but still!)

Well, see, there's this one esper that juuuust became available. His backlash is confidential, but his powers seem promisingly related and, additionally, his guild seems to think that there is a reasonable chance that they might be compatible given what Hye-jin herself has publicly available about hers.

Mhm, mhm, okay. Sure. She can go to Korea. Uh, and she can also set up other alternative people to poke if she is not in fact compatible with him, that's fine??

Yeah sure! Also she won't even need to get a plane actually because the guild happens to be Quasar which has this incredibly powerful teleporter that can just get her there and btw the esper they meant was Lee Tae-gun so hope she's fine with that good luck!

The... super competent S-rank esper Lee Tae-gun? That one?

Um.

(Well, now she feels even more embarrassed about that accidental self hospitalization. She already did, but, well. Even more so now.)

Anyway yeah sure she's totally fine with that. The teleport makes this very convenient and easy to schedule, actually, hooray!

The foyer of Quasar Guild HQ is clean and professional but not bare or too utilitarian; it has an almost homey feeling to it, in a "this is still a company" way.

One of the walls is taken over by a cute small café with a few sitting and standing tables, while the center is dominated by a beautiful statue of stained glass and metal wire that depicts different images depending on the angle you look at it from. The doors outside are glass set on glass and the reception desk is across the hall from them. The last wall has four elevators sectioned off from the rest of the room by swing turnstiles which require either a visitor's pass or registered biometrics to pass through, and heavy-duty security people stand at attention by the turnstiles. The floor is marble and the walls are polished steel, and there are two muted TVs hanging behind the reception.

The area is moderately busy, with a few groups of people having coffee or standing around chatting or just admiring/taking pictures of/with the statue.

Cool, cool, she's. Glad she wore nice clothes. Um.

.... she'll grab a muffin? She supposes?? And then, er, see about. Where she should arrange herself for the inevitable handshake??

(Ack this is a really big guild, it's very intimidating and she does not at all feel qualified to be here!!!!)

A bureaucrat in a suit spots her waiting and walks up to her. "Kim Hye-jin-nim?" Not that it could be literally anyone else, the red hair was a dead giveaway already but the red eyes just make it a certainty.

(Her eyes are really more of an amber than a red but sure, close enough. And most of her hair is dyed to match what now grows out of her head, so there's a bit of a two-toned quality to it, but - yes. Definitely. Meets all descriptions, that's her, yep.)

"Ah, yes, hello," she says, bowing.

"I'm Kim Ho-yeol," he says, bowing, too. "If you'll come with me?" And perhaps unlike other bureaucrats she's used to he'll actually wait for her to come with rather than just start walking off on the assumption that she'll follow.

No no she's fine she'll be a good little baby esper hopelessly out of her depth partner candidate and follow along dutifully.

Then up the elevators they go, all the way to the twenty-seventh floor, then down some wide and spacious hallways past some rooms with glass walls and full length windows.

"You've never been partnered before?" he asks casually.

"Er - twice, but not in a professional capacity," she clarifies, immediately. That the first was someone she was barely compatible with that she hunted down via forum posts and lasted like a month before she found her second partner is, uh, irrelevant. "I'd be a combat esper if I were dungeon ready, with my powerset." But the standards are high, and hers are even higher!

"Lee Tae-gun-shi has had three partners so far," he says. "He's—he can come off as a little bit cold and reserved, and newcomers sometimes get intimidated, but please don't be. He's a good person, and not at all intimidating once you talk to him a few times."

"Okay," she agrees with a nod, hopefully sounding more sure of herself than she actually is.

She doesn't point out the gigantic intimidating building or the very expensive and intimidating teleport or all of the glass that's everywhere, all doing a perfectly good job of intimidating her without the celebrity S-rank.

But it's such a nice building! You can see the Han river from here! There's natural light! 

Anyway here's one of the meeting rooms whose walls aren't glass. Kim Ho-yeol knocks then opens the door a little bit to stick his head in. "Lee Tae-gun-shi? I've got Kim Hye-jin-nim with me."

Kim Hye-jin tries not to fidget, and spends the intervening time fixing her hair. It was fine before, but now it is definitely fine.

She can hear a loud thunk sound like someone just stood up too quickly and bumped their knee on a table, then a voice saying, "Please come in."

Kim Ho-yeol opens the door completely then and steps out of the way so that Hye-jin can view the simple meeting room with a table in the center surrounded by office chairs and a whiteboard in the back,

as well as Lee Tae-gun himself, across the room for them, looking stiff as a board behind the table.

....

oh.

She hadn't noticed earlier, when the door opened, but, but - well, she did have a little bit of backlash backlog that hadn't been cleared after the hospital visit and subsequent ending of her partnership. And it's dissipating.

From here.

There are stories about espers that are this compatible, but she'd kind of thought, especially after her many attempts to personally acquire a compatible partner, that it was probably a myth. A fanfiction trope.

"....... hi," she murmurs, feeling like she's in some kind of dream.

(Even as she notes that ha, it'll be really difficult to accidentally send herself to the hospital with compatibility like this.)

"H-hello."

He clears his throat, remembering himself, and bows. "Good morning, Kim Hye-jin-nim. I am Lee Tae-gun. It's a pleasure to meet you."