To Jinsu’s relief, nobody had been in to mess up her room again while she was out in the town.  After washing as best she could and changing into clothes from her own time, she set about tweaking her room to the perfection it ought to be (Jongdae had done a good job; he just wasn’t a perfectionist), she began to prepare what she was going to wear and need for the next day.

She spent a long time deliberating over her camera.  Not having two functioning hands meant that she was at much greater risk of being caught with it, and also that she couldn’t hold it completely steady to take a photo, which would mean the quality wasn’t good enough.  She wondered how Kyungsoo would respond if she asked him to send her some of his photos.  He seemed to be snap-happy, and she knew he had some good ones.  Eventually, she set her camera aside and got together the things she needed.  They only had two days left in Balhae and she needed to get a sizeable collection of souvenirs to bring back for the historical society her father had given her money on behalf of.

That was when she discovered that the sack of gold he’d given her was missing.  Due to its weight, Jinsu had only been taking a pouch with her after the episode with the tiger, and she’d been refilling it as and when needed.  She hadn’t spent enough the previous day to need to top up, but with Chanyeol’s help, she’d almost cleaned herself out of money.

Jinsu’s initial instinct was that Jongdae must have put it somewhere strange when he’d been tidying up her room for her, but in the back of her mind she knew that he’d never asked about the sack’s living place, and she’d never seen him pick it up.  Nevertheless, she searched through her room and the bathroom, and then again more frantically, and then again a third and a fourth time, in her distress doing something she never did: pulling things out haphazardly and casting them aimlessly aside, because the money had to be there somewhere.

Except it wasn’t.

Jinsu could feel her heart beginning to race.  If she didn’t bring back enough souvenirs, her father would be angry with her, but if he found out it was because she’d lost the money, he’d go ballistic.  In fact, he’d go ballistic over her losing the money whether or not she’d brought back enough souvenirs.  Panicking, she scrabbled through her belongings again, her broken hand beginning to protest.

Admitting it was useless when nothing showed up, she left her room in a fluster to see if Jongdae was in his and he could help, but he wasn’t.  Jinsu found herself turning to her cousin’s room instead and pounding on the door, trying to hold back her tears.  It was opened by Sehun.

“Whoa,” he said, looking her up and down.  “You okay?”

“Chanyeol,” she told him frantically.  “I need Chanyeol—”

He opened the door and stepped back, giving her a blurred view of the room.  It was surprisingly neat for a space with four boys cramped into it.  Baekhyun was sprawled on his bed, one foot propped on a bent knee as he read a book while Kyungsoo looked up from where he was lying on his belly on the bedding that was on the floor to see what the commotion was.  As Jinsu hastily rubbed her eyes clear, she thought she saw him frown.  Chanyeol distracted her by appearing, though.

He was instantly alarmed.  “What happened?”

“I-I—”  Jinsu struggled to swallow, aware that she needed more air.  “It’s gone, Yeol – Dad’s gonna kill me; I don’t know what to do—”

Chanyeol looked puzzled.  “What is?”

A sort of squeak escaped Jinsu, but the lump of terror in was too big for her to talk around, and she just shook her head, quivering like a leaf.  A hand landed on her back and started rubbing soothing circles.

Jinsu burst into tears, beyond feeling humiliated by it.  “He’s going to be so angry!” she managed between her sobs.  She felt Chanyeol folding her into a hug and sank gratefully into the comfort of his chest.  The other hand was still patting her back gently.

“It’s all right,” Chanyeol murmured.

“No it’s not!  You don’t know what he’s like!”  Suddenly, Chanyeol’s arms were suffocatingly close.  It barely even registered to Jinsu that it had only been a couple of seconds of physical contact, but it felt stifling, threatening, and she tried to push him away so that she could pace out the nervous energy.  “I-I-I can’t do this – he’s going to think I’m a failure again – he’s going to start thinking that women shouldn’t be involved with money as well as science—”

Bedsprings creaked as Baekhyun got up, setting the book aside, and left the room.  Chanyeol managed to grab Jinsu back again and pull her to a halt.

“So. . .” said Kyungsoo, taking advantage of the silence, “why is your dad a prospective w*nker for when you get back home?”

Jinsu just shook her head frantically.  Kyungsoo was going to agree with her dad, she was sure of it—

“Wait.”  Kyungsoo put down his phone.  “Money. . . is this something to do with the massive sack of gold you had on the first day?”

Relieved that she didn’t have to say anything, Jinsu nodded.

“And it’s gone?” Kyungsoo confirmed.

Jinsu nodded again.  Sehun whistled.

“That was a lot of money,” he observed.

“Jongin and I didn’t tell anyone about it,” Kyungsoo said, “because then everybody would want it.  Did you?”

“Of course not.”  Sehun sounded insulted.

“I-I had it. . . yesterday,” Jinsu got out.

“And then Minhwan trashed your room and stole it,” Chanyeol pieced together.  “The er.  We all get given about fifty gold coins to spend every day if we need to.  He doesn’t need anymore.”

“Minhwan is a d*ck,” Kyungsoo said as though it solved everything, picking his phone back up.  “I’d leave him alone with a tiger any day.”

“We should probably tell Jino,” said Sehun.  “Or we could just break into Minhwan’s room during dinner and get it back.”

“He’s probably spent some of it by now, though,” Chanyeol pointed out.

“Great,” said Kyungsoo.  “Jinsu has a personal slave to pay off debt.”

It was enough to make a small hiccup of laughter bubble up through Jinsu, and even though he was engrossed in some kind of onscreen game, Kyungsoo grinned.  It was a gentle expression, one that Jinsu barely saw and that shaped his lips almost like a heart.

“Made you laugh,” he declared w