It rhymes. With what he's said before. About how if he wants anything weird done well he has to do it himself. About how he was explaining himself when they first met, how he, he, he's...

He wants to do things. And so he goes and figures out how to do them. Even if it's weird. Or painful. Or requires him to tank shit he shouldn't need to. He's got a drive. He's got something he wants, something to achieve.

Jaeha doesn't.

Jaeha agrees, vaguely, that they should keep dealing with Nightmare. He recognises, kind of, that he's a good asset for that. And he believes, maybe, that part of atoning for his crimes involves doing something that sounds horrible and awful and unpleasant but that will bring other people safety and happiness. But he's...

He doesn't have that drive. And it hurts to see it in someone else. It hurts to see it from up close. And he, he, he, he thinks he wants to have it, maybe, except, except, except when he did things he did awful ones. When he made decisions they sucked. When he had drive, he had drive for the wrong things, and he hurt so many people in the process. He doesn't know how to want anymore.

But he feels drawn to that want like a moth to a flame.

Anyway.

And I have a new best friend, discovered through esper connects on a messageboard of all things, though he himself is not an esper.  I'll interview him for my next post...

That's probably the monster cat, isn't it. He clicks the link but it's not as interesting (or as... shaking...) as the self-interview, and he loses interest quickly.

Sigh. Again.

Okay, well, with his newfound respect for Traceless, can he convince himself to look into that DDSI thing? Probably. But then he'll want to talk to Traceless more tonight.

...talk to Haru more tonight.

Here is post-dungeon Traceless. "Hi! How's your day been?"

"Productive. I've commandeered a room into being an exercise room and I signed up to help DDSI with stuff and I made vegetarian bibimbap. How was yours?"

"It was good! The college kids were adorable, I'm going to have to poach a couple for the monster park. The movie wasn't worth it but Cricket roasted it and that kinda was. I'm sure I've heard of bibimbap but I can't recall what it is - normally, let alone when vegetarianized?"

"It literally just means 'mixed rice' but there's standard things that go with it, noodles and sautéed vegetables and egg and sliced meat. I replaced the meat with mushrooms and since I don't know your spice tolerance I went easy on the chilli pepper paste and made a sweet version of it. There's still leftover salad that I didn't finish if you hate it though."

"I doubt very much that I'll hate it but I appreciate the spice consideration for my honorary white guy tastebuds." Dish dish nom. "Oh, this is so tasty, thank you!"

"I'm glad you like it. I developed a habit of cooking for my old partners—before Lee Tae-gun—because I knew they'd all leave eventually so I wanted to have a few more strings to make them stay a little bit longer. Better off alone than with Kang Jaeha, I used to say in my head."

"—and I just realised that that may have come off as depressing rather than funny."

"Slightly yes, wow. How many people was this?"

"Uhh... Let me think, before Lee Tae-gun was Wo Do-in, and before him there was Yoon Hangwon, and Moon Sejin..." He mutters to himself for a bit. "Twelve."

"I thought guilds were supposed to help with that sort of thing!"

"Oh, our compatibilities weren't terrible, all told, though none of it was anywhere near as good as my compatibility with Lee Tae-gun. I'm just dreadful company, especially when backlashed, and that was most of the time they'd see me, and since enough sex to guide them wasn't enough sex to fully get me out I was still not that interesting even afterwards."

"- so you should have had three of them at once, or been shopped around harder for personality compatibility, or - those were all Korean names and you speak three languages, it can't be harder to poach people to Korea than to Egypt and Egypt does it all the time - I guess eventually you landed on somebody with whom you had a completely unrelated problem but this still seems like something that could have been improved on if it were anyone's job to improve on it and the point of a guild is that it's their job, I could easily see this happening with an agency system, arguably it's been happening to me for about a decade in an agency system if not in quite that way..."

About that.

"Well, you know what my backlash is. It's not like I complained. I presented a perfectly cheerful front, power-aided, and didn't look for better, nor expect to find it."

"Perhaps I'm over-romanticizing Asian Guilds: The One Stop Shop For All Your Espering Needs and actually they are like most institutions staffed by checked-out clockwatchers who will grease only the squeakiest wheels."

"...Quasar was good. Lee Tae-gun's guild, that is. And I think nowadays they've all improved. In part because Quasar was there, being better and poaching their espers while at it. They're—I'm not sure if you're familiar with the cultural gestalt of what office work in Korea or, like, Japan is like—but most guilds were sort of like that, focused on hierarchy and respect politics and all that. And we... are... in fact, culturally, kind of pathologically terrified of standing out or making waves. And I in particular was," lol why's that past tense there, "obsessed with my image and never wanted to be seen as weak or needing help or attention."

"Oh, the corporate culture sounds heinous from what little I've heard, but - as a matter of purely impersonal equipment maintenance it sounds like you were being undersupported."

He shrugs. "Yeah. I can't say Juno was amazing. I'm not sure how it's doing nowadays."

"You haven't looked it up or it's not the kind of thing you can discern from a search?"

"Haven't looked it up, and... thinking about it I probably wouldn't be able to discern it from a search, I just have some habits of thought related to being able to find people who could tell me stuff if I wanted to know it."

"Find people how?"

"I just... knew people. A lot of people. And, uh, people who knew people. And people who owed me favours. And I—I mean. You know about the." He looks down at his bowl and swallows dryly. "Time at the confluence. I could... find people."