("Aren't you a bit too confident that your relationship with this boy, whom you've met last week, is going to last? I don't think you've thought this through.")

("I'm quite certain I thought it through even better than you did when you married my father at age eighteen, but what do I know.")

("Oh holy shit you did not just say that with your mouth.")

("...your point is well taken, and I'm sorry for treating you like a child. I'll trust you've given your decisions as much thought as I would expect of another business partner.")

Subtitles are delightful and if he holds Jaeha's hand they're not too expensive to keep up with for the whole meeting! "I acknowledge it's fast. Maybe to be really thorough we should assemble some IKEA furniture together, I hear that's a classic. But just the other day my cat finally approved of him so that's the big milestone cleared."

"Your... cat," she says, blinking.

("This on the other hand doesn't inspire confidence.")

"He has a monster cat who can speak!" he says, grabbing his phone to show them a picture. "He's beautiful but very judgmental, being liked by him is a badge of honour."

("Let's move on from this subject, just trust.")

"Oh! He is beautiful."

(No subtitles.)

"I'll tell him you said that. Anyway, here I am for the foreseeable future, and I didn't go to business school but I'm a fast learner."

There's a knock on the door.

"Please come in."

Her secretary is here with their drinks. He bows and shuts the door again on his way out.

Excellent. He brings his coffee to his lips and blows on it softly.

"So, Kang Jaeha-shi, Suwan Masaharu-shi, do you have particular things you want to discuss?"

("Let's get down to business, then, because I feel like this may take longer than anticipated.")

Sip. Mmm, tart. "What're the obligatory parameters of a grandchild sufficient to head off any direct conflict about the suitability of said grandchild and pave the way for everything to work out copacetic? Not that we'd go cook one up instantly, but to narrow down the search space while we're feeling out the way forward. I'm prepared to compromise on being genetically related, if the risk of surrogacy is intolerable, but if I'm not, some third party will be, and we'd have to come to a stable agreement with her and I think it's a pretty narrow target, someone who wants a nonmarital childrearing alliance and sees eye to eye on the childrearing aspect."

A small, barely-noticeable raise of her eyebrows and quirk of her lips. 

("Alright, I'll admit it, I've been too hasty to judge.")

"Obligatory parameters..." she says, leaning back and drumming the tips of her fingers on the armrest of her chair. "Being genetically descended from Kang Jaehyuk and not claimed by some other group," is what she starts with. "But that is not how he will be thinking about it. He will have an ideal in mind which he will aim for, with the expectation that he will have to give up parts of it, and he will trade them off against each other and the likelihood that he will get anything at all in negotiation."

"Is this the sort of negotiation where we might as well mirror that strategy, show up with a pie in the sky plan and trade concession for concession?"

"It is at minimum good to know what your, ah, 'pie in the sky plan' is." She stops drumming and leans forward again to pick her tea up and start blowing on it in a way that is extremely reminiscent of how Jaeha is doing it, modulo the way she has her ankles crossed and is leaning to the side versus Jaeha's much more open posture. "Since I'll be the one conducting negotiations on your behalf, I would like to know as much as possible about how you rate tradeoffs, yourself."

"The ideal world would of course be that we would have surrogates carry as many or as few children as we want, all of them genetically ours, and that we have complete control over who gets to make decisions about their upbringing in any given situation we might find ourselves in. Naturally Kang Jaehyuk would never feature in those. I would not marry anyone other than Haru, and we would retain control of as big a share of Kang Moon-il Group as we feel like having. There would be no particular a priori contracts involving strict distribution of inheritance the way those were written up for me and Dal-seo before we were born. We would continue to work as espers to the extent we wish to and are able to, conditional on other demands on our time and attention."

("Also I want a flying, fire-breathing unicorn that can cure cancer.")

"I somehow think that pie may be flying a little bit too high, though."

"No, Kang Jaeha-shi, this is useful. It is, for one, a change from what you told me two days ago when you said you definitely wanted nothing to do with your grandfather's legacy no matter what," she says, raising an eyebrow delicately and taking a sip of her tea.

("You need to think through these things. If you're going to be here, learn to play the game.")

"...fair enough."

...Haru pulls out a little notebook to scribble down a flying firebreathing unicorn that can cure cancer before he forgets it because that was gold and Jaeha is not composing these subtitles verbally, so he doesn't know what they say. "I imagine the overshadowing prospect of being strongarmed into something would tend to sour one on it. But there's nothing inherently objectionable about being a corporate overlord, if you ask me. I like to be busy."

"That's practically a job requirement," she says, smiling a smile incredibly reminiscent of Jaeha's.

He sips his coffee. "Well, I suppose you have our pie in the sky plan, then. How can we help you feel like you know it well enough?"

"I had one small, ah, point of confusion. When you said you'd like your hypothetical children to be related to both of you, was that..." She seems to be having a little bit of trouble figuring out what to ask.

("Is Suwan Masaharu-shi trans? Am I missing something?")