"This time it was on purpose."

"And it works just the same!"

Haru giggles and heads to his office.

Jaeha should maybe also do some notebooking.

Instead he is not going to. Because he feels mentally wrung out and he just explicitly admitted to having daddy issues in front of Haru and he feels like stuff kind of sucks in some vaguely nebulously-defined way when it comes to his brain and oh right he has a response to this and it is to go work out, he is going to be SO FIT. ...EVEN FITTER than he already is, that is.

The guild is informed of their updated scheduling protocol. Haru does an easy dungeon the next day, which looked a lot harder than it was; he probably could have soloed it, though it would have taken longer. He comes home while Jaeha's still out, having used more bullets than magic, and not all that backlashed. In fact, he can read, as long as the thing he's reading is directed at him in a loosely conversational way. Cricket apurr on his back, he flops facedown on the couch and does some Reading The Comments and Checking His Email.

One of the emails he gets today is... interesting. In a sense.

Youre a pathetic washout. How dare you think you're good enough for Kang Jaeha? You haven't known him as long as Wo Do-in, you don't understand him like Wo Do-in does, and you'll never be a tenth the partner Wo Do-in is. You're not even pretty and your powers are so pathetic and useless, Jaeha is just having pity on you. I can't wait for him to dump you like the garbage you are, but if you were worth anything you would have gone back to Japan rather than take advantage of his kindness like this. I hope you kill yourself in a fire.

"Wow. Kitty, you want me to translate you some incredible shit?"

"Will it bring me joy?"

"It might bring you self-congratulatory contempt?"

"Well, I would never pass that up."

Haru picks his way through a translation and then when Cricket's laughing about it he moves on to the next message.

Your jealousy of Wo Do-in-oppa is literally psychopathic... just because you see someone else dare to have something good in their life, you decide you've got to tear it apart? Why can't you realize that it'll never be you he cares about, you'll never have what Wo Do-in-oppa did, and stop forcing Jaeha-oppa to pretend with you? 

"It probably means something that this person is using pretend-he's-their-brother honorifics, but I guess I'll have to ask Jaeha what."

"It probably means they are rude and stupid. Everything else they write means that."

I hope you die. Nobody loves you. Nobody even likes you, even your friends can't stand you. You should just kill yourself and do the world a favor.

"Maybe I should tell you about Simoun instead."

"Maybe." He reads the next one anyway.

I know you don't know me and I feel really weird sending this email and I bet you're not even going to read it but I wanted to get it out somewhere. 

Thank you. It's silly and stupid that seeing you and your partner being in love in public like that, not caring about who was watching or even which country you're in, meant so much to me, but it did. It meant a lot. It made me feel like maybe things aren't going to be awful forever. You're Japanese and he's Korean so you probably know what it's like, the way we all pretend we're so modern and developed while still holding onto stupid traditions that don't help anyone and just make us feel small and weak and scared. So thank you for being big and strong and and brave instead. 

Yours truly,
a Malaysian boy who has a bit more hope for the future now.

"Awww, this one's a sweet one," he tells Cricket. "Maybe I'll reply to it, only I'm not sure what to say."

Cricket can read this one over his shoulder because it's in Japanese but he needs help with most of the kanji. "Well, you could tell him that Googling you would tell him you are Canadian."

This brightened my day to read. I wish you the best of luck out there.

omg ur soooooo hot you're even hotter than Wo Do-in-hyung I drew you I hope you like it

Attached to the email is a set of drawings of Haru giving Jaeha head from various different angles. They're actually really good drawings, coal on paper and lovingly detailed, capturing their faces perfectly and taking a really good shot at a guess of what they look like naked.

"I think I won't answer this one."

"I need bleach."