Jinsu wasn’t entirely sure why she had cried herself to sleep the previous night in the aftermath of the brawl.  It was the first time she’d had two boys actually fighting over her, and it was also such a rarity for somebody to stand up for her so fiercely that a large part of her brain was telling her she ought to be happy.

And yet she wasn’t.

She decided to attribute it to homesickness.  It was rare for her to be away from home for so long without either her mother or her brother there.

It’s just five days, she reminded herself.  It’ll be four when you get to this evening.  Just bear with it.

It wasn’t altogether a surprise to find another breakfast waiting for her when she opened her bedroom door, distinctly more awake than she had been at the same time the previous day.  The set-up was a little different this time: on a plate on the left was a plate with three mini-croissants – one plain, one buttered, and one ham and cheese – and a large pain au chocolat.  A sideplate next to it had a neatly sliced apple – perfect twelfths, Jinsu was impressed to notice – and another held five finger soldiers next to an eggcup with a boiled egg, capped like the previous day.  On the right were three plates: one had diced hash browns and bite-sized chunks of fried potato.  The second was loaded high with button mushrooms and bite-sized pieces of bacon.  The third had at least three inches in height made up entirely of sausages.  Just from the size and texture, Jinsu figured they were different flavoured ones, probably at least three.  There was a piece of paper in front of each side, too: in handwriting she didn’t recognise (not that she would have a chance of recognising the handwriting of anybody on the Attayear other than herself), the left side proclaimed itself to be finger food and the right to be chopstick food.  She smiled and bent to pick it up, a couple of boys shuffling past her with large yawns.

It was as she was turning to go back into her room that the little bubble of happiness was popped.

“Wow,” a boy a little further down the passage observed, his name tag proclaiming him to be Kang Seungho.  “Minhwan is sentenced to hard labour and the Parked Car gets the princess treatment and some willing slave to make her breakfast.”

“Yeah, which poor er did you screw over?” demanded his companion – Youngdo, according to his tag.  “Or just screw, come to that?”

Jinsu contemplated giving them both the finger, but it was impossible unless she wanted to drop her breakfast.

A hand s out and plucked two pieces of sausage off the plate.

“You call being made to clean all the windows hard labour?” Jongin scoffed around the food he’d just popped into his mouth.  “We’re in bl**dy Balhae, guys, twelve hundred years before our time.  If you want hard labour, literally all you have to do is step outside and go down to the quarry or find the lumberjacks I saw yesterday and you’ve got proper hard labour staring you in the face.  Window cleaning is not going to break anyone’s back.”  He grabbed a handful of hash browns off Jinsu’s plate and shoved them into his mouth before moving on past.  A few moments later, he had a delayed reaction and looked around at Jinsu mid-chew with his eyes wide.  Then he swallowed and grinned at her.  Jinsu wasn’t entirely sure what it meant and figured it was best to just forget about it and ignore Minhwan’s friends, so she returned to her room.

Chanyeol appeared without knocking about five minutes later and promptly drew up the spare chair at the desk she was already sitting at, peering at her face before, apparently satisfied, he reached out for a slice of apple.  Jinsu tried not to cringe at him breaking the perfect star the pieces had been arranged into.

“You look like you got some sleep,” he told her with relief, going for more finger food.  “I tried to check on you last night but the door was locked, so I got a bit worried.”

Jinsu gave him a blank look, unable to remember anybody trying to get into the room.  Either she’d been wallowing in too much self pity to pay attention to the wider world or she’d been sleeping like the dead.

“What time was that?”

“Late.  Minseok gave us all an absolute b*llocking.  I had to see him seperately as one of the perpetrators, too, but he was more happy I’d – his words – grown a ing pair and a half and wanted to treat me.  So I have a stash of chocolate.”  He reached into his hoodie pocket and pulled out a large plastic bag of chocolates.  “Take your pick.”

Unsure, Jinsu hesitated.

“Really,” Chanyeol insisted.  “I know you like chocolate.  And besides, it’s not like I can eat all this by myself.”

“What about your roommates?”

“Then it’s not like I’ll be able to eat any of it full stop.  Jongin’s a bottomless pit.  Sehun’s two.”

Jinsu laughed.

Jinsu learnt a little later on that everybody who had been directly involved in the brawl had been put on a thorough spring clean of the Attayear as punishment (she heard somebody complaining about Minseok and why does chores and cleaning make us adults?  Like, what is his obsession with it?), meaning only twelve of them had permission to go out for the day, and groups naturally had to be rearranged.

Jongdae invited Jinsu to join him and Junmyeon with Minho the second she got down to the atrium with a small pouch of gold (in case of emergency or treasure find) tucked into a pocket of her hanbok.  She’d looked through the clothing her father had provided her with to discover that practically all of it was silk.  He really couldn’t be more ostentatious.  Except perhaps if the hanboks had all been bright orange or something.  This one was at least a rather quiet lime green.

“Let’s go!” Jongdae enthused, leading them past another group that was getting ready.  The doors hissed open.

“Jinsu.”

Jinsu turned, surprised, and the boys with her stopped.  Her group from the first day was standing there.  Kyungsoo’s expression was neutral, but the other two – if Jinsu was seeing things right – actually looked a little put out.

“Are you not joining us?” Jongin asked.

Jinsu glanced between them and the three she’d agreed to join for the day.  They were all looking at her expectantly, even if Jongdae was waving an absent hand at the sensors to get the automatic doors to open and close again.

The attention made her feel like a rabbit trapped in headlights.  “I—I. . .” she stuttered.

“It’s okay,” Kyungsoo said abruptly.  “Just remember if we actually wished you dead, you’d already be dead.  Have fun.”

“He’s nice,” said a dubious Minho as they headed out into the sunshine.

“He’s the son of the motoring entrepreneur, isn’t he?” Junmyeon checked.  “Isn’t his mother a politician?”

Jongdae nodded in agreement.  “Famously laconic.”

“And awkward,” said Minho.  “You cannot forget that Do Kyungsoo is an awkward human being.”

Jinsu was only half listening to their discussion.  Kyungsoo’s tone had lacked its usual sardonic bite.  At face value, his words were bland at best and a little hurtful at worst, but Minho was right that he was awkward and it was also pretty common knowledge that Kyungsoo was as emotionless as a car bumper unless he got on with you really, really well.  For all his brusqueness, she wondered if he was possibly being nice to her in his own weird way, like the time when he’d flicked chewing gum into Do Minyoung’s hair.

“By the way,” said Minho, starting her back into reality as they returned to shadow under the trees at the edge of the clearing.  “I’m not saying this as a ert, but how do you manage to get dressed by yourself with only one hand?  I sprained my wrist really badly a couple of years back and I couldn’t do anything by myself.”

Jinsu had a feeling it was going to be an awkward day.

They ventured further afield than Jinsu had done on her first time out, in part because Jongdae had gone to a village slightly further away the previous day and wanted to go back.  Just a few yards from the village gates, they were surprised by Han stepping out of the forest, beaming from ear to ear and with a deer over his shoulders.  He recognised them at once, and he and Jongdae immediately got into a conversation about different types of bow and their efficacy for hunting that went on for several minutes.  In the end, they all trailed into the village together.

It turned out to be market day, and the village square – though the place was more of a small town – was absolutely heaving.  Cattle were braying and refusing to move; stallholders were insisting their food was the best quality; vendors wandered around trying to sell trinkets.  Jinsu found h