"Uh, the EU passed some laws, most other places fell in line, you were upstream but if that had been the only thing that ever happened probably it wouldn't have gotten quite that much traction."

"I knew about the EU suggesting laws, that happened—just before—I didn't realise they'd gotten traction. Uh. Wow. I mean, I guess that makes sense."

"It actually introduced a lot of friction that annoyed some people I respect with regard to their research because now you have to like, prove that you have science motives and aren't on the take from a tabloid or anything and that's irritating, but works for you here."

"...yeah. Well, I know I wasn't the only one to do anything like that, the person I hired had done similar before. Perhaps not in the middle of a Confluence."

"You have to wait, it's like breaking up with someone on Christmas, or so I hear." Omelette.

"Well, it was just before Christmas," he says, with a shrug. "—anyway, that's a tangent. For Nightmare I don't want to be recognised. It's always the same people who show up, everyone would know me. For smaller dungeons..."

"You can go masked in Nightmare. For smaller dungeons?"

"I don't know. It would feel wretched to have a victim recognise me from the news. It would feel worse to have another esper do it. And there are very few psychic espers, we all know each other. ...I literally personally know every psychic esper that was active in Korea and Japan prior to being arrested."

"Is there much chance you'd be psychically recognized?"

"...I hope not. I used to prevent mind readers from ever being able to read what was actually going on in my mind with my powers, so I don't know that anyone knows what my actual psychic signature is like."

"But if you do get recognized then that would be something they could do going forward?"

"Yeah."

"So, masks. They're more common in popular imagination than reality, they're pretty inconvenient, but June does it, goggles and balaclava."

"Lower-face masks are pretty common in Korea, and celebrities are pretty used to going out in them and hats and shades, but perhaps that is a reason to go for something else, so I don't look obviously Korean."

"If we're staying relatively local, people will not find it obviously Korean, but you might want something else for anything that pulls from farther afield."

"There are never enough local psychic dungeons for me to not be pulled from farther afield. ...I suppose if I did fewer of them."

"I just meant for the first one or two."

"Yeah, I suppose.

"What... do you think?"

"Not wanting to be recognized is reasonable. Obviously enough people have to know that if I introduce myself to a monster and die you don't get completely lost as a consideration, but dungeon victims and the SWAT guys and random other espers don't need to."

"Yeah. Yeah, okay. That sounds good."

"You have all our collective fashion sense, pick whatever."

"This is unfortunate since my fashion sense says that masks aren't fashionable."

"Oh no. You'll have to aim for some other target than pure style."

"So... I suppose I should go figure that out and then we look into scheduling our first dungeon together."

"Yup. I'll tell Paula to have an eye out."