"Incoming."

Vworp! "Sorry I'm late, everyone, had to chase some customers out before closing the bar."

"Hi, noona, you should get a name tag."

OH NO MORE PEOPLE oh wait she actually knows this one. She's her partner's twin. They've met before. She knows her name already. Still, it's good she'll be getting a nametag, they bring Hana some measure of reassurance. Especially if more people show up, that she hasn't met before. They should all get nametags. ... But will they be in the database???

Being a supportive partner is hard sometimes okay.

"Is anyone else arriving by not-teleportation? Is there a guest list at the door, or...?"

Is this perhaps a chance to make NON-ESPER FRIENDS???? Without concern for mind control???? Yessssssssss.

"Yeah, Tae-hwan had a bunch of friends... He was a really friendly sort of guy." YOU KNOW WHAT TIME IT IS IT'S TIME TO DOWN ANOTHER SHOT OF SOJU OR TWO THAT'S WHAT TIME IT IS

It sure does look like that time, yes.

Hana will pat him and make sure he also eats properly.

More non-espers do arrive. A few of them are from Quasar—Jeong Seo-ah (the lawyer), Park Eun-ji (the comms person who goes by kitkatcat), Kwon Jiesang (the receptionist who goes by Zzzzgirl but who also refuses to admit this lest Hye-jin connect the face to the chatname)—but a few are from elsewhere—he got into Quasar straight out of high school and managed to keep in touch with some of his friends from then even through the two-year gap due to their military drafts.

People get really, exceptionally, uproariously drunk, and exchange stories about Tae-hwan, and sing drunk songs. They get an absurdly large cake, and they sing happy birthday, and Woo-young blows the candle and cries a lot. This is probably Tae-hwan's last birthday, Woo-young doesn't think he'll do it again, and of last memories to have of him, it's not a bad one at all.

User0002: hey
User0002: it's ready

Tae-gun and Hye-jin continue to be sent to new dungeons, most of them abroad following their safety guidelines. They'd planned to reconvene the War Council soon after Tae-hwan's birthday to discuss ways to more proactively deal with Kang Jaeha but three of the named S-ranks they were due to get show up at the same time two days later which keep everyone exceptionally busy. It helps calm their nerves that Kang Jaeha seems to be spending most of his time in Nightmare and most of the rest of it with his partner (though it seems like they've been having some troubles recently), but he's shown that he can be very dangerous even under these constraints. The thing that they really need is for Si-yeon's underworld contacts to find the shooter so that they have some evidence of connection.

The named dungeon Tae-gun and Hye-jin in particular were helping with seals itself and vanishes about a week before Christmas, though, leaving them some time to decompress and do things other than that.

Which gives Hye-jin enough space to finish the ~final touches~ on her ~secret underground (and also underwater) silo~. Which is, at least structurally, done! Without any meddling from Quasar, actually; she'd left her mother in charge of it, with a generous helping of money to make it happen, and it sure has happened. Just in time for Christmas.

She is absolutely delighted by this, and gleefully begins decorating and personalizing and and and look she's also been settling into Tae-gun's house a bit but, but, look this is going to be hershershers!!!! There is no danger of anyone taking it away from her ever, not if she breaks up with her partner, or leaves her guild, or another psycho stalker mental esper shows up out of the woodwork to try and fuck with her brain! She is, legally, in international fucking waters, so actually if someone shows up that's not supposed to be there she can actually just fucking kill them over it. (Probably the legalities would shake out to actually revolve around the nationalities of those involved, but STILL.) It! Is! HERS!

Tae-gun's not allowed to see it until it's, quote, "less sad and empty," apparently. But he will get to see it, and she does actually still silo in his house with him. Just, just. ... She needs this, okay? She would like him to please be patient.

? Sure? It's fine if she doesn't want to show it to him at all ever, too.

(He'll miss her, though. He doesn't say that part aloud, because it's objectively speaking a ridiculous thing to feel, but he will.)

Okay! You can see my secret underground base now!

You should be able to ask the system to send you to it by typing in 'deepcoverhyejin,' as the coordinates.

Alright. 

A few minutes later she gets the notification requesting for teleportation permission for him.

~Approved!~

He arrives in a circular, domed genkan, with solid stone tile beneath his feet. The walls (or... wall, since it's just the one) are a pale cream with the subtle painted pattern of bamboo shoots, faux-wood beams, and recessed lighting. There's a tidy little nook meant for shoes, and stairs leading down to what looks to be a proper living area. Hye-jin stands at the top of them beaming at him.

"Hi!" she says, bouncing on her toes.

He loves her. 

"Hi."

She waits until his shoes are off before she takes him by the hand and starts tugging him along and down the stairs. But that's all he gets, because it's tour time.

"Okay, so there are sections that are still extremely sad, don't look at any of the guest rooms, and definitely don't go down past the main living level area, because while I will figure out a way to make hydroponics and a generator cute, I have not yet done it, and there's a lot of empty storage space..."

Her silo is not quite literally rated for surviving a nuclear apocalypse, being more outfitted for structurally withstanding intense heat and pressure, but it still has pretty damn good odds for managing it. This place is sturdy, and the layout was clearly very meticulously designed to maximize the available floor space in the extremely structurally sound domed shape. It's pretty cute about its efficient layout and decoration, though, and a lot of the furniture is built for comfort and function over surviving the homeowner's fiery wrath. Hye-jin seems to have found the curved walls of some of the outside rooms a fun challenge to work around, and there's a lot of room to grow and settle in over time.

And also she's really excited about showing him everything. Is he ready to hear about the air system of this house, and how it converts sea water to oxygen? Because she's sure going to tell him all about it, and the other slightly-too-prepared systems for keeping this place running even when completely cut off from the outside world.

Tae-gun's focus, perhaps predictably, is tactical: What escape avenues do they have if teleportation fails? How do they avoid being crushed by the ocean if something cracks? And so on. Not that he's overwhelming her with questions, but that's something he's constantly paying attention to.

...oh and, right, he needs to be positive and appreciative, he will also do this once he realises that that is a thing he should do.

So, the major non-teleportation escape route is a set of submersibles, a one way ascension chamber that will ascend to the surface and then float there with a distress beacon, and also a general distress beacon in the silo itself that can be activated in emergencies. The ocean crushing them is not really a concern, because while sea water is not the most corrosive and mean-spirited liquid known to man, it sure isn't nice to anything any human builds approximately ever. They are therefore under more than a hundred feet of rock beneath the ocean floor. More dangerous is actually the prospect of earthquakes; they are far enough west to be away from the closest fault line, but it's still a potential concern. This silo is as prepared as it can be for one, with Japan's best anti-earthquake technology stabilizing the dome that the silo is set in, but; that is the major risk to this location.

The closest civilization is the hydroelectric power plant that Hye-jin's mother quietly bankrolled, and it is both the thing that powers this silo, and the explanation to anyone investigating just what people were spending so much money on out here.

Hye-jin honestly is pretty fine with the tactics talk and doesn't seem particularly put out by having him want that first, and is if anything proud to tell him about it, but she absolutely lights up at the praise.

See it's very very easy to get him to do more of the praise thing because whenever she lights up be immediately wants to do more of the thing that caused it. 

She's so clever! This place is so cool! It'll be so useful! The tech is interesting! It looks pretty!

Actually, most of this was her mother's planning! Hye-jin herself has been minimally involved, and has mostly contributed financially and by having floorplan and interior decorating decisions. Her dad also called in some favors for the electrolysis system for the oxygen down here, he's a chemical engineer, and while he doesn't personally specialize in this in particular, he has some colleagues that were interested in it for submersibles and the support systems for water based dungeons that might crop up. She thinks her mom is planning to set up another company to quietly sell off the sea salt this place is making? Because that's a thing, they can technically just dump the salt back out into the ocean, but if you're already turning sea water into fresh water and oxygen (and hydrogen; this is what powers the generator) you might as well try to figure out something to do with the salt too, right? At least that's how her mother thinks.

Hye-jin is very fond of her parents, and. ... It's kind of clear that a lot of this is them, not her, and. They worked very hard to get their daughter a safe place to be.

...aww. Okay that's very sweet. He's happy Hye-jin has those people in her life.

He wants to meet them at some point actually that sounds slightly terrifying and also are they even at that point in their relationship and also he doesn't have parents of his own to introduce her to so it feels asymmetrical—

Not being a mind reader, she has no idea of his thoughts! But she's very happy to have them in her life, too.

Anyway, realistically speaking she will probably still be siloing mostly at Tae-gun's place, because not only is teleporting to this spot expensive, it doesn't properly have internet access. They have their commscreens and there is a relay for communication, but full internet access? Yeah no. Unfortunately not.

Still! They're set if there's a nuclear apocalypse or something!