And Woo-young is—well, not standing, that's for sure, because his legs are definitely not trustworthy after the earlier rescue assignment and teleporting here. "Sunbae, what the fuck was that this morning."

"...which part?"

"There are parts??? I mean the thing where you and Kim Hye-jin raced to complete three dungeons, what other parts are there!!"

"Oh. That. Yeah. I held her hand, too. But I didn't do anything else! Just that. Did she tell you that? Did you tell her she's pretty? ...never tell her I said that. Oh locking the texting app was such a good idea. I hate this."

"Sunbae, please, it's very endearing when you're like this but I actually need you to focus here. Why'd you do a race?"

He flops back on the bed and stares at the ceiling. "These dungeons are boring. We could've cleared them solo. So we did."

"Why a race, though?"

"...I dunno." Even at the time he didn't know, really.

"...fine. Sure. Alright. Why not. You don't know. We can work with that."

"I mean, spending the whole day doing them side-by-side would've been boring and useless, we're already working alright together in these small fry dungeons, there's nothing else to practise there, we're only going to work better together with stuff that actually challenges us at least a little bit. So this way we knock them all out quickly, that's strictly safer, right? Less time for them to kidnap civilians or spit out monsters. We get the rest of the day off to deal with the backlash and, I dunno, bond? That's part of the point, isn't it? Only I never know how much of that is the backlash speaking, do I? I want to be near her, it feels so nice to be near her, but that's the backlash for sure, but also if we're going to be partners we should at least enjoy spending time together, or at least not hate it, right? And it worked! I think we bonded, probably. But also I'm scared. I'm really scared of bonding, even if it's tactically smart. This has implications that I don't want to think about, though, so would you kindly change the subject because I don't know how to do that when I'm in this state."

He sure does say a lot of words when he's in this state, it's true. "Okay, that first thing you said there is good, though. Going through them quickly, I like it.

"Sunbae, did you see the pictures they took of your face after the third dungeon?"

"Noooooo..."

Woo-young links him it.

"...my chat app is locked."

"...right." He scoots over next to Tae-gun and widens his commscreen to zoom into the picture.

"...oh. Oh. Oh no."

"Look, any other esper could work with that, clearly you were really horny—"

"She was smirking at me and I wanted to—"

Woo-young covers his mouth. "You do not want the memory of having said what you were about to say to me. Thank me later. ...is there even a point in me asking this. The picture can't be untaken, I don't know what kind of damage control we could possibly do right now but it's fine, it was just a moment, your image of the perfect shining hero is just slightly dented not shattered."

"...just say I was tired after clearing three dungeons and that's what I was thinking?"

"Sunbae, look at that picture. That is not a man who is thinking about the monsters he's just killed unless he has very interesting predilections about monsters."

"—no!"

"Right. Park Eun-ji suggested that we just do nothing and tank it, and honestly your fangirls are going insane over this—at least the ones that aren't crying themselves to bed because it turns out you're not gay—"

"I'm into men too, you know that." Though he wishes he weren't.

"Fujoshi fangirls are not known for their complete lack of biphobia, sunbae. Anyway—" Sigh. "I'm not gonna do anything. I'm going to publish one of the videos that doesn't linger overmuch on your face, I think we have one with a good angle. And then once you're not backlashing you'll tell me what you want me to do about all of this. Sound good?"