School was routine, but by halfway through her second class, Jinsu was finding it very tough to stay awake.  Under normal circumstances, Jinsu would never have stayed up most of a Tuesday night unless it was the holidays, but the interior of the Attayear machine had been so nearly finished and the idea of not getting it completely done had made her incredibly antsy.  And then, of course, it had taken her significantly longer than expected because everything needed to be perfect, and then one of the technicians had proposed she test out staying there in one of the bunks.  She only realised she’d dozed off in maths at the end of the day when somebody whacked her on the head from behind with a sheaf of papers.

Groggily, she turned and saw Kyungsoo, yet another of Baekhyun’s irritating friends, sitting there.  He cast a critical eye over her sleepy face for a moment or two and then the papers at her with a grunt of “pass them forward”, nearly brusquely enough to give her a papercut.

To be fair, Kyungsoo wasn’t nearly as bad as the rest, but Jinsu had never figured out if he was being intentionally cold to her or if he was just one of those people who was as awkwardly untalkative as she was, because outside his little posse of friends, he rarely ever opened his mouth.  With them, though, he was constantly laughing and smiling and very talkative.

With another yawn, Jinsu passed the papers forward and then slumped back down on the desk, intending to go back to sleep.  There were one or two snickers over to her right, which she knew from the seating plan was where Byun Baekhyun sat, along with a girl called Do Minyoung who absolutely hated her for no apparent reason and a few more boys who weren’t in Baekhyun’s in-crowd but who still had fun ribbing Jinsu when they had the chance.

Her teacher’s voice jerked her back to reality.

“Park Jinsu, are you not going to hand your homework in?”

Oh.  So that was what that stack of papers had been.  Yawning, Jinsu sat up again, trying not to frown.  Maybe Kyungsoo had been intentionally harsh when he was giving her the papers, because most people reminded each other if somebody was obviously going to miss out handing their work in on those occasions.

She thought she heard someone scoffing something along the lines of “do you reckon her work’s even going to be worth reading when she’s in this condition?” from somewhere on Baekhyun’s side of the room, though the voice was too deep to actually be Baekhyun’s and she couldn’t be bothered to look to check.  It wasn’t worth getting wound up about, in any case, because Jinsu knew she was in the top five of the class, and she’d also done the work on the day it had been set, when she hadn’t been exhausted, because maths was one of her favourite subjects.  She passed her work forward to join the rest and then attempted to sit to attention for the rest of the class, though they were doing statistics, which involved decimals, which she found incredibly dull because her forte was pure maths, and which she also found anxiety-inducing, because recurring decimals were just not satisfying.  Every time she saw something ending with a recurring three, she just wanted to write it as the number and a third, because it looked so much neater and didn’t get her all wound up, but sadly, it got marks docked and so she wasn’t allowed to do it.

Sungwoo the chauffeur was waiting for her when school finished and she was finally allowed out, and he handed her a strong black coffee as she slid into the passenger seat of the car.

“Mrs Kwon said you were out very late last night,” was his response when she thanked him appreciatively.  “Thought you might want this.”

Jinsu just nodded.  A comfortable silence descended as he pulled away from the school.  Neither of the two of them ever spoke much, and even with the coffee, Jinsu was practically dozing off.  It wasn’t until they were several streets through Apgujeong that Sungwoo spoke up again.

“Do you have enough decent dresses or do we need to stop off to shop for one?”

Jinsu struggled to think about why this might even be an issue and turned up blank.  “Huh?”

“Dinner tonight, Miss, with your parents.”

Jinsu managed to yawn and frown at the same time.  “What for?”

“Your father said you would know.  I’m not allowed to because it’s top secret, apparently.”

It did absolutely nothing to alleviate Jinsu’s frown, so she shrugged and buried her face back in her coffee, making sure her hands were both placed perfectly symmetrically around the cup so that they both received the same amount of heat.

“Will we need to stop for a dress?” Sungwoo prompted.  “Though I think it would be you rather than me shopping in this condition.”

Jinsu shook her head.  “I think I have enough at home.”

“All right, Miss.”

She snuggled back into the heated leather seat, and the next thing she knew, Sungwoo was taking the cooling half-finished coffee out of her hands because they were parked in the garage at the side of the house.  One of the maids who’d only been there a couple of weeks and whose name Jinsu struggled to remember in her exhausted state opened the door for her.

“The hairdresser will be calling in half an hour, Ma’am,” she informed Jinsu, who groaned.  There was no way she was going to be ready to have her hair done in such a short time.

“What time are we leaving for the dinner?” she asked, hoping that she’d be able to push back her schedule to get things done in her own time.

“In fifty minutes, ma’am.  I believe that there is a drinks reception first with important government officials.”

This was new.  Temporarily shocked back into a state of alertness, Jinsu sat up and got out of the car, wondering if she did actually have a dress for the occasion that would suit.

“Okay,” she said.  “Uh. . . that’s not a lot of time for me to get ready.  Never mind.  Do you know if Jimin will be there too?”

“Unfortunately he won’t be, ma’am,” the maid said as she led the way back into the house.  “He flew out to China earlier today on business matters.”

Jinsu’s shoulders slumped.  Of course he did.  She’d been so taken aback by the news that he’d been dating somebody for nearly six months that she’d totally forgotten the reason he was ringing her was because he was going to be away until the weekend and wanted to let her know.

“Do you know if anybody my age will be there?” Jinsu asked, eyeing the stairs she was going to have to climb dispiritedly.

“I couldn’t say, ma’am.  I wouldn’t know.”

“Could you come with me?”  She leant against the banister railing.  The maid, three steps ahead, turned to stare at her in shock.  Jinsu sighed and cut in before