There was noise when Jinsu began to surface, but she felt so incredibly tired that she couldn’t bring herself to move.

Five more minutes, she thought to herself.  Just five more minutes.

“Where the heck have you been?  I freaked out when I woke up and thought you had turned into a female.”

“Keep it down, Kyungsoo, she’s still asleep,” Baekhyun’s voice murmured.

“Still,” Kyungsoo continued much more quietly.  “Did you even come back in here last night?”

“Where else would I have slept?”  Baekhyun sounded a little put out.

“Then care to explain why there is a girl in your bed?” Kyungsoo demanded in an acid whisper.  “I told you to do things at her pace!”

“It is not what it looks like!” Baekhyun insisted defensively.  “Youngdo and the Goon Squad messed up Jinsu’s room last night and she was in a state!  She fell asleep out on the roof with me and I was too tired to tidy up her room for her last night, so I brought her in here and slept on the spare bed so she could have the one that was already made up—”

Kyungsoo groaned softly.  “Baekhyun, honest to God, I am not joking when I say it looks like you’re hitting on her, and I’m also not joking when I say that it’s freaking her out.”

“I’m not hitting on her.”

“I know that, but Baekhyun, stargazing?  Cooking for her every day?  Letting her sleep in your bed?  This is exactly why she’s uncomfortable around you.”

Jinsu’s brain was now alert enough for her to process that it was best for her not to move or alert them to the fact that she was awake.  She had a feeling that both of them would be thoroughly embarrassed if they knew she was eavesdropping.

Of course, rolling over or yawning and stretching as though she was just waking up would shut them up, but a very selfish part of her wanted to listen to them.  She suspected that it was like the gossip reflex that a lot of people she knew had.

“You guys didn’t seem to have that much of a problem making friends with her, though,” Baekhyun said abruptly after a moment or two.

“I was just in the right place at the right time. She had a massive crush on Sehun and it’s impossible not to befriend Jongin because he behaves like a kicked puppy if you don’t.”

Jinsu choked, cutting off Kyungsoo’s “you don’t have any of those advantages”.  Both boys shut up and it went very silent, other than Jinsu’s continued coughs as she rolled over and sat up.

Both of them were staring at her.

“What an entrance into consciousness,” Kyungsoo said dryly.  “Would you like some water?”

Coughing again, Jinsu nodded.  She could feel her face going red.  Kyungsoo appeared to be sharing an expectant look with Baekhyun; the latter then vanished through the bedroom door, shutting it a little more harshly than necessary.  Kyungsoo glanced quickly between the door and Jinsu before attempting to sit up and flopping back on the pillows.

“How long have you been awake?” he asked suspiciously.

“Not long,” Jinsu admitted, and then decided that a small falsehood might save face for them all as he suddenly went a bit pink, his gaze faltering.  “I just wasn’t expecting the first words I heard to be, well, me having a crush on Sehun, and I breathed in my saliva, which is gross.”  She caught herself fidgeting with the duvet that was draped over her and made herself stop.  “Was I really that obvious about it?”

“No,” said Kyungsoo in an unconvincing tone.  “Well, maybe.  You used to stare at him all the time when we were doing our statistics module project and I initially thought it was because you were trying to look anywhere that didn’t make eye contact with me—”

Jinsu grimaced, giving out one last cough, as Kyungsoo bulled on.

“—And then when we were doing the explorations in Balhae, you were happy to be stuck with Sehun but Jongin and I thought you were plotting the best way to murder us in our sleep every time we tried to speak to you, so the obvious conclusion was a closet friendship Sehun had managed to hide, which he’d at, in fairness, or a crush.  But I wouldn’t worry: Sehun’s so dense to stuff like that that he probably didn’t have a clue.  Everybody except me and Chanyeol seemed to think you were about to elope with Jongdae.”

The door opened again and Kyungsoo shut up as Baekhyun reappeared with a glass of water.  The boy handed it to Jinsu and nervously wiped his hands on the side of his trousers before shooting Kyungsoo a glance that seemed to say don’t you even think about starting and clearing his throat.

“Thanks,” said Jinsu quietly.  He jumped.

“Oh, er. . . Kyuhyun says a couple of people want to have a meeting in half an hour about supplies and what we do next and. . . stuff.”

Jinsu nodded.  She wasn’t entirely surprised: such a discussion was definitely needed.

“Well, give me the rundown later, peeps.”  Kyungsoo let out a huge yawn.  “Could one of you pass me my laptop?  I want to see how much of the royal scribe’s records I can understand.”

Even though Baekhyun had hinted at tidying up her room, Jinsu was still surprised to return to it to get changed and find it completely spotless.  Feeling profoundly grateful, the first thing she did was go and hide the cloak, as flat as possible, under her duvet, along with the various things that she’d bought back in Balhae that didn’t leave the bed looking rumpled and messy.  It made her skin crawl to know that there were things hidden there, but it was better than Youngdo barging back in when she wasn’t there and taking them away.

Resisting the urge to go back over to her bed and make it properly, putting everything under the duvet in the place it was supposed to be, Jinsu left the room and headed down the stairs in search of breakfast.  The kitchen was deserted and there wasn’t very much food left in general, but she found a quarter slice of melon and munched her way happily through it, wondering when a good moment to approach Kyungsoo to ask him about her idea to manoeuvre the Attayear solely by controlling its fuel consumption.

Not long after she’d finished, Junmyeon wandered in with an empty teacup.

“Morning,” he greeted her.  “Are you going to join us?  We’re going to one of the communal rooms to have a discussion about the best way to proceed.”

Jinsu nodded, getting to her feet and tossing her melon rind away.  Junmyeon deposited the cup in the sink.

“Nice to see your arm out of its sling,” he said conversationally as they both left the kitchen.

“It was starting to feel uncomfortable,” Jinsu mumbled.

“Sign it’s healing,” Junmyeon said airily.  Jinsu glanced down at her hand.  There were some new bruises below her knuckles on the back of her hand, and the cuts from the previous day still looked pretty raw, but the ugly black bruising that had covered most of her hand when she’d broken it had faded to a deep purple, yellowing around the edges.

Everybody remaining on the Attayear except Kyungsoo was there when Junmyeon and Jinsu walked in.  It was sobering to realise just how few of them were left, and a little daunting.  Minhwan was talking quietly to Kyuhyun, whose laptop was out on the coffee table that the sofas were gathered around.  Youngdo and Jisung were surrounded by stacks of gold and precious items, Junho helping them to categorise and sort them while a guy Jinsu thought was called Hyunwoo (it was hard to be sure when she’d never spoken to him and everybody had dropped the name tags since Jino and Minseok were no longer around to insist on them) noted everything down in what was clearly a temporary inventory.  Baekhyun was loitering in a corner nearest the sofa that was farthest from Youngdo and Jisung, but when he saw Junmyeon and Jinsu entering, he straightened up and slid quietly over to it to sit down.

A month ago, Jinsu would have been horrified at the prospect of it being a no-brainer to sit down next to him, but she did, perching awkwardly on the sofa seat and leaving a gap of several centimetres.  Baekhyun glanced sideways at her, and for a moment it looked like he was going to say something, but Junmyeon cut him off.

“I think that’s everyone,” he said, pointing at them individually as he did a headcount.  “Kyungsoo still can’t move—”

“Useless,” muttered somebody, and Baekhyun immediately bristled.  Jinsu couldn’t help a wave of anger surge over her too.

“Language,” said Junmyeon mildly.

“He’s got one of the best brains on here for all of the technical stuff,” Baekhyun added, defensive.

“Okay, no arguing!” Minhwan snapped, getting to his feet.  “There are few enough of us as it is.”

Jinsu heard Baekhyun cough something that sounded very much like rich, and even if that wasn’t what it was, she agreed with the sentiment.  Minhwan telling people not to argue was definitely a pot calling a kettle black.

Everybody listened to him, though, whether it was because they all knew that the situation was bad, or because they respected him or because they were scared of him.  Kyuhyun slipped his computer from the table onto his lap as Minhwan massaged his temples.

“Everybody’s seen the fridge, right?” he said.  “And the pantry?”

“Half a cucumber and some peppers,” Junmyeon piped up.  “And seven sausages.  There’s enough in the way of rice and burgers for everybody to have lunch, but dinner’s out of the question.”

“We’ve got thirty-six kilo ingots of gold,” Youngdo announced suddenly, “with almost a thousand gold coins, and then a few hundred other coins which are probably precious metal or at least semi precious and therefore tradeable.  I can’t say anything on precious stones and jewellery and stuff because I’m not an expert and don’t know how much it would fetch, but I think we have enough to try trading with.”

Minhwan nodded, and murmurings arose briefly from the other boys.  Jinsu noticed Baekhyun sneaking a sideways glance at her and turned to meet his gaze.  He froze when she did, and then tilted his head quizzically to one side.

“How much of that gold is yours?” he