Oh he's being cooked for, now, is he. "Sure."

Haru flips an omelette onto a plate and hands it over and starts a second one. "I've booked myself some dungeoneering in the evening so you can spend more time with your consciousness."

"Oh no, the consequences of my decisions, now I have to spend more time with myself. —thank you," for the omelette or the dubious gift of existence, unclear which.

"I mean, let me know if you change your mind, there's no strong reason to have a consistent day to day pattern."

"I think my only real discomfort right now is with the indignity part but I've long since lost all claims to dignity."

"Anything that would help with that?"

"Only the obvious."

"Enlighten me?"

"Uh, I mean, the—needing to be knocked unconscious and," hugged by a stranger all night with no agency, "it's, you know," except clearly he doesn't but Jaeha is sure that can't just be a cultural difference, like, surely anyone would feel bad about this???

"- I can see why that would be undignified but I don't see an obvious thing that would help with it? Maybe I misunderstood you."

"Oh, I mean, what would help with it would be not needing it in the first place. Not—being a danger to myself and others while backlashed."

"Ah, not so much an actionable thing. When you're a bit farther along I do think it'd be wise to try taking the bracelet off for short periods as a dry run of what it's going to be like when you're in dungeons but you've got a lot of backlash to work through so not, like, soon."

"Yeah. I—have no idea what he'd be like, right now. I'm not over Lee Tae-gun but I—no longer think my life isn't worth living unless I'm with him—but he's... I mean the version of me that's backlashed, he's... I don't know."

"Well, if you don't know I can't really guess. Did they have you going to therapy in lockup?"

"They offered. I didn't accept."

"...why."

"...I know how this will sound, but—because there are other people who deserve to have Korean taxpayer money spent on them a lot more than I do."

"So, uh, I'm not necessarily inclined to contradict you but I would propose that among the people who deserve that are the future dungeon victims who can benefit from you being more solidly functional."

"I did not spend the past year considering the possibility that I would ever go back. I figured I'd just—die in prison. By my own hand, most likely, eventually."

"Right, that makes sense. But, now, in this context, do you want a therapist?"

"Probably someone who was doing their best to work on this—on the things I can do—probably that'd be a good idea for them.

"But no. Not really."

"...'kay. If you do change your mind you can have one."

He laughs humourlessly. "I can, can I? Sure, I'll keep that in mind."

...Haru's omelette is done. He sits down and tucks in.

He wishes he weren't broken. He wishes he were dead.

...one of those things is more true than the other, but neither of them is true.

He'll eat his omelette, too. Traceless made it for him, after all.