And then he sees her and, still looking perfectly neutral, wraps his arms around her.

"Are you okay?" he whispers, with the barest hint of a tremble in his voice.

Well now she feels terrible for scaring him.

"Yes," she says softly, leaning into him. "Uh - silo time, I'm sorry..."

He doesn't say anything to that and just teleports home. Once they're there, he doesn't let go of her, and just continues standing up and holding her, but he's starting to shake a bit.

Yeah. She'll. She'll just hold him. And consider how much of an idiot she was being - she should have just waited for backup, Tae-gun could have iced over the floor and prevented all of that, and - in retrospect she was going too fast for Minseo to catch everything, in her bid to avoid the dungeon snatching anyone else.

"Sorry," she repeats, feeling like the word is so small and useless and stupid.

"I'm just—I don't want to—I—" He shivers. "Hye-jin-ah, I've lost you twice already," Tae-gun whispers. "I, I can't—I'm sorry, I'm sorry I'm making everything about me, I—"

"I was being very self centered and stupid and I really should have just waited for backup - I mean, look how long it took you to show up, it wouldn't even have - sorry." Lean. "I, I didn't mean to scare you. It wouldn't have killed me, even though I - was being very stupid."

He nods and takes a deep, sniffling breath, and pulls away. "Are you—healed enough that I can—guide you?"

"Um - I should have someone look over my leg probably, because, I, might've..." messed up, considering she reattached it herself.

Knock knock your appointment with me is now

get your ass to my ward asap or you'll never do another dungeon again if I have anything to say about it

Eep.

"- we should teleport over to Ji-woo-sunbae," says Hye-jin, who gets to - oh she just has to accept the teleport, how efficient, and Tae-gun can come too - bwip.

Bwip indeed. He doesn't bother trying to fix his face before accepting the teleport but he does wipe his eyes as soon as he gets there.

Good news for Tae-gun! Ji-woo does not care. She is a very angry healer.

"Foot," she demands, without further elaboration.

Being partners with the sensor that saw the whole thing means that she got all of the gorey details.

meep.

foot.

There's a pause, then -

"You fucked up your nerves," says Ji-woo, flatly. "Never do another field attachment unless your life depends on it ever again, do you hear me? This is a fucking mess to clean up, would have been cheaper to reattach it myself - rrrgh, got it." From her pained expression, fixing the fuckup was not cheap. "Now shoo. You have used up your stupid allotment for the next six months."

"yes sunbae-nim, sorry sunbae-nim."

"Thank you, Ji-woo-sunbae," Tae-gun says and then yeah back to silo.

(Note to self: if Hye-jin ever loses a limb again, go see Ji-woo-sunbae first.)

(Hopefully this won't come up again!!! Hye-jin feels really bad, actually!!!!)

She'll just quietly and meekly lean into her boyfriend and murmur another apology. And, um. Maybe cry a little, actually, she feels horrible about - everyone being upset and scared and making Ji-woo's backlash worse.

Yeah. Okay. And he can get them sofa-wards, probably—it'll need a cleaning but what's S-rank esper money if not this—to hug her some more. There is a part of him that's kind of mad, but it's much, much smaller than the part of him that's just worried and scared and upset, and furthermore he thinks that expressing anger will help no one, she's probably beating herself up enough. For the moment he just wants to hold her and make sure that she's here and whole and alive, they can figure out what to do next later.

Yeah.

"I'll, take a break from doing dungeons," she volunteers, after a while of being held and - quietly crying into his shoulder about how she's the worst and most stupid person ever.

He nods, running his fingers through her hair. "Okay."

"Sorry," she repeats, for what is quite possibly the billionth time.

"I forgive you," he says, for the first.

...

Well that makes her feel worse.

"You probably shouldn't - I was really very stupid, and, and most of it was motivated by pride instead of sense or logic, and objectively I feel you should be mad at me for getting myself critically injured in a fucking B-rank," which she should probably unpack, normal people don't go 'it's just a B-rank,' actually...

Well he's not normal either. "I don't want to be mad. Hye-jin-ah, you're—very special to me. I want to, to take care of you, I want you to be happy, and I don't want to—I'm not your dad. I'm your boyfriend. You're going through a tough time. I want to help you through it, not, not—scold you. Especially not when you're—there's going to be enough other people who'll do that, yourself included. You don't need to add me to the mix."