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Kim Hye-jin has been soloing a lot of dungeons.
It wasn't concerning at first, because it made sense as a way to take power back from the people that tried to kill her, be powerful, and at the same time give every other exhausted esper after the confluence a break.
It's now perhaps starting to get concerning.
Outwardly, though, she... seems fine? Just really work focused. Distant towards everyone, maybe.
But so fun!
Live a little, delight in the complexity and beauty of the world around you!
Also freed up a space on Friday night, that work okay for you?
She gets an email from one jeong.hoyeon@quasarguild.co.kr. It's listing her some resources she might want that they could offer, ✨just in case✨. It's suggesting that taking breaks is normal and healthy and good. It has links and various people who could be points of contact for her if she wanted this or that.
It's trying to not be overly familiar, but the message is clear: Are you okay? Can we help? Is there anything we can do?
To: jeong.hoyeon@quasarguild.co.kr
From: kimhyejin@gmail.com
Listen, while I appreciate the attempt to help me in a - safe corporate way that doesn't overstep my boundaries, it's really misunderstanding my discomfort? You have clearly spent all of this time and effort to find resources specifically for me, to try to help me, and then you scrubbed all hints of the person responsible from it all, and frankly, that just freaks me out. I don't want a nebulous corporate entity taking interest in my affairs and mental health, I want a person, preferably with minimal strings leading back to nebulous corporate entities that can screw me over.
So: can I have an agent or representative, to interface with Quasar for me? I'd wanted to find something out of guild to represent me in such a way, but, well. Kang Jaeha. I still want that, but I can have a Quasar based representative of me in the interim, and then pick back up my own personal side projects as I'm able. I think it would be both more constructive and more comfortable than this.
To: kimhyejin@gmail.com
From: jeong.hoyeon@quasarguild.co.kr
Cool! I'll start over.
Hi, Kim Hye-jin-shi! Nice to meet you! I'm Jeong Ho-yeon. I can be that representative. Just tell me what you need! You can also message me on the company app, and my work phone is in my signature below.
Hope we can work together productively!
To: jeong.hoyeon@quasarguild.co.kr
From: kimhyejin@gmail.com
I hope so too! Thank you, that's much less disconcerting.
On a direct resources level: I've got a real estate agent already for selling my house, I'm okay on that front. What I'm having more trouble with is finding a therapist. Not in house, please, I realize that means they will probably be worse but I'm already pushing it as it is on trusting Quasar an inch. Just please help me narrow down some options for my extremely weird circumstances, with special care towards avoiding being victimized.
Actually, since it'll be relevant to representing me in the future: how much of my history with White Star, Quasar, and Lee Tae-gun's whole situation do you know of? Because I feel it's important for you to have context of wtf is going on with me and why I'm so wary of corporations, including Quasar. I expect you've heard prez pissed me off, but I think it's still not clear as to how he managed it?
To: kimhyejin@gmail.com
From: jeong.hoyeon@quasarguild.co.kr
I don't know the details of Lee Tae-gun-shi's backlash situation but my understanding of it is that it was really, really bad but he didn't want to have a new partner for what is now clear were Kang Jaeha reasons so prez decided to surprise him with a new one, except he didn't tell you you were going to be a surprise either so you were used as a weapon against Lee Tae-gun-shi against your will. Is that about right?
To: jeong.hoyeon@quasarguild.co.kr
From: kimhyejin@gmail.com
Yeah, that's most of it. I also didn't have a heads up about how bad his situation was - I thought he was some kind of alien or had several other side partners or something, not that I was needed for an ongoing medical emergency. But it was approximately the worst intro Quasar could have possibly made, aside from holding my parents hostage or something, because - it was a lot, to trust a guild enough to leave Japan. I was trusting your company to help me adjust. It sucks to trust someone to catch you and help you get settled in a strange new country, and then immediately get dropped in favor of being weaponized against someone else. Prez did not help by pitching his attempt at an apology as 'think of all the people you're disappointing by cutting contact and all the friends you could make,' which just sounded like entitlement and potential traps to me.
I have since been forced by circumstance to get over it, because Kang Jaeha. I didn't really have any other choice. Frankly, I haven't been particularly impressed with Quasar's ability to interface with me as a corporate entity. No offense to you, I really do appreciate the attempt to help me, just, the way your company is organized means I slipped through a lot of cracks, and no one seemed to care. There were a lot of ways that Quasar could have helped me - sending me links to resources, promising to protect me in legal situations, laying out the rules for whether or not I could tell my parents that I was being stalked by an S-rank psychic esper, helping me find alternatives to Quasar resources - that it didn't, or did later rather than sooner. Hell, I didn't know where the fucking blankets were in the silo Tae-gun brought me to the first day.
So, uh. That's where I am. I do not expect my relationship with Quasar as a corporate entity is salvagable to the point where I'm going to be just another ordinary esper in this guild. I'm going to be weird and traumatized and fighty, and I am and have been holding my nose to work with Quasar as a company this entire time. I trust several people in Quasar, but that's different. Probably all important information in representing/interfacing with me.
To: kimhyejin@gmail.com
From: jeong.hoyeon@quasarguild.co.kr
Man, prez really messed up, huh.
Well, I'll do my best to help. We actually don't have any in-house therapists because it'd be a conflict of interest to have someone who's counselling you about personal things to be in any way employed by your employers, but I have a directory that I can triage and send to you based on recs, how does that sound?
To: jeong.hoyeon@quasarguild.co.kr
From: kimhyejin@gmail.com
He really did, yeah. Downright artful snipe of my traumas, it's in retrospect pretty impressive.
That sounds great, thanks!
To: kimhyejin@gmail.com
From: jeong.hoyeon@quasarguild.co.kr
Alright! I'll get back to you asap. Cheers!
Nothing comes up to interrupt her time out with Woo-young, probably to be yelled at that she's being stupid and breaking herself, but, well. He's allowed to be worried about her.
Anyway, here she is! Attempting to do a social!
And so is he! He thinks they are well past the "hugging" stage of friendship so he will hug her, incompatibility be damned.
"I am! I've mostly been feeding Quasar's sadly depleted batteries of my powers post-confluence, recently."
"I could use some boring. Unlike some people I know." He can move, which means he can sit at the table of the nice Japanese restaurant they're at, and gesture for her to do same.
Yep. Here they go. Sigh.
She sits, though, giving an awkward shrug.
"Boring just... still feels like an opening for an attack right now, you know?"
"...sorry, I'm not trying to get on your case about it. I'm sure hyung'll do it better than me. Just—it was—I saw your schedule and I thought, she needs a break and she's not gonna take one so I'm gonna be a break and—I should walk the talk and not talk about that, how about."
Aw. She relaxes, a little. Not entirely, but a little. He's trying, and she appreciates it.
"Thanks. I'm - not self destructing, though, just. Letting off steam and chipping away at Tae-gun-ah's terrible backlog at the same time." Shrug. "Anyway."
No idea what thing to talk about instead though.
That's the problem with workaholics, isn't it.
"Hyung showed me the video games you introduced him to a while ago."
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