"Oh. I guess I don't know. She wasn't so different that I noticed, at least."

"Which I guess would be the relevant threshold from multiple angles. Did it ever - I guess it never spoke to you through avatars that were originally patterned for someone else but do you know if it does that in general, commandeers a construct from a victim's tableau to hassle rescuers?"

"It has done that to me, actually. —or, uh, it's—said things that made more sense to me than they did to their ostensible targets, at least? But—I don't know of it having done to other rescuers, probably at least in part due to them always being shielded so it'd need to be taking shots in the dark and it doesn't really do those. It only takes a shot it knows will hit home."

"What's happened when it's done it to you?"

"...it was always riffing on the same themes. I was obsessed with Lee Tae-gun, monomaniacally so, so it was always about that. The first time I went into it right after Min Woo-young rescued Lee Tae-gun from me was... rough."

"...should I not pry?"

"...at this point, you might as well. Maybe it will be cathartic to talk about it with anyone." In addition to causing him emotional anguish.

"What did it say, then?"

"I don't remember it word for word, but... it was all my fault. I had everything. Everything, he, he loved me. He loved me, I loved him, I had—no reason—to do what I did. To be, be, be terrified the way I was, of ghosts and shadows and, and, and mirages it itself had planted in my brain. It was taunting me, it mocked me, saying that I must not have really loved Tae- Lee Tae-gun all that much, if I'd let some, some, some dungeon cause me to, to—and then it went on to say that even that was me being cowardly, because, because most of what I did was long after the confluence was over. It wasn't—it wasn't Nightmare that made me do it. I did it. Me. Me, without backlash—at first, at least. Just, just me. It, it was," he swallows dryly and looks at his plate, half-finished now, and he can feel his appetite vanishing into nothing. "It was me who decided that, that, that I couldn't stand the thought of, of—that—he could have anyone in his life. Other than me. I didn't. I didn't have anyone, just him, so why, why did he need anyone else? It was just me. It could've been just me.

"It was wearing his face, that time, and it laughed at me and said that that was pathetic, that being that, that—that if anything was going to drive Lee Tae-gun away it would be how insecure and scared I was, it would be, it wouldn't be his hyungs. It wouldn't be his friends. It would always just be me." He swallows again. "It was just me."

"- what is a 'hyung'."

"—ah. It's. A term of endearment for an older male friend, used by men. Or—it can also have romantic connotations. T- he called me that, and it was—it was definitely romantic there, but h-he also called his older partners, ex-partners I mean, he called them that."

"It never talked to you before you and he had met, at all, is that right?"

"Yeah. And by the time it showed up, we were already in a relationship." Still not looking up. Still staring at his food that suddenly looks disgusting, almost as disgusting as he is. Still, still, still...

...still not okay.

"Are you aware of any other espers it doesn't try to talk to even when there's shield slippage, as a consistent pattern?"

"No."

"So you were plausibly already special to it at your first encounter... how did you start going in unshielded, did everyone just assume that you wouldn't need it and you... forgot?"

"Yeah. I—the first time I went into it I—well, I was going to say that I was already," a monster, "deep in backlash, but the first time I reached zero after the day I manifested was with Lee Tae-gun, so—I was backlashed, as I always had been, the first time I went into it, and I felt—embarrassed—to admit that I couldn't shield myself, and then it didn't matter because it didn't target me."

"Wow. This is how many total Nightmare appearances you've attended over the years?"

"Fifteen? I think? I didn't keep track."

"Would your guilds of record have this if I call them?"

"Yes."

Typety type. "Any characteristics you can recall of the constructs it spoke to you with when it wasn't ones purpose-made for you with familiar faces?"

"It never built new ones for me that weren't familiar, when it spoke to me from other constructs it was by co-opting rescuees' nightmares."

"Right, but like. Consistently the ones that are shaped like humans? Any trends in the victims whose constructs it repurposed or the constructs themselves?"

"It didn't co-opt anything that wasn't human, and I didn't notice any trends beyond that."