Jinsu could tell Saeeun had done a good job when even the unshakable Sungwoo took a moment or two to stare at her before clearing his throat and turning to her father, who was sitting in the passenger seat.

“Might I comment on how splendid Miss Jinsu looks tonight, Sir?” he asked, ever polite.  Park Jiwoon barely looked up from his tablet.

“Splendid,” he echoed with little feeling.  “Jinsu, you’re to stay with me tonight.  I need to show you off.”

Jinsu’s temporarily bolstered mood came crashing down and she stopped with her hand on the door of the car.

“I might be your daughter, but I’m there primarily because I was selected to go as a representative of my school,” she protested.  “My project was one of five short-listed for the awards ceremony.”

“Well, you’re going as a representative of the family today,” he said, swiping through a news article.  “And it’s not like you’re going to win anyway.  Just get in the car.”

Incensed, but knowing it was useless to protest, Jinsu got in and sulked in the back seat all the way to the venue, ignoring her father trying to talk to her.  She did nearly laugh when she heard Sungwoo chip in with a diplomatic “I think you’ve offended her, Sir, it might just be best not to say anything” when Park Jiwoon started getting snappish.  Amazingly, he actually took the chauffeur’s advice.

Some of Jinsu’s cheerfulness returned when she stepped out of the car and realised that the event was being held at one of Kim Jongdae’s family’s hotels.  It was one she’d been to a few times before, and it had probably been chosen over the Blue Star because Heart of Seoul had the biggest ballroom and biggest hotel conference venue in the city, even if it wasn’t quite as swanky as the flagship hotel itself.

Jinsu deliberately dithered in the foyer as a smartly dressed, middle-aged man approached her father with a glass of champagne, her idea being to get herself separated from him as speedily as possible, but without him noticing.  There were teenagers everywhere – she spotted one or two trying to steal full champagne flutes off a tray a waiter was carrying around, even though he politely told them that alcohol was only for the adults – and she really felt like the odd one out because she was the only one not in school uniform.

Seeing the striped blue-and-white blazer from her own school, she blanched and headed for the nearest table without any of those blazers near it, intent on getting herself some fruit juice.

“Made you jump!” somebody yelled behind her, digging their fingers into her waist, and Jinsu shrieked with surprise.

Turning, she found a tuxedoed Jongdae doubling over from laughter, a slightly less amused Junmyeon tagging along beside him.  She swiped feebly at Jongdae, a little bewildered that he deemed them to be on friendly enough terms to be that casual.  Nobody else except her brother was like that with her.

“You scared me,” she whined.

“Sorry,” he chuckled.  “Junmyeon was convinced it wasn’t you, so I had to do it.”

“I didn’t recognise you,” Junmyeon admitted, reaching past her for two glasses of juice.  He pressed one of them into her free hand.  “You look gorgeous tonight, by the way.”

Jongdae frowned.  “Yeah, aren’t you supposed to be in uniform?”

“You’re not,” Jinsu pointed out.

Jongdae’s frown eased up, only for him to pull a face.  “Yeah, that’s only because I’m the heir to the hotel and I’m supposed to be simultaneously hosting this event and attending it.”

“Good on you,” said Junmyeon, way too happily, as he smacked Jongdae on the back and made his step-brother choke.  “Multi-tasking is good for you and it means you’re turning into a proper businessman about five years too young.”

Jongdae relieved Junmyeon of his glass of juice and downed it, still spluttering.  “Anyway, gotta dash!  The mics weren’t working earlier and I need to find somebody to blame for it, so see you around!”

He sprinted away.  Junmyeon picked up another glass of juice and watched the carnage Jongdae wreaked across the foyer as he went to find some poor lackie.

“Yes, you should,” Jinsu told him.

“Sorry?”

“Follow him and put him on a leash.”

Junmyeon laughed.  “Okay.  I guess I’ll see you later then too, shall I?  I’m assuming you’ll be at the awards ceremony.  Are you presenting or something?”  He gestured to Jinsu’s burgundy dress.

Feeling herself blush, Jinsu shook her head.  “I’m here as the daughter of the inventor of the Attayear tonight.”  It was with difficulty that she managed to keep the bitterness out of her voice.

Junmyeon looked a little confused as to what her answer meant, but he gave her a smile and then disappeared in the direction Jongdae had fled, though at a significantly more sedate pace.  The sight of him turning his back almost had Jinsu regretting sending him after his step-brother to give poor Jongdae some help (Jongdae had seemed rather stressed, even if he was still playing the fool).  Out of all the people in the room, Junmyeon and Jongdae were the only ones she could guarantee weren’t hostile to her, and even then, knowing the people they mutually knew and what those people might say to either of the boys if they saw one of them talking to her, she couldn’t be sure that would stay.  Knowing how well Jongdae knew her brother, she suspected that he’d just ignore her rather than being outright mean to her, but Junmyeon was an unknown quantity in that respect.  He seemed nice enough and Jinsu wanted to believe that that was Junmyeon through and through, but it was so hard to tell.  She’d been burnt too many times to trust her instincts on that kind of thing anymore.

Sipping at her orange juice, Jinsu leant against the table and looked around the room, for lack of anything better to do.  The place was now absolutely teeming, and poor Jongdae was likely pulling his hair out at the stress of it all.  Jinsu counted nearly thirty different school uniforms – it was really amazing just how many schools had either maroon or navy blazers, which meant that it was only possible to tell them apart by the ties or by the crests on the blazer pockets, if the school in question had one.

Aside from the sea of maroon and navy, there were three schools with black blazers (one distinguishable by the white piping around the lapels), and a handful with greeen.  There was even one with mustard yellow, and then Jinsu spied the brown blazer of the international school that Jongdae and Junmyeon went to.

A laugh Jinsu would have recognised anywhere distracted her from getting too bogged down in blazer details and automatically searched out Sehun, wanting to see what had made him happy.  It wasn’t too hard to spot him since he stood almost head-and-shoulders above most people there, and he was also standing with Chanyeol and another tall boy with his back to Jinsu who was also laughing.

She squinted at the boy, trying to work out who he was, but she couldn’t make out anything beyond the sleek navy blazer, the shoulders of which poked up above the rest of the crowd, and the boy’s dark brown hair.  Something about him seemed familiar, but Jinsu didn’t get a chance to work out what it was, because Chanyeol caught her eye at that moment.  He frowned at her, clearly wondering what she was doing, and then looked furtively around before mouthing something across the room at her.

Jinsu frowned back, absolutely no idea what he’d said, and took another sip at her orange juice.  He tried again, but when it was obvious Jinsu still didn’t understand, he sighed visibly and made to detach himself from his friends, only to freeze a couple of seconds later and then turn away, pretending he’d never made eye contact.

Before Jinsu had time to wonder why, a hand landed on her shoulder.

“I thought I told you to stay with me at all times tonight,” said her father, and Jinsu winced.  She’d been caught.

“The crowd was a bit of a crush,” she mumbled, hoping he was in a good enough mood to let it pass.  To her surprise, he clapped her on the shoulder.

“You had the sense to stay in one place and try to spot me.”  He reached for a glass of orange juice, and Jinsu stared at her own one.  Her lip gloss had left a noticeable mark just below the rip and it was annoying her.

“Who was the boy you seemed rather friendly with?” he asked her.

Warily, Jinsu glanced up at him.  “Do you mean Junmyeon or Jongdae?”

“Jongdae’s running the event in place of his father; he’s too busy to mingle with the guests.”

“He wasn’t too busy to chat to me,” Jinsu blurted out before realising that her father might find her tone of voice offensive and clapping her hand over .

“He wasn’t?”  Her father sounded thoughtful.  Jinsu stared at the lip gloss mark on her glass again, internally braced against wherever this was leading.  “Jongdae’s a good friend of Jimin’s, isn’t he?”

“Yes. . .” Jinsu said quietly.  Her father nodded to himself.

“And what do you think of him?  He comes from a good family and stands to have a decent inheritance—”

Jinsu looked back up in alarm.  “Wait, what?”

“Well, if you like him and he has nothing against you and his father agrees to it, he’d be a nice match for a marriage.  I’m not going to marry you off to somebody you hate,” he said, as though it was the most obvious thing in the world.  Jinsu didn’t know if she was more shocked by the idea of her marrying Jongdae or by her father actually thinking it important that she at least got on with the husband in question if he wanted her to get married.

Her father patted her on the shoulder again.  “We’ll discuss it later.  No point hashing out details while Mr Kim isn’t here.”

“Father, I don’t want to get married!  I’m sixteen—”

“Later.”  He passed her his empty glass of orange juice.  “I see the keynote speaker has arrived – we should go and greet him.”

Disgruntled, and worried that she might lose somebody she was hoping to cultivate as a friend due to her father’s machinations, Jinsu trailed after him as he made his way through the crowd.  They had only gone a few steps before he decided that she was walking too slowly and placed his hand on her elbow to ensure she stuck by his side.  Jinsu smiled obediently as she was introduced to the tall man who was evidently going to be making the main speech to galvanise all the young scientists in the room.  She wouldn’t have been able to name him without him mumbling a quiet “Bang Daehyuk” as he shook her hand, but she recognised his face from various interviews he’d given on TV.  Assuming she was correct, he was more or less the PR professor for the Korean Institute of the Sciences.

“Good to see you again, Jiwoon.  We missed each other at the last dinner the Institute held because you were on business and I wasn’t able to come to the launch of the fabulous news about your time machine just recently since I was out of the country.  How are you, in any case?”

Jinsu zoned out as the smalltalk continued, wondering if she’d be able to get away with sidling off.  Unfortunately, she wasn’t able to get more than two steps before her father’s hand was on her elbow again and he was turning her towards another middle-aged man who had joined them.

“Dr Park, we thought you might like to review the prize list and citations before the winners are announced,” the man told her father.  “The judges are still squabbling over which of the final three ought to take fifth place and since you’re the most eminent scientist here and generously hosting the grand prize for the top five, the committee thought that it wouldn’t be remiss to draft you in.”

Park Jiwoon laughed, telling Bang Daehyuk that he’d see him later, and followed the newcomer, still with his hand on Jinsu’s arm.  Resigned, Jinsu followed him into one of the rooms just off the hall.

Five more men around her father’s age were bickering around the table in the room, stacks of paper in front of them.  The door clicked shut behind Jinsu and her father, the latch locking into place, and he finally let go of her.  Jinsu dithered by the doorway, wondering if this was a good opportunity to escape.  She heard one of the