"Two days, then. I haven't booked a flight home because if you wind up coming with me we're going to have to teleport, so I can be flexible."

"Sure."

"See you then." And he heads out.

Haah...

God, what's he even meant to do? He had just begun to, to—to get used to being alive, and now there's this. This random guy shows up and wants to pull him back into doing dungeons and is guilt tripping him into it and, and why isn't he dead already. Why hasn't he died. He should've died, he should've succeeded when he tried. Now he's here, getting guilt tripped by some Canadian guy who calls himself Traceless into going back into that fucking hellscape.

He can't. He can't do it. He just can't. He doesn't, doesn't, he doesn't have it in him.

Traceless is back in two days for another visit.

Kang Jaeha is expecting him, but... he also does not seem to be willing to leave his cell? He hasn't really, ah... expressed an opinion one way or the other on Traceless's presence.

"...well, can I meet him at his cell?"

"He doesn't have any visitor restrictions on his file so I see no reason why you wouldn't be able to if you so wish."

"...okay, do I need to be escorted or searched or anything, what's the protocol -"

Some rigmarole later he arrives at Jaeha's cell.

Since he's not some petty criminal, the prison he's in is the fancy kind, and his cell is basically just a small room, and he doesn't deserve even this much comfort but he can't bring himself to ask for anything else. Right now, he's curled up into a ball, his back to the door, staring at the wall.

"Good morning. Uh, it's been two days. I don't know if you meant to tell them to turn me away at the door and this just didn't successfully happen, or if you just needed to lie down for a while, or what? - you can totally tell me to fuck off, if I wasn't clear enough about that."

"I know I can," he tells the wall.

"Do you have... questions, perhaps, about how I see this working or anything...?"

"Sure, why don't you start by telling me about that."

"Okay. I live in Toronto when I'm at home, and I found a cottage on Fox Island - it's an hour's drive and some ferry time, if you're not teleporting, from Toronto. It's a nice house, at least if you ask me, I live below my means; more importantly it's far enough away from other residences on the island, and I leased it as a silo and bribed all six of the neighbors, though of course I'll break the lease if you don't want to go. You'd live there. Whoever we find to partner you, I've got leads on a couple backlashes that sound maybe workable, would come by regularly for guiding, perhaps exclusively while you are asleep. You'd wear an ankle bracelet and you would leave the immediate environs of the house only with me and only wearing a body cam; I have those already, waiting in the silo. I can get a robot to deliver groceries and stuff, there's internet access, if you need anything else of course you can ask for it, this is important and I don't mean to pinch pennies. That having been said, if this works out long term instead of merely as an abortive pilot experiment in which I just eat the loss of the startup cash, it'd ideally be self-funding. My accountant couldn't find an insurer who'd touch you so you'd need to pay most of what you made in dungeons into a self-insurance account for the first while unless you retain enough control over your previous finances to fill 'er up from the get-go. We do agents, in the West, not guilds, and I can see arguments both ways for whether you'd share mine or have your own for conflict of interest reasons, though the conflict of interest is here sort of the point."

"You've really thought this through, huh."

"Yes."

Goddamnit.

God fucking damnit.

"And Korea's fine with this."

"Yep. Also I made some more calls after our last meeting and you can take the bracelet with you to Fox Island if you want it for while you're awake."

"...the version of me without the bracelet will in fact attempt suicide as soon as he possibly can. There is no version of this plan that does not involve that bracelet coming with me."

"Bracelet it is, then."

"What's the plan for actually getting me out of the backlash hole? I think if I had a reliable partner I were having sex with every day it would take me weeks. Being hugged in my sleep—" Assuming he didn't decide to just turn around and kill the person sleeping next to him before offing himself...

"Months, yeah, though we could get lucky on blood typing."

So. The difference between the status quo and that is that he'll spend months being hugged by a stranger in his sleep and then maybe eventually that'll culminate in him not needing the bracelet anymore (the thought burns like a hot poker) and then maybe that version of him will be able to be useful to society again and do some amount of atoning for his crimes. Which... he probably doesn't deserve, but it's probably better, in terms of—justice served, and harms reduced—than him just being stuck in a hole forever.

He would rather die than go through that.

"Okay."

"...yeah? Okay? You don't have any other questions about literally anything?"