"Ah, yeah, I can see how that'd be a pretty big issue. But you do have a partner right now?"

"Yeahhhh but we're not that compatible." Still more than Woo-young is with Lee Tae-gun, though, which is a shame. Not that he can compete with Kang Jaeha, of course, but, sue him, he's a bit start struck and has got a little puppy crush. It's fine if he can recognise the feelings inside him, right? He's not indulging in anything other than some longing looks.

(How did he ever think he was 100% heterosexual? Maybe it's because he hadn't ever been this close to Lee Tae-gun, not that he's ever going to tell the man himself that when he said it was "being around handsome men" that made him question it what he meant was specifically "having been in the same room as Lee Tae-gun a couple of times". It's not kosher to tell someone you barely know that they personally made you realise things about your sexuality.)

"It's really lucky that the guild managed to find a battery for your powers so quickly, anyway, so you don't need to go into dungeons that much."

"Oh they actually already had one!"

"Huh. Really? That's lucky."

"Yeah. I mean, they do keep these weird dungeon materials around, right, and the researchers said... Okay I confess I don't understand what they said, exactly, but they knew roughly what kinds of affinities that material had and when I manifested and went through the initial battery of government tests the researcher that was working with me suspected that I might be a match and followed up on it and it turned out that I was. That's actually how I got into Quasar—I could've just sold my powers to them but you guys seemed pretty cool, in comparison to other guilds, so I decided to just join up."

"...yeah. Quasar is really cool."

How can anyone not have a crush on this man when he's capable of smiling like that? It's quite frankly unfair.

"How'd you join? If you don't mind me asking."

"I... was homeless. Before Quasar. I went into my mandatory military service as soon as I could and manifested like the week after I got discharged and Quasar took me in." Despite the embarrassment that while of manifestation was, which he's pretty sure Quasar had to somehow sweep under the rug for the sake of his image. Or maybe not? Tae-gun supposes no one would believe someone who went "hey I actually matched with Lee Tae-gun on one of those sex apps once, he was begging for my cock all night like a little slut" so maybe Quasar just relied on that. "They were welcoming and accommodating in a way I don't think any of the other Korean guilds could match up."

"...aw, that's really nice. I'm glad you had them."

"Yeah. And—I know how it comes off, to say that a company is like a family, but they... have been. Like a family." That's maybe a bit too emotionally vulnerable with a stranger? But he's been feeling weirdly chipper these past couple of weeks, probably courtesy of Kang Jaeha.

"No, I totally see what you mean. ...it is still pretty weird to me to, um, call you sunbaenim."

"...yeah. That was weird to me, too, especially straight out of the military. I'm a bit more used to it, right now, but it's definitely a different environment than I expected I'd end up in, growing up. You don't have to if you don't want to, obviously, it's just—the way everyone around here does it, I guess?" It's one thing to refer to your partner that way, but someone who just happens to work in the guild with you just kinda goes counter his expectations.

"I mean, I'm fine with it? No one told me to do it or anything, and they act just fine if I don't—well, Park Yoo-min-sunbae did make a bit of a face when I called him Park Yoo-min-nim, but he didn't say anything. And you're right about the way it comes off, but I've been here a couple of months and it's hard to hold onto the expectations of formality when basically no one else does."

"Sunbae does seem to really like the way things work here, yeah. I have the impression he wasn't ever really even planning on joining the traditional workforce, but we haven't talked about it."

"But you were?"

"...well, yeah. Weren't you?"

"I was."

Yeah, so.

—Woo-young feels like a step in the dance just got missed. 

"Did you want to work with anything in particular?"

"I had been thinking of maybe going into engineering."

"—huh! Really? Somehow I didn't expect that."

"Why not?" Is that an insult? It doesn't sound like one.

Because you're hot and do physically strenuous activities for a living and engineers are nerds.

He's not gonna say that.

"I guess it's hard to picture Lee Tae-gun as anything other than Lee Tae-gun. It's especially hard to imagine you as an intern at an engineering firm, in a suit, working from a cubicle."