"I wonder."

"Jaeha," he says, warningly.

"Father, what did you think was happening?"

"...I beg your pardon?"

"You had an esper check it, oh, however many days into it—"

"Four."

"Four days into it. What did you think was happening before that?"

"What would you have done if I weren't an esper? What are you going to do now that I am? Aren't you kinda fucked, now? I've always had a lot more options than you thought I did, but now? The world is my fucking oyster."

He slams the desk. "Jaeha! You will respect me!"

"Or what, father? I will respect you or what, Jaehyuk?"

He visibly startles at Jaeha using his given name.

"Did you, at any point, get worried. Did you get concerned. Did you, at any point, feel scared?"

"Of what? Of you?"

"Of losing me!" he says, his voice breaking. Fuck, he did not want his voice to break here. "I stop eating, stop moving, stop shitting, I could've died, would you have cared about it at all beyond losing your only goddamn heir—" And he doesn't need to actually hear the answer because he can know. He can just know. The knowledge of how to do it is at the tip of his fingers and he can just see, he can just look—

—there's nothing. There's nothing there.

He knew. He's known it for years. He's known it for years and it was so, so stupid to have ever hoped otherwise.

Kang Jaehyuk doesn't love him. The confirmation is naked before his eyes, it's amazing how well he can understand it when what he sees isn't even the feeling itself, it's the, the—

—it's the way Jaehyuk's heart is hammering in his chest, because he is scared. Kang Jaehyuk is terrified of Jaeha, right now, he doesn't know what Jaeha's esper powers could be and he knows that it could be that Jaeha might be able to kill him with a thought—

—it's the way Jaehyuk feels in the hollow of his throat and in the middle of his tongue like there's an opportunity, he's salivating over the possibility of Jaeha getting a useful power, a power that could propel Samsung forward, his mind is churning with possibility—

—it's the way his eyes are narrowing, Jaeha is so familiar with the way Jaehyuk's eyes are narrowing because it's the same way Jaeha's own eyes narrow, that cold calculation that replaces fight or flight in his lineage, apparently, because Jaehyuk has a plan, Jaehyuk always has a plan—

"Hold that thought, father," says Jaeha, and he holds Jaehyuk's thought for him, turns around, and opens the door.

As Jaeha expected, there are somewhat more body guards outside than there usually would be.

Jaeha is holding their thoughts, too, now. He's holding their thoughts, and they're forgetting what they just heard and saw. Jaeha hasn't just walked out.

He's still holding Jaehyuk's thought, and the bodyguards'. He's holding all of their thoughts, and he is carefully, carefully erasing them. He's looping them, they're stuck in the same second, and they're all going to be stuck in the same second while he walks a few more rooms down to see if there are any other surprises Jaehyuk left him.

There aren't.

Jaehyuk is really quite stupid, isn't he.