"I did! Thank you." Kiss, pet pet. "Mostly I think it's just enthusiasm instead of real questions that require thought. Oh, and there was a nice suggestion about registering when we think we're in dungeons, and getting teleported if we're wrong, which I liked a lot."

"Reg'st'ring?" he asks, finally opening his eyes (to look at her because he wants the first thing he sees in the morning today to be her).

Then the first thing he sees is her pretty smile.

"Oh, just - something on our commscreens that we press to say 'I think I'm in a dungeon.' That way if we're actually outside of one, and being tricked, we won't stay there for long. I was thinking another earring or something, for being sneaky and hard to stop us from touching. I do still have another one that's open to being programmed, after all."

"Mm. Yeah, sounds good. I could get earrings too."

"It doesn't have to be! That's just what I went with. Could be a necklace, or a ring, or a watch or something. Are your ears even pierced?"

"No. But I c'n just disable my power for that."

"Ah, I see. Well, there's an annoying post piercing care phase, so only do it if having earrings is worth six weeks of cleaning it daily and waiting for it to heal. ... heh. I suppose I can get new piercings now and not have to worry. Or maybe I would, if it'd just heal back over regardless? I got my ears pierced before my awakening, so..."

"Hmm. Can get Ji-woo-sunbae to speed it up for me maybe."

"Maybe, though possibly don't ask during a confluence? I guess she'd understand if you explained everything to her, but I think if you just went 'Hey can you speed up my piercing recovery' without context right now, she might smack you."

"...I think if I told her it was important for confidential reasons she'd believe me? But you're probably right that it's not necessary."

"Fair. Confidential reasons she'd accept. I think." Pet pet. "So my plan was to not do any dungeons today and just focus on implementation of ideas?"

Mrrrrrrr but if he doesn't do any dungeons that means he's useless and has no reason to exist and he's already skipped a day and it must be a sign of personal growth or something that his brain isn't even producing anything particularly compelling here, just the bad vibes of being a workaholic who isn't working attached to a stream of generic self-hating words.

"Yeah, I think that sounds fine."

Hye-jin could point out that she didn't make any decisions about what he's doing with his time, and that he's free to solo a dungeon or two if he'd like, but. ... She doesn't want to. She'd rather keep spending time with him.

That is probably also part of the personal growth.

He pulls himself up to a seat and opens his own copy of the ideas to peer at them. "...AI idea for cameras near dungeons isn't doable directly but if we had access to the feeds themselves we could do it ourselves manually. It'd be bad for security if their feeds were accessible easily, though. I guess maybe there could be a generic API for running pattern recognition algorithms? But that could be maliciously abused..."

"Hmm, yeah. Just the bodycams, then? But then it would be asynchronous."

"No, we can do the AI thing for the body cams and get warning notifications if they detect anything weird synchronously. ...we might want—wait. We could just bring our own cameras with us and have whatever pattern recognition algorithms we want running on their feeds. Like, non-body cams, ones to just leave near the dungeon portal same way the guild ones are."

"Oh, that could work. Though I have some questions about where the processing power for that will be located -"

Their day won't be devoted entirely to implementation talk, but they do have a lot of ideas to think about implementing. But they can also just... have a day off. Together. No trips to the hospital or War Councils or whatever else the world's going to inevitably throw at them.

Yeah. At least for today, at least if there are no more emergencies that require them in particular, they can just spend time together. Just them.

Like the last time something insane happened, nothing equally insane follows in its immediate aftermath. If there's a shoe waiting to drop, it's taking its sweet time; Kang Jaeha isn't sweeping in with a next strike, no one else is claiming credit for the hit either, and no other espers are targeted. Tae-gun and Hye-jin do have more emergencies and more S-ranks to deal with, because of course they do, it's still a confluence, but nothing out of the ordinary-for-a-confluence happens.

Various security measures are implemented, though. Si-yeon becomes very tight-lipped about whether "his psyops guys" have anything to do with it, but in East and Southeast Asia the media is surprisingly cooperative about limiting its reporting in some ways (they'll still do live reporting of a dungeon's appearance and kidnappings and monsters but not mention nor show any specific espers until afterwards) and the EU does very quickly write up a bill requiring that support teams setting up all dungeons on its soil have to follow this-and-that regulation and other non-EU countries have to follow similar restrictions if they want EU espers to show up at all. The US is, obviously, the most reluctant to do anything that could interfere with "freedom", but not so reluctant that they're willing to stand their ground during a confluence.

A confluence that is lasting much, much longer than anyone hoped it would.

"So, what's your plan for after you drop the hitman at his feet like some kind of demented cat?"

He's not going to engage. There's just no point in engaging.

"Aww, c'mon, you must have such a good plan, though! You're Kang Jaeha, master puppeteer and three steps ahead of everyone else, especially me! So tell me. What's your brilliant plant to get Tae-gun-ah back?"

"Don't call him that. You don't get to call him that."

"Yes I do. I called him that on international television. Or are we adding even more self delusion to this meal?"

"Fuck you."