Two pieces of big news hit on Monday morning, for which Yeonhee was incredibly grateful as it distracted almost everybody from their curiosity about the prince’s girlfriend.  The first was that the trial for the prime minister’s assassin was starting – charges had been brought incredibly quickly, and Yeonhee was informed by a quick text from the prince that some people in intelligence had somehow managed to get Wu Yifan to talk, which had made gathering and verifying the charges that much easier – which stirred up the public consciousness even amongst those who hadn’t supported Huang Zitao, and the media were all over it to be the first to publish the new information that came out during the trial.

The second was that China was calling for the extradition of a Chinese national who’d been living in Taderra for a decade or so, who was an outspoken critic of the Chinese political system.  This probably wouldn’t have been front page news if the same man hadn’t also been jailed for a string of murders and a torrid affair with two sixteen-year-olds while he’d been a teacher at a school a couple of cities over from the capital, one of whom had escaped the basement he’d locked her in to appear dishevelled on a live segment a news reporter was doing on the city’s homelessness to beg for help, as the camera crew had been the first people she’d seen on breaking out.  Sehun had of course looked into it and unearthed something the press was not yet reporting – which was that China was also holding two Taderran tourists who’d committed misdemeanours and was trying to use them as a bargaining chip by sentencing them to jail time when ordinarily they would only have received a fine.

“I don’t get why they don’t just deport of this convict,” Mihae said as she and Yeonhee tried to get on with some work in Baekhyun’s room while Sehun and Baekhyun tried to repair Baekhyun’s hi-fi speakers.  There were wires everywhere and Baekhyun had a screwdriver clamped between his teeth as he worked.

“It’s a human rights issue,” Sehun said, squinting at a set of wires in front of him.  “I personally think we should execute this monster and have done with it, but there are indications he’s going to be sent to a labour camp, and that’s against the Geneva Convention.”

“It’s not wartime, though.”

“The Geneva Convention is what governs international law when it comes to imprisonment and labour camps.”  Sehun reached for a pair of pliers.  “It depends on what the UN’s feeling like, but even if we repatriate the felon, we could find ourselves under embargoes, which would damage the economy, and that’s the last thing we want when we don’t even have a functioning political system.”

“Do you think we’ll be able to get the two Taderrans back?”

Sehun just shrugged.  “Depends how good our negotiators are.”

Quietly, Yeonhee reached for her phone to fire off a quick text to the prince asking about the situation.

Half a minute later, she got a photo of Luhan face-planting in despair.

From: Private number, 16.00

Me too.  And the other three in the negotiating committee for this fiasco.

To: Private number, 16.01

You’re dealing with this yourself?

From: Private number, 16.01

Me, Luhan, the minister for Justice, the minister for Foreign Affairs and the Home Secretary.

From: Private number, 16.02

Our lovely counterparts have been loudly expressing their concerns over our legitimacy to do anything since this is an emergency rather than elected government.

From: Private number, 16.03

Of course, it’s all perfectly constitutional and legal, but they’re throwing their weight around.  The Home Secretary asked Luhan if I could be co-opted as the chief negotiator because I’m the person with the most political clout.

Yeonhee felt rather sorry for him, and she texted back a sympathetic that .

From: Private number, 16.05

I’m really terrified I’m going to this up.

If he’d been in the room, Yeonhee would have reached for his hand to comfort him, but all she could really do was send him an unhappy emoji and tell him to look on Easyl later.

“Who are you texting so happily?” Mihae asked curiously when a broad smile cracked across Yeonhee’s face at the prince’s response of I love it when you draw me stuff.  It makes me feel special.  (He already was special, so she counted it as an achievement that she could make him feel even more so.)

“No one,” Yeonhee replied before realising how stupid that was.

Baekhyun sat up.  “Bullsh*t.”

Sensing where this was headed, Yeonhee began to gather her things together.  “Just a friend.  Don’t get so hung up.”

“It’s Sugar Daddy, right?”

Yeonhee threw him an exasperated look and left.

There was a small package waiting outside her room when she got there, and Yeonhee eyed it for several long moments before gingerly picking it up and bringing it into the room with her.  There was no To Yeonhee note on it when she checked, so she opened it.  Inside was a mug, a teatowel, and a pamphlet with a picture of a broken crown on the front.

A little wary, she opened it up.

There was a cheerful bubble in pale red at the top of the page.

Hi!  Welcome to your Antiroyo starter kit!  It’s so exciting to have you on board—

She got no further before dumping the whole lot in the bin.  Whoever it was who had put it there was an idiot, but then again, it was pretty clear that their PR team wasn’t particularly bright.

Putting it to the back of her mind, she got out her sketchbook and started brainstorming for what she could draw the prince.

Tuesday was a haze of misery because Mihae dragged Yeonhee off to the gym early in the morning (it turned out that this was the time Sehun usually went to the gym, and Yeonhee spent an hour longer than she would have liked on the treadmill next to Mihae because it was the best Sehun-spotting point) and her muscles screamed at her for the rest of the day.  Wednesday was marginally better: Sehun wanted help with some stuff for his panel discussion, which had been okay until Taehyung and Jiawei joined them.

“We really ought to get some kind of comment on the current standoff with China,” Taehyung said, beating Sehun to it.  Sehun sat up, leaning back from his laptop with a slightly disgruntled look.  “We don’t even have a proper diplomat involved in that because apparently the prince strong-armed his way onto the committee after it had been set up and placed himself as the chief negotiator, and the Chinese are talking to him in the capacity of a royal head of state rather than as a delegate on the committee.”

Yeonhee tried to be patient, but it was hard.  Tightening the ponytail she’d just tied, she let out a sigh.

“He was asked to be on the committee,” she snapped.  “Don’t be such an idiot.  Why would he set something like that up and then turn around and join it a week later if he wanted full control of it anyway?”

Sehun looked carefully between the two.

“How do you know?” Taehyung asked.

Yeonhee just groaned, dropping her head into her hands.

“Well, reports are that the Chinese were more or less refusing to negotiate at all with the actual delegates,” Sehun said slowly, “so it would make sense to put the highest-ranking official in the country on a committee like that.”

“Does a prince even count as an official?”

“I’m not. . . sure.”

Yeonhee looked up.  Sehun didn’t often hesitate like that.

She found him staring curiously at her.

“What?” she asked, a little put out.  He just shook himself and raised a quick hand, wrinkling his nose.  Nothing, apparently.

“Apparently we’re not even going to have a functioning government tomorrow,” Jiawei reported.  She’d been scrolling through twitter feeds on her phone for most of the meeting.  “Princeling is taking a trip over to meet the Chinese on their home turf.  Apparently he’s going to visit the Taderran prisoners.  I think it’s meant to offer some form of comfort?”  She shook her head.  “He’s due in emergency talks when he touches down tonight.”

“What’s the point?” demanded Taehyung, exasperated.  “They’re still going to be talking about it this time next week.  Nobody’s going to back down just because he went to their country!”

“Political showmanship,” said Sehun.  “Probably aimed at the world stage more than anywhere else.  It’s to show them he’s trying, most likely so we have a case to present to the UN if it turns out that the only way we can repatriate the Taderrans is by giving the murderer up for extradition into slavery.  There’ll be cameras on the prison cells, I bet you.”  He chewed on a pen lid.  “In terms of political impact, the aim might be to force the Chinese to take them out of the cells, since they shouldn’t be there in the first place, but they’ll probably just be detained in a form of house arrest if that’s the case.  That’s probably the main reason they’re actually sending the prince over there.”

Yeonhee asked him as much that night when he rang during the spare few minutes he had before the meetings.

“Pretty much,” he admitted.  “Which friend is this?  He sounds really smart.  We could do with someone like him.”

“I don’t think you’d get on.  He’s a republican.”

“And?”

“You’ll probably find it quite difficult to seduce him into changing his mind.”

Yixing laughed tiredly.  “I prefer to win people over with good arguments more than by making them fall madly in love.”

“Prefer to means that sometimes you have to resort to the second option, though, right?” Yeonhee pointed out cheekily.

“Believe me, if that worked, I’d be strip-teasing our opposite numbers in this discussion right now.  I have to get going, though, I’ll speak to you tomorrow.”

“Stay safe.”

“Is that an innuendo?”

When the prince rang on Thursday evening, it actually woke Yeonhee up.  She’d decided to get an early night, since Mihae had taken her to the gym again and she was really tired, but it was still past eleven when the sound of her