our carefree lives | Glowfic Constellation

Lee Tae-gun. Korea's first and, currently, only S-rank. There are A-rankers who could get the promotion to S-rank, if they wanted to, if they revealed enough of their powers—or, at least, there is one, in Kang Jaeha himself—but this flash in the pan boy was the first one to decide to just go for it and now he's probably learning about how much it sucks to be the center of attention.

Not that you'd know from just looking at him. He's always gorgeous, stepping out of dungeons, and that's genuinely impressive in itself, but it's even more impressive if Quasar is right that they might be compatible. This implies things about the shape of Lee Tae-gun's backlash, things that suggest he's quite good at self-control, and that he must be holding quite a lot in, to be able to look like that. So that piques Jaeha's curiosity, and he looks into the boy.

Lee Tae-gun is 21; manifested really late, about a year and a half ago; has had three partners so far, none of them particularly impressive in their own rights, each lasting a handful of months and ending in the normal way these things do, with them finding partners they're more compatible with. As far as Jaeha can tell, there's nothing particularly out of the ordinary in the boy's history. He's really just very straightforwardly boring.

And, well, Jaeha is also between partners right now. The story with him is also usually the same: he's never found anyone he had great compatibility with, and they'd all eventually leave, even if they never found someone else. Better alone than with Kang Jaeha. But he doesn't take it personally. He knows they probably want more out of a partnership than he can give. This boy will be no different, they'll spend a while together and help each other survive and eventually the boy will move on and Jaeha won't take it personally either.

So Kang Jaeha is in a meeting room, reading some files and waiting for Lee Tae-gun to arrive so they can figure out whether they'll do business together or not.

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neither_rest_nor_peace

He still doesn't know if that's insulting. Probably not? Because Min Woo-young has no reason to insult him with a straight face? But he thinks he'd be a perfectly good engineer.

there_to_stay

Lee Tae-gun is making faces that Woo-young doesn't know how to interpret and he might've offended him and aaah.

"Did I... say something bad?" he wonders, tentatively.

neither_rest_nor_peace

"Huh? No." He doesn't think so?

there_to_stay

"Oh. Okay."

neither_rest_nor_peace

...well, now it's awkward. He opens his mouth—

there_to_stay

"It's just that it looked like you were—uncomfortable with what I said?" You know, Woo-young, the way to get your celebrity crush to not write you off would be to maybe stop talking.

neither_rest_nor_peace

"No, just... I thought I'd have made a good engineer, is all."

there_to_stay

"Oh! I mean, I'm—" The words "sure you would have" die on his lips. Lee Tae-gun has been nothing but straightforward and has only said things he definitely means and hasn't wasted any time with flattery and platitudes, so perhaps Woo-young should do the same. "I guess I'm not sure you would have since we don't know each other that well yet, but I wasn't thinking in those terms. It's just that you're really, really good at what you do right now?

"Like, imagine seeing an Olympic swimmer get a gold medal, and then finding out that they thought about being an accountant, and, maybe they'd have been a great accountant, I don't know, but it's difficult to imagine them doing anything but this thing they're clearly amazing at, you know?" Also the swimsuit, it's hard to imagine an Olympic swimmer not in a swimsuit-and-related and it's hard to imagine Lee Tae-gun not looking incredibly physically impressive and HOW did Woo-young ever think he was heterosexual.

neither_rest_nor_peace

...see, that was a very clear set of sentences that articulated and communicated things very well and didn't leave Tae-gun having to guess at Min Woo-young's thoughts at all nor feeling maybe veiledly insulted! Tae-gun appreciates this set of sentences.

"I guess I don't know if I'd have been a good engineer, either," he says, smiling a bit. "I just like engineering things."

there_to_stay

...well, he does sound a certain kind of smart, now that Woo-young thinks about it.

"Like... maths things, or?"

neither_rest_nor_peace

"That's... some of them, yeah."

there_to_stay

Patientwaitingface.

neither_rest_nor_peace

Oh he's going to have to actually explain it. Cool. Uh...

...how does he explain it.

He doesn't... know...

........this is embarrassing. It's. Taking embarrassingly long for him to figure it out. It's especially taking long now that he's spending so much time thinking about how embarrassing it is that he's spending so much time thinking instead of about the thing he should be thinking about.

there_to_stay

He blinks, considers saying something, and... decides against it, actually? He's happy to wait.

(Lee Tae-gun looks adorable getting embarrassed like this? He never thought he'd have the thought 'Lee Tae-gun is adorable' but here they are, Lee Tae-gun is adorable.)

neither_rest_nor_peace

Min Woo-young should be saying something. Should be interrupting him. The silence is streeeetching oooooout...

neither_rest_nor_peace

...and it's fine? It doesn't look like he's... judging Tae-gun at all?

there_to_stay

Nope. No judgment here (other than cute).

neither_rest_nor_peace

Okay.

He thinks.

neither_rest_nor_peace

"I think it's something about... precision," he finally says, after what was probably three and a half years of silence during which they both starved to death waiting for him to come up with something to say. "Things having... exact solutions, or exact bounds to their inexact solutions. If that makes sense? There being... algorithms and procedures, those kinds of things. They're interesting and... I think I'm good at them."

there_to_stay

"Precision... I can see that. It even fits your power's theme, somewhat? I think?"

neither_rest_nor_peace

...huh.

neither_rest_nor_peace

He hadn't actually made that connection before.

there_to_stay

"If we ever run out of dungeons you know what to specialise in!" he says cheerfully.

neither_rest_nor_peace

Oh he'd really rather not think about that possibility. It would probably be better for the world if dungeons stopped but, in Min Woo-young's metaphor, it'd be like if all pools in the world dried up.

there_to_stay