Blink blink blink blink.

("Wait hold on no one told me about this I'm not so sure about this.")

He looks at her. "Do you think you'd find something like this useful?"

("I'm not going to trample over your own feelings to please your mother.")

She looks at her mother.

Who just continues to smile.

("I'm not giving you anything, sweetheart. You're on your own, here.")

She chews on her lips and looks at Jaeha. "Probably?"

"Dal-seo."

She clears her throat and tries again, more firmly. "Yes, I think that would be useful, but I'm not sure how that would work, exactly."

"I can probably think of something, but perhaps Nam Hee-seo-nim had something in mind?"

("If you've got specific things you want now's the time to tell me what they are.")

"I think you might benefit from getting to know each other, perhaps Dal-seo could tell you a bit about her job, see if you have opinions..."

("If I knew how to fix the problem myself I would've fixed it. I could probably figure out how to fix it, if I tried, but it's cheaper if you do it for me, and might be good for her besides.")

"I suppose I can do that, and hopefully make myself useful. Why don't we meet up for that coffee I suggested last time sometime, Dal-seo?"

("It'd be hard to do worse than this, she's such an open book.")

"That sounds reasonable." She's not gonna make the same mistake twice in a row. "Message me and we can find a time we're both free?"

"Will do."

"And it seems like we're running out the hour. Did you have anything else you wanted to discuss?"

"No, I don't believe so."

"It's been lovely to meet the both of you."

They all stand up, bow according to their stations, exchange last minute well-wishes, and after walking out of Nam Hee-seo's office using their feet Jaeha and Haru can teleport back home.

At which point he hugs Haru and hides his face in Haru's shoulder. "Haah... That was stressful."

"Well, you looked extremely put together and calm at least to my eye the entire time. Also your subtitles were great, there was one I had to write down -" He produces the firebreathing unicorn note. "When you were pie-in-the-sky-ing."

He reads it and snorts then covers his mouth in embarrassment and starts giggling. "I was so sure I was going to say the wrong thing all the time and fuck us over... Or that I'd misread her or something..."

"Well, to the extent my assessment is worth anything, everything went well." Haru squeezes his hand.

"Yeah. Yeah, I think it did.

"...and I guess now I've introduced you to my mother. I'm afraid I won't do the same for my father."

"Why be afraid when the alternative is so much more dreadful?"

He kisses Haru on the cheek. "I should meet your family next."

...wow, damn, good job, he said that all confident-like and didn't even second guess himself until later.

"You should! You should see the string of emojis Ren sent me about that one selfie, actually -"

It's mostly assorted hearts and exclamation points but she did also dig up a gay marriage emoji from somewhere, in between the seventh red heart and the fourth ‼️.