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. She's a useless pathetic lump who is wasting everyone's time and attention and she can't even do a basic tactics talk on a subject she's one of the most knowledgeable on and she's crying and can't stop and no one even cares about her except this guy she barely knows...

"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, because she's trying to actually voice her emotions instead of not, 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."

"It doesn't," he mumbles, leaning into the hug. This hug feels a lot nicer than the previous one, and it doesn't take a genius to figure out that Tae-gun feels more comfortable hugging to comfort others than he does hugging to be comforted. "I—that's not what I was thinking. I thought about what I—"

"So I'm not saying no or stop but I am saying are you sure you guys want to get into it right now? Genuinely, it's fine if the answer is yes, and we can give you space if you need it."

"... I think yes, neither of us are proving to be super useful at tactics talk today, really."

He totally was! ...eventually! ..........maybe not while Hye-jin was being miserable next to him.

"Roger that. You two go to the living room, then. Tae-gun, since you made us this feast I assume there's dessert too?"

"Yeah."

"Excellent, I'll find it and I'll bring you two some in a sec."

Giggle. "Thank you."

Okay. Scootching to the living room.

Now, how is Tae-gun going to explain that her feelings suck and she should have submitted a formal notice of her emotional state a week in advance before displaying any...?

"...I'm sorry. I don't—mistrust your judgment, and I don't think you're—bloodthirsty or looking for excuses to, to..."

"Then why is it what you remember first about my reaction to - this? Because I thought about it and - I didn't, actually, jump to 'I kill monsters,' I jumped to," she motions back to the dining room with the others, "tactics talk about how to keep ourselves safe. And when you brought it up I told you I didn't want him dead, exactly, I wanted him to stop? And that was before I knew he was a victim of his own backlash! Knowing there's a decent guy underneath the enforced depression and sociopathy doesn't make me want him dead more, Tae-gun-ah!"

He's just going to keep hugging her because looking at her isn't going to work. "I don't trust my own judgment. I, please don't, I, this is hard for me to talk about. I, I know it sounds like excuses. But I didn't think about it in years, except when I did. I couldn't even think his name until—more recently. It's not, it's not like, it's not that I was," why is it so hard to say he had such eloquent things to say in his head when he was thinking about it in the kitchen but now they're coming out all wrong and jumbled. "It's not like I wanted it," he says, his voice getting thick. "I, I wasn't, it's, it's like you said. A blind spot." He swallows and shuts his eyes. "I, even, it's, even now I," and he runs out of words again and has to clear his throat and try to start over.

"It's like my mind just—slides off it. It's like, like staring into the sun, if I do it too much my eyes hurt and then I go blind, except, except I can choose to do that, and I can't, I couldn't, choose—" Breathe. Deep breaths, Lee Tae-gun. "I couldn't choose to look. It wasn't there. And, and so the only way I have of, of, of thinking about it is sideways. It's, it's, I can't rely on anything. I can't rely on my, on, on the way I think about other things. My habits of thought are all fucked and useless and I'm not, I'm not smart enough. If I want to look at the sun I need to do it out of the corner of my eyes and only a little—"

"I never thought you wanted - whatever he was doing, or anything," she sighs. She pulls him closer and pets him. "I'm sorry this sucks so much. I was trying really hard not to - rub any of it in your face. Just - fuck, Tae-gun-ah, it's - ... do you want a dungeon combat metaphor. I think I have one for - what I feel like just happened."

"...yeah, I think so," he loves her so much, "but—can I—try to get all the words out? I, I think I might lose them if—"

"Yeah, sorry, go ahead."

"It's okay. ...thank you, I—appreciate it. The, the—dungeon metaphor thing. I know I'm bad at understanding things. I hope I—

"I appreciate you. I like you. A lot. I'm also bad at saying that. But I do. I think you're grand."