***Warning: the latter half of this chapter contains unpleasant insinuations and propositioning + minor harrassment.  Nothing graphic, but I've marked the passage with *** at the open and close for anybody uncomfortable so they can skip/miss it if they want.***

Jinsu didn’t know which she was more taken aback by when she opened her door the next morning: the note from the mystery chef or the visitors.

The previous night, after Jongdae had left and Chanyeol had come knocking to see if she was okay and then left to inform Jino that the money had been returned, Jinsu had left a very short, very simple note to the person saying I can’t thank you enough.  The response she’d got was I’d really rather you didn’t try.  She couldn’t work out if the mystery chef was being dismissive or modest.

But she hardly had time to try because of the three boys outside her door.

Kyungsoo and Jongin were sitting cross-legged on the floor with knives and forks in hand, gazing up at her expectantly.  Sehun was attempting to haul them away, his face flame red with embarrassment.

“You have lots of good food,” Kyungsoo proclaimed.

“Feed us!” Jongin agreed, opening his mouth like a hungry baby bird.  Jinsu stared from her tray to the boys.

“I am so sorry for these two idiots,” Sehun apologised, giving up on attempting to drag them both away at the same time and grabbing Kyungsoo by the back of the collar with both hands instead.  He managed to pull the boy backwards a couple of steps before Kyungsoo squawked and went comically cross-eyed, pretending that Sehun was strangling him.

“But Jinsu has more than enough food for one person,” Jongin protested stubbornly.  “She has at least enough for three.”

“Friends share,” Kyungsoo piped up, eyes bright, as Sehun let go of him.

Jinsu looked back at the tray again.  She could probably give them the scrambled eggs, since there was no Minhwan to throw them at—

“Friends do not steal and eat all of each other’s food,” Sehun said firmly, this time trying his luck with Jongin, “and you are a bottomless pit.”

“But Jinsu has Cumberland sausages!” Jongin protested, flailing.  “Cumberland sausages are delicious!”

“Exactly why she won’t want to share them with you.”

Bewildered, Jinsu watched the bickering for several moments, wondering how on earth her life had ended up like this.

“Er. . .”  Jinsu’s brain went blank, and she stepped back, pushing the door open.  “Come in. . . ?”

Correctly interpreting it as an invitation to join Jinsu for food, Jongin and Kyungsoo both shot off the ground and into her room, Jongin dragging Sehun along with him.

“Wow,” said Jongin, looking around and moving to the desk to absently move things about.  “This is ridiculously neat.”

Sehun slapped his hand back to his side.  “Don’t mess up her stuff.”

Jongin jumped, looking chagrined, and smiled apologetically.  Something about the interaction had Jinsu gulping.  People at school joked about her having OCD all the time and made fun of her for it, possibly not realising the extent to which it was damaging, or just finding it amusing, but it looked like somebody had told Jongin that it was actually severe, and the only two people Jinsu reckoned would have mentioned it were Sehun and her cousin.

Kyungsoo, by contrast, looked like he didn’t quite know where to put himself, and from the way he glanced at her for permission before gingerly sitting on the spare bed, Jinsu knew that he must have been brought up to speed on her condition as well.  Sehun was the only one who seemed anything like comfortable.

“Are you sure you’re okay with this?” he asked dubiously, keeping his weight off his bad leg.  “We can eat downstairs.  They’re just being tools.”

“What a nice thing to say about your friends wanting to keep somebody company,” Kyungsoo said blandly.

“You were the one who said she wasn’t in a good way yesterday,” Jongin added, flinging himself down on the bed next to Kyungsoo, “and we have to look out for the Attayear’s princess because she’s our group buddy, not just because a tiger might eat her.”

Sehun plonked himself down in the spare chair, looking like his leg wasn’t going to take him standing for much longer.  Jinsu wondered how he’d managed to walk as far as the town in the condition he was in the previous day.

“Chanyeol said you got the money back,” Sehun said.

Unsure what to do with herself, especially with so many people in the room, Jinsu hesitated before crossing to the desk and putting the tray of food on it.

“Yeah,” she murmured.  After a few more awkward moments, she sat down in the remaining chair.  It was unnerving to have the boys’ undivided attention in a space that she considered her own.  “Someone brought it back.”

The silence that followed was stifling.

“That’s good,” offered Jongin, and the others nodded.  Jinsu nudged the tray in the direction of Jongin and Kyungsoo.

“Help yourselves.  This is what you’re here for, right?”

Both of them looked absolutely scandalised.

“We’re not having a bite until you’ve had some.”

“Yeah, we were only doing that as a joke to cheer you up,” Kyungsoo explained.  “Not eating breakfast is really bad for you.  Stuff your face.”

The prospect of them sitting there and watching her eat was even more awkward than the situation currently was.  Sehun seemed to realise this and sighed.  He reached out, breaking a sausage in two, and popped half into his mouth before offering the other half to Jinsu.

“Sehun!” Jongin complained as Jinsu took the half sausage, her fingers brushing against Sehun’s greasy ones.

“I’m trying to keep the atmosphere comfortable.”  He glared at the other two.  “Nobody wants people sitting there staring at them while they eat a plate full of food.”

“Good point.”  Kyungsoo reached for a mini hash brown.  Come to that, apart from the sausages and the eggs, everything had been sized as finger food again.

Jongin shrugged and went for the food with his fork as well.  Jinsu was surprised when he shoved the square of bacon towards her instead, leaning across a protesting Kyungsoo to do so.

“Did you know you were going to be designated the youth ambassador for science before you turned down the top prize at the competition?” he asked her curiously, now getting a sausage for himself.  “I can’t think why any sane person would turn down the opportunity of a lifetime to go into the past.  You must’ve known it was going to be part of the prize.”

“Minseok even said you’d designed some of the interior,” Kyungsoo agreed.

Jinsu shifted uncomfortably, unsure really what to say.  Did she really want more people knowing about her relationship with her father?

“See,” said Jongin, “I heard from a reliable source that your father is an absolute a**hole – no offence, of course – and that he forced you into giving up the prize.”

“It does feel a bit weird there were no female winners,” Sehun agreed.  “I saw in the stats that there was a 70:30 ratio of boys and girls who entered and that was pretty obvious in the prizegiving hall as well.”

“On the flip side, it would have looked like nepotism if you’d won,” Kyungsoo pointed out, helping himself to some scrambled egg, “but not nearly as nepotistic as getting you the ambassadorial role looks.”

“That was weird, though,” Jongin murmured.  “That feels more like a sore loser saying ‘my daughter ought to be on here, but she didn’t win, so I’m going to do it some other way’, no?”

Kyungsoo looked up at him.  “Remind me who’s on my winning team again?”

“Oh, sh*t,” Jongin realised.  “Byun Baekhyun.”  He turned to Jinsu.  “God, he really threw you under the bus, didn’t he?  Did he force you on here because he couldn’t take the prize away from Baek?  What a d*ck.”

“Jongin!”  Sehun glared at him again.

Jongin retreated his fork, looking a little abashed.  “Ah, sorry. . . We probably shouldn’t be talking about your dad like this in front of you, should we?”

“I honestly don’t think she gives a ,” droned Kyungsoo.  “Do you give a , Jin?”

It took Jinsu several moments to reply, since the surprise at hearing her brother’s pet name for her coming from a classmate was something she had to process.

“Not really, no,” she admitted.

“You are cold and unfilial,” Kyungsoo told her with a completely straight face.  “Well, there you have it, guys.  Jinsu doesn’t give a , so we can continue to think that her dad is a b*stard.”

It took slightly longer to realise that Kyungsoo was joking, because Jinsu still wasn’t used to his sense of humour, but she allowed herself a small smile.

“You’re right,” she told Jongin.

“See?” he fired at Sehun.  Sehun raised his hands defensively.

“After the state she was in last night, I didn’t think it would be a good idea to bring her father up.  I admit I was wrong.  Can I have a croissant?”

Breakfast was far from a quiet affair.  Chanyeol showed up just a couple of minutes later to check on her, and Jongdae breezed in a few seconds after, followed by Junmyeon, who paled at the amount of meat on Jinsu’s tray and stood a little over to the side of the room.  The response of the newcomers to the boys in Jinsu’s room was identical to the boys-already-there’s response to the newcomers: what are you doing here and why are you eating Jinsu’s breakfast?

“You should have told us you were cribbing off your cousin for food,” Kyungsoo said to Chanyeol around a very large mouthful of said food.  “This is delicious.”

Chanyeol looked a bit annoyed.  “This is the exact reason why I didn’t.”

Jongdae immediately started fussing with the food on the plate, swatting away hands as he moved things onto the now empty sideplate that had contained the pastries.  He put it in front of Jinsu and moved the boiled eggs and toast towards her.

“Kick them out next time,” he told her.  “Kim Jongin is a bottomless pit.”

“Why does everybody say that?”  Jongin protested, deftly stealing a finger of Jinsu’s toast.

“Because it’s true,” Junmyeon said from the wall.  “Literally the only thing I’ve seen you refuse to eat was a gluten-free chocolate brownie—”

“Stop.”  Jongin held up a hand.  “That brownie was gluten-free, dairy-free, egg-free and taste-free.  If you call that food, you are doing a disservice to humanity.”

Everybody laughed at Jongin’s indignant tone.  Grinning to herself, Jinsu took another finger of toast and loaded it up with scrambled egg, presenting it to the human dustbin.

“Gluten-rich, dairy-rich, egg-rich and taste-rich,” she announced.  “Brownie for you.”

Kyungsoo snorted with laughter as Jongin stared at the proffered food in confusion, and then gave Jinsu a rather worried look.

“Please never cook for me,” Jongin whimpered.

Sehun grinned.  “You were asking for that one, Jongin.  Shall I see if I can find some chocolate sprinkles for your brownie?”

Everybody laughed at the horrified look on Jongin’s face.

“That is a crime against food!  Never put chocolate on anything savoury, you tasteless person!”

“No brownie for you, then.”  Sehun plucked the eggs-on-toast finger out of Jinsu’s hand and crammed it whole into his mouth.  He looked so pleased with himself it was almost sickeningly cute.

The upshot of being gatecrashed meant