The dungeon started acting weird everywhere so Woo-young is already on it for everyone. Vworp.

Cricket charges straight out the portal.

And outside, there is pandaemonium. The support team is reorganising itself so that 3/4 of it can be sent elsewhere because dungeons are spawning everywhere, and from the way some authorities have been called to try to get the crowd of onlookers to safety  it seems likely that a different dungeon appeared somewhere nearby, one that's probably started spewing monsters. His comms reconnect and if he pays attention he'll get confirmation of same, plus official warning that the guilds are quickly coming to the conclusion that the confluence has started.

It's not chaos, though, because they've been preparing for months; rather, it's the business and stress associated with putting a complicated and important plan into motion. And as it's literally only just started, this is just the opening salvo, which is typically followed by a short lull before a gradual but rapid ramp up.

He will hang around in case they want him to go back in there with a plan robust to the terrain being evil on top of the moths, but he is going to WAIT for such a plan to materialize.

They're going to need to find different espers because this dungeon just got ranked up but so did half the dungeons in the world. They get a Japanese speaker to tell Cricket that it'll be at least half an hour before they can get people to back in with him.

He will wait for half an hour. Can his escort get a guiding break in that time or is he getting a new one or what.

He's probably getting a new one, his escort isn't rated for this much danger.

Yeah the moths were pretty weaksauce. Cricket laboriously taps out a text to Haru while he waits.

Cricket's message won't be the first one Haru receives, though. Both he and Jaeha got notifications at the same time, and their schedules have been completely cleared. Quasar will also be holding an all-hands in about three hours, when every on-duty esper who isn't taking care of any emergencies is projected to be done with their current dungeons. Barring said emergencies, attendance is mandatory; all Korean guilds are doing the same thing, but staggered, so that they can all cover for each other.

"...well, fuck."

"This'll be my first one, I wasn't doing dungeons yet last time. What's to expect?" Haru asks, taking Jaeha's hand and squeezing it.

He squeezes it back, then puts an arm around Haru. "Fewer hours of sleep. As metonymy."

"Uh-huh. I'll... reschedule all my interviews." He gets on that.

Yeah.

"So... Nightmare is definitely going to show up. It always shows up for confluences."

"I should go with you for that. Force-multiplying you there is almost certainly more important than anything else I could be doing."

"I, uh, disclaim that I know that I'm being insane here but the idea of you going into Nightmare gives me nightmares."

"It won't be able to see me. I guess it can... see other people seeing me? But not me directly. I can be invisible to the victims, even, so only shielded people know I'm there."

"It almost certainly can't get to you. I can shield you for the double whammy. But the mere possibility of it touching you makes me want to hide you away forever. And even without touching you, it... sucks. It's going to be showing you horrible stuff, all the time."

"I've read about it. I don't want you to have to be alone in it, either, though, you realize?"

"oh"

Okay he's gonna hug Haru, now, because, because, because... just because.

Hug. "I love you."

Aaaaahhhhhh. "I love you too." Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhh!!!!

Haru kisses him. "We'll be okay."

How could he ever believe otherwise, with Haru in his life?

"...so I'm not sure what your schedule will be like, but for me they usually bias towards sending me into dungeons I don't have to actually go inside of unless there's one that particularly needs me, so that I'll be close enough to comms for when Nightmare appears. And since it tends to be most active at night I'll match my circadian schedule with it, wherever it appears in the world."

"That makes sense. I'm just assuming here they'll agree that I should be matched to you, if they don't think of it themselves is it straightforward to tell them?"

"Yeah. Most of my previous partners were also psychics so we'd often go in together anyway, and you double as having very good mobility, so it's not a bad idea. Tactically speaking."

"Yeah, I can fly you around. Shoot nightmare bears."

"The bears are fine. The bears are never the problem."

"Yeah. Just, metonymy."

"Yeah." Hug. "We'll figure out what our schedules will be after the all-hands, probably, but having to wait until then is giving me anxiety."

"Y'wanna fuck the anxiety away?"

"God, I love you so much. Yes, I do."

"I have great ideas," chirps Haru, and he kisses his boyfriend.

He does, he does have great ideas, and his boyfriend thinks he deserves his favourite sex act as a reward for them.

Not everyone is attending the all-hands in-person, and even the people who are are spread between a handful of auditoriums with the address being made virtually. Amongst the people who are in the main auditorium and visible to all cameras is Lee Tae-gun, being reassuringly S-ranked in front of everyone, and his new partner Kim Hye-jin, who is not yet S-rank but from the splashes she's been making with him it seems like it might only be a matter of time.

Yep, she's here, looking attentive and standing next to her objectively amazing partner, hi everyone, she is just going to look like she definitely knows what she's doing, hahaha definitely hasn't only been doing dungeons for like a month and a half at best, nooooo...

Jaeha and Haru are also in the main auditorium, but they don't get seats of honour like the big shooting stars of Quasar. Which if it's all the same to Haru, Jaeha really does not mind.

As long as he can, like, see what they're supposed to see. They're both taller than the average Korean, should be fine.

There isn't much to see; just the guild president plus a holographic screen accompanying his speech.

"Good evening, everyone. I don't want to take up too much of your time, especially given the time of night, but confluences aren't known for starting at reasonable hours. I'm going to go over the basics of how confluences work, for those of you who are newer or more out of the loop, and then cover some operational and logistical concerns.

"Confluences happen about two to three times a decade, and just like no one really understands where dungeons come from or why they happen, no one understands why confluences happen either. The short version is that they are a period lasting between one and six months during which the frequency and power of the dungeons that crop up all over the world reaches critical levels. A few of the big, named S-rank dungeons that no one's been able to seal yet only appear during confluences, while others always appear during confluences even if they also appear at other times. Additionally, several new dungeons appear to, and please don't read too much into this phrasing, opportunistically make use of the time when we're all busy dealing with their bigger siblings to become bigger, themselves.

"I don't want to overstate the danger, but I don't want to understate it either. We've managed to create some very good systems to deal with confluences when they happen, but they are taxing our system and they are very difficult to deal with. Both espers and non-espers will be spread thin, and everyone's workload will be necessarily increased. During confluences, you should consider every other esper your ally, and forget about guilds or what-have-you. We're all working together, here, for the good of Korea and the world, and cross-organisational teams will be the rule rather than the exception. You'll be seeing many new faces and we'll be expecting you all to be showing your best faces. Misunderstandings are always risky, but when working with people you've never worked with before they can be deadly. Be liberal in what you accept, and conservative in what you emit, to copy a certain saying. Everyone will be extremely stressed out, backlash levels will be much higher on average, and exhaustion and frayed tempers are to be expected.

"Your comms system has numerous functionalities that will be invaluable. It's usually not worth the bandwidth cost, but for the duration of confluences, you will all have access to live maps of dungeons all over the world. It's usually best for people to stay local, of course, for familiarity and specialisation reasons, but any espers that have more niche or specific powers may find themselves being called much farther afield than they are used to.

"You all have access to information packets elaborating on all of this, and to anyone doing their very first confluence, I urge you to read it all in detail. I'm going to go over some of the most important points, here, though, to make sure we're all on the same page..."

Haru follows along in his packet.

It's very neatly organised and summarised. There's a section with a list of all dungeons known to always or often appear during confluences, in decreasing order of power and urgency by default, but with filters like dungeon type, how long it's been active, whether it tends to send monsters out, and so on. There's a section on statistics, which tracks the overall trends in the appearances of dungeons, including a couple of predictive models that try to map how likely certain areas are to be hit given what other areas have been hit and known dungeon predilections and so on. There's a section with a non-exhaustive list of guilds and agencies they're likely to be running into, with various filters. And so on, so forth.

The guild president himself is going over some highlights of the dungeons they're most likely to encounter, the resources available to other guilds that will be shared with them (as well as the resources of theirs that they'll share with other guilds, such as Woo-young's teleportation powers), the live map of dungeons, and various little tools and functionalities in their commscreens like emergency buttons and quick-summary requests for support.

Cricket, sitting on Haru's shoulder, listens attentively (to Jaeha's live illusion-translation of all this incomprehensible Korean).

(Haru's holding hands to cover for that.)

(Thankfully the illusion-translation is really cheap, backlash-wise. All he has to do is pay attention, himself, and let Cricket's own brain generate the content.)

It's not that long of an all-hands, only about half an hour all told, and then people are dismissed after being told that they'll receive updated tentative schedules soon.

Jaeha and Haru are in the first batch, and the recommended schedule they're given does place them together for lots of dungeons, though not all of them. They also receive a different schedule each that doesn't try to optimise for placing them in the same dungeons, and sends them to ones more tailored to their specific powers (so more similar to what they usually get). They can accept or reject either, suggest modifications and make tweaks, or do something more à la carte, though they're encouraged to go with the first suggestion as that's the one that's easiest on the support teams as well.

Haru looks over the reports on what's in the recommended schedule in case he needs to replace anything, but he's inclined to stick with Jaeha. Both their powers will go farther partnered, and the unpowered SWAT types can do a lot of the sort of non-psychic dungeon Haru normally handles if they, like, bring ladders and take longer about it.

"And, hey, we have a solution to the comms chatter problem in dungeons together now, if you've got the hang of picking up what I subvocalize. Like in Speaker for the Dead."

"Yeah, I think I've gotten pretty good at it now." Especially because practising it meant being able to listen to Haru's feelings and he will never ever get tired of that. It makes him feel like he's constantly hugging his Haru, it's great.

"So I can talk your... not ear... off and vice versa and nobody will be the wiser. It'll be lovely." What's first on the docket and when are they doing it?

Eheheheheheheh.

A-rank in the morning, themed around a haunted theme park that gives people this weird conviction that they're still children without actually messing with any other memories or perceptions of theirs. The effect seems to be kind of sticky, but the dungeon appeared only about an hour ago so they're not sure of much more. Jaeha can probably just stay outside and shield people and clear effects while Haru can go in and help rescue people trapped in rides from hell with evil clowns or FNAF-inspired demonic animatronics or what-have-you.

Sounds legit. How early are they meant to get up for that, maybe they should turn in.

Pretty early, they're expected there at seven-thirty.

"We should crash, might be our best night of sleep for a while."

"Yeah. Probably.

"...I love you." He's starting to get really fond of this whole "saying 'I love you'" thing, it felt weird at first but it makes him feel really giddy and warm inside.

"I love you too, my Jaeha."

And bedtime.

And bedtime.

And then wakeup time. Jaeha does not love having to wake up earlier than usual but he is not one of those people with very specific and rigid sleep schedules or who gets super fucked up when it changes, so he's just mildly bleary and in need of some very strong coffee.

Haru puts an ice cube and a generous squirt of Hershey's syrup and a splash of cream in his coffee and chugs it, pulls a hardboiled egg out of the fridge and starts sprinkling salt on that for the rest of his breakfast and munches through it dutifully, and checks for updates on the dungeon.

The effect is definitely sticky: after spending long enough under it, people start feeling uncomfortable with their senses of self and memories of their lives that are incompatible with how young they feel, with the end results varying a lot per person, as is usual for dungeons that mess with people's minds like that. The inside of the dungeon also looks a bit too big for it to be a first timer but it doesn't match any known records of escaped dungeons. It's a confluence, so it might well be a first timer anyway, but it might also be an unrecorded dungeon, or even a recorded one that refined its schtick beyond recognition while it was out.

Or it's from Indonesia because they do not have their shit together in Indonesia! In Haru goes, extracting people from roller coaster restraints and the tilt-a-whirl, gunning down clowns.

Meanwhile Jaeha shields espers and clears the psychic effects off people.

Honestly, he sometimes wishes he were a bit less OP? Like, other espers have trouble with this stuff, they need to be careful pulling dungeon yuck off people, making sure they don't break anything or cause extra damage, but Jaeha? All he has to do is kind of wave over people and poof all of the bad is gone nothing is damaged everything is fine, he doesn't even get much feedback from it other than that yep it sure did work. It makes his work occasionally really fucking boring.

And they're not in the dungeon together, which means Haru can't chatter at him and is reduced to going "hey kids, this ride's busted, we're getting you back to your family now, 'kay?" and suchlike, at least when he's not taking a guiding break.

Guiding breaks: the very few times when he remembers why he's doing all of this in the first place. Not just because he loves Haru with the very marrow in his bones, but also because it lets him remember that good things exist and are good.

Good things exist and are good! Haru can kiss this knowledge directly into the Jaeha.

He caaaaaan~

(Also he's kind of glad he's not in the dungeon itself because he is a bit of a wuss and a scaredy cat. He doesn't like horror movies or horror dungeons.)

Haru is being restrained with the photography, but he is wearing a camera that will not distract him from his job to compensate. Jaeha of course is under no obligation to look at the scary mascots.

Yeah he would prefer not to if it's all the same to Haru.

Honestly Haru's not likely to get through them himself till after the confluence beyond, like, making sure that the camera's working.

The dungeon turns out to be large enough, and has kidnapped and is kidnapping enough people, that they're pretty sure it's a repeat of some kind. Its core hasn't been found by the time Jaeha and Haru's shift ends, so they're going to be sending in a more powerful sensor/tracker soon once one can be spared. They might ask Jaeha to clear some more victims once that happens.

Before they can rest much, though, they get an emergency warning for another dungeon that seems to be spewing out psychically invisible monsters.

Yep. That's a confluence alright.

Is it in a place where Haru can safely shoot them or are there civilians all over?

It has the problem that the monsters tend to follow civilians so if they evac there will be monsters following civilians home which will be harder to contain. It has the secondary problem that they're just receiving the report that these monsters bud. It has the tertiary problem that they have the ability to hover, not so high that Haru wouldn't be able to get to them but high enough that melee is impossible most of the time.

Bright sides: they're kind of slow, and once a person is psychically shielded they completely lose interest and move on.

So, Haru carries Jaeha in flight, Jaeha shields espers and civilians and maybe confuses monsters, Haru shoots them?

"If you ride piggyback, yes, I don't think I can carry you in my arms and shoot at the same time. Do we have a place to stash monster corpses in case they bud even after they've been shot?"

"I assume we must but we can check for sure once we're there." They barely got to fuck. Fucking confluences, man.

"And I can probably snipe a lot of them from the ground if they're up in the sky, since humans are seldom up in the sky, unless they're carrying people off like birds of prey..." Are they doing that.

They are not. They just attach themselves to the humans and give the humans an unspecified bad time, psychic flavour.

In that case Haru can shoot them down with his partner clinging to his lap to un-bad the times of the humans around.

That's not the last emergency of the day. Or second-to-last. And the next day isn't much better. Their schedule is cleared on the day after to give them some time to rest after this rough start but there is another emergency call that evening, too.

Honestly, Haru wouldn't have cleared their schedule on day three. They're in this for the medium haul and he can do more than two days in a row of this, he thinks. But he'll take it; the people making the schedules are busy too and don't necessarily want quibbling. And maybe they don't want them too ragged to step lively for emergencies like the evening dungeon, or, eventually, Nightmare.

Or, eventually, Nightmare.

Day 09: Nightmare. Its location: Seoul, Korea.

Kang Jaeha gets a personal notification for that one. And since Nightmare likes appearing at night that means that he gets the personal notification at 10:22PM after having had the single busiest and most exhausting day of the confluence so far.

Sometimes he wonders if it hates him personally.

"We can just go and do a batch of shields for fresher espers and go back in the morning. It'll be around for weeks."

"Yeah. We can."

Squeeze.

"We don't usually go in the morning, because most of the time it doesn't kidnap people during the day. We could help mop up the last few rescues, but..." He feels guilty as all hell to consider the possibility of not spending the first Nightmare night active.

"We can also pull an all nighter and sleep in the morning, I can get us coffee. This is your show."

"...yeah. Let's do that. I'd—I know it doesn't make much sense but I'd feel guilty."

"It makes sense." Haru pecks him and goes to collect coffee and adulterate his.

No one knows what the very first dungeon was, but gun to anyone's head if you asked, most people who know about how these things work would say it's Nightmare. It's far from the most normal dungeon, in the most technical of senses, but it certainly is the paradigmatic one, when thinking about how bad dungeons can get. There's arguments, there'll always be arguments, it doesn't cook you inside your skin, it doesn't cause unending agony, there's lots of things it doesn't do that could reasonably be described as worse along one axis or another, but the thing it is, really, is evil. The thing it does is evil.

It reaches inside you, it finds the worst it can there, and it gives you it. It gives you the worst it can see in you, over and over and over. It shows you your worst nightmares, in gruesome detail. If you lost someone to suicide, it will show you how much their death must've hurt, or how they did it swiftly and without wasted time, or how long it took them to actually die, or it has them tell you in detail how much they hated their life and how much it was your fault just as they die. If you were in an accident that nearly killed you, you will relive that accident from every possible angle, you will see it in slow motion, you will feel it happen again and again. If there is anything you love, it will take it from you and twist it beyond recognition. If there is anything you fear, it will present you with it on a silver platter, inescapably, and it won't even give you death should you seek it. It doesn't need to burn you from the inside, when it can make it feel like you do. It doesn't need to do anything for real, and it's worse for that, because however bad it gets, you know it will just keep happening, forever.

It's not even all just an illusion. That car accident that keeps almost killing you? Those cars are there. They're really, actually there. When the rescue espers come for you—if they come for you—they will have to weave between those crashed vehicles, skip over the corpses to find you. The spiders you're terrified of? They're there, they're really there, you can't just close your eyes and hope they'll go away because they won't.

And if that's still not enough for you, you can't actually leave. Even should you find the exit, somehow—and oh, will you see it, you will be given so many opportunities to seek an end, and none will be real—you can't step through it. You can't leave, not until someone helps you. Not until they find you and create a psychic shield to protect you from the dungeon and clear the mark it leaves on you. For as long as you're marked, you're Nightmare's. It can see you, it knows you, it can find you, and you can't leave. It can find you again. It can find you again, after it's gone, and it can bring you back. You're not safe. You're never safe. You will never be safe. If you ever, ever think you'll be safe from it, you'll be wrong.

Unless, that is, Kang Jaeha is the one who rescues you. If Kang Jaeha clears Nightmare's mark from you, then it's gone. You're safe. It won't get you again.

In any case, no one really tries to kill it, anymore. There just isn't any point. It's achieved apex predator status, its core has never been found, it's too large and its layout too inconsistent—too dreamlike, even—for proper exploration. It has the highest esper kill rate out of all dungeons on record, it's extremely hard to predict when it's about to seal itself and then going back to the exit is a race against the clock during which you know you're inevitably leaving victims behind so that you yourself can survive; many espers have traumatic experiences with the entire surrounding context. Survivor's guilt is common, and Nightmare does seem to try to tempt espers by showing them victims that they could save if they took a small detour just as the dungeon's sealing itself...

The teams that are sent in are consequently always small: one or two psychic espers for the shielding and rescue proper, one esper who can find the victims, and if necessary an esper who can find the exit. Teleportation does work inside, but distances are inconsistent and constantly shifting, and that makes most types of it unreliable or more expensive than they could be. Nightmare doesn't waste time, and is constantly and continuously kidnapping victims throughout the night, without stopping. The only reason people aren't told to immediately evacuate its environs is that... it's been tried, and when that happens, Nightmare just seals itself quickly and quietly and goes elsewhere, and on net, more people are lost.

When Haru and Jaeha get there, there are two such small teams inside, plus a handful of others congregated outside. One of them looks like it's just stepped out, and the victim they've rescued looks ashen and near-catatonic, her mascara long since run from the crying. She's hugging herself and flinching whenever anyone gets too close, but the support team seems competent to handle it, and they're getting her a blanket and some food and water.

...well, Jaeha doesn't need to be the one to rescue you, exactly. Just the one to clear Nightmare's mark off you. And his range is well wider than this. So, shoo, Nightmare's mark; it will never get to her again.

Haru's right there with him to pull away the backlash from doing that. Any briefings they need to hear about what's in there today before they go through the portal?

They've been aware of the dungeon being out for less than an hour, so they don't have a very comprehensive list of who's been kidnapped, not that it's really possible to actually get one, especially given just how many people live in Seoul. There are some reports that are probably legit, but that's the extent of the preparation, is knowing the people who might be inside, and maybe having some hints about what their nightmare could be about. This person is a veteran. This person was kidnapped once. This person is one of five survivors of a horrifying accident that was caused by a dungeon portal suddenly appearing in the middle of some train tracks while a train was barreling towards it at full speed. And so on.

The tracker they managed to get on such short notice is a French esper called Colette Fauron who can hand them little wooden doodads that came from a dungeon and have an affinity with her power. While inside and holding a doodad, a trail of glowing petals will show the way to the nearest non-esper, and she's by the portal and can point them in a direction no recent esper team has gone in so that they can make sure to find a new victim rather than one that's already being tracked.

Haru doesn't really speak French but he is from Canada and can do a competent "Merci" for his doodad and attach it to his wrist.

Is Jaeha parking by the portal while Haru does mobility things?

No, he has to shield the victim once they find them to make sure Nightmare won't keep chasing after them, he has to come with. He shields Haru just before they step in—no reason to have Nightmare backlash Haru when it's a one-time cost for Jaeha—and in they go.

In they go holding hands and following the doodad in an unvisited direction, then. Haru goes a half-step behind Jaeha, so if he needs to suddenly seize him and fly into the air he can do that without having to spin around, but they'll have better stamina if they walk where that's feasible.

What's there to see?

Not... much.

The area directly surrounding the portal looks sort of like an endless flat expanse of darkness. The portal itself emits some light, and there are some chairs and unattended medical materials by it, but as they walk away following the glowing trail of flower petals it feels almost like they're falling out of the world, their only connection getting farther and farther away from them.

Haru assumes they've tried bringing floodlights in here and they just don't help that much, but will a flashlight make it impossible to see the flower petal trail? He's always got one in a dungeon.

No, the petals glow quite brightly. Neither they nor the flashlight make much of a dent on the darkness, though. It's just really, really dark. Their steps don't echo—they're barely audible—and there's nothing to see.

"Well, so far this is boring," he murmurs. "I will cherish it while it lasts."

"I've had runs where I had to walk for an hour in the darkness like this and I am unfortunately a scaredy cat so it was more dreadful than boring."

"An hour, wow. It's - admittedly spooky, but only because I know where we are..."

"And if the doodad in your hand ever stops working you're also stuck here, with no way out, just like a regular victim. —sorry, just, this fucking place gets to me."

Haru squeezes his hand.

He squeezes back.

It doesn't take them an hour for the terrain to start—well, existing. The eerily dense darkness starts giving way to something that looks like it's trying to become carpeted floor that resolves itself into the living room of a proper manor, old style (but they didn't walk into the house through a door, of course), and the trail points through the door and down a hallway.

Mindful of the possibility of jumpscares, and undetectable to victims, Haru proceeds in Jaeha's wake.

He hates this part. Hates it hates it hates it. And he especially hates it when victims have proper horror movie trauma, which this one is shaping out to be, what with...

...the way the light is still kind of precarious, and the fixtures not illuminating their surroundings very well. Or the way the house is actually kind of... too big? Like, it's... big enough that they could almost feel like children in it. Like if they were eight years old in a very big house, that's what the proportions feel like. The wood under the carpet creaks too much, too loudly, much more loudly than it should under their weight.

And there's the smell. It's so strong, so uncomfortable. It smells of alcohol, reeks of it, gin and sweat and mahogany and coffee seeping deep into the carpet, so deep it will be so expensive to deal with.

Haru hasn't been in here before. But he's read up on it. He has a guess. He has his gun ready.

The sound travels weirdly. By the time they can hear the slurred screams of "GET THE FUCK OUT HERE YOU LI'L SHIT! YOU'RE GOIN' TO LICK THAT FUCKIN' CARPET CLEAN!" and the loud thuds they're almost on top of the bizarre gangly monster trying force a door open by slamming its body against it. It's clearly meant to be reminiscent of a human, an adult in proportion to their childish sizes, but it's all wrong, its eyes are almost red and its teeth are too big and its arms are too muscled and its knuckles look like they're made of stone.

(And under all of that, on the other side of the door, their esper hearing can catch the muffled crying.)

Oh good, he was a little concerned about the possibility that the monster would look human and he'd have to make a judgment call about whether this was a nightmare of receiving or committing abuse. Both have happened on record.

Haru shoots the monster.

It dies, and falls to the ground, loudly. The gunshot sound is nonexistent to the victim, since Haru's being imperceptible to them, but the lack of the monster's screams does seem to take them enough by surprise that they stop crying.

And now Haru has backlash, though just a tick of it, eased away by brushing his hand against Jaeha's. He listens for a second, then holsters the gun. Door locked?

Locked and barred.

"I can walk through if they won't open it, but maybe you can talk them into it?" Haru murmurs.

He hates this part, too. Especially now that he's being ethical and not using his powers—hm.

("I'm worried I might fuck it up because whenever I did this in the past I used my powers to figure out how to come off as nonthreatening and helpful. I'm not sure I know how to do it by hand.")

"We're in Korea, they probably know your name. You can just be like, it's Kang Jaeha, I'm here to rescue you, and maybe that'll go over."

("...yeah, okay.")

"Excuse me!" he calls, projecting his voice. "Can you hear me? This is Kang Jaeha; I'm an esper, I'm here to rescue you."

"I-I can hear you Kang Jaeha-nim," says a thin voice, responding immediately and shakily like the expected response to a hesitation is unthinkable.

"Can you unbar the door? That way I'll be able to shield you so the dungeon can stop getting to you."

"I - I," they stutter. "Yes Kang Jaeha-nim." The bar slides aside.

The door handle is higher than eye level but reachable, and once the door is open, he immediately clears the mark from and shields the victim.

Which doesn't... really change anything in their environment. Presumably Nightmare can just keep its nightmares up even if it can't see its target anymore to torment them.

The victim - a small skinny man - stands there, trembling, not meeting Jaeha's eyes.

Back when he used to use his power he'd be able to figure out directly if what this person wanted was a hug or space or verbal encouragement or what. He'll just have to do his best.

"What's your name?" he asks, softening his face and his voice.

("Nightmare can't see him anymore but it can still send things after us here so I'll want to get a move on soon,") he tells Haru.

Haru nods.

"Ji Dong-sun, Kang Jaeha-nim."

"Ji Dong-sun-shi, Nightmare can't get to you anymore. You're completely invisible to it. Once we leave, you'll be safe. So come with us?"

"Yes Kang-jaeha-nim." He doesn't super believe this but he's in a very obedient frame of mind at the moment.

Yeah, that's okay if he doesn't. He is safe, and that's what's important. ...or, well, he will be.

("Are you visible to him?")

"Not, yet, should I be now?"

("Yeah, I think so, he's shielded and it'll be easier for you to carry him.")

"Ji Dong-sun-shi, my partner is about to become visible, please do not be startled. He can fly, and he will carry both of us to the exit so that we'll be out as rapidly as we can."

Which is probably a good idea because esper hearing only gives them so much headstart on the noises of something approaching.

Haru appears while Jaeha's speaking, and bows, and says, "Hello, I'm Suwan Masaharu," and picks up Ji Dong-sun in his arms, and when Jaeha's climbed on his back: zoom.

The doodad is now presenting them with a path in differently-coloured petals, back the way they came. They don't pass by whatever other creature Nightmare was about to send their way, and with Haru's flight the return trip goes a lot faster than the way in did.

Ji Dong-sun isn't talkative so Haru's chattering to Jaeha on the way, subvocalization-style so they don't have to bother the poor guy about it. "Is this the high end of cooperativeness? Or for that matter the low end of medical acuity?"

("Hmm, some people throw themselves at me and are extremely eager to follow me out, I think that probably ranks as more cooperative? And most victims aren't medical emergencies, Nightmare prefers it when its food lasts very long. Sometimes they're catatonic, though.")

Haru's taking the trip in sort of a series of flying leaps, launching himself in a burst and arcing through the air on momentum alone before catching himself with his power again. "I'm glad the monster looked like a monster."

("...yeah. But we're definitely going to run into monsters that don't, a lot.")

"Can you tell or do you have to figure it out from context?"

("Figure out from context. Nightmare can create minions that are indistinguishable from humans to power senses, so I couldn't even use that.")

"I'm worried about making a mistake there."

("Yeah. To state the obvious, err in recoverable ways. Perhaps more snappily, if uncertain, don't shoot.")

"Yeah. But if a situation's moving fast..."

("I can use my powers on them. Nightmare's minions don't actually have minds, as far as anyone can tell the dungeon is personally puppeteering them individually, so it can't really fake human reactions to my illusions that well. I could maybe do an overlay for you of what I'm showing each potential person so you can also keep track of who seems to be acting weird. But we can't do much better than use our best judgment, in the end.")

"Okay. Do you need ins to any more of my senses than you have right now for that to work?"

("Probably not? But I'll let you know if I do.")

"Okay. ...do people ever bring Nightmare visions in as legal evidence, like, if this guy wanted to prosecute his dad..."

("I'm not sure. Possibly if a rescue esper is recording video it could be admissible.")

And there's the portal, floating solid in the air, the only thing visible in a sea of darkness now.

"Do we just toss him out the portal to float down and get seen to or do we have some more elaborate handoff procedure?"

("Protocol is for us to come out with the victim to hand them off personally to the support team and also so that the team can make sure we're okay, don't need shields to be renewed, don't need a break, etc.")

"Okay. Breath of fresh air sounds nice anyway. Starlight. That kind of thing." Haru jumps out with Ji Dong-sun and Jaeha still aboard and floats down. Who's he handing this guy to.

The support team is very on the ball for this particular dungeon. They've got a camera filming victims floating out of the dungeon portal running them through a face recognition algorithm so they can match them to the database of known or suspected kidnapped people, in case there are known triggers or preferred ways to deal with them and in case there are loved ones looking for them.

"This gentleman introduced himself as Ji Dong-sun, Jaeha's erased his mark and shielded him," Haru informs them for their checklists, handing the guy over, and he'll take point on any remaining chatter that needs to occur, considering.

And then they can go right back in.

Yeah. Right back into the depths of hell.

It's dark, and their tracker lights up the way. The distances to victims vary wildly, and it definitely looks like they should've run into some of these while rescuing others. The distances to the victims are not always the same as those from them and back towards the portal.

And it's always bleak. Always horrible. This person was kidnapped and left in a dark room with barely any food or water for three days. This person was stalked for two years by someone who kept texting them pictures of them in private situations they had no way of being observed in. This person was beat up to an inch of their life by their ex. This person was gaslit by their parents for years. This person had cancer that went into remission three times, the latest one supposedly for good but who knows. This person was bullied so much they had a breakdown and now have psychotic paranoid delusions. This person was in a hiking accident in which their spouse died and they lost a leg after spending days thinking they were also about to die in the wilderness. This person is a recovering drug addict who was abandoned by everyone they ever loved because of their addiction.

Nightmare torments all of them, individually, personally, and very, very thoroughly.

Haru scoops them all up one at a time and flies them out, once Nightmare can't see through their eyes any more, and does his best to find something light to distract them chattering about. What's their favorite color? Who should know that they're out, do they want to workshop what they'll say to whoever their emergency contact is? Have they got pets, he's got a cat himself -

Halfway into that their tracker needs a short guiding break, which is as good an excuse for them to also take one themselves, but it's not long enough to zero anyone and then they go back in, newly caffeinated and ready to witness more trauma. 

The bright side of Jaeha's backlash, he supposes, is that he grows inured to horrible shit very rapidly.

This next victim isn't a very long distance from the portal—or rather, their area of influence isn't. Before Jaeha and Haru can actually see the epicenter of their nightmare, they can feel the heat and see the floating embers in the air.

"Well, at least it's not going to be dark?"

"Small mercies, I suppose."

The situation is straightforward. As they approach, the air gets hotter and they start being able to smell smoke. The sounds of fire lead them towards something that looks like an apartment complex's hallway, formed without its outer walls as buildings here sometimes do; the darkness just slowly melts into it.

There's a snag, though: from where they're standing, there isn't any obvious way further in that doesn't seem either blocked by the fire or far too precarious.

"We might have to leave this to somebody else, I'm no good with temperature."

"Nightmare doesn't typically kill its victims, so there must be somewhere safe inside..."

"There doesn't necessarily have to be a safe path to whoever's in there, but maybe there is, if we go around?"

"Yeah. Nightmare also likes to give its victims the illusion that they can escape, often, so there could be, though it might still be too dangerous for us. You could maybe fly around it very quickly?"

"Okay - you coming along or just doing psychic comms?"

"It..." Fuck, it kind of terrifies him to be split from Haru in here but... "It might be safer if you go on your own so you can have your full range of motion and reaction times? Maybe?"

Jaeha's range is insane and he doesn't need to keep eyesight once his power's got hold of someone, which it has been so that Haru can subvocalise to him when needed, so he'll be able to keep in contact throughout. However: argh.

"Okay. Love you." And he's off into the darkness, flashlight bobbing like a rock skipping across a lake, in that more-efficient flight gait he's picked up. "So far so flaming, and the geometry of this place is really fucked..."

("What's the tracking doodad saying, anything interesting or just, yep, this person sure is in the middle of the flaming frames of a building?")

"I think I might be closer if I'd gone around the other way, I'm trying to triangulate."

("This is really unusually hostile of it.")

"In a way that has implications for what it's going to be like in there?"

("I don't know. I try to hold my expectations lightly, thinking that Nightmare will definitely act one way or another is a recipe for being surprised, always negatively.")

The hallway in front of Jaeha suddenly grows a wall with a door blocking it off.

("—like this. I think the person inside might be moving, the building is starting to grow in my direction. Did anything happen where you are?")

"Nothing new over here. You think they're coming in your direction? Being herded by the fire or on their own?"

("I don't know. Probably—")

The hallway starts stretching out into a foyer of an apartment.

("—definitely coming this way.")

Jaeha takes a couple of steps back, tensing up. He does not like it when Nightmare does this kind of shit. It's never good.

"I'm like halfway around and so far it's just - no nevermind now it's doing something -"

("...it's doing something on your end, too? Why would—")

The building starts to grow faster. More walls, a bathroom, the upper floor. It starts to spread out to the sides, picking up speed as it goes.

("—no, this isn't the victim moving, there's no way they'd move this fast.") He starts jogging back, looking over his shoulder to make sure there's nothing waiting for him but trying to mostly keep an eye on the fire. ("What changed?")

"It's like it's trying to envelop me in the building, like the dream switched from being about fire to being about bad architecture. Though uh it's still very much on fire and absolutely pouring smoke, I'm gonna - fly faster."

("Envelop you? But—it shouldn't be able to see you—unless the victim—")

If he wants to steer clear of the growing geometry of this building, growing bigger than apartment buildings usually are, getting more and more floors, more and more apartments, more and more rooms, all towards him, Jaeha is going to have to start jogging. And then running. And then sprinting.

("Change of plans we leave now this is too dangerous, I'm running back, can you get to me?")

"It's getting taller and wider just a little faster than my flightspeed. I might have to go inside and walk through a few walls and the more I put it off the more walls there's going to be..."

("—no! That's—isn't there somewhere else, maybe the opposite direction—") No no no no no no what is happening why is this happening what's going on—

"That'd - no, it's gotten past me, I'm inside now and it's fucking sweltering, good thing I don't have to inhale very much to talk to you -"

("Haru-ya—")

Run, little Jaeha, run, b̵u̶t̴ ̶d̴o̷͉͂ ̸̖͒y̸̼͑o̵͓͒u̴̼̓ ̷̺̒ṙ̴̰e̴̤̒a̷̛͕l̶̨̋l̴̲͛ŷ̷̡ ̵̘͝t̷̨͝h̴̲̑ĩ̴̖n̴̩͘k̴͍̋ ̷͙͝ỳ̷̯o̸̭̻͗́u̶̪̰͝ ̶̻̽c̸̺͐́a̷͍͉̾̕n̶̯͊̑ ̶͕͇̀̉e̸̮̞̙͙̺͍̜̻̋̋s̷̱̋̆c̸̘͈͖̬̰̯̘̙͊ä̵̢̩͇̝́͛͒̓̃́͜ṗ̷̢̰̝͖̣̘̒́ệ̴̢̰̤͖͙?̴̨̗͊̍̈́ͅ

("Fuck! Fuck fuck fuck fuck I'm, I need to run, Haru-ya—")

"It's too hot here, I'm going to accelerate through the building top speed and if that doesn't cut it it doesn't cut it."

("—what do you mean if it doesn't—")

Jaeha can hear—and feel—an explosion, somewhere, not very close but definitely too close.

("—do what you need to to survive. Please. Please survive. Be careful. I love you.")

"Ow - can't breathe -"

("Haru-ya, talk to me, or, no, don't, save your breath, just—") Fuck does he have access to—what's Haru feeling, is he, is he going to be okay, please, please say he's going to be okay, please, please please please please—

Backlashed to hell.

Coughing.

Burning.

Nononononono not that no ("Haru Haru Haru please Haru please please don't Haru please—") no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no

("Haru? Haru, where are you? Haru? Please? Haru-ya? Haru-ya, please?")

You can't escape, little Jaeha. You'll never escape. Not. Ever.

Burning. Choking. Not moving any more. Lonely, lonely, all alone - and gone.

Wh. What.

N-no. No. His, his range, it's. He's running but he's, there's, he hasn't run that far, his range should, should get him, should, he should still be able to feel Haru. Haru is still close. Still close enough. Haru can, he can, he—

BOOM

He doesn't care. That doesn't matter. It doesn't, doesn't, it—

No. It can't be real. It, it just can't. There's, he, he's still running, because Haru would've wanted—Haru does want him to live, Haru wouldn't—doesn't want him to die, so he shouldn't, shouldn't stay and wait for the fire to reach him, but, but what's, what's the, what, his, he's, it's meant to be, it's, it's meant to be hot not cold but he feels cold? he feels numb he feels, his legs are, it's, it's heavy, he's heavy, what's, what's he doing, he's running, why is he running? to live, to survive, because Haru, he, but Haru, he can't, he tripped on something, but there wasn't anything on the floor, how could there be, but then how is he on the floor, and what, he's, he needs to get up, needs to, needs t

"Always negatively, huh, you're telling me a dungeon named Nightmare doesn't sometimes surprise you with sunshine and roses?"

"Jaeha? All quiet on the western front over there?"

"Am I getting lazy with the subvocalizing, I can switch to talking out loud if that's easier at this distance or something? Jaeha?"

...

"JAEHA," Haru hollers, switching to a run instead of flying, waiting for backlash to tell him if anyone other than Jaeha's trying to listen, or for Jaeha to get a bead on him and say something, anything. "JAEHA WHAT'S GOING ON -"

Suddenly and quite without warning the building starts expanding in all directions, the incomplete rooms getting completed and then growing walls, ceilings, new floors, with the fire following soon after.

Well, nobody was listening, which is depressing as shit but he was right next to his partner throughout this dungeon and they took a guiding break not long ago. He's got leeway. He arcs forward, top speed around the building.

The building doesn't seem able to quite match his speed, or, no, it doesn't seem like it knows he's speeding up more like, it's just growing out rapidly in all directions with no concern for where he is, but that does still mean that his arc is going to be quite wide if he wants to avoid the fire.

Yes, well, he does. ...he might be able to go over the building more easily and just trust that he'll still be twenty feet above it if it grows another fifty, but he'd rather try that for the first time with a growing building that isn't on fire, and anyway it didn't work in the minotaur labyrinth so it's doubly not wise to try here. Fast as he can get, skirting around the nightmare building. "JAEHA!" he calls periodically.

No Jaeha.

No Jaeha.

No Jaeha.

No Jaeha.

N—

Yes Jaeha! Or something that looks quite like him, curled up on the ground far enough away from the fire that he probably sprinted for a while but still right in sight of the encroaching building.

Someone else will have to get Fire Victim. Or maybe Fire Victim will just have to stay here, they lose a few people every time. Haru's getting Jaeha.

"Jaeha, get the fuck up!" he screams. Panic, backlash, tactics, they're all in agreement here and it doesn't matter which one is steering.

Oh. He's hearing things, now. He always thought that was just a fiction thing. Ha ha. Or maybe that's just Nightmare messing with him. Ha ha ha.

Haah...

"If you broke your fucking leg or something I'll carry you, fine, but at least TALK TO ME!"

Well he supposes he can twitch in the general direction of the voice. "You're dead, though. So what's the point."

"Who told you I was dead, fucking Nightmare?"

"I felt you die. So probably you're Nightmare." Though that's, like, enough to get him to actually turn around and sit up.

"If I'm Nightmare does that mean I have a fight on my hands about picking you up or should I assume that you don't care because you were lying on the ground?"

"Assume I don't care?" he says, wobbling a bit, because that. That was a very Haru thing for Nightmare to say. Wasn't it.

"That should be fun to go over with your therapist later." His flight power is perfectly happy to help him stop on a dime: he wants to arrest his momentum when he's just precisely that far from his Jaeha and then land and pick him up. "The comms cut out so that was also completely goddamn delightful. I'm abandoning whoever's trying to die in a fire over there, they can find somebody else for this one." Tracker, which way out - running.

Oh. Oh this feels—nice. Like guiding. Can Nightmare fake the feeling of guiding? Jaeha can, but, but, but, "Haru-ya? Is, is it really—are you really—"

"I realize I asked you the same question once upon a time but it's a silly question! Surely I would claim to be real even if I weren't!"

Okay now he's crying on his Haru. Thankfully that does not mean he needs to stop talking.

("I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I'm sorry, Haru-ya. I love you. I love you so much. I thought, I thought, I felt, you were—burning—")

"I love you too. I'm okay. We're gonna be okay. We're gonna hit the exit any minute now and you're gonna faceplant in my shirt so nobody sees you crying because you're gonna care about that later and we're going to take five, report, and go the fuck home, we can finish rotating our sleep schedules tomorrow."

Oh, God, it really is Haru. But it really was Haru earlier? Except it was an amount of Haru he—thinks he could've imagined? This much concentrated Haru is, he doesn't think he can come up with this much concentrated Haru on his own.

("Okay. Okay. We can do that. I'll follow you to the ends of the Earth.")

"We're arguably not on Earth!"

("I will follow you into hell itself, and I think I might feel like arguing if you said we aren't there right now.")

"No argument to be had, it's wretched in here. So -

- Jaeha -

- can you not shield yourself -"

("Oh. Fuck. I can't. Fuck. Shit.")

"How has this not come up before??"

("...I didn't have anything I cared about before?") he guesses. ("I had no nightmares for Nightmare to use...")

"Okay, well, that's very romantic and once was too many times for that to happen but we can postmortem that later, this doesn't seem like the time."

("Yeah... I'm sorry. I, it's my fault, I'm sorry, that was so stupid...")

"We're postmorteming that later! When you're debacklashed! In particular we are not doing it where Nightmare can hear you!"

("—right. Yes. Let's go. ...we're already going. My brain is mush. I thought you were dead...")

"I'm okay. I've got you. We've gotta be almost there."

They are. The exit's right there.

"Hidey face, love."

Hidey face. If this is Nightmare it'll be very funny, he bets. Ha ha.

(Please don't be Nightmare please don't be Nightmare please be real please be real) "I love you" (please please please please)

"I love you too."

He takes a flying leap out the portal and wafts to the ground and heads straight for a guiding tent.

...this is alarming! People are alarmed! They don't, like, do anything about their alarm, when two espers shoot out of a dungeon portal clinging to each other for dear life and zoom straight to a guiding tent you step aside and let them, but, that's Kang Jaeha and his partner.

Nope, he doesn't care, they're out, they're actually out, this means that this is real and Haru is really alive, he's going to cry harder now thanks.

"Hey." He can sit down now, still holding Jaeha. He's more backlashed than Jaeha is right now but he's also at the moment definitely the more mentally stable of the two of them. "Hey. It's okay. We're both okay." He kisses the tears off Jaeha's face, it can pull double-duty as comforting and guiding.

Oh God.

"I'm sorry. I love you. Please don't hate me. I'm sorry, I know I, I really fucked up, I—"

Haru squeezes him. "I don't hate you. I love you. It's never been a problem before, right? You just made a mistake."

A mistake that almost got him killed and then Haru would've been alone because he's fucking stupid—

—that's the backlash speaking. "It hasn't. Or, I, I bet it—I bet it's looked through my eyes to make problems for other people, somehow—but..."

"And it wasn't on anyone's radar, like, I could have made a checklist with 'make sure Jaeha self-shields' and I did not do that."

"I—" There are other espers around. He doesn't want to say this out loud anymore.

("I should've thought about it. With every other psychic dungeon it was so automatic, will I be affected by it, if so I'm not going in, and I never reviewed that after I recovered my sense of ethics and I've been so, so stupid.")

Haru pets him. "We should postmortem later when you are debacklashed."

"Right. Yes. Later. Okay.

"...can we go home? I, we," ("I can write a very quick report and send it.")

"...I was imagining delivering a report out loud myself in person but that's the backlash talking, yes, go ahead and do that."

He opens a commscreen but he'll also talk Haru about it while he types.

"We ran into what looked like the locus of the nightmare of someone who survived a fire. We didn't find any obvious safe ways in, and while you were looking for them the building Nightmare was simulating started expanding rapidly and dangerously, temporarily splitting us up. After we met back up we decided we weren't able to rescue that victim and we left. We're now going back to our silo for guiding and won't be returning for the rest of the night. Morning? Until our next shift in the evening.

"Did I miss anything?"

"...you are going to need to be assigned someone to shield you on your next shift."

"...yes. But I'm not sure this should be in this report? Might be the backlash talking. ...I want to talk to Quasar about it."

"Okay. But tell someone now, give the gears time to grind so we're not standing around waiting for them to scare up another psychic with spare capacity on our next run."

"Yeah. Good thinking."

Jaeha'll... message Lee Juheon about it. He's probably asleep but they've been chatting on and off, he's one of the people who's in on Jaeha's whole thing, and Jaeha is kind of too embarrassed to tell Park Yoo-min about it.

Haru squeezes him. "You didn't break your leg, did you? Twist your ankle? You were just - lying there -"

"I, I just. I tried to keep going but I had, I." ("I felt you die. I felt it. I felt you burning and suffocating and I, I just.")

"I'm okay," murmurs Haru. "Not even singed. And I would've wanted you to get out."

"I. I tried telling myself that. I tried. I just. I."

Squeeze. "I love you."

"I love you too." He hits send on the report and summons the teleport screen. "Let's go home."

"Should I be summoning the energy to get railed or are we just gonna sleep this off."

"...near-death experiences aren't great for my libido." Teleport. "And I'm so tired and I just want to hold you."

"Okay. Whatever you need." Haru divests himself of gun and flashlight and other random dungeon gear.

"...but I want to take a shower with you." Wash Haru's hair, make sure that he's really real and really here and, and wash off this feeling that's clinging to his skin that's not even grime, it's something psychological, like Nightmare's got its grubby hands on him and he wants it off.

"Okay. We can do that." They can head to the bathroom and Haru can remove more articles from his person.

And Haru really is real. Really is here, and alive, and okay, and solid, and with him. 

God, he's such an idiot. It's a good thing he has a Haru to set him right.

"I can't shield myself, and back when—back before you, I was just too... proud to admit it, and embarrassed. But Nightmare in particular, you saw how it was before the fire. It just never came after me. So I forgot. Or, I didn't forget so much as it just became part of my work habits. Just automatic. 

"And of fucking course as soon as I'm free of backlash for the first time and have something I couldn't bear to lose it pounced."

Haru pets him with the hand he isn't using to eat... brunch? Is it brunch if it's after lunchtime but you just woke up because you were up for hours in fucking Nightmare? "Yeah. You did your standard operating procedure in Nightmare that has worked before. Or... has probably worked. Probably it wasn't conspicuously using what it got off you against anyone else, but it might have been doing some kind of subtle thing."

"Yeah. Though I'm not sure what it could've gotten. Maybe details about what other espers were likely to be inside it, although as soon as they ran into victims it would know they were there through their eyes anyway..." Assuming it works the way people think it does, but he's already said his opinion on the idea of expecting things. "But yeah."

"If you'd been shielded maybe it wouldn't have taken so long to find the victims? It wouldn't have known where to hide them - do other people usually have shorter trips -"

"I haven't noticed a difference, not reliably, but it's not like I measured, I hadn't read your series about yelling about basic research yet back then."

Snort. "Well, you can notice if the times drop when we go in next. - are you good to go in again tonight?"

"I think so. But I'll want to check the shields after every victim. At least at first. I want to be... a bit paranoid."

"Super legit to be paranoid after a close call. Also, no splitting the party."

"No splitting the party," he agrees vehemently. "God, what was I thinking. ...well, I wasn't, I was sleep deprived, that's another unforced error to go on my ledger."

"Me too, we should probably have quit sooner and maybe just not gone that day. Or done the shields only thing."

"Yeah." Sigh.

He puts his chopsticks down and wraps his arms around Haru. "When I was trying to run and I kept thinking about how you wouldn't want me to, to—then I thought, I'm never going to get my autumn wedding in British Columbia, and that was. That. Kind of."

Hugs. "You will. We'll go to Canada and the leaves'll be gorgeous and we'll get married, okay?"

He closes his eyes and hugs Haru tighter. "No fair. I was meant to be the one to propose."

"If you want you can go down on one knee in front of an entire QQ meetup and I'll pretend to be surprised."

"I might just do that. I'll brainstorm it."

"Everybody'll go 'awwwwww'."

"I love you."

"I love you too." Haru kisses him.

He kisses back. Because he loves Haru, and they're going to be together forever, autumn wedding and all.