"...I'm glad I can serve as your thermometer for how ridiculous your feelings can get."

He giggle-hiccups into Tae-gun's skin.

Hye-jin gives a little soft huff.

"I think you're allowed to feel whatever you want, and that it's better for you to express your feelings than hold them in and call them stupid. So. I hereby give you permission to be sunbae stupid at emotional regulation."

"Getting ganged up on now, am I."

"Keep that idea in reserve, hyung, I might take you up on it."

"—oh, you're considering it!"

"Shut up!"

"I, that, um!"

No, don't burn the egg part of the omurice this is key!

Plate. Fried rice. Omelette. "Sunbae I need another ice knife, I promise I have good intentions for this one," she says, instead of engaging with, uh, any of that.

Yep yep he should not be giving Woo-young any more ammunition here's the knife.

"...but you see why this is really stupid right? I was just sobbing and now I'm fine. And I think I just read too many therapy books because I keep telling myself it's okay to feel whatever I'm feeling until that's all I'm hearing in my head and I'm not feeling anything and I don't know what it is that's okay for me to feel."

Slice open the omelette, to dump delicious eggy goodness over the fried rice! Behold. It is edible. Ketchup is traditionally added but is not required, the bottle will instead be offered on the side.

"I... think that's just how grief works? I mean, I haven't read many therapy books, but. I don't think any of that's stupid. Also: behold, food."

Cool Tae-gun can—hmm he'd been thinking of bringing Woo-young with him to the table but actually he thinks that probably he should keep snuggling so instead he'll bring the food over here.

"Thank you. ...both of you." He unhugs a bit to accept the plate and start picking at it. "It's just stupid. I'm—I'm going to say the kind of dumb hell iPhone shit hyung likes to say, fair warning."

"It's not nice to call America hell, Woo-young-ah."

Well now he's sobbing again.

...that was not the reaction he'd been expecting!!!

Same from Hye-jin, actually!

"I feel like we're the two people least likely to hold acting like Ta-sunbae against you. I mean, it's literally him and his partner. Honestly I think seeing this in someone else is probably very good for him."

"It's just not funny. That stupid joke. It's just not that funny so why, why did, why did Tae-hwan, ah, why did Tae-hwan laugh so much when I told it to him and why is he never going, going to laugh again! His stupid laugh! The stupid dumb half-grin and, ah." He nearly drops the plate, would've without Tae-gun's help, he's taken over by a wave of vertigo and nausea. "Why? Why did he laugh so much? 

"And, and he was a fucking hero. He was a hero, did you know? He saved everyone in that dungeon. And I wasn't there," he's starting to hyperventilate, "I could've gotten him out but I wasn't, wasn't assigned—he saved everyone. Someone fucked up and killed the core too soon and he stayed behind until everyone else was out and then, and then, and then—"

"Oh Woo-young-ah, I'm so sorry..."

"He was twenty-three! He was younger than Seungjoo! Why is he dead! Why, why, why, Tae-hwan why, why didn't you leave, why—"

He can't speak anymore because he can't breathe, his body is shaking with the violent sobbing and he'd have hugged Woo-young and not said anything and interlaced their fingers together and kissed Woo-young's knuckles and now he's never going to do that again, because he's dead.

Oh, fuck, that's a really awful way to go. And the - the uncertainty of it, the not knowing what would have happened to him after the dungeon closed...

She has not actually started on the next batch of omurice yet (she was still on beating the eggs), so there's nothing stopping her from putting this down to give him a hug.

"He's dead, he's dead, ah, he's dead, why, why why why why why why why why—" How can anything ever be okay again, how, how can, how is he going to, how is he going to wake up in the morning?