...right. Alright, then. He can go... be handcuffed, and knocked out, and hugged by someone he is apparently really compatible with it turns out... And he won't think about how much this makes his stump ache.

When he wakes up eight hours later the handcuffs are off, the bracelet is on, and Traceless is no longer on the phone; he's at the table with a microwave curry steaming between him and his laptop, working on a blog post.

Man, he kind of doesn't like this.

Not that that matters.

He should probably eat, too.

"How's the sleeping twice thing sitting so far, if it seems bad I can get a bottle of ten-hour and do overnights instead."

"It's fine," he says, automatically, looking for something to eat.

He's got lots of choices in the freezer. "If you say so."

Yeah he'll pick one of those choices in the freezer and cause it to become edible, then.

Typety typety. "Do you need anything, questions comments complaints concerns, or shall I get out of your hair now that you're conscious?"

"No, and you don't need to leave if you don't want to, it's all the same to me."

"If we were doing overnights that'd make sense, I might want to switch to that to save on teleports even if you don't mind spending sixteen hours a day asleep, but not tonight, my cat's expecting me."

"Sure. I'm not allergic to cats if you want to bring it here, either." ...are any espers even allergic to anything. They might not be.

Whatever.

"Nah, he's a huge asshole to people who aren't me, he'd have something mean to say. - he's a talking monster cat."

Blink. "A talking monster cat."

"With wings." He clicks a link, on his computer, and a picture shows up; he gestures toward it. "His name's Cricket."

Jaeha looks. "He's pretty."

"I'll tell him you said so." He closes the laptop. "I'll see if I can finagle an evening dungeon tomorrow and show up with pajamas and whatnot, if that's all right with you."

"Sure, that works."

Fork in dishwasher, empty tray in the trash. "Seeya." Laptop in bag. Teleport. Afterimage and then nothing.

Sigh.

Okay. Well.

...if he tried, he could kill himself right now. Traceless got rid of the sharpest knives but let's get real, here, it would be very easy, actually. There are several OTC meds that can be overdosed, and sufficient overdosing can easily be too fast for medical attention (though he'd need to do research and he's not sure his phone isn't being monitored). Even not very sharp knives can be used to cut himself, he could fashion a sharper one out of stuff in the woods maybe, a creative person with the resources at his disposal wouldn't really have trouble dying and his backlashed self was sufficiently creative and he has no reason to believe that he is less skilled than his backlashed self at anything.

It follows, then, that he doesn't want to die anymore.

Which is a fucking pain because he doesn't exactly want to live, either. So what the fuck does he want? And how would he figure it out?

He's gonna go order some barbells and dumbbells and a yoga mat and exercise clothes with the money his carer gave him and then Google him.

Traceless has a blog, Eventualities, published in English and French with a few recent posts also available in Tagalog, which is about dungeons, espers, monsters, and related topics, with digressions into the translation process, charitable causes, cat pictures, and research methods; he has an official esper profile, listing his public powers (selective imperceptibility, personal psychic defense and flight) and his partners (June Yamanaka, secondary Sparkler); he has a couple of small fansites and fanblogs; he has given out an above-average number of interviews to various journalists, some of which results are crossposted to Eventualities.

Jaeha notices an impulse to try to do deeper research on this guy but he recognises it as contentless and sourced from his constant need for control, which he's let go of, so it's more of a passing fancy than a temptation. He probably doesn't even have access to his network anymore so he couldn't if he tried. 

...but doesn't he...? No he does not and even if he did that's what evil Jaeha does, not him. He doesn't even have a reason to do it. 

Whatever. He supposes he might as well read the blog.

Photography posts! Dungeon case studies! Sex Themed Dungeons: What The Fuck (that's the literal title). Public-information compatibility map of every esper partnership every esper with available data has ever had in their entire careers (this one's a link, Traceless didn't do it all himself). Book review of a history of the early reception of espers and dungeons. Interview with Columba. Interview with Sparkler. Interview with the founder of the Maple agency. Interview with a mundane dungeon squad leader. Interview with an author who's got a book on tour about recovering from being kidnapped by dungeons. "The" "standard" dungeon and how common various deviations from mode are. Cricket's biography. Esper immigration law and practice ft. interviews with three different experts. Dungeon Surveys And Why You Should Fill All Of Yours Out Please. Interview with an esper who survived awakening in 1971 and the zeitgeist of not knowing it was possible to ever guide backlash away in the early days. Interview with Rhombus. Link roundup of all the research available on attempts at propagating plants from cuttings/seeds/spores/monsters that turned into sessile plants/etc. originating in dungeons. (One of them yields a surprisingly tasty gluten free flour.) Profiles of named dungeons, including ones somebody managed to kill after the naming.