There are no video games on this comm device. It doesn't have a GPU, as it were.

Not even Zork? He did feel likely to be eaten by a grue.

Curses. All there is to do then is watch the clock. He briefly considers the more chaotic option—fake intercom announcements—but those are funnier when there isn’t a confluence with actual serious announcements. Plus, does a place with commscreens even have an intercom?

Tik. Tik. Tik.

Tok. Tok. Tok.

Maybe he should've been more punctual...

Backlashes really take the fun out of being an esper. He could do so many good joke announcements. Or plays. Or he could whisper things to people from behind them and make their friends think that they’re losing it. Instead he sat here looking vaguely special but being boring and useless.

Not that this stopped the occasional wandering eye. He is doing his best to look nonchalant—and honestly he didn’t think his eye color was all that noticeable! His hair is pretty ordinary, too. Maybe it’s just not that common to loiter in the lobby. 

At length, it occurs to him that he could just ride the elevator up and down a bunch, checking periodically whether his dining companion had arrived. But maybe they would notice that, too.

Instead he decides look for translations of Chekhov’s The Boor into Korean using his commscreen. It’s a good play for soliloquies, which were obviously the easiest for his power to do well. 

And at 8PM sharp, he appears in the lobby in a flash of light. He's in a button-up shirt that's unbuttoned almost halfway down his torso with sleeves rolled up to his forearms, a golden choker and numerous rings, and extremely tight pants that accentuate his assets. He spots Dasol and confidently strides towards him, letting out a low whistle. "Well, Kim Dasol, you're looking good."

Kim Dasol is so startled as to be totally airborne for a few seconds. He turns around after landing, and fusses with the hem of his sport coat. "Thank you, it was difficult to find something appropriate on short notice, but I couldn't let you go out on the town with anything but the finest."

"You couldn't, hmm? Well, I appreciate it."

”Least I could do,” in the sense that Minseo did it all, anyway. “It only occurred to me just now that we could xave teleported to our destination directly. I suppose that I assumed those were work-only.” Or does this still count as business?

"Not work only, but expensive as hell. Besides, what better time than an October evening walk to prove that—hmmm, nope, that would probably be way too crass, we met today."

“Xaxa! Try me. It’s not so formal in r—the north where I’m from. I worked with Malinin Misha-shi, after all.” Not being from Russia anymore is really making the whole bit of not being much like a Korean quite a bit harder to gesture toward. Spycraft sucks!

"I was going to say 'what better time than an October evening walk to prove that hoes don't feel cold'." Speaking of October evening walks, he's going to lead the way.

Dasol does not know the significance of gardening tools seeming cool to the touch, but on the positive side this makes it very easy not to take offense at the crassness. He laughs along and follows Si-yeon out into the street, where the weather is overwhelmingly pleasant to his unbacklashed skin. “I like this weather!” he asserts. “It is great for a walk.”

"Hoes and people from the north don't feel cold," he amends, cheerfully.

“Common misconception! That’s actually just all the vodka.” He squints as a gust of wind whips around a corner and assails them. “Oh! I hope we can get some soju. There was only ever the one kind in my village and it was awful. I want to try the good stuff.”

"We can get you good stuff, for sure.

"So, how'd your afternoon with Minseo go?"

How—wait, who are we kidding? Of course he knows. Dasol slowly releases the bowstring-tension in each of his neck muscles one by one. “I can’t speak for xer, of course. I xope that it went well. We cave sufficient compatibility for productive guiding, and she seemed unconcerned by my limitations.”

"I know how it went for her. I'm asking you, not her."

“Oh.”

“Uh… how did it go for her?”

"Hey now, I'm not a go-between, here. I'm asking how your day went as a friend, if you don't wanna talk about it that's fine but your professional relationship with her is your own."

So it didn’t go as well as he thought. “Ah. Well, I had thought it went pretty well, personally. She didn’t have any difficult demands, other than seeming bored out of her wits. Simple enough to help with, I think.”

"You're reading into what I'm saying," he observes. "You're going to get a lot of anxiety if you make that a habit, I'm a gremlin.

"How was the morkovcha?"

No he won't! He already has so much that no more will fit!

"I knew that was you! I left it out of the contract, and somehow it showed up anyway. It was really good. Thank you."

"You're welcome. I'll send you the contact of the people I got it from later so you can have it whenever you want."

Dasol sticks his hands in his pockets and looks down at his shoes. They were the only part of the ensemble that wasn't new, not that you could tell. They were buffed with military precision, shiny and black. Around him, Seoul is bustling despite the dark, and it's rather overwhelming. Even Vladivostok didn't have anywhere near this many people, certainly not all crammed together across a few city blocks. He looks up and has to search a bit to find Ha Si-yeon's tiny frame weaving through the crowd. He quick-steps three or so paces to catch up to him before he loses him in the colored haze of neon signs and streetlights.

Eventually they reach the restaurant in question, and are soon seated—well, knelt—at a low table and offered tea.

“Now seems like as good a time as any to admit that I’m still not used to kneeling over meals.” It doesn’t stop him, though! He happily pores through the menu with a seraphic grin.

"It is tragic that I am your sunbae, you keep handing me lines." He's not checking the menu, he already knows what he wants.

“What do you mean, sunbae?” he asks without looking up from the menu. “Are you very xungry? I could go for something big if you were up for it. I love morkovcha, but little carrots aren’t enough to really satisfy you—ooh, pork sounds good.”

"I mean you keep saying things that I could turn into innuendos or flirting but it would be inappropriate for me to." Because he does not want to be in the kind of story with silly misunderstandings. "And yeah, I'm hungry."

“What do you mean by—“

“—oh no.”

”I’m just going to sit xere quietly and take it all in—wait—I mean the atmosphere!”

He laughs. "After the carrot comment I thought for a moment you might've been doing it on purpose."

“Oh, yeah, absolutely everything I do is totally on purpose. I wasn’t paying more attention to my growling stomach than my word choice!”

"With a power and backlash like yours, I'm sure you're good at multitasking."

“Xa! I am very specifically good at focusing on something innocuous to the expense of all other stimuli.”

"I suppose that would tragically follow."

“It’s not unusual, surely? You have to overcome your own, right? What is your backlash, again?”

"Indecision, ish. At low levels it looks kind of like mania or excessive talkativeness and insecurity, at high levels I can't decide whether I should blink now. Or drink water. I assume it might get bad enough I can't decide when I should breathe in and out but it has yet to get that bad."

It occurs to him to stifle his giggle too late to take action in time. Instead he giggles apologetically for giggling, which interferes constructively to cause full-on laughter. “Oh, that sounds very cute!” he says by way of explanation for the giggling, which makes him actively more embarrassed, for which he giggles again—now stifling it behind a napkin lest he disturb the other patrons. “Mine isn’t nearly so charming.”

"Oh it's adorable. I was slightly backlashed earlier when I was with you and Misha, it was why I was talking so much."

“Well, I hardly noticed! I just figured you were that chatty type.” They are briefly waylaid by a server asking about their orders. Dasol looks at Si-yeon for help on choosing good soju and they start in with appetizers. Once she’s gone, his eyes flick back to Si-yeon with a mischievous glint in them. “Are you still a bit backlashed? Is that why you complained about being handed lines instead of using them?”

"Not at all. I complained because I am your sunbae and it would be terribly inappropriate. I can only use those lines after appropriately disclaiming that I don't mean them."

“Does it say that in the contract somewhere? In my previous place of work the seniors said whatever the hell they pleased. Are you worried I’ll be offended?”

"I'm worried you'll think I mean it!"

“…no, I’m quite sure you do not have any interest in me.”

...should he say this... yeah it might be good for Dasol. "If it weren't for the professionalism issue and for the let's-call-it-cultural issue you would be totally and completely wrong."

Really? He thinks it but he does not say it aloud. “Cultural issue?”

"I'm a very spiky person in a way that I think would interact badly with a lot of your expectations about how relationships go. I think I can do friendship well enough but more than that has some pretty sharp risks."

Dasol looks Ha Si-Yeon over. He has no visible protrusions, and his hair is lying mostly flat. “What is spiky?” he finally asks. “You look smooth to me?”

He waves a hand in circles next to his face, vaguely. "In a social sense, not physically. My personality is divisive. I cause very strong reactions in people, often, and those aren't always good reactions."

“Oh? You seem pleasant enough to me!”

Then again, he thought Sasha Nemtsov was ‘pleasant enough’ as well, and he was definitely, uh, controversial if left to his own devices for long enough. So maybe there’s something to that claim.

"I've been trying really hard to be pleasant enough, it doesn't come naturally."

“Well, you’re hardly the first person of my acquaintance to have that problem. As you are probably very aware by now.” This feels like an awkward direction for a conversation to be headed. Sensitive, maybe, if not quite offensive. He opts to veer back to safer territory.

“What do you do for fun when you aren’t escorting newbies around Seoul?”

"I escort non-newbies around Seoul," he laughs. "I'm—pretty eclectic, honestly? I like learning new skills, I like sports, I like going to bars and dancing. I suppose I'm more of a, go out and do things kind of guy than a stay in and read or watch Netflix kind of guy."

“I have never watched much Netflix, either.” This is because Netflix is still under embargo in the Federation after political fallout from the Slavic season of the popular Lonely Island: Real Silos of the World rather than any actual aversion. But still! Bonding!

"How about you, what is your idea of a fun time?"

“Mario Kart!” he blurts out. “Video games were kind of lifesavers when I had backlash onboard. Blinking lights are distracting and my hands aren’t as sensitive to my backlash.”

"Oh, you know, that makes sense. You must be very good at it."

Back in Russia, he routinely thrashed everyone else in the building whenever he could convince them to play. “Not in the slightest! I’m quite mediocre. I do enjoy it, though. Do you play any? Kart or otherwise? It seemed like Minseo-sunbae did.”

"Not very much. I think I'd be tempted to cheat with my power and that would not go great for anyone involved."

“How would that even work? Would the game crash or be destroyed by a segfault? Or would you make other people go limp for five minutes?”

"None of those are how my power works! My power is that I can do things. And if the thing I want to do is play Mario Kart well, I can be very good at Mario Kart."

“So it doesn’t allow you to like, say ‘I can get four super stars in a row’ or something? It has to be something you perform?”

"Yeah. I usually don't use it continuously, just intermittently. I've learned lots of weapons and martial arts by deciding I could do it for a second, doing a move, then trying to do it again without my power to figure out what I was doing wrong and how it felt different."

“That is really clever.” Really clever. He looks his dinner partner over with renewed interest. “But it doesn’t let you do something physically impossible? Or, uh, impossible within like a game or something?”

"It does let me do something impossible. I sometimes give myself superstrength, or speed, or like make myself jump really high into the air and stay there for longer than I ought to. But supernatural stuff is much more backlash-expensive, and I think if I wanted to temporarily be able to, I dunno, psychically alter the way a game functions, that might kill me on the spot."

“Oh. I guess it’s not as straightforward to estimate backlash for a power like yours. With mine, I can practically pinpoint an amount of backlash to generate within a few minutes.”

"Yeah, bit more complicated with me. Honestly I actually barely use mine while on the field, when I do a dungeon. It's only small bursts of it, a super punch here, tanking a swipe there. Most of the time I'm just a souped up non-esper."

“I suppose I would be, too, if I were ever brought into one. But as it stands, I’m generally kept back for after-action guiding.”

"Honestly, dungeons aren't even the most dangerous kinds of stuff I've had to deal with."

“Well, no, you were dealing with a backlashy Misha earlier today! But what else were you thinking of?”

"Esper criminals. Humans, in a word."

“Ah! So we were both thinking of Misha, after all.”

"He's hardly dangerous." Not contesting the 'criminal' part.

Well… “Not malicious, for sure. Just, ah, passionate.”

He laughs. "I'll take passionate over the kinds of criminals I have to deal with any day."

“You may want a more thorough accounting of him before you say that. What’s the craziest you’ve had to deal with before?”

"Hmm... I'm not sure about craziest. No, actually, I do know, but it's classified. Craziest unclassified case might have been... a sex trafficking ring I busted with Interpol once."

Dasol just folds his hands and stares raptly, waiting to hear about the horrible circumstances of people coerced to use their bodies for the comfort or pleasure of others deemed more important than them.

Oh he's not going to go into detail, that shit was nasty. Also, nonverbal communication is not that high-bandwidth, so he interprets Dasol's look as a request for other examples. "There were a few elaborate serial killer-wannabes, and a couple of terrorists, too, but those weren't that crazy."

“Wait, did you xave to catch the Nanjing Knife? The documentary said they fled to Korea before being apprehended. It was all over the news in—my village.”

"Ah yep, that guy. That was actually my first job that was that dangerous. I still have scars from the fight," he says, lifting the side of his shirt to reveal three thin parallel lines running along his ribs.

Ha Si-yeon also revealed his musculature in so doing, of course. Dasol stares silently for a while, then finally: “Wow.”

He lowers the shirt. "So, like I said, Misha's not really dangerous. He could be, if he wanted, but he's—to put it simply, not evil. I've had to deal with people who are evil." Like the Russian government. Those people are evil.

He lets out a small, relieved sigh at that assertion, and his shoulders drop. “No, xe isn’t.” I’m glad you recognize that.

"Yeah. And dungeons never left me scarred. So, like I said, human foes: much scarier than dungeons."

“The xero we didn’t know we needed, Xa Si-yeon-sunbae.”

"You don't know the half of it." It would be stupid to ever bring up his suspicion that Dasol and Misha could've been spies. They almost certainly aren't but that's simply not something you ever conclude for sure. The only reason he's been so loose-lipped is because he's trying to project a bit of an aura of incompetence around infosec to see if that catches anything.

“Well, that’s a rather alarming thing to say right after discussing the Nanjing Knife. Do I need to keep a closer eye on the cutlery than I have been?”

Of course the server brings out appetizers just as he says that name. He looks sheepish as food is served, and waits politely for sunbae to start eating.

Sure, sunbae can start eating. "Like I said, classified."

Uh. He had expected laughter. He eyes the fancy metal chopsticks nervously.

Now he laughs. "So long as you're not about to use an undisclosed power for cutting things on unsuspecting victims you have nothing to fear from me, I'm just some twink."

“Best I could do is make the chopsticks say very cutting insults. Does that count?”

He clicks his chopsticks together twice. "No. 잘 먹겠습니다!"

“You sure? I think you underestimate how demoralizing it is to be insulted by metal sticks. 잘 먹겠습니다!”

"I spent my life being called dick-sized and a faggot, I think I'm immune to insults now."

“Don’t be silly. You’re at least two dicks, even if we only count esper ones.”

He laughs again. "Very flattering."

He beams in silence and takes a bite, smiling even as he chews.

It's a very good restaurant he picked. "Now that we're here, I'm drawing a bit of a blank on shameful secrets to share."

“I’m sure all the good ones are classified. Which is a pity, I have plenty.”

The words come out his mouth before he really stops to consider them. What secrets? The only secrets he has now are, like, his nationality and real name and such, which are also classified. He smiles playfully to cover this train of thought. “But sunbae first, of course!”