And then he's back downstairs. "Are you—"

"Hyung, for the love of—just go."

Yeah. Right. Alright. He goes.

Sigh.

Well, now he has to figure out what to do with himself. He still can't walk, and he doesn't have Tae-hwan to help—

He lights a cigarette and tries not to think about it.

About him.

The dungeon they got called to opened in Seoul itself, and there are various non-esper staff as well as a couple of B-ranks already on site when they arrive trying to contain the worst of the damage before Tae-gun and Hye-jin got there.

Alright, what kinds of monsters are these, then?

They're translucent slimes with glowing cores, and like most slime monsters trying to just straightforwardly destroy their cores causes them to split, and they occasionally clump together to form a bigger slime. They're also a lot faster than it seems like they should be, as rather than sliding along the floor they roll like wheels. The slimes bigger than people try to absorb them whole, the ones that are smaller try to get attached to them.

Are they perhaps vulnerable to being boiled alive? Yes? Awesome. She will clean up the large packs of little ones and leave the careful precision work to her partner and try to carefully toe the line between efficiency of handling this crisis, and efficiency of not racking up too much backlash when she's already still kind of hurting on that front.

The boiling alive will definitely need to be their tool du jour for actually killing them because it's just a lot more efficient than Tae-gun's freezing. He's definitely going to have to multitask because the slimes are spreading out pretty fast but most of his attention is going to be focused on cutting any people trapped in slimes out and then detaching any that are currently chomping via careful precise applications of ice surfaces. He jumps onto his hoverboard and starts from the outside in, trying to make sure the slimes that got the farthest away are dealt with before advancing.

The support staff is also working on setting up a perimeter around the portal to that it can be dealt with once the monsters have been eliminated and contained, and while the fact that the dungeon is actively spewing them out means that people are mostly smart enough to stay away, there are still some gawkers and people who feel like they're sufficiently safe to take pictures and videos. And there are the conversations, everywhere...

                                   "Is that Kim Hye-jin?"

      "It is! The red hair!"

              "I liked her more naked."

          "Did you see Lee Tae-gun?"

"You know what they say about slim men..."

              "He wasn't that slim either."

     "Perv."

              "I was talking about his shoulders!"

                    "Espers really have it all, don't they? Looks, power, pretty men smiling at them..."

"Big tits."

          "Those, too."

Tae-gun is perfectly used to people being horny on main about him, especially since they always assume he only has regular human hearing and say more things than they would if they knew he could hear them. He is... somewhat less used to people doing so in full knowledge of what he looks like naked.

That's probably going to be the new normal, isn't it.

Hye-jin's less used to people objectifying her quite this much. Usually the parasocial relationship was a bit more focused on her being an adorable perfectly untouched Good Girl (tm), which: definitely did get her horny fans, but. ... Talking about the size of her tits. In earshot. Like she’s a piece of meat. That’s a bit new. Sort of similar to what she’s used to, but fundamentally different, too. She doesn't know how she feels about it besides not liking it.

Wait, no, hold on. Now that she thinks about it, she knows what she feels. Angry. She's angry. But not about the tits comments, she's angry about these people being stupid. This is an active danger zone! These dumbasses are going to use up very valuable esper time and energy (namely: hers and Tae-gun's, when they're both backlashing more than usual) needing to be fucking saved, because they put themselves into danger ogling people who are trying to do their damn jobs and save lives. During a confluence! The fuckers!!

"Please evacuate the area for your own safety, this is an active dungeon break!" she yells, instead of telling them all to fuck off. That would only encourage them.

It's fiiiiiiine, they're fine, Lee Tae-gun and Kim Hye-jin will help if anything goes wrong.

...you know what, Hye-jin has a point.

Tae-gun will start summoning ice walls between people and the dungeon break area, trying to do some active crowd control where he can spare the attention and help the support staff trying to keep everyone away as much as he can.

The support staff is simultaneously grateful and incredibly irked. Why are people like this!!! They shouldn't be taking so much esper time and attention!!!!!! Not that they'll say that, of course, they're much too professional, and also they're used to dealing with spectators wanting to ogle dungeons on the regular, but. Ugh.

Yes ma'am he knows the slime chomping on you hurt ma'am but that's what you get for not staying away ma'am please go ma'am.

Ma'am.

Sigh.

Yeah. Ugh. People. She likes them for the most part, but sometimes? They make it so hard. She will give the support staff grateful smiles and focus on making their lives easier over catering towards any of the idiots wasting everyone's time and attention. No conversations, shoo, she's working. (She's slightly more polite than that, but. ... Only slightly.)

Anyway yes back to their starter JRPG quest of killing slimes. (Heh. And they even have the dumb NPCs...) They will do it so well and even the stupid NPCs people will live.

Honestly, they could do this in their sleep. If they weren't still not really recovered from yesterday's backlash, they'd barely notice the strain. They'll be methodical and professional, Tae-gun will close the perimeter and Hye-jin will kill their starter quest monsters and they'll manage to contain the threat in short order, and find themselves behind the yellow tape.

The dungeon does not seem to particularly care that they think the threat is "contained" and is happy to keep spewing more slimes.

Is it trying to play attrition with them? Is that its game?

Apparently. And it's a game it is definitely losing. They can sit perched next to the dungeon entrance on one of Tae-gun's ice hoverboards and Hye-jin can incinerate them as they come out, and. ... There are cameras, because of course there are, but they can hold hands anyway. If he's okay with it?

At this point? The ship's sailed. There were already rumours that the two of them were banging like screen doors in a hurricane, is there even any point in trying to hold onto a semblance of propriety? ...also holding hands isn't that big a deal, Lee Tae-gun, why are you thinking about propriety???

(It's because he wants to jump Hye-jin's bones and being next to her makes him want it more, duh.)

He can keep a public face while they hold hands and wait for everything to get set up so they can go in and kill the dungeon. A couple of support espers to hold the fort outside, a medical team (more necessary than ever in a slime dungeon, if even a drop of these pests escapes it can be a nightmare to track down), as soon as that's all set up they can go rain fiery and icy wrath on their foes.

Yep. They will politely wait here, keeping their backlash to a minimum, while everyone else gets things sorted. They'll probably need to escort a sensor in to make sure the dungeon doesn't have anything weird, but Hye-jin suspects this is one of those dungeons that isn't going to get the chance to get a proper classification before it's closed. Because, well. They're here and going to squash it.

It goes exactly as expected, and is squashed accordingly.

"I'm good to head back to your silo whenever, I packed an overnight bag," she informs her partner in an undertone once that's all neatly wrapped up. What? She's efficient, okay, and teleports are now extremely precious resources! She basically cleaned out her silo of all of her personal items and stuffed them in a backpack.