"And, and we don't have his body, so we can't bury him, and no one has time for, for a fucking funeral, or even just to go to a shrine to light some incense, and he hated the smell of incense—"

"Woo-young-ah—"

"Shut up. Just, just shut up, just hug me and let me pretend for ten minutes, just. Just shut up..."

Yeah. Okay. They can do that.

...fuck, Tae-hwan...

Yeah.

This is Kang Jaeha's fourth confluence and, like in the last three, Kang Jaeha's main job will be dealing with Nightmare. It hasn't appeared yet, though, and there are other dungeons that could benefit from his help; amongst the many ways in which his powers are superior to those of other psychic espers is the fact that they work on a large class of monsters, too, so he has some niche uses even in dungeons that have no mental effects at all. That said, there are so few psychic espers that he usually doesn't have to do that, there's always more psychic dungeons for him to go help with.

And this means that he's not on assignment when he hears the news.

He's not sure what he's feeling, when it happens. That's usually true—whenever he feels anything at all, he mostly doesn't bother trying to figure out what, and it goes away as quickly as it came—but now that's even more the case, that he doesn't know, and it's not going away at all. If there's one person who has always been able to mess with Kang Jaeha's head and heart, it's Lee Tae-gun, so it's no wonder that Lee Tae-gun's death would do the same.

"...hyung?" asks his partner, a younger guy called Kim Insoo, looking alarmed.

...alarmed? Why is he alarmed? Does Jaeha look very—oh. He dropped his mug of coffee and spilled it all over himself. It... actually hurts, a bit, the burning. "Ah," he says, trying to reboot his face.

"Sorry, Insoo-ya, I just got—really surprised," he says, aiming for "a bit shaken and trying to awkwardly paper over it". He reaches for some paper towel to dry his hands and notices they're very, very red.

"Hyung, that looks bad, did you spill it anywhere else?"

He looks down and, yeah, the bottom of his shirt and the top of his trousers have coffee on them. "I did."

"Okay, cold water, right now, to prevent any further damage," says Insoo, walking over to Jaeha to start pushing him towards the bathroom.

Right. Yes. Burns. Those are... important, somehow. For some reason. He's not totally sure what the reason is, but the version of him Insoo knows does agree with that, and so he hurries appropriately to get some cold water running onto the places the scalding hot coffee spilled on him.

(Tae-gun can't be dead. He can't be dead. That's not, that's not a way the world can be.)

"Hyung, Jesus Christ, are you that shocked Lee Tae-gun died?"

...Insoo sounds insecure. Despite Jaeha's efforts Insoo still feels jealous about the partnership Jaeha had with Tae-gun. Jaeha's pretty sure this is mostly in a "wants to measure up" way, not in a "Jaeha let slip how much he cares" way, but in order to reinforce that he gets rid of Insoo's most recent memories and replaces them with an illusion where Jaeha reacted more promptly to spilling the coffee—

When the newscaster says Lee Tae-gun and Kim Hye-jin are dead he gasps and drops his mug of scalding hot coffee. "Ah, shit!" he exclaims, immediately stepping away from the counter and reaching for paper towel to try to get clean himself.

"...hyung? Oh, shit, hyung, are you alright?"

"Yeah, just—fuck—was surprised and spilled my coffee. Ah, help me with this—should I run some cold water—obviously I should."

"Yeah! Take your clothes off, how bad is it?"

He gestures at where his clothes got coffee on them as he hurries towards the bathroom.

"Oh, ouch. Did that reach—"

He lets out a laugh. "It did not reach my cock, Insoo-ya," he says, stepping into the bathroom and turning the water on. He quickly kicks his shoes off, strips, and gets under the shower.