Surgery appeared to go well.  Yeonhee’s parents returned after signing the forms and seeing Grandma down to the anaesthetic before she went into the operating theatre, and they both seemed quite disappointed that Yixing had disappeared.

“I still had things I needed to ask him,” her father said.  “Shinae hasn’t even had a proper opportunity to talk to him yet.”

“Yes, Dad, because you cross-examined the poor guy,” Minhee said pointedly, looking up from a sheet of A4 paper that Yeonhee was covering in doodles.  “He almost collapsed from stress when you two left and then he took off to see his father.”

“Oh, of course, the king’s still in a coma,” said Siwoo.  “Poor man.  And the poor prince.  I’d completely forgotten he’s only twenty-three.  I always have him at this indeterminate fixed age in his mid-to-late twenties in my mind.  He’s got an awful lot of responsibility for somebody that young.  My parents barely even trusted me to drive the car down the street at that age.  I think they would have jumped off a cliff if I was put in charge of a country.”

“Darling,” said Yeonhee’s mother, “how on earth did the two of you end up on speaking terms?  He said he got in contact with you through your artwork, but according to Minhee you stood him up when he invited you out for dinner the first time.”

“I’m personally very surprised he put so much effort into you given that you’re a very well known republican.”  Siwoo shrugged.  “Obviously I’d never accept somebody who didn’t put effort into you, but he didn’t half pick a challenge in you for himself, did he?”

Yeonhee could feel her ears burning.  “Well, we corresponded a lot before I actually found out who it was,” she mumbled.  “And then when the king was admitted to hospital he contacted me and I happened to be in here overnight staying with Grandma and I felt it would help him more if he actually had somebody to talk to in person rather than over the internet because he was in a bit of a state.  And. . . yeah.  He invited me out for dinner again and then asked if I could teach him how to draw and things just kind of went from there.  I don’t think he was intending a romantic relationship at first.  I certainly wasn’t.”

There was a long silence as her father mulled this over and nodded to himself.

“And what happens if the general public finds out?” he asked.  “The paparazzi has a way of digging this stuff up.”  He paused, a worried frown creasing his forehead.  “I can’t imagine either of you being treated very kindly, especially given the ethnic tensions in the country at the moment.”

“Gosh, I hadn’t even considered that,” murmured Shinae.  Yeonhee grimaced.

“Sehun’s helped me put everything in order to step down from all my involvement in republican stuff by the end of the week,” she said.  “I mean, I’ve already told people I’m backing out of it to focus on other things.”

“Would it be better if you actually came out and told the press?” her father suggested.  “Obviously it would have to be at the right time, but cupcake, the longer the two of you are together, the more likely you are to get caught, and that’s just in terms of statistics.  The whole country knows the prince has found himself someone and everybody wants to know who it is.  There will be journalists on the lookout to make the scoop.”

“Yixing wants to and thinks it would be a good idea,” Yeonhee admitted.  “We just haven’t had a proper discussion about it yet.”  She gulped.  “To be honest, Dad, it’s kind of scary.  It would make everything so formal and final, you know?  A bit like crossing the Rubicorn.  I like how things are now and I’m worried they’ll change once the public knows.”

Minhee patted Yeonhee on the shoulder.  “I can’t imagine he feels much different about it, Yeonhee.  Bear in mind he hasn’t had a year without a scandal for a decade and he’s prepared for the ridicule that will come with him dating a known and vocal republican, even if you’ve stepped back from that and changed your opinions.  That’s got to be a point of no return for him too.  I meant it when I said I was certain he was serious.”

The rest of the week came and went rather quickly.  Yeonhee had a couple of late nights catching up work after long calls to Daehyun and other eminent republican figures to inform them that she was resigning.  Daehyun’s immediate worry was that Antiroyo was trying to poach her, especially after one of their most recent conversations had been about Kim Sohye and others trying to sign republicans up to the cause.  After a little back and forth, Yeonhee told him that she’d had some pressure put on her by Antiroyo to jump ship, and said (which wasn’t completely untrue, though it wasn’t exactly a motivating factor) that one of the reasons she felt it was a good idea to pull back from her republican activities was because it would hopefully stop Antiroyo from trying to pursue it further.  He was very disappointed, but eventually wished her luck with her exams and with the new group she was setting up with Chenle.

“I guess it is too much work to do all three at once,” he commented ruefully before bidding her goodbye and hanging up.

The more senior people in the republican movement were harder to deal with.  Yeonhee got bounced around from one person to another as they took it in turns to try to convince her to stay, since she was known and popular and had traction in the movement as a whole.  Kwon Jiyong, one of the republicans from the panel she’d recently chaired at the university, tried to entice her into staying for the remainder of her time at university and also to bribe her with the offer of a job at his company once she graduated (which, Yeonhee had to admit, was tempting).  Three out of the five people she spoke to didn’t understand why she couldn’t just juggle all her commitments for a short while and not step down from the chapter, and all five of them thought that she could easily just leave her other project to Chenle or somebody else, since she was an established figure with the republicans and “anyone can run a focus group like that, surely?”  Yixing sympathised sleepily with her over the phone when she rang him at quarter to midnight on Thursday evening to vent.

“I feel bad, though,” she confessed once she’d got all her irritation out.  “They’ve been training me and Daehyun up to be leaders of the next generation for the past three years and I feel like I’m betraying them.”

“People change,” Yixing pointed out around a yawn, “especially when they’re young.”

Minhee dropped by the university after lunch on Saturday to drive Yeonhee over to the pala