interlude: our carefree lives | Glowfic Constellation

this_peculiar_power

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

Hyup!

this_peculiar_power

"So what's your schedule going to be like?" he asks once they're showering.

neither_rest_nor_peace

It's been two days since the confluence started and they've barely had time to catch up. It picked up steam a lot faster than they typically do and Tae-gun and Jaeha were immediately swamped with emergency calls. No emergencies have come up this morning yet, though, so they have some time before their first scheduled non-emergency.

"Small dungeons I can solo, B-ranks or A-ranks, with time between them for when S-ranks show up or I have to be called in for emergencies. You?"

this_peculiar_power

"Similar, except I'm waiting for Nightmare to show, and I'm less able to solo dungeons."

neither_rest_nor_peace

"Oh. Right. How does that usually... go?"

this_peculiar_power

"Nightmare? We go in small groups, a tracker finds a victim, someone with good mobility powers gets us to them, I remove Nightmare's mark, and we get them out."

neither_rest_nor_peace

"That sounds..." Straightforward? Almost peaceful.

this_peculiar_power

He smiles a bit, bitterly. "Nightmare isn't directly dangerous to espers, at least not with competent shielding, until we find the victim and get caught up in their nightmares. What's difficult is that it keeps taunting us, trying to make us get lost, showing us other victims we could be helping so that we can stray from our known path and be trapped. It's psychological warfare." And it goes without saying that when he's backlashed he just doesn't care.

neither_rest_nor_peace

"I'm very mobile," he observes.

this_peculiar_power

"You're also most useful in dungeons where you can do things no one else can. Lots of espers are very mobile, very few espers can do everything else you can."

neither_rest_nor_peace

He nods. "It's not my comparative advantage."

this_peculiar_power

"...your what?"

neither_rest_nor_peace

"Like, it's not the thing I'm best at, so even if I'm also really good at mobility and a lot better than other people I should do the thing I'm best at instead because very few people are as good as I am at that and so someone has to—I'm explaining this wrong. It's an economics concept, like, okay imagine two countries that export—"

this_peculiar_power

Jaeha kisses him. "I think I get it."

neither_rest_nor_peace

Whyyyyy does he still get flustered when Jaeha kisses himmmmm it's been moooonths since they've been togeeetheeeeeeerrrrrrr!!!!

this_peculiar_power

It's because he's a cutie.

neither_rest_nor_peace

Sure, whatever he says.

"Anyway, I just meant that maybe I could help in my downtime. Flying around is less backlash intensive than most things I could be doing, and if I'm with you I'd get passive guiding that might help and even be backlash-negative."

this_peculiar_power

"...hmm. Maybe." It's not an obviously awful idea.

neither_rest_nor_peace

"You don't look happy about it."

this_peculiar_power

"Well... are you happy that I have to go into Nightmare?"

neither_rest_nor_peace

"...well, no."

this_peculiar_power

"But I'm specced for it. You're not. Even if I can protect you... It still scares me."

neither_rest_nor_peace

"...hyung..."

this_peculiar_power

"I don't know. Maybe. It would be reassuring to have you right next to me rather than off doing something insane on your own where I can't see and having to wait for you to come back home afterwards, not knowing if you'll die in a dungeon."

neither_rest_nor_peace