"Hi," she mumbles, miserably. She's not going to say 'Good morning,' because it's not one.

No, it isn't.

He wants to broach the subject.

He does not know how.

She'll just stay here curled up miserably, then. She feels like being dramatic. She's allowed. She got shot in the head yesterday. (And the heart. And the thigh. She checked with the nurse, before they left Nevada.)

"Why are you staying?" he manages to ask, eventually.

(He has a headache from all of the fighting and stress and crying and not sleeping well. This is noteworthy because the only reason he knows he has a headache is because he hadn't had one in a while, which is new. He'd gotten so used to constant headaches that he just ignored them, until he got sufficient guiding from Hye-jin for them to go away for long enough that he is noticing this. The extent to which being Hye-jin's partner has helped him makes this even harder to ask.)

"... In... bed...? Because I'm miserable and don't want to be a grown up adult who solves problems right now?"

"With me," he clarifies. "As my partner."

"I do - like you. Like being your partner, like being able to - do something as absurd and insane as fuck an S-rank dungeon to death. I like how we work together, and can either go together into the big dungeons or split up to take down the little ones. It's very nicely efficient. And I also like you as a person. Just. You have this one massive blindspot. That shot me in the head." She didn't mean for that to come out quite so bitter, but. There it is, it's out, and it's bitter. She told you so. ... Admittedly not the assassination in a dungeon in particular, but. She was always the one whose safety was at risk. "And I feel like I've been trying so hard to get help or do something to stop him from what he could do, and do bullshit like wear a camera at all times and get an offshore server and get teleported without my goddamned IUD on a maybe of a maybe and it's all, just. I'm tired."

She sniffles. "I feel like I've been doing this alone. ... Except for Woo-young. He really needs to be paid more. And maybe get more hugs and the longest vacation of all time."

"...I'm sorry. I'm sorry I can't help with it. Or couldn't. I—

"I didn't think he'd do something like this. It's, I—

"But I don't know how to help. Everyone else keeps, keeps jumping to—we should kill him, we should teleport him into a volcano, but—until now—that would've been wrong. None of what he'd done deserved—that. Except if everyone else keeps saying that it did then clearly I do have a massive blind spot but the thing about blind spots is you can't just see them if you just turn your head. They're still there. There isn't anything I can do to see. And if I have a massive blind spot and I can't even agree with anyone else about what to do about it then what help can I offer? You can't just become able to see past a blind spot by trying hard. I've tried really hard—" He cuts himself off and conks his forehead on his knees.

Tae-gun didn't, actually, sleep very well at all. What he did do was spend the night thinking and thinking and thinking and unlike most times when he thinks and thinks and thinks he did have productive thoughts.

"It's not even just the jump straight to murder, I didn't even actually jump straight to murder, and he obviously fucked with my head! I - I sent him a damn e-mail, I - I'm sorry. I know this is hard. Just. Fuck. I can't do this alone."

What time is it? That's right! It's crying time!

"...yes you did. I—I'm sorry, but—yes you did. The first thing you said about this was that it was your job to kill monsters. That was the very first thing I heard about, about how you felt about all of this."

"Wanting to murder someone and saying so, and figuring out how are different things, Tae-gun! It is my job to kill monsters, I did and do want him dead! But, actually, it's hard to kill someone and get away with it! So! I sent a fucking e-mail. Several, actually, one was a cease and desist to his guild to get a paper trail set up..."

"Yes, sure, and—the fact that you wanted him dead made it impossible for me to understand it. Because I went through it for a year and I didn't want him dead. I've had him haunting my nightmares for half a decade and I still didn't want him dead! I want him dead now because he tried to have you killed. I want him to die in horrible pain. I cannot—comprehend—why he did what he did. Now. But if my thoughts and your thoughts about the appropriate thing to do were so, so, so—disconnected—then what use would it be giving suggestions? What use would it be trying anything else? I was not living in the same reality as you."

"... Yeah. I guess we haven't been living in the same reality, have we." Because apparently all of her attempts to be kind and caring and gentle towards him did not register or translate, and he feels like she's been stomping all over his feelings this whole time. Cool. Great. Excellent.

(She's going to cry about it.)

"All of that sounded like the sort of stuff that if Woo-young heard it he'd roll his eyes and say something cutting about being dramatic. ...mine and yours, I mean. I don't—I've had Woo-young in my life for years and I don't want to act like someone Woo-young makes cutting remarks about, not with something as important to me as—us—on the line. I want to be a grown up adult and, and actually have a conversation that fixes things, or figures out that they can't be fixed." He thought he'd feel pain when he said that but actually he just feels empty. It's probably the sleep deprivation but right this second he's thankful for it. Being empty is making it a lot easier for him to say these things.

"I'm in pain. You're in pain. We've—failed to communicate something really important. To both of us. I want to try to bridge that gap. I want to fix it. I want you to not be in pain, and I want you to feel like you can rely on me and ask me for help, I want to be able to support you. I don't know how, but—I don't want you to tell me how. I can—no, I can't figure it out, we can figure it out, together, because that's how you get relationships that work. But I need you to tell me when there are problems. And—I need to do the same. Tell you when there are problems. And, and stop, stop—letting the hell iPhone autocomplete everything I'm about to say. Or feel. I'm not, I don't—and I keep thinking about how you've just been shot and I'm making this all about me but, but—but I don't want to be in a relationship where I'm having to compare how badly I have it to how badly you have it all the time, because, because—because in a good, healthy relationship there isn't how bad I have it and how bad you have it, there's just how bad we have it, because hurting you is hurting me and vice-versa.

"Or, or, I mean, less—codependent—than that sounds. But I don't want to be keeping track. Of who has it worse. I want to just have it better, with you."

"I didn't want to make it about, about comparisons and whose turn it is to be allowed to be sad, just, just. ... I don't know. I thought I was being - communicative about my feelings, in spaces where I was - allowed to. Which means with things that weren't Kang Jaeha related, because, you know. Your trauma. But it turns out that having a crazy stalker mind esper is kind of a major life altering event." Sniffle.

".... Did you really not... did you really feel like all I was doing was just stomping all over your feelings about everything, all the time?"

"...no. Did I say that? I didn't mean to say that if I did. When would you ever have done that?"

"When you - I don't remember the words, I was doing my stupid bitchy competitive thing because I have all of the predictable character flaws of who I am as a person and going, 'Well, can you think of times that I have obviously cared for your feelings,' and... you just..."

Yeah okay words are hard, sobs are easier. She's going to do that second one and just curl in on herself because apparently she can't communicate for shit.

Tae-gun feels like this conversation is going great, actually! She hasn't decided to break up with him even a little bit! He's still, like, feeling dead inside, but since she hasn't broken up with him even a little bit after all of this he feels like he can in fact hug her and try to comfort her.

(The sleep dep might be catching up to him in weird ways.)

Okay. This is allowed. He is allowed to hug her while she cries about how she's apparently garbage at displaying that she cares about people and their feelings. (And is a horrible bitchy crazy person who can't do anything on her own, and can't try to do anything with anyone else because whenever she asks for help she apparently fucks it up and-)

Look. There will be a lot of crying, okay.

That's okay, crying is okay, he's here for her. "I don't think you've stomped all over my feelings. I'm sorry if I gave you that impression." He has no idea where it could have come from but clearly they've been going through some insaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaane amounts of miscommunication here that just flew under the radar. "I like you, Hye-jin-ah. I like you a lot."

Sniffle.

"Okay. ... I like you too. Just." She doesn't know how to finish that sentence. She doesn't know 'just' what. But. It sure is there.

"Just wish I didn't have a crazy stalker psychic ex. Just wish I were better at understanding other people's emotions and expressing mine. Just wish I were more helpful or useful with the single most dangerous thing in our lives right now." That last one is new, he would not have rated Kang Jaeha as dangerous before. Or—not in that way. "Just wish you could believe and trust that I'll actually support you and be there for you despite you feeling like I haven't at all. Just wish you had more than liking me."

"I do trust you completely in combat situations! My bodily integrity is fine with you around, just. ... My complicated fucked up feelings are also part of me."

"I know. And I want to support those, too."

Nod.

Snuggle.

The world is awful and being a human being is awful and being an esper is extra awful, since it comes with this kind of insanity, but snuggles are nice. She can hide from the wide awful world.