"Because if he likes me without me having to manage it directly then there's less possibility for my fuckups to ruin it."

"Would you feel you worry about ruining things a lot?"

He huffs a bit self-deprecatingly. "Yeah."

"Is that the main thing that tends to worry you or are there more patterns?"

"It doesn't always get as bad as ruination but the theme that I might make a mistake that will do irreparable or at least very-hard-to-repair damage to a relationship is consistent."

(What even happened to his vocabulary use and speech patterns! He didn't use to talk like this before!!!)

"Relationships in particular?"

"Broadly construed. In the sense that covers image and perception and intuition."

"Has that happened before, a relationship being hard or impossible to repair?"

"I'm pretty sure my relationships with all of my past partners are impossible to repair. Not to be a cliché but so is my relationship with my father, though that one I will claim very little credit for ruining, the man did most of the work himself."

"Oh?"

"My father is Kang Jaehyuk from Kang Moon-il group. I'm his only heir, and he had very specific expectations of me, including the assumption that he would be the one to decide whom and when I'd marry like his father did for him, as well as that I would be always mindful of how my actions reflect upon the family name. If you've ever read those light novels or manhwas with rich magnate parents fucking up their kids, they're almost a textbook description of our relationship."

"I'm afraid I haven't. It sounds like you've managed to avoid at least most of those constraints affecting your adult life."

"Except for the obvious ways in which they've caused me to have control issues and lack affection in my life and all of those chewy things, yes."

"Can you think of a relatively recent example of a time when you felt badly out of control and drill into that in a lot of detail on your emotions during that time?"

"...hmm. Let me think."

She nods and waits attentively.

He hasn't really felt very out of control at all with Haru, recently—or, like he said, he hasn't felt the need to control how Haru sees him. There have been—some things—hmm. Actually.

"So this one might not be the best example because I've kind of already worked ninety percent of it out but I think it's kind of—emblematic. And it wasn't really that bad, either, because it was with Haru, and—I feel safe with him.

"We didn't start dating until very recently, and for one reason or another we hadn't really gone on any proper dates until then. And when we did I had—some suggestions for what we could do, involving me showing him around Seoul some since he hadn't had the opportunity, and doing some nice things, and he—shot down some of my ideas. ...that sounds harsher than I mean. Concretely, one of the things I suggested was taking him to a nice fancy romantic restaurant, and he said that he wasn't really much of a foodie and that some of the effect of that would be lost on him. I did have other suggestions, and we went with some of them, but it felt really bad for him to refuse a couple of the ones that I felt were most—centrally romantic, like the kinds of things you see in movies.

"And it's not like a picnic by the Han river isn't also the kind of romantic thing you see in movies. And it took me a bit to understand where I was coming from, why I had felt bad, and—had it been someone else I probably just wouldn't have suggested something that had the possibility of being rejected. I've lived a lot of my life like that, only suggesting things I know will be accepted, only making requests I know I'll get. With him I didn't—don't, anymore—and so it got rejected, and I felt like I wanted to roll back and try again, wanted to have a redo of that conversation in which I effortlessly suggested only and exactly the things that he'd like the most out of a first date, be the perfectly discerning boyfriend.

"Because if I'm not the perfect boyfriend then he might leave, and that'd be awful. Because if he rejects something I wanted then that means he is fundamentally rejecting a part of who I am—I don't actually think that, to be clear, but that's what it felt like and I think it would've wormed its way into my subconscious if I hadn't explicitly tried to figure out why I felt the way I felt afterwards. Because of course his taste is perfect and flawless and it's me who should change and adapt and I should guarantee he never ever has a bad time in our relationship and it's all sun and roses forever and we have a beautiful Autumn wedding in Canada. If he ever has a bad time he might leave, and that'd be awful.

"And one thing that I thought, later, when I was putting my feelings under the microscope, was that that was all very stupid and also Haru wants to be in a relationship with me and relationships aren't things where everything is perfect forever, they're things where you're prioritising the other person highly and you want them to be happy and that will sometimes mean doing things you don't want to do or make sacrifices for them and that this is symmetrical and it shouldn't always be me who makes sacrifices because if it is then it's not a relationship it's just slavery. And obviously this is so small, small enough that after I had distilled all of these thoughts into their component parts I actually no longer cared about the restaurant. I figured out that I ought to ask things of him, when they mattered to me, and we could talk about what would make both of us happiest."

"And yet I completely failed to bring the topic up over the past several days because the thought that I might inconvenience him," especially after all the everything about how he's a horrible villain, "feels terrifying and it is furthermore really embarrassing to have to admit that I felt bad that he didn't want to go to a fancy restaurant with me when I turned out to not even want it that much either, and if I act embarrassing or immature or needy or clingy he will surely get tired of me and leave."

Dr. Park is writing a lot of notes here. A lot of them. She looks fascinated. "Are there sacrifices you do ask of him?"

He's happy to be an interesting case study. 

"It is in full recognition that this is insane and not true that I say that my immediate, intuitive emotional response is 'being with me is sacrifice enough'. Other than that..." He didn't exactly ask Haru to spend a month on an insane schedule so that he could accumulate enough backlash to help guide him to zero most efficiently but that wasn't not a sacrifice he made for Jaeha's sake. But he doesn't want to go into details. "There was something he did for me that was... kind of exhausting and difficult and time-consuming, which I didn't ask him to do, but which benefitted me greatly, and which I still feel a bit like I—sort of owe him for."

"Hm, would he say you owe him for it?"

"Probably not?" Jaeha doesn't think so? Not in so many words, at least? He did say he thought it was important to make sure you're sane regularly and... he said he likes Jaeha... and also he let Jaeha feel it which was a feeling better than guided sex honestly. ...oh, he should suggest that Haru let him feel it when he's coming, he gets so much enjoyment out of feeling his partners come. He'd also offer the reverse but something tells him Haru would Really Rather Not.

Then again, maybe he wouldn't? His personal dispreference seemed very strongly on the mental privacy side? Food for thought.

"Hm. Can you think of a concession from him - even a very small one - that you'd be able to ask for? Like going to that fancy restaurant, even."