"Tae-gun-ah—" Oh, his name tastes so sweet in Jaeha's tongue, it's intoxicating. "I feel like I keep doing this," even though at this point in time it was, what, three months ago? Anyway. "I have more things to confess."

...oh no.

"Did you... slip up more...?"

"There is so, so much I need to tell you, but a lot of it doesn't make sense so I'll start with what does. I can't shield myself. I—hadn't originally meant to lie. I forgot. And then—Nightmare—I'm not immune to Nightmare. It can get to me."

Tae-gun feels like that is a pretty fucking glaring omission actually—

"And it did. It got to me. The reason I was—so tired, so wrecked, so upset every time, was because it kept showing me you. It showed me you dying, it showed me you leaving me. It showed me you choosing Ha Si-yeon-shi and Lee Juheon-shi over me. It showed me you growing tired of how clingy and needy I am. It showed me you growing past me, getting over me."

Oh.

Oh, no.

Oh, his poor hyung. "Jaeha-ya..."

"I didn't just slip. Over the past few weeks, I, I manipulated you again. I pushed you into spending less time with your friends, made you more reluctant to go out or be with them. I was scared you were going to see them and leave me. And I was too stupid to get over my own petty jealousy, I let myself be manipulated by Nightmare."

...there weren't that many opportunities for Tae-gun to interact with his friends, though, and he hadn't really felt up to doing anything with them, so whatever Jaeha did can't have been that big...?

He's not looking, and he's not using his power, but he does know his Tae-gun well enough to guess what he's thinking.

And he has knowledge of the future.

"I am quitting being an esper."

"—what??"

"I thought I could deal with it but I can't. I clearly can't. I'm not good enough, not strong enough. Not the way I've been going. There might be some way in the future to do this again but—I can't risk it. I can't even plan for it. I need to not give myself any opportunity to keep fucking this up.

"Tae-gun-ah, I don't deserve your love, not as I am, not unless something very big changes."

"But—but hyung—"

"I know myself well enough, now, to know that nothing less extreme than that will do it. I will not, I cannot keep doing this. I, I can't do it, and I can't, I can't—"

"—I can't do what I was going to do to you tonight. Not again."

"...should I cancel my dungeons? This is starting to sound like..."

"Yes, please." The version of Jaeha from that time would've refused, would've told Tae-gun that this wasn't that important, Tae-gun shouldn't change his day because of Jaeha. This version of Jaeha—isn't him. "Because I have a lot of very, very strange things to tell you."

"Okay." He opens his commscreen and gets to doing that. "...can we talk about this over breakfast?" Having a fraught conversation in the bedroom, in the dark like this, feels extremely uncomfortable and claustrophobic and, and, and too serious. And he's already committed to sticking with Jaeha, his Jaeha, he promised his Jaeha that they'd figure it out together and clearly it hasn't been enough and if his Jaeha feels like something needs to change, then, then Tae-gun needs to be there for him and support him.

"Of course." He can't ever refuse Tae-gun, is the refrain that goes through his mind, but now he knows that just not refusing isn't enough.

Okay.

Alright.

(His hyung is acting really weird. Really weird. Tae-gun doesn't know in what way but it's really really weird, like there's some missing step somewhere. He doesn't like it.)

Yeah. It's a lot.

"Please bear with me, here," he says after he's started with breakfast and Tae-gun is sitting at the table waiting for him. "Imagine you one day wake up and you find yourself six years in the past. In your own body, as it was then, in the same place you were, but with the memories of six intervening years that haven't happened yet.

"How would you convince everyone around you that that happened?"

...that is so extremely not where he was expecting this conversation to go!!!!

"I. Guess I'd. Try to remember things that happened that I shouldn't be able to know...?"

"Tonight is Park Yoo-min-shi's birthday reunion."

Wait, is it? Oh, huh, would you look at that, Tae-gun has a message from Park Yoo-min-sunbae inviting him to his birthday party.

"In that party, I'm crazy with jealousy. Your friends are really close to you. I'm still not over Nightmare. Ha Si-yeon flirts with you a lot, and you don't push him away completely. He and Baek Junhae and Min Woo-young make various comments that I interpret as being malicious, in my direction. They hint that I'm bad for you. It all goes over your head, I think, and so I decide to take matters into my own hands and make you understand what they really mean. You respond to those words, the imagined words that I put in their mouths, and they get surprised and dismayed. It goes badly. You leave the reunion early, and I comfort you, and I feel really really guilty about it but also vindicated. I feel like I just proved, to you and me both, that your friends aren't as good for you as you think they are.

"This isn't the last time I do this. When they text you, I edit what they say in your eyes, and I make you feel worse about it. When you meet, I make you dislike them, and I make them dislike you. Ha Si-yeon is angry, and thinks you're pulling away from your friends to spend time with your shiny new boyfriend, that you're being a dick. Lee Juheon is sad, and feels like you're making a mistake, but not one that he can do anything about while still calling himself your friend. You're confused and upset that they're acting so weird. Min Woo-young—I am so, so thankful for Min Woo-young. Right now, not back then.

"Back then, I didn't realise how much of a problem he was going to be. Min Woo-young never lets go of you, and I don't even know, because he isn't one of your ex-partners. And he can get to you when I'm not around, and he notices. He notices the way you're acting. The way you keep pulling away. On Christmas, you have no one but me. It's normal, isn't it, to spend Christmas with your boyfriend? But it's not normal to ignore your friends like that, and it's not normal to ignore them for your own birthday. I don't remember exactly, but I think that, by then, Ha Si-yeon has already written you off, and Lee Juheon only makes a token effort towards reconnecting. Min Woo-young, thankfully, doesn't let me get away with it. I don't know what he does, exactly, because the two of you succeed at hiding it all from me.

"And one day, when I get home from a dungeon, you're not there anymore. You're not there, and you left me a message saying you're dissolving our partnership, and telling me to never contact you again. Quasar abandons me, which shocks everyone, most of all me. I don't understand what's happening, not until much, much later. It hurts. It hurts so much. I don't understand what's happening, I keep trying to contact you and I can't. You block me completely. You move out of your house. You get a new house, somewhere, I never learn where."

He has absolutely no idea how to engage with literally any of this.

"Are, are you saying—what are you saying, hyung?"