🧋youngwoo: amen
🧋youngwoo: but it does mean that there are a single-digit number of people who know what his backlash is even including you

❤️‍🔥Azkalita: no, yeah, i do actually appreciate the gravity of the situation
❤️‍🔥Azkalita: and i appreciate the heads-up too
❤️‍🔥Azkalita: it's a better reason than i thought he had to not partner with me in dungeons
❤️‍🔥Azkalita: it isn't one for avoiding a noncombat guiding arrangement but
❤️‍🔥Azkalita: maybe he doesn't think it could help enough, and obviously he'd rather cut his own dick off than put himself in a situation where he feels that way around somebody he doesn't know
❤️‍🔥Azkalita: i don't know his life
❤️‍🔥Azkalita: but like
❤️‍🔥Azkalita: if you made the choice to save the world, fuck everything else, i'm a boddhisattva of violence now, etc
❤️‍🔥Azkalita: and it turns out you need to cut your dick off
❤️‍🔥Azkalita: you take the knife

It takes Woo-young a little bit to respond to that.

🧋youngwoo: sunbae doesn't know what he wants and doesn't want to cut off future options
🧋youngwoo: and i don't just mean his dick
🧋youngwoo: i guess what i want to say is, and forgive me my bluntness, you don't have the full picture and it's not as simple as that

Hm.

Did she just try to tell a man she does not know that his best friend should grow some balls and re-traumatize himself about something she has literally no context on.

❤️‍🔥Azkalita: yeah. thanks for being blunt actually
❤️‍🔥Azkalita: i don't know basically anything about him even if i do feel like he's really easy to read
❤️‍🔥Azkalita: and i keep trying to say things that make pretty pictures instead of trying to find out what's actually going on
❤️‍🔥Azkalita: so. thanks for the callout
❤️‍🔥Azkalita: genuinely

🧋youngwoo: cool i'm glad that landed hahahaha
🧋youngwoo: and yeah sunbae's emotions are often easy to read
🧋youngwoo: especially if you're familiar with the trajectory map of those eyebrows
🧋youngwoo: but he's got layers. like an onion.

❤️‍🔥Azkalita: inshallah he will be sautéed soon

Marza's house and silo requisitions go well, that is to say normally, that is to say, she gets a nice little cottage on the outskirts of Seoul with a silo in the basement. The silo is mostly just a big heated saltwater pool with voice-activated massage jets, plus a little electrotherapy station that can help her through the home stretch once she can mostly see and hear and move again. In addition to this, she had somebody work out a Braille reader that uses needles – mostly blunt, like tacks, just enough to prickle – because even numb, she can feel pain, and anything's better than nothing. She'll need to learn Braille, but she's a fast learner.

(Probably she won't usually be returning home completely deaf, blind, and numb, because if she reaches that condition in the field, she'll die. But it doesn't hurt to be prepared.)

yoo-min-max: marza-senpai
yoo-min-max: how come I don't have your number 
yoo-min-max: do u hate me

❤️‍🔥Azkalita: that's definitely an illegal suffix but i like it
❤️‍🔥Azkalita: anyway i hate you WAY less than i should
❤️‍🔥Azkalita: it's medically amazing, you're like one of those cats we invented to be bald and ugly so people who die about cat hair can still have cats even if they suck
❤️‍🔥Azkalita: if you wanted my number you could've texted mimi, i did call her on your comm
❤️‍🔥Azkalita: i gave you all the clues mr policeman

yoo-min-max: it would be extremely creepy for me to try to get the phone number of a female hoobae nearly ten years my junior from her roommate

❤️‍🔥Azkalita: huh. well i don't give a shit about any of that but fair
❤️‍🔥Azkalita: anyway you can send your precious message to #legitimate-korean-phone-number

She gets a text!

hello hello, I sure hope this is the real phone number of one María Esperanza Ricardo y Belleza otherwise i am about to make a fool of myself

oh man i totally should've given you a fake number

except i don't have any friends with korean numbers except mimi whose number you already have

so it probably wouldn't have worked that great

hi

hi!

so do you want to get very inadvisedly drunk tonight?

invitees include my partner, woo-young, and woo-young's partner

fuck yes!!!

i think woo-young doesn't hate me yet even, this is gonna rule

cool!

I'll send you the address

see you~

There's a little bit of outfitting to get through. (Marza has grown out of the phase where she pretended not giving a shit what other people think meant she wasn't vain and a little bit socially anxious.) She decides to show up in a red cocktail dress which she's pretty sure is overdressy enough to be clearly intentional and mildly entertaining, without making her look like a stray bridesmaid. And metallic gold eyeshadow, blingy but not too Trixie Mattel.

She shows up at the address and scans the heads for – yep, there's the grass she was looking for.

"Good evening," she says, slipping into a seat. "Either you gentlemen are Yoo-min and Woo-young's – nim's – partners, or I'm being very weirdly trolled. How are you both."

"Good evening, Marza-shi."

"Good God Joo-ya please drop the formality."

He grins. "I'm Choi Seungjoo."

"Seo Tae-hwan."

"And I'm Lee Tae-gun."

Ooh aah. "Wow, Gunbae, it's such an honor! Did you do something to your hair? And your ass? Anyway good to meet you both and uh. Also Woo-young-shi who I just remembered I hadn't in fact met in person before. You have the teddy-bear chat sticker nature, I recognized it from the door."

"Glad to be recognisable."

"You settling in alright?"