hi!! i want to first thank you for your kind words and say that i’m happy you’re enjoying the story!~ secondly, i am aware of how korean honorifics work. let me try to clear things up.

hao didn’t use ‘hanbin-ah’ with hanbin when they first met, it was after the fourth time they met. there was never any sort of line in the fic that proclaimed when they should start talking casually to one another, it’s just sort of implied that after meeting so many times they would do that. there fourth meeting was when hanbin showed up to the station unannounced and hao was flustered because he was emotional. the talk that they had was the signifier that they were getting closer. looking back on it though, maybe i do agree that it shouldn’t be until they start getting more close (middle of chapter 2), so i did go back and fix that, so thank you!~

as for hanbin calling jiwoong ‘jiwoong-hyung’: he did so throughout the entirety of the fic. keep in mind that they’re best friends and they can very well speak more casually, but i had hanbin always call him jiwoong-hyung because it felt right. there was only one time that hanbin called him ‘jiwoong-ah’ and it was because he was calling out to him in his office.

chapter 3 was the first time hanbin calls hao ‘hao-yah’, but like i said before, they are close at this point! you hadn’t commented about this, but i want to make it clear that that’s also why hanbin uses ‘-ah/ya’ with his witch friends (and they call him the same), because they are all close.