"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."

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.

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.

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

"Oh. Okay."

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

"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.

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

"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.

...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."