They arrive only a few minutes later, and all of them together.

One of them is very tall—about as tall as Park Yoo-min—and pretty buff to boot. His hair is silver and his eyes are moss green, and when his eyes land on Tae-gun his face splits into a huge smile.

Next to him is a woman that would in any other company be pretty tall—she's taller than Hye-jin, who is herself taller than the average Korean woman—with long light-blue hair and blue eyes.

And if the first man was unreasonably tall, the second is unreasonably short, his eyes golden and his hair blond and styled in an undercot with a messy top, wearing a chain around his neck and several earrings on both ears. His face goes through a few complicated expressions when he sees Tae-gun and then Hye-jin but he settles on reasonably neutral.

And the person who is probably his partner is yet shorter than him, with fluffy neck-length pink hair and large red pink eyes, wearing a choker with a heart-shaped charm.

Tae-gun stands up and bows. "These are my old partners Lee Juheon and Ha Si-yeon and their current partners Baek Hyun-jae and Kim Chun-hee," he tells Hye-jin, gesturing at each of them in turn. "And this is my current partner Kim Hye-jin."

She also stands to bow. Tall pairing and short pairing! She will not be calling them by these nicknames outside of her head, but it makes it fairly straightforward to keep everyone attached to their names.

"A pleasure to meet you all," she says sincerely.

"Likewise!"

"Tae-gun what in the world are you doing," says the woman introduced as Baek Hyun-jae with a sigh before she walks up to him and pulls him into a tight hug.

!

"Can I join in on that action?"

???

He... nods?

Cool he is now also being hugged by a big hulking wall of muscle.

...tsk.

Ha Si-yeon doesn't join in, and instead just sits on one of the cushions.

Ummmm.

She's not sure what to do actually.

Awwwww. Cute?? Cute. This is good, Tae-gun needs more hugs in his life. Hye-jin beams a little, then heads off to cover her partner's openings and therefore rescue Chun-hee from the social awkwardness. She sits down on her own cushion, smiling brightly at both members of the short and warm colored partnership.

"I already ordered some Bori-cha, if you'd like any?"

"Oh! Um, I'll accept some, thank you," says Kim Chun-hee, gratefully sitting down, too.

After a couple more seconds the taller pair releases Tae-gun from the hug and sits down, too.

Yeah. Um. Yeah. He'll sit.

...............he has no idea what to do next. The platitudes like "How've you been?" die in his throat because, because. It's been more than five years. And also they worked together in dungeons during this time, here and there, but Tae-gun... was too embarrassed to actually interact with any of them and so never did, so it feels even more awkward to ask because—he had so many opportunities to.

His partner waits for a few seconds, then sighs and elbows him.

"Apology first," she coaches, sipping her tea.

Ha Si-yeon snorts despite himself.

Then tries to go back to pouting.

Oh. Oh that's so much worse and more embarrassing than just asking how they've been. He should've practised this, why didn't he think of practising this, now he's going to have to come up with an apology on the spot and he has no idea and—

"I'm sorry," he mumbles to his lap because, well, that's, like, an apology by itself, right? He can try to improve on it but those two words are already an apology.

"You don't have anything to apo—"

"No, no, no, let him cook, I want to hear that," interrupts Ha Si-yeon, lifting a hand to stop Juheon.

"I'm with Si-yeon on this one."