"What do you want me to say? Obviously I understand she'd be pissed and traumatised but it's—it's letting my mistake hurt my people, Woo-young."

"Prez, she doesn't owe us shit. She could've gone to some other guild, she could've gone to Lucid—"

He makes a face.

"I know Lucid woulda been worse, you know Lucid woulda been worse, but she doesn't. It's, like, if you're bar hopping looking for someone to spend the night with a minor negative sign from someone will get you to keep looking, you won't insist on someone who gives you bad vibes just in case they might be your soulmate."

"...do you do that, Woo-young?"

"Don't change the subject. What do you want? Really, really? No bullshit, full honesty?"

"...I feel like you're fishing for an answer."

"Okay, then, I'll start for you. You want sunbae to not die—"

"Obviously."

"—and you also want him to be happy and healthy. You want all of your people to be happy and healthy, obviously, but the one you're failing the most blatantly is him."

"Why does everyone insist on saying I'm failing him? It's self-inflicted!"

"I know that, you know that, sunbae knows that, but you still feel responsible for it and it eats away at you and you hate it when it's pointed out."

"Can we go back to last week when you didn't talk to me like this?"

"You're the one who decided to get me involved, prez, so lie on the bed you made."

Grumble grumble.

"And obviously the fact that he's the face of the guild, Korea's most powerful esper, plausibly single-handedly responsible for over ten percent of the lives saved from dungeons in the country, is weighing heavy in your considerations, too."

"...Min Woo-young. No."

"No?"

"No. If I treat him differently, it's because of who he is as a person. He is not a tool and he is not just 'the face of the company' or 'the most powerful esper in Korea'."

He pauses and scrutinises prez's face. "Huh. You mean that."

"If only Kim Hye-jin could see that too!"

"Aaand you feel guilty."

"I see we're back to stating obvious things."

"No, I mean... you were considering her one of our people already, weren't you? That's... that's why. Huh. You'd... just already bucketed her in your head as one of us so you acted like she was. And so the fact that she refused is..."

He flinches at that. Being read like filth is not pleasant to experience.