6

Draw Me a Date
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Yeonhee got no sleep that night.  Her initial instinct had been to block the lonelyblues account on her Easyl, delete the app, and turn off her computer.  Round about four in the morning, she realised that all three were dumb ideas.  Lonelyblues – or the prince, as she supposed she rightly ought to think of Lonelyblues now – already knew which university she was at and almost definitely knew exactly who she was, so turning off electronic devices wouldn’t stop him from finding her.  And blocking his account would just have alerted him to the fact that she’d stood him up deliberately after finding out who he was.

Good God, she’d stood up the heir to the throne.  However much she thought his role was useless and that Prince Yixing himself was a waste of space, she couldn’t believe herself when that actually sank in.  Could it be counted as treason?  Regardless, it was undeniable rude.  What she ought to have done was to remain calm and collected, accepted dinner, and intellectually demolished any pretencions he had about his right to govern the country while they spoke.  If he was aware of who she was, he had to be aware of her views, and, well, he was an idiot if he expected her to suddenly fawn over him because he was royalty and he’d invited her out to dinner.

And that was what really broke her brain and had her huddling in a crouch with her duvet over her head most of the night as she eyed the door, waiting for secret agents to burst in and arrest her for whatever misdemeanour or crime jilting the heir to the throne constituted.  She couldn’t figure out what the prince wanted.  Had he known right from the very beginning?  Had he been the one to spread speculation that Pencilmania was Im Yeonhee?  It felt like a set-up.  It had to be a set-up.  After what she’d actually said to him of what she thought of his family and him, directly to him, there was absolutely no way he could have just wanted to take her out on an innocent dinner date.  But she couldn’t think of what he might have been planning that the dinner date would be a trap for.  As far as she knew, she hadn’t done anything actually illegal in the protests she’d staged and participated in.  Slandering the king with that caricature of him was probably the closest she’d come to a felony, but all he’d really said about the incident was that he hadn’t thought it was particularly wise to draw it.  Had that been a warning to her?  But then he’d sympathised with her after it was plagiarised.  And also, political cartoonists lampooned important figures the entire time.  If the prince was trying to get her arrested or something over a picture she’d drawn, then he was a fascist and deserved every second of demonstration a person could hurl at him, stones that sliced his cheek open included.

She was still a gibbering wreck when Baekhyun knocked on the door and let himself in around seven thirty, already in running kit and prepared to drag her out of bed, as he attempted to do most Saturday mornings, for an early workout.

“Wow,” he said, stopping short and staring at her, not even bothering to flick the lights on.  “Do I need to call the doctor?”

Apparently she looked that bad.

After some time, she managed to convince him that she’d had a bad dream (he only seemed satisfied that she wasn’t lying when she resorted to fibbing that Taehyung had managed to draft her into a dating contract for a thousand years that would get her executed by Vlad the Impaler if she ever tried to break it), and he got her hot chocolate and tiptoed out, leaving her to go back to sleep.  There was no way she could have told him the truth.

Yeonhee didn’t sleep at all.  At about nine, she finally steeled herself and got up, only to spend the best part of an hour trying to figure out how to apply makeup that would make her look less like the lovechild of a vampire and a zombie.  Then she decided she was going to have to attempt some form of damage control.  Would it be too crude to plead a sudden onset of stomach cramps that had kept her back?  That was embarrassing enough for her not to want to say to a stranger she’d assumed was a girl but had then found out was a boy.  But then, it would probably have to be something drastic, quick and near fatal for it to mean she couldn’t actually go fifteen minutes to meet somebody who was offering her free food in her favourite café and, more importantly, that she wouldn’t be able to use her phone.  Maybe it would be better to plead being hit by a truck.

She suspected he’d send somebody to the hospital to check up on that one.  After all, that was what a concerned, “friendly” person would do.  And somebody being hit with a truck would also have made the news.

It took a little dutch courage before she was able to make herself log on to Easyl and unblock the Lonelyblues account.  There were a couple of unread messages that he’d sent before she’d blocked him, as well as various other unread fan messages.

Cringing, she followed the link to the Lonelyblues ones.

Nov 24th fifteen hours ago, lonelyblues wrote:

Is everything okay?  Did you leave a bit late or something?

Nov 24th fifteen hours ago, lonelyblues wrote:

Seriously, nothing’s happened, right?

Nov 24th fifteen hours ago, lonelyblues wrote:

Okay, now I’m worried.  Do I need to call the emergency services?

Yeonhee bit her bottom lip a little too hard.  Should she respond to this?  What should she respond to this?  If she did respond, was he going to ask about her blocking him?  How would she explain that?  Was it better to respond with a lie, or with the truth?

She automatically reached to her phone to ask Baekhyun or Sehun for advice before remembering that it would possibly be the worst course of action.  She wasn’t sure they’d believe the prince had an account on a primarily Hanmi site and had spent the last couple of weeks jokingly referring to her as senpai.  To be fair, she wasn’t sure she’d believe herself either if she hadn’t known it was true.  (What was the prince doing on a Hanmi art site anyway?)  She also adamantly did not want them to find out that she was Pencilmania.

Not to mention the chaos that would ensue if they did decide to believe that the crown prince was indeed Lonelyblues.

Brain hurting, Yeonhee decided to leave that problem for when she was actually awake.  Maybe Lonelyblues hadn’t noticed that she’d blocked him and would come back online at some point soon and send her another message checking if she was okay that she could respond to in the knowledge that there was nothing awkward.  Because this was definitely awkward.

She also needed to stop thinking of the prince as Lonelyblues.

That really hurt her brain.  Lonelyblues was playful, intelligent and teasing.  Sometimes responsible.  And Prince Yixing was. . .

A slob.

A coward.

A drunk.  (Well, had made headlines on multiple occasions for drink-related offences, such as puking on university vice chancellors.  Yeonhee wasn’t sure if it actually constituted an alcohol problem.)

A Zenyu.

Really dumb.

A national embarrassment.

Useless.

A spoilt brat.

A rebellious brat.

A waste of public money.

Somebody who could barely string two words together.

And that was just the tip of the iceberg.

She eyed her bed for a moment, contemplating going back to sleep, but realised that probably wouldn’t happen at all even if she tried, and so she reached for her phone, wondering about calling Mihae to go for a good long walk in the university park.

There was a text from Sehun, and so she looked at that first, only then reminded with faint surprise that the prince had actually made a speech the previous day and that Sehun and Sowon had been in the lecture theatre to listen to and record it.

Feeling distinctly better about herself, she accepted Sehun’s invitation to go over to his room and watch the footage.  It would probably make her angry, because watching Prince Yixing speak always made her angry, but at least she would have a direction to vent, and towards the actual person.  He always made some kind of gaff.  It was mean spirited to actively look out for those moments to attack him on, but Yeonhee needed an outlet, pronto.

 

Sehun did not have the usual champagne and popcorn when he let her in, and perhaps that should have been a warning.  He did offer her chocolate and orange juice, though.

“You’re not going to like this,” he said grimly.  “It’s a very good speech.”

Yeonhee paused mid-chew, and then swallowed a lump of chocolate that was a bit too big.

“Is this comfort food?” she asked suspiciously, pointing to the half-eaten bar that he’d evidently started on without her.

Sehun screwed up his nose, which usually meant an embarrassed yes, and Yeonhee raised her eyebrows.

“The princeling never makes good speeches, though.  He normally loses the thread early on and spends the rest of it stuttering around something stupid somebody else has written for him,” Yeonhee pointed out.  “I’m pretty sure he doesn’t even understand the concepts he’s talking about half the time.”

No, he definitely does understand the concepts he’s talking about, the pencilmania side of Yeonhee piped up.  You had a philosophical debate on the nature of politics when you didn’t understand your essay title.

Sehun sighed.  “Well, I don’t know.  All I can say is I spent the first twenty minutes trying to work out if there was a ventriloquist or if he was a lookalike, and the rest of the speech wondering if he’s had a soul transplant.  He did say a couple of friends had helped him prepare, but still.”

He plugged a pair of speakers into his laptop and hit play on the video onscreen.

Sehun was right.  It was an exceptionally good speech, delivered with a confidence and vivaciousness Yeonhee had been convinced the prince was actually incapable of.  It was difficult to believe her eyes.

Rather awkwardly, the content of the speech also made a protest of it look pretty stupid.  Yeonhee was also sure that the prince had done it deliberately.

“Your student union president, Chenle, gave me a very vague title about the role of the monarchy,” he began, shifting a couple of pieces of paper around on the podium.  He held one up to read from.  “The email I got requested, quote, anything you’re happy to speak about, maybe the monarchy or something and how it holds the country together?  It’s a contentious point.”  He gestured with the piece of paper towards the doors of the hall.  “There are people outside right now who clearly think the monarchy doesn’t do anything to hold the country together.  So my secretary wrote back – PR damage control before I could take one side of the argument—” this drew laughs “—and said I was willing to talk about our country, which is very dear to my heart, and the greatest illness in it, which is the ethnic divide which has given rise to a great number of political problems.  And this landed on my desk at the beginning of the month.”

Here, the prince put down the paper, which was probably a print-out of the email that he’d quoted from, and took a sip from a glass of water.

“Now,

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Korekrypta
I don't currently have much internet access so I might not be able to respond to your comments until the weekend :( 30/8/17

Comments

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Mitsukiii #1
The political issues in this seemed very applicable to real life, I always did wonder if you took inspiration from an actual country/show. It's been years and I missed all of you wonderful authors.
JeMerald #2
Chapter 25: This is my nth time rereading this and after all the angsty stuff I've read, it was even clearer to me how different the feels wouldve been if Yeonhee decided to be a tsundere of the highest degree
OhSehorn
#3
It's the year 2023 and i'm to reading this fanfic, my comfort fanfic T.T i remember waiting this fic to be updated years ago. This is one of the best fanfic i've ever read.
Baembi
#4
Chapter 23: naurr yixing’s messages are so cute it’s turning me into a pile of goo >…< yeonhee’s “royal high-nice” was such a good save too hahaha
tonnettie
#5
Chapter 83: Dang! It’s still ao good! Be honest sometimes when you re-read stories it gets boring. But this is a real gem! (Stories like this results to hopeless romantic individuals)
atasiwi #6
I love the story' ^^
hetacat
#7
Chapter 83: Well, I finished it. And I was thoroughly enjoying it by the end. Thank you for writing such a brilliant story as usual Korey. I do hope you still read comments despite your disappearance. I've been a fan of your writing for so many years now and I genuinely reread TBBC and DLWL at least yearly, usually more. This story was certainly just as impressive, if not more for the sheer depth of worldbuilding. I'm kind of bummed I put off reading this for so many years, it's a shame. But it's bloody brilliant. Hope to see you back someday, your writing genius isn't something to be sniffed at!
hetacat
#8
Chapter 33: I have to admit I didn't know whether I'd like this story from you Korey! I've always been a fan of your works but the deeply political themes of this story put me off. I'm glad I finally got to reading it though. As a political philosophy graduate some conversations and statements in this story make me deeply uncomfortable but I'm really enjoying how the narrative deals with it. Kudos to you for making me uncomfortable whilst I'm still enjoying the plot! And as always, your romance is absolutely blissfully perfect. So so smooth you hardly notice it growing. I love how protective Yixing is without being over the top or overbearing, especially when compared to Taehyung. Adore it! And do I spot Daehyun from BAP? My ult <3 Thanks for writing such an amazing story as usual and I'm excited to see how the plot thickens!
Emilieee
#9
Chapter 64: HIT WITH THE REALIZATION THAT THE AFF ANNIVERSARY FRIEND IS ME ??? WOWOWMAMWMEMDN ITS BEEN SO LONG