Just a bit, he said.

Right.

"Hye-jin-ah," he manages, eventually.

"Mmm?" she hums, already in the process of taking off his shirt.

"Can we talk?" God she's so tempting, though, she's so hot, and he could—no. Stay down, boy. You'll have plenty of opportunities to ravish her spend quality guiding time with her, don't lose your nerve now.

"... right now??" she says, a little surprised. Usually he's - you know, all for immediate victory sex after dungeons.

"Yeah. Right now. I, I mean, it's fine if—" No. No. "No, right now."

She goes a little bit still against him, suddenly afraid.

"I - yeah, sure, what's wrong?"

He's carrying her since she pounced him so he's gonna relocate the both of them to the living room. 

Also, she sounds anxious, and he can figure out easily what he'd be feeling in her shoes, so, "Nothing bad happened and I'm not about to give you any bad news or anything."

She is naturally suspicious of this statement! Clearly her life is really only filled with bad things happening to her lately, and only bad news. She studies him anxiously and doesn't protest being carried off to the living room.

"... Okay...?" she says, unconvinced.

He sighs but yeah that's legit. Here's the couch. 

"Hye-jin-ah, you're not okay and it's making me worried." That's a good start, right? Not beating around the bush and letting her get super anxious.

"... of course I'm not okay, I'm still backlashed after my last dungeon?" she says, and - look, she didn't mean for it to be a dodge of the actual topic he seems to want to talk about, but, but. Since when has anyone aside from her parents given a shit on whether or not she's okay? It's easier to focus on the immediate, simple, way she is not okay.

"Hye-jin-ah..." She's still draped all over him so even if it's not as much guiding as if he were literally inside her now is not the time for a boner it's still very good, especially with how compatible they are, so she can deal.

"I-I don't... what do you want me to say, I am suddenly okay after being stalked, harassed, and almost killed by an S-rank psychic esper that literally fucked with my mind? I'm not. Obviously. But I'm - dealing with it. I'm fine."

"I've said that exact same 'I'm fine' almost every day for half a decade and it's not any more convincing when you're the one saying it."

She looks away from him.

"... okay, well, turnabout is fair play? And - I mean, really, I'm being much more responsible about this than you were, if anything this is really useful, we've still got the massive backlog of your backlash to chip away at, it only makes sense for me to -"

"That's not—Hye-jin-ah I shouldn't wish what I went through on anyone and I especially wouldn't wish it on you."

"I'm sure it's very inconvenient, having to see what you looked like from the outside," she agrees, for all the wrong reasons.

"—inconvenient? I didn't start this conversation because I thought it'd be convenient—"

No. Wrong. Bad. That's not the kind of backlash he needs to lean into.

Maybe he should actually have started this conversation after they'd fucked each other's backlashes away, it's getting really difficult to go the more useful direction especially with how his brain is now starting to loop around being mad that that's what she thought of him, and being mad that she's making it so hard to help her, and being mad that he's being mad for such petty reasons—

Behold. A girlfriend who does in fact seem to think that of him. What ever could have caused her to do that.

Well that's just making him want to fuck her insolence away—

"I'm going to start talking and hopefully I'll get my point across.

"I don't know what it means, to you, for us to be—dating. Boyfriend and girlfriend. To me it means a lot more than just being friends with benefits. It means a lot more than just, just, just doing whatever's convenient. It's the opposite of that. It's the opposite of that!" Okay, that's working, actually, he's a bit more snappish than he'd hoped but he's getting into gear. "If it's just doing what's convenient, spending nice times together and tolerating each other then that's not, that's not even friends with benefits actually because friends do more than that. I'm pretty sure. I think? No, I know. And I want to do more than that. That means that I—I don't know how to be a boyfriend, really. But I'm not going to magically learn overnight. I'm going to fuck up. I am fucking up. I think not waiting until after we—guided each other—was probably a mistake—"

"It was," she confirms, glaring. "I don't know what possessed you to think that it was okay to - fucking - ambush me when I came here to alleviate my life-threatening medical condition, but making it so that I literally cannot escape your intervention safely is not the sort of thing a partner should be doing. Especially not a boyfriend."

"—I'm sorry. I'm really, truly sorry."

"Uh huh." She's heard that before, and yet.

He sighs. "I—this probably killed the mood. I'd be willing to have sex if you wanted but I'm guessing not? I don't want to trap you. I didn't mean to trap you. I really don't want you to stay if you don't want to stay and it didn't, wasn't, that wasn't the framing I was using because I'm so used to carrying a lot of backlash but that was inconsiderate of me and not properly taking your perspective into account, so I'll try harder to think these things through in the future."