It was odd to have Yixing in the house. While she and Minhee and their parents had all had male friends and guests over before, Yeonhee was so used to it being a majority-female dynamic that to suddenly be outnumbered in her own home felt surreal. Not just that, but she was suddenly acutely aware of how much smaller and more mediocre everything was in relation to the palace.

Not that Yixing seemed fussed by that at all. Once he’d taken off his coat and cap and Yeonhee had shown him around, accompanied by his comments of how homely and cosy the place felt, he made himself at home looking through the family photos on display in the sitting room. Yeonhee almost melted into his side, very happy with the comfortable weight of his arm around her shoulders and taking some assurance in how calm he was about their world potentially burning down around them. At his request, she explained the stories behind each of the photos. Some of them were school ones, which didn’t really have a story so much, but he was interested in how old she and Minhee were in them, what kinds of things they had been up to and what school had been like at that point.

“Your sister’s extremely photogenic,” he commented eventually, picking one of the photo frames up. “Is she coming over as well?”

“I got the impression she planned on staying away unless Jongdae came,” Yeonhee admitted. He let out a loud snort. “That said, I’m not sure how serious she was.”

Tutting, Yixing put the photo back down and reached for another one that had been hidden behind it. “It would be very unfair to Jongdae if an attractive young woman showed up to distract him while he was on shift.”

“It’s unlikely anything will actually happen in the house,” Yeonhee pointed out.

“Statistically, yes. My word, this is obnoxiously cute. You should wear pigtails every day.”

He showed her a small photo of her that she’d forgotten even existed.  Her six-year-old self beamed at the camera in a manner that made her jaw hurt just looking at it while two high pigtails sprouted from the side of her head.

“Oh my God, burn it,” she groaned with embarrassment, but Yixing had already taken his phone out to take a picture of it.

“Absolutely not.  This is precious.”  He held the photo up beside her face and leant back to get a better angle with his phone.  Yeonhee hid her head in her hands.  “Ah, too late.  Already got you.”

“Why do I like you?” Yeonhee grumbled, lowering her hands.  There was a quick shutter sound.  “Yixing!”

Laughing, he raised his arm to protect himself as she thumped him.

“Hey,” he protested, amused.  “You were adorable growing up.  I’m making up for lost time.”

Grumbling to herself, Yeonhee relieved him of the photo and put it back, but she was hard pressed to hide a smile as soon as her back was turned.  His arm slid back around her shoulders.

“You cheered her up mighty quick, son,” her father commented, appearing in the doorway.  Yixing jerked away as though he’d been electrocuted.  “Sorry, I mean, your highness.”

“Oh.  No, whatever’s easiest for you,” Yixing said, his voice not quite firm.  “I’m not a prince here.”

“You’re a prince everywhere, son,” Im Siwoo said with amusement.  “And stop looking like I’ve caught you in the act.  I’m not going to eat you.”

Yixing smiled sheepishly.  “Sorry, sir.”  His hand crept into Yeonhee’s.

Her father definitely noticed, but he didn’t comment on it.  “If I’m allowed to call you Yixing you should be calling me Siwoo,” he said.  “Lunch is ready, kids.  Come and eat.”

Both of Yeonhee’s parents seemed to sense that she didn’t want to talk about anything to do with her relationship or being in the public eye, and Yeonhee reckoned the prince actually looked a little glad not to be discussing it, though she was sure her dad would ask him about it later.  Minseok spent the afternoon in Siwoo’s study sorting out security arrangements for something or other the prince was due to go to while the rest of them played board games.  Yeonhee’s dad thrashed them all soundly at a game of Scrabble once they’d played through Monopoly (Yixing won), Cluedo (Yeonhee’s mother won), and a very short game of Risk in which Yixing managed to utterly annihilate everybody else.  Scrabble, though, was one of the few times Yeonhee was reminded that Hanmi wasn’t actually Yixing’s first language – occasionally he seemed unsure of spellings, or hesitated to think again because he’d made a Zenyu word with his letters instead of a Hanmi one, and he was definitely at a disadvantage when it came to complicated obscure words.

“Yixing,” she said as he settled back on the sofa beside her, Shinae in the kitchen getting snacks and tea ready and Siwoo turning on the TV to listen to the news, “does it ever bother you that we only talk in Hanmi?”

He gave an absentminded hum and combed his hair back with his fingers.  “Not really.  It was tiring when I wasn’t accustomed to it, and any kind of public event that requires it is still really stressful, but constantly talking in Hanmi has done me a lot of good and I’m completely comfortable with it now.  It’s one of the ways I relate to you.”  He lowered his hand slowly.  “I’m pretty sure one of your strongest criticisms of me used to be that I never made a proper effort and that it alienated half the country.  It gave me something to prove.  You have no idea how ecstatic I was when we first started talking on Easyl and you assumed I was Hanmi.”

“It was a Hanmi site,” Yeonhee muttered.

“You still didn’t suspect a thing,” he pointed out, smug.

Yeonhee decided it was best to get off that topic before he remembered she’d thought he was female.  “But still—”

“You would have been so intimidated if I’d insisted on talking to you in Zenyu, or if Mum had decided she wasn’t going to bother accommodating for you,” Yixing went on.  “So intimidated.  It was obvious you felt you expressed yourself best in your own language and I wanted