Jinsu was in such a state of shock that she was practically unable to process what was going on around her.  Time seemed to stop.  Her head was spinning and she felt horribly, horribly nauseous.  The world she knew had come crashing down to burn around her ears as numbness spread over her and Jimin’s sobs became part of the general ringing in her hearing.

When she at last came to her senses, Baekhyun was leading her across the darkened room and Jimin, who’d apparently turned the light out before curling up on the floor amid the wreckage, was fast asleep, sniffling quietly from time to time and twitching as though caught in some kind of nightmare.

She came to a halt, trying to breathe as her brain attempted to compute what she’d witnessed.

“No,” Baekhyun told her firmly, his voice low, as he tugged her away from her brother and towards the door.  Dazed, Jinsu obeyed.

It gradually began to come together as Baekhyun fiddled around with the lock and some pieces of Mechano and the door swung open.  She’d grown up living, believing – embodying – a lie.  The Attayear belonged – or should have belonged – to the Byuns.  Her father had robbed them of it and then used his influence to silence them.  She’d known her father was ambitious, known that once he’d set his sights on something he’d stop at nothing to pursue it, but she’d still never imagined that he was quite this bad.  And Jimin. . .

She choked, returning enough to herself to realise that she was crying harder than she’d ever cried before her in life.  She couldn’t even see where she was going, though that could have been because it was dark just as much as because her vision was completely blurred.  Somebody with a familiar voice was speaking to her, but she could barely understand a word he was saying.

Jinsu clung to the familiarity.  Lights flickered on and a boy whose voice she knew very well finally managed to say something that got through to her.

“Jinsu, pull yourself together.  Come on.”

Baekhyun.

The tears cleared a little and Jinsu realised they were back in her room.  Baekhyun must have made an executive decision to get her away from anywhere somebody might accidentally stumble on them, especially in a building he was unfamiliar with.

Baekhyun’s entire family had been ruined by her father.

The full truth of that hitting her was physically painful.  Gasping around the agonising pain in her chest, Jinsu crumpled to her knees.

“I’m sorry,” she choked out.  “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry—”

The words spilt out like a mantra that needed to be recited to keep her alive, but all she could feel was growing hysteria.  After everything, Baekhyun had been right.  All that treatment at school, all that hatred – Baekhyun had been right and she’d just blindly followed her father because—

“It’s okay.  It’s okay.”  Warmth enveloped her.  “Shh.  It’s okay.”

Nothing had ever felt less okay for Jinsu.  She could hear herself continuing to apologise as though from a great distance, but that was never going to be enough.  Never.

A finger pressed against her lips finally shut her up.

“Not another word,” said Baekhyun gently.  “It’s all right.”

The energy remaining in Jinsu drained out like water from a bath and she slumped against him, crying out the remainder of her tears.  Gradually, things started to make sense again.

They were sitting on the floor of her room just inside the door.  She’d seen and heard her father more or less admitting, in not quite so many words, that the Byuns had been the brains behind the invention of working time machines, and that he’d used Jimin to steal those.  He’d hit Jimin.  If there was one thing Jinsu had firmly clung to as a belief, it was the relief that her father had never descended to the point of physical violence.  Himself, at least.  She didn’t know how much truth there was to rumours of his involvement with gangsters, and she didn’t particularly want to know.

They were sitting on the floor of her room and Baekhyun had her in his lap, cradling her as though she was the one who needed comfort and protection from her father and not him.  Baekhyun.  If he’d heard everything she’d heard, and had seen everything she’d seen, his comforting presence didn’t make the slightest grain of sense.  Snuffling quietly, she waited until her blood pressure had gone down and she could breathe through her nose instead of gasping in air like she was drowning, and then tried to disentangle herself from Baekhyun’s grip.  The last person in the world that she deserved to have with her was him.

Baekhyun steadied her as she got to her feet, swiftly rising to his own, but he blocked her as she reached for the doorhandle.  Jinsu looked blankly at his hand for several long moments, trying to come up with something coherent.

“Let me go.  Please,” she said thickly, not even sure what she was asking.  “My family’s done enough damage.  Let me just d-disappear.”  Her voice cracked with the last word.

“No,” said Baekhyun, no louder than he had been before, but no less firm.  “You need me with you right now.”

Jinsu felt tears springing to her eyes again.  How was it even possible to cry anymore?  Surely all the liquid in her body had been wrung out of her.

“You should hate me,” she choked out.  “I can’t believe— I’m s-sor—”

“Why should I?” he challenged in that same calm, quiet voice.  “Name one part of this fiasco that’s your fault, Jinsu.  Then I’ll hate you.”

“My life is just a long series of events where I’ve made myself look stupid.  I should’ve—”  She broke down again in big, ugly sobs, and he let go of the door to wrap his arms around her once more.

“It’s all right,” he told her, interrupting her stream of almost incoherent apologies.  “You had nothing to do with this.  You were six.  Stop apologising.  It’s not your fault.”

It didn’t take nearly as long for Jinsu to cry herself out this time.  Drained, she let Baekhyun hold her.  Everything still seemed horribly surreal, and even though she knew she wasn’t dreaming and that the truth had now settled, she still hoped that she was going to wake up and breathe a sigh of relief because it had just been a nightmare.

There was still something that didn’t add up, though, and now that she’d calmed into a state of near listlessness, it was beginning to niggle.

“I know it’s a shock,” Baekhyu