"...oh."

He loved her. He loved her as much as he loves Jaeha.

That's also impossible, for a completely different reason.

He lets out the breath he'd been holding.

"You have sex in the dungeon. It's probably the only reason you survive. That and... the fact that Kim Hye-jin has regeneration powers. I'm not sure if she knew at the time, but it was definitely kept secret. You have sex in the dungeon, and you guide each other enough that you kill it. The two of you destroy Volcanic Range."

"From the outside...

"The other espers that went into the dungeon with you saw the sudden unexplained attack the dungeon launched against the two of you personally, from a distance. They saw Kim Hye-jin be targeted, and they saw you shoot underground after her. They thought you'd killed yourself in grief, except the dungeon starts getting extremely hot, inhospitably so, and they have to leave.

"Everyone thinks you're dead. I think you're dead. I break down, for a while, and I manipulate Kim Insoo into leaving me alone, and I—mount a rescue. Some other espers go in and they notice that the dungeon has become a post-nuclear wasteland somehow, and the team I build is getting ready to go in when the portal turns green. No one has any idea what happened, not until you and Kim Hye-jin walk out of the dungeon together, wearing nothing but ice. You're actively backlashing, and the whole world now knows what you and Kim Hye-jin look like naked."

...oh my God that sounds horrible.

Why is he getting hard.

"I'm obviously livid, and I decide I need to kill her no matter what. I try to scare her again, and that doesn't work, so I hire a hitman to kill her."

Whaaaaat the fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck.

"They succeed. They put a bullet through her brain, one through her heart, and one through her leg.

"She survives, of course, due to aforementioned regeneration. She escapes the dungeon they tried to kill her in, she recovers, and esper organisations all over the world mobilise to tighten security around dungeons.

"And then you send me an email."

"You tell me that you want me to stop. That if I kill Kim Hye-jin you will never forgive me. That I need to move on with my life.

"Something breaks in me, then. In hindsight, that's when I realise I'd lost. I am extremely angry and upset that you would ever believe I'd do such a thing. Which I had done. But you weren't supposed to believe it. You were supposed to still love me. And so the only thing I could do was find the hitman—of course they were anonymous so I did have to search—and deliver them to the law. As a show of 'good faith'. Or something. Even now I'm not sure why I did it. I surely didn't truly believe you'd change your mind about whether I'd been the one behind it after all."

"And after that I realise that I have nothing to go on for. I lost. I'll never have you back, no matter what. And I also realise that if I ever got guided again I would feel horrified about all the things I'd done, and want to die. I do want to die.

"Nightmare asks me not to die."

Honestly he's no longer evaluating the plausibility of anything Jaeha is saying anymore.

"Nightmare drops kayfabe, completely. It uses Kim Hye-jin as its mouthpiece, and it tells me that I'm the closest thing it's ever had to a friend." Now he's starting to properly show emotions, because that was—just a few hours ago, to him. That was just now. That's the present. "I don't know if it meant it or if it was trying to drive me to suicide, but the conclusion is the same anyway; I exit the dungeon and I kill myself."

"And that's when I woke up, earlier today, here. Six years in the past. On the day of Park Yoo-min's birthday. Fully guided for the first time in years, with memories of this future that's never happened. Either I'm in a coma and you're not real or, or, or something very strange is going on. I'm in the past. And I can stop all of that from happening."

Now that he's done with it all he finally lets himself go, leaning forward and hiding his face in his hands and failing to stop a sob from escaping his lips.

"Tae-gun-ah, I need none of that to ever happen. I need, I need, I n-need to n-never, e-e-ev-ver, e-ever l-let myself d-d-o a-any of th-those th-things. T-Tae-gun-ah—"

...oh, his hyung. His poor hyung. The food is forgotten, untouched, and he walks around the table so that he can hug his hyung.

Oh, God, this is the first time he's hugged Tae-gun in six years and, and, and it feels better than he remembered, and he doesn't deserve any of it, he's been the devil himself for years, he shouldn't be allowed to have a do-over, but he can't refuse it. He can't refuse it, even if it's fake, even if it's a dream, he can do it right this time. He can, he can, he can just... not hurt anyone. He can be good.

He can be good.

It doesn't actually matter if it was real or not. His hyung is here, right in front of him, suffering so much, looking, looking—somehow looking more broken than he did every time he came out of Nightmare. Tae-gun didn't know it was possible, but he's never seen Jaeha stutter before, he's never seen Jaeha shake the way he's shaking right now. Bad dream or visions of the future, something has hurt his hyung and it needs to stop.

This is everything he's wanted, everything he's worked for for the past several years, and he did nothing to deserve it, he should've been denied it, and he doesn't understand why he's being given it. He should suffer in hell; instead, he's being offered redemption. What kind of fool could ever say no?

He's got a lot of practice comforting Jaeha by now, so he can wait, hug his Jaeha and wait until he's feeling alright again, or at least until hugging him isn't what he needs to do to help anymore.

"T-Tae-gun-ah," he says, once he's finally run out of tears.

"Yeah?"

"Tonight, you sh-should go to Park Yoo-min's party. A-and, and you should have a lot of fun. And, and if you want to flirt with Ha Si-yeon then, then that's fine. Or if you want to, to, to kiss him. Or more. Or Lee Juheon. Or, or anyone."

"...hyung...?" Is Jaeha breaking up with him?

"My, my stupid jealousy caused all of this. I can't let it keep doing that. I, I want, I, if you want to be with me, then. Then I want you to. And if you want to leave, then you should. Even if you're leaving me for them. But I don't want to, to. To keep you in a cage. I want you to be happy, Tae-gun-ah. Even if that's without me."

"—hyung, I—I am happy with you, hyung, I don't want to, to—!"

"—I'm not trying to break up with you." He's not sure he's physically capable of it anyway.