Jinsu was just beginning to drift off when there was a knock at her door.  Groaning, she sat up and called for the person to come in, wondering what was so important so late on.

Baekhyun poked his head around the door, shaking his hair out of his eyes.  It had grown a fair amount over their time on the Attayear, and while it had started off at what Jinsu would now call pleasantly scruffy, he had a really head of it that made him look almost leonine – and very y.  Jinsu hastily turned her head away and gulped, hoping he hadn’t noticed her blushing.  y was a thought that needed to be scrapped as soon as possible.  Hot.  Or Handsome.  Either of those was better. . . except maybe not.  He looked nothing.  No positive adjectives.  Nothing attractive.  Nope.

“Hey, um. . . can I come in?”

He was biting his bottom lip just a little off centre.  Jinsu wasn’t sure if it was a better option to tell him to stop biting it or to bite down directly in the middle with both incisors rather than just the left one.

Then she realised that he was looking at her expectantly and she nodded.  Baekhyun slipped inside and let the door shut behind him.  He looked around, apparently at a bit of a loss, and then just stood there with his back against the door like he was trapped and had no escape, hands folded behind his back.

“What?” Jinsu prompted anxiously, wondering if Minhwan or Youngdo was on the loose and Baekhyun had managed to piss them off again.

“About travelling back,” he said.  “Are we telling the others about it?”

Jinsu considered.  “No,” she said slowly.  “It’ll just become a massive argument that I know I’ll lose and then they’ll be looking out to make sure we don’t try to do whatever we’re doing.”

Baekhyun nodded.  “So how are we going to hijack the Attayear, then?”

For several moments, Jinsu just looked at him, her brain completely blank.  He held her gaze, dark brown eyes sparkling with intelligent curiosity.  She forgot what they were supposed to be talking about.  How had she not noticed before that Baekhyun’s eyes were almost as pretty as his hands?

Oh my God, what the hell?  Jinsu internally panicked.  Why was she thinking about parts of Baekhyun’s body?

“Are you okay?”  The eyes were suddenly an awful lot closer, and Jinsu almost shrieked when she realised that Baekhyun was now by the bed, bending down a little with his hands on his knees so that they were on the same eye level.  His expression was confused.  “You look traumatised.”

Jinsu’s heart was beating as fast as if she actually was traumatised.  She jerked her head back, trying to find her tongue.

“I’m fine.  I’m fine!  I was just. . . thinking!”

There was a moment’s pause.  Then Baekhyun straightened up, a faint smile playing around his lips.

“Oh yeah.  Thinking.  Scary stuff, isn’t it?”

He was teasing her and Jinsu didn’t even care.  It actually sent a warm glow through her and she nearly gave him a wide, stupid grin.  She’d been around Kyungsoo way too much if that was how it was affecting her.  Thoroughly chagrined, she ducked her head.

Thankfully, Baekhyun saw fit to get back to business.

“How long will it take for the Attayear to start up and be prepared?” he asked.

Back on firm territory, Jinsu was quick to respond.  “We’d have to do an emergency safe-mode start-up like before, since the virus will just spread further if we do a normal one with all the computers and settings on and open.  In any case, we’re controlling everything by fuel and not the computers, so we don’t even need to go into the computer room, right?”

“And what about if, say, Kyuhyun or Junmyeon notices there’s something going on and tries to change things via the computers?”

It was something Jinsu hadn’t even thought of.

“They can’t do anything without you authorising it.”

“But then they’re going to come find me or you and ask for authorisation because ‘the Attayear’s gone completely rogue’.”  Baekhyun made finger quotes, and Jinsu’s eyes were drawn to them like a moth to light.  He had criminally pretty fingers.  Manly ones, yes, but everything about them was just. . . perfect.

Distracted, she went for a quick option.  “Couldn’t you just knock them out?”

Baekhyun stared at her.  And stared.  Jinsu began to fidget, wondering if she’d said something wrong, but then a grin cracked across his face and he laughed.

Something had to be wrong with Jinsu, because it sounded even better than Sehun’s laugh, and she’d heard Baekhyun laughing numerous times before and his laugh was never as nice as Sehun’s, and she definitely knew that.  But she’d made Baekhyun laugh, and she really liked that.  She felt accomplished.  Appreciated.  Accepted.  And until recently, that was something she’d almost never felt in her life.  Tentatively, she smiled at him.

“Why are you trying to turn this into some kind of action mission-themed movie?” he asked her.  “I know I said hijack, but—”

“It’s not like we’re in control of the Attayear,” Jinsu pointed out.

“I didn’t expect your first thought to be violence,” he reproached, but he was still grinning, and his tone was light.  Still teasing.  Still sending a warm glow through Jinsu.  “You weren’t this bellicose when I was being a d*ck to you.  What happened?”

Jinsu wasn’t sure if she was supposed to respond, so she just sat there, hands clasped delicately in her lap, and gazed up at him with the most innocent look she could muster.

After a few seconds, Baekhyun’s face turned a beautiful shade of pink.

“You blush a lot,” Jinsu told him without thinking, and his face almost went puce as he choked.  Jinsu could feel herself burning up with embarrassment at her inability to filter her thoughts.

“I have a skin condition,” Baekhyun said quickly, looking and sounding like he was making it up on the spot.  “And it’s the heating.  Anyway, good night!”

He was gone through the door before Jinsu even had time to register that it was actually fairly cold.  But she wouldn’t have pointed it out, because that would just have made everything worse.

Jinsu was so embarrassed by the previous evening that just the memory of it made her cheeks heat up as she and Minhwan and Youngdo, together with Junho and Jisung, checked over the oil in clay jars that they’d bought.  Minhwan had managed to barter the price down just a little, but bar three gold pieces, they were now completely wiped out of anything that remotely resembled money.  She wondered how on earth Baekhyun managed to put up with her when she seemed to be shoving her foot in the entire time – or Kyungsoo, for that matter.  And the others.

She was jolted out of her reverie by Minhwan moving in front of her, putting her in shadow.  Her first reaction was irritation, especially since she hadn’t even wanted to go with the boys, but then she saw several tribesmen, including the chief, trying to peer at her with interest.  Perhaps Minhwan was trying to block her from view.  She shivered, wrapping herself tighter in her cloak.  At least they’d finally be on the way back that evening.

Whatever kind of silent showdown or face-off (though both terms seemed a little strong, in Jinsu’s opinion) dissolved after a few moments, though, and Minhwan turned to the others.

“They’ve agreed to help us take the oil most of the way to the Attayear for us, so can you go on ahead?  Jinsu and I need to stay.”

Jinsu looked at him in alarm as the boys bustled off to the men standing around with sleds loaded up with oil barrels.  Minhwan looked very annoyed.

“I need to get it into their heads that you’re not for sale,” he grumbled.  “But from what I can make out from the drawings, as the chief male and female they’ve met, by tribal customs we need to show our respect and join them for a meal or something.”

Jinsu didn’t quite relax.  “Can’t we just go back with the others?”  The last thing she wanted to do was spend more time out in the snow with people they could barely even communicate with, especially if they were still eyeing her up for whatever reason.  She wasn’t totally sure if it was because she was foreign and something ‘exotic’ to them (she found the notion a bit repulsive) or if it was because they were short on women and desperately needed more, or – the worst option – if women were seen as second-rate and chattel that could be bargained back and forth.  She’d had reactions within those three every time they’d gone to bargain and settle with people, but it was fairly clear that her presence had had some kind of impact on every payment they’d had to make.

Minhwan seemed uneasy.  “I don’t think it would be a good idea.  They’ve been kind to us, especially given the time of year, and this guest-friendship thing seems to be sacrosanct.”

As they followed the tribe chief back into his tent, Jinsu caught herself wishing that Baekhyun was there.  The prospect of being alone with Minhwan was almost as horrific as her father wanting to take her away on holiday, just the two of them.  Minhwan did thankfully seem a bit preoccupied, but Jinsu didn’t trust him and there was no telling if he wouldn’t suddenly turn on her.  Being forced to rely on him went so against the grain.  Even when she’d felt the same way about Baekhyun, she had at least had the knowledge and assurance that he wouldn’t dessert her to the unknown or the enemy, and that he was capable of breaking a few bones if the going got rough.

According to her watch, they were there for the best part of two hours.  The chief had put on a fantastic spread of food for mid-winter and insisted that Jinsu and Minhwan ate enough for three people each.  (Jinsu was secretly thankful for the large breakfasts Baekhyun had given her that she’d grown used to, or she never would have managed it.)  There were what Jinsu worked out was some kind of votive offering to various gods (she wanted to film that, or record it somehow, but she knew she couldn’t), and then toasts and a lot of wine and other forms of alcohol swilling around.  Jinsu refused it wherever she could – for one thing, she was still a minor, and secondly, the idea of fermented food, even kimchi, didn’t sit well with her and her cleanliness radar.  Minhwan, being eighteen, ended up having to discreetly swallow the cup of wine set in front of her so that they wouldn’t look rude, and declined his own cup being topped up, blinking in a manner that suggested the alcoholic percentage of the wine was stronger than he’d anticipated.

The sun was heading towards the west by the time they finally managed to extricate themselves.  The chief tried to offer them an – that was what Jinsu understood it to be, at any rate