"Yeah, I do like it. I'm a nosy little queer, I like knowing things no one else knows. I like the, the—actually I'm not sure I should say this, it makes people worry sometimes when I say this. But yeah, I really like it.

"And my power is actually just a lot better for dealing with espers than with monsters. I, like, can help with dungeons, but dungeons and monsters are all thematic, right, they're all doing just the one thing, so the flexibility of—I can just do things, any things, fancier things are more expensive but I can react to anything—is just a lot more useful against opponents who are actually creative and resourceful. That's—about as much as I can say, the specifics of how I got into this kind of work are unfortunately classified."

Lawrence resists the urge to laugh at Si-yeon calling himself that. Like. It's so relatable. Same, really. Lawrence is not going to say those words with his actual mouth, though. Those are inside thoughts.

"Thank you for your forthrightness. I'm glad that you have work which you like. I'm not made uncomfortable by you saying that.

Now that you say it, it does make sense that...well, espers aren't trained, they just happen. We have better institutions now but it's not like espers are selected for...ethicality. There would be forces that have to deal with problematic espers.

I don't think I'm categorically averse to doing this type of work, but." He purses his lips tight in lieu of a response.

He's going to glance at the contract for a moment, actually. How much is Quasar offering? Are they offering more than Lucid?

About the same, maybe a teensy bit less.

"Yeah, I get it, it's definitely not everyone's cuppa."

He looks up from the contract.

"Lucid offered me more money," he says matter of factly. He asks Ramos to give the figure and Ramon does so.

"They said that Lucid specializes in psychics, and my psychic powers were very desirable to them. And that the trends of compatibility point towards them being more able to furnish me with a partner, because they have more psychic espers than the typical guild. And that they can give me psychic specific training for my powers which other guilds are unlikely to be able to offer. And that Lucid is the guild of Kang Jaeha, the only esper thus far capable of removing Nightmare's mark on a person.

I will also be forthright with you and say that I'm strongly considering joining Lucid, because of these reasons. Quasar is one of the last few organizations I'm meeting with before I make my decision."

He twitches when Lawrence mentions Lucid. "Oh we're covering that. Hold on." Commscreen to text someone. "I'll get you a better number in two minutes."

"And they're... right... about that... but also Quasar is actually the biggest guild in Korea and we definitely have more people than them and we can find you someone compatible for totally sure."

Okay! That happened quickly!

"Thank you," he says. Wow, they really resolved two of those issues instantly. He'll want to look up guild numbers again later, but he doesn't think Si-yeon is lying about that. That would be such a stupid thing to lie about.

"It seems like the experience of working for Quasar is different from that of working for other guilds. I don't have experience with either, so I would find it valuable to hear about it from you."

"Oh yeah that's totally why they sent me too, isn't it, so I could tell you what it's like for an actual esper. That's smart. 

"Okay, so, lots of guilds, most of them, really, they're, like, they're corporations? And corporate culture is what it is. But it's a weird kind of corporate culture because at least in normal corps you can, like, get promoted. But if you're a dungeon esper then you're a dungeon esper, you might start leading teams but there isn't the same corporate ladder. So if you don't even have a corporate ladder to climb that might improve your lot all that's left is politics. 

"On the positive side, they're very comfortable and familiar, especially to espers who grew in the relevant countries? Corporate life is what we all grow up expecting to do, and I'm, you know, not good at conforming but lots of people are and like that. And you can just do your nine-to-five and know that you're doing your part and treat it like a job. 

"Quasar is in a lot of ways more like a Western agency. Figure out your own special snowflake thing and get professional help seeing it through. The way it's not like agencies is that it tries to be more proactive about nudging you? It won't be waiting for you to say I want XYZ and then giving you that, it'll try to give you those options from the start and suggest things and support you while you figure it out. 

"On the negative side, not having a proper hierarchy sucks for a lot of people, it can feel, like, unstable, and Quasar definitely won't be telling you what to do, you'll need to be more decisive about figuring out your own path. You want to be a dungeon esper, great, they'll find you dungeons and you can accept to work on them or not, and you can figure out whether it was a good choice in practice and learn from that, but that can be scary. ...I don't find it scary, I'm not the kind of person who wouldn't like Quasar, maybe someone who'd hate it would be more compelling about the negatives."

"Thank you. I think that was helpful.

So what I'm confused about is...I understand that I've asked this question before, but. What sorts of expectations would Quasar have of me? In terms of...other guilds talk about how I need to clear a certain percentage of all dungeons they send me to, or something like that. It's less hierarchy for me. More about...so long as you are at least doing X, you're fine. It's difficult when it's ambiguous what your standing is." Though there is also a lot of danger, in being so legibilized as that.

"So the standard dungeon esper thing is pretty similar, you're expected to accept at least a certain percentage of the dungeons you're assigned, although your first month will be more flexible I think? 'Cause you won't have figured it out yet. And also spending your time on training and preparing for dungeons also counts some and is expected. If you can't or won't do that many dungeons you won't get fired but the guild will want to figure out why and help clear any obstacles that are in your way, and you can also scale down the dungeons in general for a proportional reduction in pay.

"There's also an option for you to have a more agency-like relationship with the guild where rather than having a fixed base salary with variable extras depending on dungeons you have almost fully variable salary where you can accept only and exactly the dungeons you want to and you're paid per dungeons cleared, scaled with difficulty, and so on. That's the one I do, 'cause of all the non dungeon work."

Okay, that makes more sense, now. The second one sounds appealing but it's a little fraught because he's kind of attached to the salary increase they gave him, now, and asking for the second type of contract reopens the question of pay. Well, reopens it more, because there's still more talking to do after these appointments.

What other questions does he have?

For all that Si-yeon is terribly unprepared, he finds that he actually rather appreciates Quasar's sending of him to represent them. Separate from the halo effect of his beauty. He's very...not upfront. More like...unfiltered? It's quite refreshing. And Quasar was willing to match Lucid's pay and affirmed that they are equally or more capable in finding a partner for him.

"What kind of training or coaching would be available for me, for my powers?"

"We're not Lucid but we do have some psychics with experience, and some people whose whole job is helping us all do better at backlash management. First order of business would be finding anyone minimally compatible before they can properly experiment, and then once Quasar has that they'll start looking for someone who could actually in fact be a long term partner. There's these mixers new espers go to to shake hands and see if any recent awakenings pair up, and Quasar isn't above trying to poach someone who already has representation if you turn out to be compatible with them, since it's better to be partners with someone in-house, but we've got plenty of people with off-guild partners. 

"And your first few dungeons, if you're doing dungeons, would be smaller ones with more experienced espers to see how you deal with the environment. If you've never had any self-defence training they'll probably want to give you a bit of that first, though, you should at minimum know how to fall and how to run. Then they can tailor training regimens to how you prefer operating.

"Wow, look at me, I'm being so professional and informative, I think I deserve a cookie." He starts tapping at his commscreen so he can summon a cookie.

He kind of wants a cookie now too, it's been three hours since lunch Si-yeon is being a very skilled negotiator in demonstrating further uses of the commscreen. He's heard of mixers from Leah.

"That seems good. I've never had any self-defense training.

How does the commscreen work? Who gets them, in Quasar? They use dungeon materials, right?"

"—oh everyone in Korea has them. Well, every esper. Wish I could say it was a Quasar thing but Lucid and stuff totally have them, too. Do you want a cookie, too?" He summons one and offers it to Lawrence. "They're dungeon bullshit, you gotta get a little chip implanted but it takes literally seconds with a little box anyone can get you off the inventory system. It teleports stuff, to be clear, none of this is being made out of thin air. ...I guess other guilds might not have as much teleportation, but we have the most powerful teleporter in the world and also the batteries that store his power so we're pretty liberal about it."

"Yes, thank you." He accepts and takes a bite. He is being won over with baked goods.

Batteries that store the teleport power of the most powerful teleporter in the world. Wow. Why did he not lead with that. Probably because he doesn't have a script.

"One thing that appeals to me about joining a guild is that, because of how big it is, you get a huge professional network instantly. But the issue also is that, if you dislike your coworkers, it's harder to leave. You mentioned politics as an issue that plagues some guilds, before. Do you think Quasar handles that well? How does it handle internal conflict? Especially given that some espers have more valuable powers, powers that the guild would be more hurt to let go."

"They make sure not to schedule you to go into any dungeons with anyone in particular you don't want to work with. Actually that's true even if the other person isn't on the guild. I don't think we've had drama big enough that anyone left over it, or at least not over just that, other than the, uh, one obvious case. ...wait, were you, what, twelve at the time or something, maybe it didn't even make the news in the Philippines...?"

"That seems wise. I'm eighteen," he says, waiting for him to, presumably, elaborate.

"Lee Tae-gun—I assume you know who that is—and Kang Jaeha—same—used to partner. And Kang Jaeha left the guild when they stopped partnering. I don't think anyone knows why, there wasn't any big blowup or anything, they are as far as anyone knows not hostile? And it could just have been, you know, a bad breakup, and Kang Jaeha not wanting to stay. We've had breakups before, though, and often even when there's bad blood people just decide to not be around each other and it's fine."

There's an undercurrent of something in his voice, but he sticks to the facts.

He does know who he is now but he learned of him perhaps more recently than Si-yeon might expect. He is definitely going to have to research that drama later.

"Hm. If I join Quasar and decide to leave and join another one, how difficult would that be?" He's assuming there are penalty clauses like with other guilds. "What about if I decide to retire — not out of injury or anything like that. Just...I don't want to do any major esper work anymore."

"I think if you were being relied upon for any specific contracts there's a penalty, and partnership contracts can also have those, but the default is if you give a month's notice you're fine and in practice I don't think Quasar fusses a lot about that, wouldn't be living up to our ideals very much if we wanted to take steps to keep you around against your will longer than you wanted to stay."

Exit rights are great, we love that.

"I've heard things about the esper culture in Korea. It's good that you say that Quasar will accommodate my media interaction requests, but it would be good to know more specifics. Do you interact with Korean media or journalists a lot?"

"I'm complicated because of all the spy stuff. But you don't have to interact with the media any more or less than you need to. Quasar does encourage you to, uh, try not to give interviews unprepared, because journalists are sharks and smell weakness, but if you want media training we can do media training."

Lawrence definitely wants media training. Anyway...he feels like he asked a bunch of random questions, but. Yeah. Their fifteen minutes are running out. One last question, or maybe two.

"I have heard that there is a lot of homophobia in Korea." Which is not a question, but.

"Sure is. Uh, people often give espers a pass, 'cause it's a life-saving intervention and also it's hot when it's famous people, they can write their brain fanfics, but that feels icky, too. Can't help you there. Quasar's fine, though, we got a group called Queer Quasar and someone being homophobic or biphobic or whatever is an offence you can report to HR. Doesn't really happen, though, like, are you the one who wants to be homophobic to Lee Tae-gun, didn't think so."