"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.

She's not the only one realising it just now. "Holy shit, Tae-gun, I always thought you just didn't like the attention..."

"I mean, there's that, too, I don't, so it's not that big a deal—"

"Someday I'm going to get a little buzzer button and carry it with me all the time and press it to buzz really loudly whenever you do your self-effacing shit. For now just consider yourself buzzed."

"...right."

"And yet you don't want—"

"For fuck's sake!" Tae-gun says, pulling away from the hug to glare at him. "Ha Si-yeon, you of all people will know this best: what's the sentence for misuse of psychic esper powers?"

"Sentence? Like, legal sentence? Uh, that's... broad... but in Korea it's from two years up to life in prison. In theory it could get capital..."

"Uh huh. Now imagine he got caught and nailed for everything he did that we know of up until two days ago. What would he get?"

"Ten to twenty."

"Which is, unless I'm very much mistaken about what words mean, not killing him."

"...right."

"So I rest my fucking case."

... So, yeah, it would suck for the hypothetical Jaeha that is unbacklashed, but.

Then she and Tae-gun would be able to just live their lives.

But it's not just about them, is it?

"See, I'd almost prefer that, except going entirely public means that there will be even more stigma against other psychic espers," muses Hye-jin, out loud. She knows very well, the careful dance of not looking too scary to the public.

"...so, what, are we meant to kill a guy just to avoid public stigma?"

"It's an important angle to consider."

"It's a very sharp angle."

Hye-jin flinches away at Tae-gun’s sharp reply. She wasn't, actually, even jumping to murder, she was trying to think of the wider picture and how the greater populace would be affected.

She doesn’t say anything. She pokes at the food, wondering what ever could have persuaded her to perhaps sit on her feelings and thoughts. What an absolute mystery this is.