"What the fuck!!! IUDs are removable and children aren't, you should not have a child by just happening to not be using contraception while fucking your partner! You should not have a child you don't actively and enthusiastically want!!!" He starting to pace and fume. "For the good of the country??? The familial correlation isn't even that strong!!!!! And if Japan is so fucking concerned about its birth rates it should maybe try to make living there less of a fucking nightmare!!!! And White Star Guild is meant to be protecting your interests, that is their point! And we need powerful combat espers right now a lot more than we need potential maybe-espers in twenty fucking years! And also it's your fucking life and your fucking body and they don't get to make you have a baby you don't want to have!!!!!!!!!!!!!

"What the fuck!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

He's actually starting to emit some icy mist around himself while he talks.

"Yep, that was about my reaction. With more shouting, less ice, and literal fire."

...less ice? Oh. Right. Away with the ice.

He stops at the kitchen counter to rest his weight on it, leaning forward and taking a few deep calming breaths. "Sorry. Sorry about that."

"Honestly, your reaction is very gratifying, and brings me joy. If it helps, White Star is looking incredibly stupid right now. What with what we've been doing and how I am clearly doing great now that I'm away from them. I checked."

"They should be! Losing you to Korea because of this? Because of that pile of turd? They deserve to crumble." Another deep breath, calm down, Lee Tae-gun. "...that would probably be bad for the world. Or something. But they should be looking like clowns, now."

"Eh. I think it's important to the overall guild ecosystem for the shitty ones to experience consequences? For the good of the overall country and the world. But yes. They should look like clowns, and they do, and it's immensely satisfying."

"I hope he's looking like a clown, too. I read some of the stuff he said after, uh." After they had that one conversation in which Hye-jin cried at him and he realised he didn't know anything about her. "Thinking he's hot shit, like you're the one missing out."

"Oh, he looks like the biggest dumbass. The coward's been avoiding interviews even though he adores talking about himself. I think he's likely to be painted as 'the idiot who lost Japan an S-rank,' but. I haven't been keeping up with the news, obviously."

"I guess it's presumptuous of me, to expect I'll be made S-rank, but." Volcanic Range is gone because of her, that's pretty hard to debate.

"If you're not an S-rank I'm not an S-rank. Modus ponens to modus tollens..."

Pause. "Uh, that's, uh, that's a maths thing, it means that since I am an S-rank you must be, too."

Giggle. "Well, thank you."

"The, uh. The media is now calling us the ice king and the fire queen," he says, it having occurred to him that she wouldn't know if she's not keeping up with the news.

".... you know what, I'll take it over fire princess," muses Hye-jin. "Properly crowned queen instead of implications of being a spoiled brat, and all that."

Oh. Yeah. Right. That. He'd been mostly thinking about it from the angle of "yet another way the media is boxing them into a couple mold" but that's also a thing, isn't it.

"I'm not entirely sure what to do about the whole... public image angle." Tae-gun has never been one of those espers whose official PR had a stance on the nature of his relationships with his partners, not even to the "do they kiss" level. Some espers go all in on it—Yoo-min and Seungjoo are known to be a couple—and others just leave it as various levels of subtext and playing to the Korean understanding of the kayfabe their celebrities do—Woo-young and Tae-hwan used to be one such case—but Tae-gun's never done the kayfabe thing at all and let people speculate to their hearts' content. Now, though? Everyone knows for a fact they're fucking, that they fucked while cavorting with monsters in an S-rank dungeon, and Tae-gun feels really conflicted about all of this. After all, Hye-jin herself is a big example of why one might want to not give the impression that they're dating their partner to the public.

"Oh. I was going to ignore it and say our sex lives are none of their business? I honestly feel the whole... celebrity kayfabe from espers is incredibly fucked up. We're trying to save lives, not start a fanclub. It's like if people were expecting their local firemen to do the celebrity thing."

"Oh no, I wasn't thinking that we'd—do anything like that. Just... I don't know." Maybe that's healthiest? Just not thinking about it? It does not feel entirely, uh, safe for him to just not care about his image but he's having some trouble articulating... why... "I wouldn't want there to be pressure on either of us again for, like, dating, or, if we go our separate ways have a ton of media about how we broke up or whatever, I guess is a thing." That's more concrete. "Back when—with him—it was pretty... low-key?"

Nod. "That sounds nice. I think there's going to be pressure or - expectations - no matter what we do? But if it's just the media and not in Quasar then, you know, it's... not exactly fine, but I'm kind of used to it. Uh, we're not doing sexual exclusivity, right? I'm assuming not but that seems worth asking out loud."

Blink.

Blink blink.

Blink blink blink.

"Uh. I've never thought about that."

"Oh. Uh, well. You are my second sexual partner in my life, so, um. ... I honestly might experiment? I haven't even kissed another girl yet, it's tragic. And honestly any source of backlash reduction for you would be great, please do go acquire an extra partner or two if you're feeling up for it."

"...I don't think I will." She can guess why. "But it's fine if you want to have sex with other people. —not that I really have any right to control that or, or tell you what to do. ...though I, uh, empirically am not going to be amazing about using protection so uh, um, be careful about, uh, I mean, you know?" Why is the word "STDs" so hard for him to say.

"STDs?" questions Hye-jin, and then nods when he confirms this. "Yeah. I will. Though I'm not even sure if I will or not, I don't know how to, uh, go to a bar to pick up chicks or... whatever... just. I might want to." Probably not right now, because Jaeha exists! And probably hates her.

"Woo-young knows how to. Pick up girls, I mean. At bars. ...now's probably not the best—"

He gets a text.

"—time?" What time even is it, why is Woo-young texting him in the middle of the night, did something happen—