Juheon is only paying half attention to Si-yeon's talk, and the other half is on Hye-jin. In the middle of that he gets up (though he doesn't stand up to his full height) and backs away from the table to scoot over between Hye-jin and Woo-young. He hesitates for a second then hugs her. "Sorry," he says in a soft, gentle murmur. "I know this is hard and sucks a lot for you. We're trying to help, and I'm proud of you for hanging on. We'll figure this out."

...bwuh?

.... Oh.

Those are good ideas.

And also someone is acknowledging that, actually, talking about the thing that's been haunting her for literal months the day after that thing just very nearly killed her is hard and sucks a lot.

"Mhm," she whines, pathetically, as she then proceeds to break down crying. Again. This time on Juheon, who she admittedly doesn't know very well but who is compensating well by giving off some excellent teddy bear energy. "I'm sorry, I'm trying not to be a massive bitch that bites everyone trying to help me, really, it's, just." No, she doesn't want to talk about her problems right now, she wants to talk tactics, actually. "Um. T-those are all r-really good ideas, thank you."

...Tae-gun will not make this about himself.

(How did Juheon know this was the right thing to do? Why can't Tae-gun be the one to do this for Hye-jin? Why is he so broken he can't even notice when his partner just, just needs a hug and, and.)

(He wishes he could be what Hye-jin needs.)

"Don't worry about it," he replies to her in the same gentle murmur. "Let it all out, participate as much as you can or want to."

"I'm glad you like them!" says Si-yeon, slipping into his informal register for a moment before going back to what he'd been doing. "So, any more ideas? Even if they're not very polished or impractical or expensive, it's better to have too many ideas to sift through than too few."

"Da-eun was talking about the possibility of physically reinforcing access to portals somehow, though that's control security more than location security?"

"All ideas are welcome." He adds "physical access to portals?" to the list as increasing control, not touching location, being proactive, and being recoverable.

"There are illusionist espers who could literally disguise Tae-gun and Hye-jin, as an overpowered refinement on the 'decoys' idea."

"The fact that they're having to be sent to specific dungeons every day limits how much security they could get but would it be possible for their dungeons to be at least somewhat randomised? Especially the ones they do without a team, the smaller ones. That would give the support teams on the ground less time to prepare but that's also a plus, right, since it means that there's also less warning for anyone else..."

"Illusion espers" go below "decoys", "randomised dungeon assignments" are added as increasing location security and slightly lowering control security "for the same reason having media and onlookers increases it", proactive, recoverable.

She. Really doesn't have to participate in order for things to maybe turn out okay and in a way that'll be helpful to her goals, does she. Other people will come up with ideas without her.

Okay. Good.

Then she's just going to do more of that crying thing, thanks. Hello, she is miserable, hates talking about this topic, hates thinking about this topic, wants desperately to be free of it from her life, feels simultaneously like she's incompetent (because she got shot) and also like she was the only one doing anything (because basically all actionable ideas up until now were hers), and. And it's just a lot, okay. So if she doesn't need to do anything for a higher chance of staying alive and untampered with, then she's just going to cry.

(She would actually also prefer that it were Tae-gun holding and comforting her, but apparently he's too fucking busy acting like she's a rabid tiger he's got to keep under control instead of - something else. She's not sure what. Whatever he's like when fucking Kang Jaeha isn't involved.)

Does it help if Tae-gun looks wistful and miserable? 'Cause that's what he looks like right now, stealing glances at her.

(She's not looking at him right now, so. No.)

"...oh for God's sake, you two. Hyung, just hug her."

...bwuh? [x2]

Juheon can pull away a bit and see if Hye-jin would like that? He expects 'yes' but.

"It's fine, he doesn't have to," says Hye-jin, miserably.

"No, but he wants to, except he was beating himself up about the fact that he didn't realise that you wanted it because he thought that you were mad at him right now and wanted nothing to do with him and so he was trying not to pay attention to your emotional needs and also he's the brand of autistic who is bad at both performing emotions and reading them. And you, miss, also want him to, so Juheon, thank you very much for your service, but these two need to learn to be less dramatic."

Well, far be it from him to question Woo-young's judgment. He fully unhugs and gently nudges her in Tae-gun's direction.

...okay but what if Woo-young is wrong, what if actually she doesn't and she thinks he sucks and is the worst for not offering first and not even noticing—

"Hyung." He grabs his phone and taps it. "Hell iPhone."

Oh.

Okay.

Um.

He can hug her?

".... I am still pretty mad about how your model of me seems to think that I'm bloodthirsty and looking for excuses to kill Kang Jaeha," she grumbles, but. Yes. Fine. He may hug her. "Thank you Woo-young-oppa. You're an ass but I appreciate you for it."

"Thanks! I try."