He gets something in his stomach, and as he starts to plan farther ahead he realises that he can't just show up at the dungeon. Not just because there'll be cameras or he'll be detected; he has a guy. If he gets there, and finds Tae-gun, and saves him, then what? How is he going to explain this to Lucid? How is he going to explain it to Insoo? He's under no illusions that Tae-gun will just accept him, and he shouldn't plan assuming that that'll happen. Tae-gun may feel grateful, he might be able to leverage that, but he has to think longer term.

(He can't live in the world where Tae-gun is dead. Since the alternative is unthinkable, he has to take actions assuming he lives in the thinkable world. That's the same logic they use for dungeons like Volcanic Range, where they're almost certain that the way to defeat them isn't feasible in most possible universes so they strategise for the universes where it is. In the world where Tae-gun is dead, there are no possible actions Jaeha can take that will ever mean anything again, so he must live in the world where Tae-gun is not dead, and in that world what he needs to do is prove that Tae-gun is not dead and get him out.)

...he's been thinking about this all wrong.

If Tae-gun is alive—because Tae-gun is alive—he needs to be rescued. And Jaeha can't rescue him. Jaeha will die, if the reports are correct he'll die as soon as he steps into the dungeon, and if he dies then he can't save Tae-gun.

No. What Jaeha needs to do is to mount a rescue. He needs to find people, any people, who can go into that dungeon and find Tae-gun. But everyone thinks Tae-gun is dead, so they're not going to go into it with that possibility in mind, they're not going to look that hard.

Jaeha needs to find people. Jaeha knows people, knows quite a lot of people, all over the world. He has contacts, he's powerful, he's owed favours. And he's good at this. He forgot that for a moment, he lived too long in the unthinkable world, but he's good at this, and if Tae-gun is to survive, he needs to give it his all. He needs to give this a real shot. Twenty people? Maybe twenty-five? They're going to need to be handpicked to be able to do search and rescue in that environment, and those people will of course all be busy with other dungeons in the confluence but it's early, it's only day four, there aren't that many S-rank dungeons already out. And everyone will agree that they can't lose Lee Tae-gun, he's too strong a weapon against dungeons like these, they can't lose him on day four (they can't lose him ever).

He grabs his phone. He has many, many calls to make.

They don't have a very productive rest of their day, and for the first time in Tae-gun's life he thinks that's a good thing. Hye-jin calls her parents to reassure them, and prez texts Tae-gun to make sure they're still alive, and then Woo-young tells them stories and tidbits about Tae-hwan. Just little things he thinks about randomly as he speaks like the dumb faces he used to make while watching movies and how he was actually scared of horror ones and loved romcoms, how he'd actually wanted to be a firefighter when he was younger so becoming an esper was like a dream come true, how he'd sometimes talk in his sleep, how cute the way the corners of his eyes crinkled when he smiled was, how he was jealous of Tae-gun but didn't like to admit it and how Woo-young would pet him and try to reassure him, how much he loved his job and going out every day and seeing people and protecting them, how much time he spent on his hair and skincare in the morning...

They all sleep together that night (not like that, pervs), with Tae-gun in the middle so that he can guide both of them, and by the time they wake up Woo-young can fully move his upper body again, if slowly and with difficulty, and Tae-gun summons a regular non-magical wheelchair from guild storage for him. Hye-jin is still suffering from more backlash than she's ever had in her life, though mostly not in the acute hypothermia way, while Tae-gun... got his background backlash reduced, on net, but by less than one would've expected, given how he also got a lot more backlash from taking the brunt of several explosions to the face right before diving into magic lava and swimming in it for a while to find Hye-jin.

The three of them have no assignments today, barring emergency calls, so they're just having a lazy morning, which Tae-gun once again surprisingly doesn't object to. It might help that he's feeling better than he has in literal years, physically speaking: some old pains have eased, and he's had a great night's sleep, at least compared to his usual. Which obviously he feels guilty as hell about, because Tae-hwan is dead, especially when Woo-young has a short bout of crying when he wakes up and Tae-gun hugs him to console him, but so it goes. Now they're all in Tae-gun's kitchen, Woo-young making some coffee while Tae-gun is looking at news and other updates on his phone.

Hye-jin is still a little chilly; it's managable, but usually she manages it with... clothes. Which she mostly doesn't have. The coffee will help, but the coffee isn't ready yet.

"Is there a way to bring in... clothes... here. Without teleporting off to grab them from my house or the split silo? Not that I don't make your shirts look great, but." She feels very exposed, okay.

Tae-gun: is still naked.

"I think I have warmer clothes?"

Woo-young: is wearing Tae-gun's clothes, but he can actually reasonably fit in them, and does not have a cold-inducing backlash.

"Hyung, you're really something sometimes," Woo-young sighs. He opens the commscreen and, "Wait, actually, did you guys already replace your chips? I assume Volcanic Range fucked them up. —anyway, I'll show you how to do that later, Hye-jin, but there's a way for you to materialise some basic clothes from storage if you want."

"Oh. I didn't."

"Oh it would have fucked up my chip, wouldn't it. Damn. But yeah, basic clothes that fit me would be great."

"What size are you?" he asks at the same time as he presses a button on his commscreen that materialises two little cubes approximately 10cm to a side with circular apertures on top.

Tae-gun walks over to Woo-young and puts his right index in the cube. He doesn't flinch, but when he pulls his finger out there's a small bleeding incision there.

Yep, she too can get the finger prick while she takes a moment to convert her size into Korean sizes. Look, she's used to using Japanese sizing, okay, it'll take her a bit. But: yes, she remembers.

"How highly should I prioritize making an emergency stash to keep here?" wonders Hye-jin, a little awkwardly. "I - am making no assumptions about our siloing situation going forward."

Right.

"You can do that if you want," he says, choosing this moment to switch from browsing the news on his phone to browsing the news on his commscreen. That's a reason for him to not look at her that is not embarrassing.

...Woo-young wants popcorn.

"Right. Well. One emergency stash for you, one for me, I guess? Your emergency stash would be in my secret underground silo when it's done, my house is objectively compromised even if I can't stand to sell it because of my emotional attachment, and I'm assuming your side of the split silo has stuff for you."

"Yeah. It, it does."

Gosh what interesting news.

The things Tae-gun-hyung gets embarrassed by (discussing bringing clothes over to each other's silos) and the ones he doesn't (being naked in front of Woo-young and Hye-jin) are a source of endless fascination to Woo-young.

Anyway! Since Hye-jin has her own commscreen already Woo-young can show her the place on the internal Quasar app where she can request various items on storage. It's organised by a tiered permissions system, and Hye-jin has permissions for various amenity items—such clothes, toiletries, and the like—melee weapons, OTC meds, an emergency phone, a world map as well as maps of various cities in Korea plus bigger cities elsewhere, and so on.

Huh. Neat! Anyway yeah she'll get clothes, and then immediately flee to the bathroom to go put them on. They're a little bland for her taste, but such is the way of these things. She is both more warm and more decent! Hooray! She will have coffee in celebration.

"So, uh. Who wants to watch movies? Tae-gun in the middle to deal with backlash?"

"Oh I'm down," he says, picking up his phone to message Tae-hwan to invite him over—

—he drops his phone and looks down at it and starts crying again. Quietly, this time, no sobbing, but just. 

He doesn't remember the last time he watched a movie without Tae-hwan, and every time he did he'd always have invited Tae-hwan over, and now he can't, anymore.

...Tae-gun wraps an arm around Woo-young and pulls Woo-young's head to rest on his shoulder.

Woo-young asked them to not make a big deal of it when this inevitably happened, though, so he says, "Yeah, sounds good to me too."

She nods, gives Woo-young a quick hug, then heads over to see about picking out a movie. Of some kind.

And Tae-gun pushes his chair to the living room and picks him up then gently places him on the sofa.

"The news still doesn't know what happened. Quasar hasn't been bugging me about it but it might be good to give them any update," Tae-gun says as he settles down on the sofa, himself.

"Oh. Yeah, I gave my explanation to you two, I didn't put it in any kind of official report." She perches next to Tae-gun's clear and obvious sitting location, then begins typing something out. "I'll, uh. Start working on that."