Given that a number of students had been to the ball and that a fair few of Yeonhee’s wider circle of friends were republicans, she was unsurprised that almost all the campus gossip over the next couple of days revolved around the Phoenix Princess, what this meant for the royal family and the country, and whether or not a royal wedding was on the cards.  The pro-monarchy students, especially those who’d been to the ball, were largely pro-royal-wedding (as soon as possible and as big as possible, especially if it meant a special bank holiday), and now that it was more or less confirmed that the mysterious royal girlfriend was not a member of the aristocracy, a lot of them were enthusiastically trying to profile the country’s Cinderella to discover more about her and work out what kind of princess and queen she’d be.  The republicans were surprisingly split: there were, naturally, some who thought it was a calamity, especially since the popularity of the royal family and particularly the prince had seen a marked boost as a result of the ball, but others thought the relationship looked sweet, and that if the likely-to-be princess was indeed from a non-aristocratic background, it might be possible to work with her to inject some common sense into the royal family and upper classes in general.  Needless to say, it took all of an afternoon for the two factions of the republicans to fall out badly, the former accusing the latter of not being true republicans and the latter demanding the former to tell them exactly what was wrong with dating (because why wouldn’t a young man of twenty-three be allowed to date?).  Sehun managed to keep himself out of the arguments, though he did tell Yeonhee in a pointed undertone that she really, really ought to resign as soon as possible.  Yeonhee suspected that Yixing was quite glad to have an excuse to be out of the country, because several photos of the palaces got into the news and it was clear that there were reporters actually setting up camp outside them, and brief video clips that made it onto the internet revealed that some journalists were actually harassing palace staff in attempts to discover anything at all about who the prince was dating.

Even the politicians were getting questions about the prince’s personal life, the most common one being whether or not he should be dating when he was supposed to be running the country, especially since he was refusing to hold a general election to let elected officials run the country.  The Home Secretary had managed to get most of the reporters to give up on bothering him and other members of the emergency skeleton cabinet by raising his eyebrow the first time he was cornered with the question, and then saying dryly, “well, he’s actually started running the country since he got a girlfriend, which is more than can be said of the last three governments.”

Yeonhee still thought it was mad that the prince dating was front page news on Wednesday, but she still would have preferred that to the utter chaos on Thursday.  Social media was suddenly buzzing after the first lecture on Thursday morning, and by lunch everybody was discussing in hushed tones the news that the minister of Justice had narrowly escaped being car-bombed.  The only real name being bandied about as potentially behind the car bomb was Antiroyo, and Yeonhee reckoned it probably wouldn’t take that long for them to own up to it.

By mid-afternoon, the country was in a state of shock after no fewer than fifty-seven car bombs had gone off, twenty-three of them in the capital alone, some targeting specific high-profile individuals, others seemingly random, and the death toll began to climb.  Well over two-thirds had been set off in specifically Zenyu areas, but most horrifying was the ambulance that had been detonated just as it was delivering a critically injured patient to Nihueng University Hospital, killing everybody in the vehicle as well as several paramedics who had been on hand to help with the patient and injuring a number of patients and civilians who’d been near the ambulance A&E bay at the time.

Yixing sounded shaken when she rang him that evening.

“I’m flying back first thing tomorrow,” he said, unable to keep his voice even.  “Luhan said the death toll’s already reached two hundred and at least double that have injuries that have hospitalised them.”

“Two hundred and thirteen dead,” Yeonhee confirmed in a daze, staring at the latest update on her computer screen.

“God,” Yixing breathed out.  He sounded on the brink of tears.  “It’s been so hard to find somebody decent to run the Internal Security department of the Home Office.  She was just settling in and now the public’s going to be out for her blood.”

They didn’t really talk about much else.  Yixing hung up after a few minutes, saying something about needing a walk to clear his head, and Yeonhee spent the next twenty minutes staring at her desk and wondering if he was really going to be okay.  Eventually, she did a quick sketch of two people hugging, touching up the facial features so they recognisably represented her and the prince, and took a quick snap of it to send him.  It was nearly midnight before she got a response.

Thanks, he’d written.  I needed that.

To: Private Number, 23.56

You can have a real one when you get back.  It sounds like you need it.

From: Private Number, 23.59

I think I need more than one.

Yeonhee had not expected Friday to be a great day mostly because there was going to be a lot of follow up from the previous day, and people were still shocked by it, but waking up