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, two A-ranks and one B-rank, each lasting a handful of months and ending in the normal way these things do, with two of them finding partners they're more compatible with and one stepping away from dungeoneering. 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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Ha Si-yeon

freefall

It's so good when people tell him what to do. Yes, he can do that.

neither_rest_nor_peace

It's trippy as fuck and a little bit terrifying, the way everyone else just blips out of existence while the entire environment kind of flows like it's made of putty, but he was braced for it. Time to do whatever he can do, until Woo-young finds the core.

Hopefully it won't be inside the monster.

Min Woo-young

there_to_stay

It's not.

It still takes Woo-young a while, because despite the existence of radars and the software to interpret their results into 4D maps he still needs to understand the damn things to teleport people, he needs to know where the core is.

But the stupidest thing is that the core is three-dimensional. It is in one of the infinitely many 3D slices of 4D space, with actually zero probability that you'd hit it by just looking. But, well, Ha Si-yeon is doing a pretty damn good job of keeping the monster occupied, so Woo-young can teleport Tae-gun to the right place.

neither_rest_nor_peace

Perfect.

"Get us all out of here."

there_to_stay

Vworp.

freefall

It takes all of them a moment to adjust, Si-yeon in particular, but as soon as he realises he doesn't need to mess around with 4D anymore and can just leave he promptly goes sick on the floor.

neither_rest_nor_peace

"How many more people are there left to rescue?"

"...Lee Tae-gun-nim. We cannot actually wait."

neither_rest_nor_peace

"—we can't just leave the victims behind—"

"We can, and we will." It is the team leader's job to make these calls, after all, and... "This dungeon has existed for as long as espers have, if it's at all smart it is going to seal itself immediately with all of us inside and it is actually that smart, and all of the monsters will be gunning for us—we're killing it. I'm not discussing this. Place their lives on my shoulders. But we're ending this now."

neither_rest_nor_peace

He saw the logic even before she said it, saw the inescapable truth. This is a named S-rank, the smartest, most dangerous kind, the kind that has been escaping them for decades—they need to kill it. They cannot give it the opportunity to leave.

Fuck.

Yeah. She knows.

She made the decision, so she'll be the one to go through with it. She gets Woo-young to teleport all espers out, waits until every other person has left, then finally destroys the core and leaves.

neither_rest_nor_peace

How is he meant to face the public. How is he meant to act when they just, just—

With his head held high and the confidence that he did the right thing because now that threat is gone. It is gone for good. Their names are going down in history; even if they retired tomorrow, they'd have saved more lives than most espers do in their entire careers.

Ha Si-yeon

freefall

Sure doesn't fucking feel like it, though.

Fuck.

Min Woo-young

there_to_stay

The team leader gently encourages everyone else to go into isolation, but she needs to be there to answer questions and have her decision reviewed and all of that.

neither_rest_nor_peace

Yeah.

this_peculiar_power

Jaeha has to hold his annoyance and jealousy back when Tae-gun tells him about what happened. He went after Ha Si-yeon, at great personal risk, despite having no idea what had gone wrong—what would Jaeha have done if Tae-gun'd died?? It was a named S-rank. And he just, just—

this_peculiar_power

No. No. What did he expect? Did he really expect his Tae-gun to just leave one of his best friends behind? Obviously not. That's ludicrous. His Tae-gun wouldn't be who he is if he did that. Jaeha will be supportive, instead of petty and jealous.

"I'm proud of you, Tae-gun-ah."

neither_rest_nor_peace

"...I didn't do anything."

this_peculiar_power

"It certainly wasn't anyone else who managed to locate Ha Si-yeon-shi and Kim Chun-hee-shi and then figure out what to do to finish the fight."

neither_rest_nor_peace

He... guesses. It feels like it could have been anyone else. And...

"...and all of those people we didn't rescue, they..."

this_peculiar_power

"Oh, Tae-gun-ah..." He knows what it is that Tae-gun needs, here. He know that Tae-gun knows it was the smart decision, the correct decision, the decision that gets the most people safe in the long run, but... Tae-gun'll be beating himself up about it regardless. Or just plain old sad. And for that, he can hold Tae-gun close and pet him soothingly and just be there for him, the way Tae-gun's there for Jaeha.

neither_rest_nor_peace