"Tch."

"And this is going to inevitably get personal and upsetting so we don't need to go there tonight if everyone isn't feeling up for it."

"That's literally the point of tonight."

"I don't mean we shouldn't talk about him at all, I mean we don't need to go into any permanent solutions, we can figure out how to effectively protect ourselves first."

In Si-yeon's opinion the best defence is offence.

Yes, everyone's heard his opinion loud and clear many times over.

"We can potentially hire - the equivalent of security guards - to monitor live bodycam footage. But then there's the fuss of, well, one, needing the setup to constantly stream footage instead of just uploading files under specific circumstances, and two, having some guy watch every single moment of every single day. I guess there's - public time and nonpublic time but." She looks away. She shrugs. "I didn't want to go there, but it's an option. Theoretically sending people after Kang Jaeha himself is also an option - in an investigative sense, not a murder sense." That last one is clarified for Tae-gun's convenience. Though, yeah, she's with Si-yeon here. Just. Trying to be polite and prosocial about it.

She does look distinctly uncomfortable with this whole topic of conversation, though she's trying her best.

"We already have people on Kang Jaeha. It'd be great if we could do it 24/7 except he also has access to teleportation, but to the extent we can we have as constant and continuous monitoring of him as possible."

"...wait, you do? Since when?"

"Since five years ago, prez has been keeping tabs on him to make sure he wouldn't pull the same shit on any new partners and wouldn't come after Tae-gun. We'd dialed back down to a less constant level of monitoring when it looked like he wasn't doing anything suspicious but."

"That got turned back up when I mentioned mysteriously running into him?" she confirms, because that would make sense.

"Yeah, 'course. And I wish I could say, 'by the way he acted real suspicious on such and such date', but that bastard is slippery as fuck."

Here's Tae-gun with the drinks.

...and also here's Tae-gun noticing that Hye-jin is looking really uncomfortable. He opens a comm screen to type her a message:

Hye-jin-ah, are you holding back on something you want to say?

I think it would be better for you to say everything you're feeling here.

It's - nothing in particular, just discomfort at needing to add yet more changes in my life to protect myself from this person.

Yeah okay.

He sits next to her. "I think if we could find solutions that don't involve having to change our lives even more that'd be best. I got a whole house and silo that are completely off-the-grid and not on any maps, which I teleport to by using direct coordinates I've memorised and which don't get saved anywhere on any systems. I have the guild constantly making sure I never get assigned to missions with him, and I'm especially never sent to psychic dungeons even though I have very high mobility and can often help with them. We're wearing body cameras all the time now. Hye-jin is having to not live in her house because he knows where it is. I'm tired of making my whole life revolve around this fucker."

"...'this fucker'?"

"What!"

"Nothing, just..."

Hye-jin relaxes a little, and gratefully leans into Tae-gun.

She'll sure be busy sipping this available drink, though! Mmm. Juice.

"I can't even go out in public, Woo-young. I know that I'm not the most sociable of people but I used to be able to go to shopping malls and now I just can't, I haven't since then, and I usually don't think about it but now I'm thinking about it and my whole life—"

"No, I mean, I agree, just—I don't know. The way you're talking about him."

"Ah." He scratches the back of his head. "It's just... I don't know. I think it was probably him and if it was then, then—my feelings about the person he was don't really matter, because he's much farther from that person than I thought he could be, and it's..." He would not be able to forgive Jaeha killing Hye-jin. Everything else, he could overlook, because of Jaeha's backlash, but—not this. Not losing her.

... Well, now Hye-jin is going to hug him.

She, uh. Feels kind of bad for not realizing how much this was affecting his life too. Probably because he's so - settled in it, used to living like this. But that's also a tragedy, now isn't it.

He leans into the hug and sighs.