"It's... a self-perpetuating problem, isn't it. I use my power, I get backlashed, my backlash makes me care less about everything, my empathy is one of the very first things to go, it's so much easier to slip into it.

"When I manifested, my father forbade me from working as an esper, from doing dungeons. He said he was going to disown me, cut me off completely. And now here I am, working as an esper, doing dungeons, and still using money that comes from companies controlled by Kang Jaehyuk.

"I use my power all the time. Constantly, on everyone. I micromanage their reactions, I make sure to come off flawlessly, charmingly, interestingly. I make sure to say the right things, to be seen in the right ways. I make sure to pull on the ways people like me, the ways they think I'm cool or fun or hot or impressive, and I downplay the ways they dislike me, the ways they think I'm arrogant or overconfident or mouthy or irritating. I find the right things to say, every time. The right things to do. No one, before we became partners, had ever had a negative interaction with me, or at least they didn't have the memories of any. No one'd ever seen me commit a faux pas, no one'd ever seen me be rude or obtuse or clueless."

"They'd... seen me be passive. Apathetic. Callous. Since right after dungeons, when my backlash is at its height, I don't even manage to care enough to want to manage their impressions of me. I'm boring. I don't have a personality. My old partners could barely deal with it, if they wanted to have sex with me they'd need to be the ones providing all of the enthusiasm, at least to start off. And it wore on them. It wore on them that whenever they saw me, I'd be this empty husk, and they'd need to fuck me for half an hour for me to have any semblance of humanity. I couldn't give them what they needed, out of a partner. I don't actually know if Wo Do-in—if my old partner—I don't actually know if he found someone else, or if he just decided that he was better off alone than with Kang Jaeha. He might have. He wouldn't have been the first."

There was one last thing.

"I knew about Sparkler before you told me about him. I know his secret identity. I was so jealous I wanted to make sure you wouldn't ever be with him so I wanted to find out—why he was with you. See if I could figure out a way to—give him what he needed. Find him someone else, something else, so that he wouldn't see you anymore. And then I learned that he has groupies. He's just some fuckboy. That—calmed me down. And that was before I asked you about it. Because—because everything good about me—or at least everything that isn't wretched—is gone. It's just the jealousy and the petty pride left. I can't let myself be seen as—weak, vulnerable. I couldn't have asked you about it, because if you knew how desperately jealous and needy I was you'd leave. You'd find it offputting, aggravating, pathetic. I failed, I failed really hard, but I also tried really hard, I tried really hard to be cool. To not be so whiny and needy. To stalk Sparkler until I found his full name and more details about his family than he probably wants me to have, rather than ask you."

Haru is still hugging him. He's not sure why. He's trying not to think about why. He knows it will be for the last time. He knows there's no Autumn wedding waiting for him. And he shouldn't—feel—he shouldn't cling. He should let go. He should, should, should let Haru find someone who isn't so—monstrous. He can't actually be the man of Haru's dreams, because the man of Haru's dreams wouldn't have done everything he did.

"That... that was all."

"You're very sure that was all?"

"Y—hang on." He will actually think this through. Was there anything else...? He'll spend at least thirty seconds thinking about this because he cannot get it wrong.

Haru waits.

After the thirty seconds are up he nods. "Yeah. That was all."

"Cricket?" he asks. "Anyone else I've met?"

"Not Cricket. Yes the—people who were at the same dungeon we were at, when we met, but not in any—specific ways? Just generally. And the waitress at the restaurant you took me to, she was feeling homophobic towards us so I made her not direct those feelings at us. And... there might have been other people, just generally... You should assume I was using my powers on everyone all the time until the day you moved in with me. Except you. And Cricket."

Well, Haru guesses he's glad he never got around to introducing Jaeha to Ren.

"Why not Cricket?"

"Because... I wanted to win him over honestly. As part of winning you over honestly. I failed but..."

"It took - this long to - I know the backlash was pulling shit but if you were able weeks ago to want to win Cricket over honestly and that successfully occurred to you as a necessary component, why -"

"Part of the—ethics thing—" He's glad he's been reading so much stuff about altruism online because it gives him a lot of expressive vocabulary for this kind of conversation. "Is generalising. It's—caring about people even if I don't know them, right. Or in the abstract. Or for—themselves, as ends unto themselves. It's expanding my circles of caring. I didn't care about Cricket, I just knew that if I used my powers on him and you found out that'd be bad. It wasn't—because I thought it was wrong. I knew it was, intellectually. But I didn't care."

"Right. And if I did find out it'd be impossible to cover up without getting into some hideous psychic fight with me, I guess, so it minimized - risk."

"Yeah."

Can Haru please just go. Can he just leave. This, this, this playing with Jaeha's heart isn't—it's cruel. It's cruel that he's staying. It's cruel that he's asking these things. It's, it's giving him hope, and he shouldn't hope. He shouldn't hope for something that's not going to happen. And he could never, ever say that. Any of that. Haru knows everything, now. There's nothing left. So it's just—Jaeha makes no more choices, from now on. Has no agency. It's all on Haru.

So won't he please go?

"I'm gonna sit here till I zero out. So I can go write. If that's okay by you."

"Yeah. Of course."

Okay, that's... obvious, in hindsight. The obvious reason why he'd stay. Because he's not stupid. He's not gonna just drop a partner like that before he can get fully guided. So they can stay here for... however long. And then he'll go.

He can keep that in mind. And think of nothing else. He's guiding Ha- Masaharu. That's all.

"It all started with - your father?"

"...the power use? Yeah."

"I'm making up a narrative in my head, it's probably not quite right, I don't know if it'll turn out to matter but it might?"