***Warning: Part 2 of the triple update for the ball!  PLEASE DO NOT READ THIS WITHOUT READING CH 43 FIRST OR IT WON'T MAKE SENSE!***

For the beginning of the mazurka, Yeonhee and Zhoumi sat in silence, Yeonhee trying not to feel too sour about how everybody else in the room seemed to be able to do it perfectly.

Zhoumi cracked first and spoke up.

“There are some paparazzi on the prowl for you tonight,” he said.  “Be on your guard if you need to go to the bathroom.”

A bit taken aback, Yeonhee just stared at him.  It did, however, break the ice.  Yeonhee used the opportunity to find out a bit more about him and the various high ranking or well-known people who were at the ball.  Zhoumi was largely working on hypotheticals since everybody was wearing masks, but there were some people he could quite easily point out, like Xu Mei, who was wearing a lilac dress with a skirt that floated behind her making her look like some kind of goddess, and a rather eccentric twenty-five-year-old who apparently styled himself as Turner but didn’t speak a word of English and for some reason had come in ceremonial military dress.

The orchestra took a quick breather once the mazurka ended, some music and instruments being switched over and tuned, and Yeonhee automatically looked around for Yixing.  She spotted him still with Jia, inclining a little towards her as they stood side by side and he listened to whatever she was saying, but then she was distracted by three young men much closer by who were behaving rather oddly.  They kept shoving each other forward, each one resisting the pushes of his companions, and after a couple of moments, she realised that they were also stealing glances in her direction.

The orchestra finished tuning and Junmyeon abruptly popped up in front of her.

“Are you up for a foxtrot, ma’am?” he inquired politely.  “His highness tells me you’re quite good.”

As she allowed him to lead her towards the couples grouping on the floor, Yeonhee saw one of the three young men hitting both his companions in a very I told you so gesture.

Despite being completely different genres of both dance and music, the foxtrot blended seamlessly into the programme and was swiftly followed by a polka.  Junmyeon stayed with her for that as well, though there was a tense twenty or so seconds between the end of the foxtrot and the orchestra striking up with the polka during which she noticed a number of people looking pointedly in her direction and at least two young men were actively and obviously sizing Junmyeon up.

“They want to ask you to dance,” Junmyeon explained as they set off sedately around the room.  “The prince has never brought a date to a ball before and when you sat the mazurka out some of them must have assumed you were only going to dance with him or not at all.  Now they know you’re accepting other dance partners, you’re probably going to get a lot of requests.”

He was right.  Almost before the polka had finished, Yeonhee found herself besieged with requests for the next dance.  A little bewildered, she accepted the first person who happened to offer his hand and agreeing vaguely with the clamour that one or two others were next.

It was another waltz, and she found it more difficult to read what her new partner wanted because she was used to the way that Yixing did it, but after an initial stumble, she got the hang of it and the young man whisked her straight out into the fast track.

“So who exactly are you?” he asked as he negotiated a patch of couples that was getting clogged up.  “Everybody’s calling you Darling, but that can’t be your actual name.”

If she hadn’t been wearing the veil, Yeonhee would just have smiled at him and left it at that, opting for being a mysterious beauty.

“I’m afraid I’m not saying more than the public already knows.”

“Oh, come on!  That’s hardly fair!” he protested.  “I’m Bolin.”

“And tonight I’m Darling,” Yeonhee shot back.

Bolin continued to complain good-naturedly, at one point asking if the veil was going to come off, but then settled for asking more innocuous questions.  Yeonhee dodged the one about her age, but was happy to say that she lived in the capital city, and that the palace reports about their relationship were true (technically speaking they glossed the truth a little), which produced an astonished reaction she hadn’t expected.

“You’re genuinely just an ordinary member of the public?” he demanded.  “How did you even meet?”

Yeonhee just shrugged, which was surprisingly hard to do in ballroom hold.

“Jeez,” Bolin said, stopping them to sway to the beat for a few bars.  “The family must really like you if you’ve only been dating just over a month and you come to something like this in a homage to the dress the queen wore when she was presented publicly after she married.”

Yeonhee hadn’t even considered it that way, but when he put it like that, she supposed that the public really were going to read much more into the dress than what was probably there.  As far as Yeonhee was concerned, the queen had just leapt on the chance to dress her up in one of her favourite dresses.  She definitely got the impression of a fair amount of vicarious living on the queen’s part.

“So what are the dates like?” Bolin asked as they set off again.

“No different to ordinary dates,” Yeonhee asked.  “Why?  Were you expecting me to say he takes me abroad in a private helicopter or something?”

“He definitely has the means to do that.”  Bolin pulled her back to avoid a collision with a couple travelling almost twice as fast as they were.  “He is one of the richest people in the country.”

She was subjected to various of the same questions for the next two dances with two different men young men, having decided it was best not to give too many people the privilege of two dances when there were so many people almost fighting for the chance to dance with her, and after sitting with another bodyguard called Hangeng for another two mazurkas, Yeonhee found herself being whisked around the ballroom on a quickstep with Chenle.

That was probably the most bizarre point of the evening so far, because he appeared not to know what questions to ask her, getting tongue-tied before he even managed to finish one straight thought at a time.  Now a little more used to the likely questions she was going to receive, Yeonhee answered what she thought he was asking if it didn’t give away too much information either about herself or Yixing, and then asked him about what he did.  It was hilarious how he tried to play down his position as one of the most influential students in the country when he usually spent so much time playing it up and throwing his weight around.

Flushed on new exhilaration from the dancing, Yeonhee used the next pause between songs to grab some more juice and bumped into Yixing chatting to Wenhan at the table.  It was sweet how Yixing’s first instinct when she was close enough was to wrap his arm around her waist and draw her nearer, and Yeonhee leant happily into his side, listening to them talk.  She wasn’t used to such sustained use of Zenyu and just let the words wash over her until she realised that they were both looking at her because one of them had asked her a question.

“Sorry?” she said, looking between the two of them.  “I zoned out.”

They both laughed good-naturedly.

“You haven’t danced with Wenhan yet, have you?” said Yixing.

“Yes, may I have the next dance?” Wenhan repeated, offering his arm as the music struck up again.  “Unless you’re already taken, that is, in which case, may I have the next available dance?”

Yeonhee nodded.

“You know, Yixing, Darling’s quite popular.  When she’s not near you she has people flocking around her.”

Yixing laughed and kissed Yeonhee’s temple as the music struck up again.

“Go on,” he encouraged her.  “I’m sitting this one out because I need a break, but you should enjoy yourself.”

Yeonhee ended up indulging in two dances with Wenhan, who if anything was actually better than Yixing, and she was a little disappointed when he bowed to her and handed her off to another Zenyu noble she hadn’t yet met.

Most of them, she discovered, were actually pretty nice people, if a little uninformed or naively insensitive on some issues.  She tried not to say too much when politics came up because she was aware that she held opinions most people in the room would have disagreed with, but when she accidentally let it slip to one of them who’d spent most of a very sedate waltz espousing the opinion that all children from rural districts ought to move into towns and cities for their education that she thought he was missing knowledge of nearly thirty separate studies showing that children learnt best when in small classes and that large comprehensive schools were more likely to impede than enhance education, he sat out the next song with her (which was a polka-mazurka) to discuss the issue.  It took Yeonhee completely by surprise because she’d never met somebody so open to hearing the other side of the story before.  She noticed one or two of the bodyguards hovering nearby just in case, but whoever this young man was (he’d introduced himself, but she couldn’t for the life of her remember his name), she didn’t find him in the least bit overbearing.

“I actually have a friend here who you might get on with quite well,” he said as the polka-mazurka drifted into its final sequence.  “He has similar sorts of views to you and you might like to pick each other’s brains a bit.  I’ll go find him for you.”

The next person who’d asked for a dance was much more difficult to deal with.  The questions as they went round the ballroom were incessant, and he was rather annoyed that Yeonhee had laid him off for the polka-mazurka (even though she explained that she didn’t like dancing the mazurkas anyway) to talk to somebody else.

“Are you never going to take that mask off?” he demanded, actually reaching for the ribbons.  Yeonhee winced as it pulled at her hairdo.

“It’s a masquerade ball.”

“We have a right to know who you are.”

Yeonhee stopped, trying to step back, but he wouldn’t let go of her even when she started using her free hand to push him away.

Within a matter of seconds, Junmyeon, Zhoumi and three others were there – two of them actually not bodyguards, and a number of nearby couples came to a half to watch the altercation as Junmyeon planted himself between Yeonhee and her partner and demanded he back off unless he wanted security to be called.  Out of the corner of her eye, Yeonhee noticed that Yixing was watching her anxiously from where he’d just stopped with his own partner.  He didn’t come over, but once the aggressive young man had stormed away from the dance floor and everybody resumed, Yixing mouthed next dance to her as he and his partner came by.  True to his word, almost the second the dance had finished, he came to over to her while she was thanking Junmyeon for intervening.  Yixing held her a little closer than normal for the polka that followed, not saying anything as they toured the ballroom.

“It’s not your fault,” Yeonhee assured him at last, because even with half his face covered it was pretty obvious he felt guilty about it.

“Let’s sit the next one out together,” he said.  “I could do with some fresh air.”

They actually ended up sitting out the next three on a small balcony a floor up from the ballroom, one of the bodyguards who’d been on the galleries lurking just around the corner.  Another couple was using the same space for a make-out session, masks forgotten, but it was pretty easy to ignore them and they seemed to be completely oblivious to the fact that they even had company.  After a quick look around, Yeonhee made to lift the veil up so that she could feel the fresh air on her face, but Yixing stopped her.

“Don’t – we don’t know where cameras might be lurking.”

She settled for sitting across his lap instead while he told her about gossip he’d picked up from his dance partners.

The bodyguard eventually popped his head around the door to remind them that rumours would start if they were gone too long, and so they headed back inside.  Yixing passed her off to Zhoumi, wanting to save his second unbooked dance with her for a waltz later on that was apparently one of his favourite pieces of music, and went to ask somebody by the refreshments table for a dance to avoid an incoming Wang Xiaodan, who looked irritated at his speedy disappearance.

Her next three partners took it on themselves to apologise for the actions of the disrupter.  After a bit of an odd exchange with the third one, who said he thought it was quite romantic the prince was determined to keep her a mystery and that he hope it stayed that way, Yeonhee found the boy she’d talked to about education waiting for her with somebody else when the dance was over.

“This is Taehyung,” he said, gesturing to his friend, and Yeonhee felt all the blood drain out of her face.  She was hugely thankful for the veil at that moment.  “Taehyung, this is, um. . .  Well, I guess this is Darling, and obviously she’s the prince’s girlfriend.  Like I said, I think you have quite a lot of views in common so yeah. . .”

He bailed on the situation while Yeonhee was still trying to work out how to get out of it herself.  The orchestra started up with a polka-schnelle.

“May I have the honour?” Taehyung asked.

Yeonhee fiddled nervously with her skirts.  “I. . . I need a drink,” she mumbled.  They were standing near the refreshments table, and so he turned quickly and handed her a glass of water.

“It’s all right, this one has a long introduction,” he told her.  She noticed with envy that he was much more confident with his Zenyu than she was.  She wondered how many students from the university were there.  Other than Chenle, she was aware that she’d already danced with two, and once or twice when going to get herself refreshments she’d overheard a couple of conversations in Hanmi.

“You dance well,” Taehyung told her as she sipped as slowly as she could at the water, hoping that if she took long enough, he’d lose interest and find somebody else to dance with.  “Is it your first time at a ball?”

She laughed nervously.  He picked up his own glass of water.

“Everybody’s going crazy trying to figure out who you are,” he went on, and Yeonhee realised to her horror that he was