Hye-Jin was bracing for his presence and the uncomfortable heat of his awful, awful backlash, so she doesn’t flinch. But: it’s so bad. It’s so, so bad. The poor, poor man. Part of her wants to just reach out and hold him for a while so he can stop being in so much pain, but… well. That would cause him to run. Besides, she doesn’t much feel like cuddling on its own merits right now, she’d be tolerating discomfort to try to fix him. Like he’s not an adult who can make his own damn choices.

Instead she just gives him a cordial nod.

“Good evening. Do you have any preferred strategies for this sort of dungeon?”

"...I am unaccustomed to working with others. I usually just go in and... deal with it." He frowns at himself.

…. Ooooookay.

“I’ll handle the large and weak crowds, you cover any holes I leave,” she won’t leave any, but she will play pretend that she might, “and watch for an opening to take down the center of it as we get closer?”

He nods. A big part of the reason to do this at all is to see how they work together and try to get a sync, but... Tae-gun honestly feels like if they want to do that they shouldn't send Kim Hye-jin and him after small fry. If either of them could take the dungeon without breaking a sweat that won't do much to help them coordinate. 

Well, whatever. He'll deal, like he always does, and he'll try to ignore Kim Hye-jin to the best of his ability. "Do you want to go in first?"

Nod. And then, in she goes.

She really, really could just handle this herself, though. It’s transparently obvious. She has really a lot of fire, with a lot of accuracy and control, and methodically burns the way to the thing they’re looking for.

Yeah, see, he thought so. Does he even need to be here? What's the point? 

He spots a medium-sized formless over there that her fire didn't quite reach, perfectly aware that if he just waited for it she'd deal with it too, but he's really bored and feeling useless so he sends a small ice spear flying at its small glowing core, almost lazily.

...except the spear he ends up actually throwing is about half again as big as he meant it to be, and when it hits the monster it shatters into several mini-spears that fly in all directions. 

The fuck?

She’s surprised by his surprise.

Was. Was he not expecting and compensating for the power up working with her would give him? Was that a surprise to him? Because it’s not a surprise to her. She was expecting it. It’s still a little scary, how easy it is to make there be fire with him here, compared to what she’s used to, but she was prepared to compensate for it. And has practice with this phenomenon, if not quite to this degree of magnification. He… doesn’t. Huh. That… is probably something to work on. Or, well. Give him space to work on.

“…. Do you want more room to practice?” she offers, a little awkwardly. “I can tone it down a little.”

The way he's flushing to his neck is a trick of the light. That, or his backlash. A tiny amount of backlash from the tiny nothing he just did to that formless. 

That's his story and he's sticking to it. 

"It's fine. I'll deal." He's ever had a partner before, he's just gotta remember.

...not remember. He'd rather not remember. He's gotta practise. Just a bit should be enough.

Uh. Okay.

She gives him a bit more space to practice in anyway, though. See, there are now holes for him to cover for. That’s definitely an accident and not clearly deliberate, you can tell by the… systemic and predictable pattern of where she leaves openings, where they wouldn’t be particularly dangerous or debilitating. Yes. Very accidental, those. So accidental.

Well if he ever needed more reason to think that he's a pathetic excuse for an esper who can't be trusted to do anything on his own, he's got some. 

It doesn't take him very long. The thing is just that they usually measure power expenditure by the amount of backlash it produces; there aren't any other measures. So espers get used to gauging, constantly, how much backlash they're accumulating, and what this means for how much more they can do and what that accomplishes. And Tae-gun is good at this, probably owing to the fact that he's always carrying a decent amount of background backlash. He has to pay attention to minute changes in it and adjust for them, to manage his energy levels very close.

But he hasn't had a partner in years, and hasn't had to compensate for the passive backlash reduction they cause since, and the way his backlash heat fuels his partner's active fire while their backlash cold fuels his own active ice. He's having to recalculate and relearn it on the fly. 

With an audience.

In summary everything sucks and he wants to die.

Hye-jin is actually impressed by how quickly he adjusts, but she doesn't say that, because it would probably seem patronizing. And she, for one, hates being patronized, and suspects that Lee Tae-gun is a similar flavor of 'too prideful for his own good' to her own. So. She'll just leave it be.

Fortunately, the dungeon's cleared up very quickly. It's really not a difficult one for either of them, much less both of them, even when practicing. But it's pretty clear why Quasar wanted them on this one, anyway. Along with the practice, they have more of a feel for each other's strengths and weaknesses. In short: he has more range and precision, she has more flexibility and firepower. It's a bit more complicated than that, of course - for example, she can achieve range similar to his if she works at it - but she's not as fast or as effective as he would be.

Before they leave, though, his partner awkwardly offers her hand and asks, "... do you need, um..?"

"No touching," he replies immediately, taking half a step away from her.

She might... notice he's trembling, a bit. Just a bit.

"Right. Sorry."

It's just his backlash is barely even chipped away at?? Like taking a bucket of water out of the ocean. It's better than literally nothing, but... well. It's really, really not enough.

But he won't let her do more to help, so. They can just leave the dungeon. That's fine.

No no it's helped a lot. For someone who is tracking every bucket in his ocean. Also, his flush now is in fact backlash.

He takes a deep breath and prepares himself to pretend that everything is fine. Like he always does. It's a very well-exercised muscle, and the fact that it's being tested more than it's been for the last while is immaterial.

The support staff is waiting for them when they step out but they know better than to hover around Lee Tae-gun. Not that they'd be inclined to hover much, they're professionals and are used to this and only hover if they actually need to help, but Lee Tae-gun never does.

There are, also, onlookers on the other side of the yellow tape. Actually a lot of them, much more than would be expected from such a small out-of-the-day dungeon, even accounting for the fact that Lee Tae-gun is the one closing it. Actually, it's probably in large part because Lee Tae-gun is the one closing it—with a partner. He ever goes into dungeons with other people, but it's usually teams, not a single other person, and the implications are implicative.

Right. Public face on.

Yep. Hye-jin has one of her own, and on it goes.

Hello, onlookers and media! She definitely doesn't hate you all with a passion and feel like she's in a fishbowl! No, no, she's honored to be so well liked!

(This is why he leaves via teleport, right? Can she do that too? Because she really, really wants to.)

Oh, yeah, absolutely. Actually, when he makes a teleport request on his commscreen, she gets pinged with an invite to be teleported with him.

Yes absolutely let's not be here right this minute. See! They're such a good team! Synchronized teleportation!

Vvvwoom and then they're in a quiet resting room in HQ dedicated for exactly this. It has sofas, a stocked mini-fridge and kitchenette, coffee, backlash control meds, a TV, and an ensuite bathroom.

(An ensuite bathroom that is rather larger than it strictly needs to be, with a rather large than it strictly needs to be bathtub in it.)

Tae-gun makes a beeline for the meds, grabs three pills, and swallows them dry.

Now that they're under corporate lights, she can see the sheen of sweat and the flush much more clearly than in the dark dungeon or under the glaring sun in public. She can also see the way his hands are shaking, the way he's having to tense his arms to not drop the box of pills. He's not looking at her, and he's tense like a violin string.

Yeah. She's seeing them, but she's trying to pretend she hasn't. She'll continue doing that.

Physically, though, she would have preferred the glaring sun, if not the public crowds in it. This backlash isn't particularly bad - not with a partner she's insanely compatible with right there the whole time, not for such an easy dungeon - but she is kind of unhappy about now being in carefully air conditioned environment. She carried the brunt of that dungeon, and therefore brunt of the backlash, and now she's kind of chilly. It's not bad, she's had worse, just usually her after dungeon care is... better than this. Because there are no space heaters in here, she's sure as hell not getting cuddles, and she does not want to take a fucking bath at Quasar HQ. Fine. She'll just. Get coffee. And if she curls around her hot cup of coffee a little more than is normal during this time of year, well, that's nobody's business but hers, isn't it.

He sits near her. Not right next to her, but just beyond arm's length. And if he's not close enough for his actual body heat to reach her, his metaphorical heat is pretty close, and that is after all the source of the physical one, isn't it?

"I can switch the A/C to heating," he murmurs, looking down at his feet rather than at her, squeezing his hands into white-knuckled fists.