Jinsu was terrified she’d overstepped the mark on Friday evening when she went down for breakfast on Saturday morning and found her father sitting at the kitchen table, arms folded and obviously waiting for her.  She paused in the doorway, gulping and wondering anxiously if she could escape, but he’d already seen her.

“Are you thinking of going somewhere?” he asked, getting to his feet and gesturing to Jinsu’s outfit.  She knew that Daegu was one of the warmest cities in the country, but it was still drizzling lightly, so she’d opted for a dress that stopped at mid-thigh along with tights and a cardigan and she’d tucked a small umbrella into her handbag.  Baekhyun had kept hold of the tickets for them both.

She looked nervously up at her father as he approached, trying to read his expression, but his face was impassive.

“Go and buy yourself a new dress or something,” he told her gruffly, ing a roll of notes into her hand before brushing past her and out of the room.

Jinsu stood there, utterly confused, for a good number of moments.  Usually when he gave her money, it was on the first day of the month and directly into her bank account, not in cash.  Why did he think she needed a new dress?  The one she was wearing was perfectly good enough.

It was only when she was waiting at the station for Baekhyun to arrive (she was twenty minutes early) that she thought to stop clutching onto the roll of notes and put it into her bag.  Curiosity got the better of her when the first 50000 won note almost came away from the rest and she had to catch it, and she began counting through them.

When she got to the end of them, she didn’t know what to make of it.  Her father had just shoved the better part of one and a half million won into her hand before walking out of the kitchen, and she couldn’t think of a single reason why he’d done it.

A chin dropped onto her shoulder.

“That’s a lot of money,” observed a familiar voice.

Jinsu was still too busy staring at it in disbelief to turn and greet Baekhyun properly as he wrapped his arms around her.

“My dad gave it to me this morning,” she said weakly.  “Told me to buy a new dress and just shoved the money at me.”

“Why?”  She could tell from Baekhyun’s tone that he was frowning.  “You look perfectly pretty in this one.”

“I don’t know.”

“You did look better in the red one, though,” Baekhyun teased, pulling the money out of her hand and tucking it into her bag for her before turning her around.  “Can I get a good morning kiss?”

Not completely distracted, Jinsu pecked him on the lips.

“And for the record,” he told her in a low voice, “you look gorgeous today.”

It made Jinsu feel a whole lot better.

They didn’t actually get up to an awful lot in Daegu, but being able to wander around in their own time, hand in hand, and discuss mundane things rather than how to get a broken time machine home without being killed by the other people on it was a luxury they hadn’t really had before.  Jinsu discovered that Baekhyun’s big sister Jihyun, who he seemed to absolutely adore, had managed to get herself a job as a computer engineer in China several years back and was more or less the main breadwinner of the family.  Baekhyun didn’t say as much, probably because he didn’t want the atmosphere to turn sour, but Jinsu got the impression that her father had made it more or less impossible for either of Baekhyun’s parents to find decent employment.  His mother made jewellery for a local boutique store and Jinsu didn’t quite manage to discover what his father did.

They were halfway through a very late lunch, paid for by the money Park Jiwoon had given Jinsu (though she was a bit reluctant to use it at all) when Jinsu’s subterfuge phone (as Kyungsoo had labelled it the previous day) suddenly pinged with a message.

Hey!  It’s Jongdae, she read off the screen.  Chanyeol said you were using this number rather than your other phone, so he’d better not be playing me for a fool and getting me to text some random stranger.  I just thought you should know I sort of have a girlfriend.  Not that it’s going to bother you since you’ve got LoverByun, but with this whole arranged marriage thing I figured it would be best to tell you.

Jinsu snorted, making to put the phone away, but Baekhyun reached across for it.

“What’s funny?” he asked, plucking the phone out of her hand.  Jinsu didn’t bother to stop him.

“LoverByun is so uninventive,” he muttered to himself as he scrolled through the message.  “Could at least have gone with Boyfriend Baek.  Alliteration is the in thing.”  Before Jinsu could tell him not to, he texted something back and then handed the phone back.  He only managed to hide his mischievous little grin for a few moments when Jinsu checked to see what he’d written.

…

Who are you?

The response was almost immediate.

I’m going to throttle Chanyeol.

Smiling to herself, Jinsu sent another message to assure him she was teasing and that it was the right number.

“I forgot about the whole arranged marriage thing,” Baekhyun admitted, distracting Jinsu from prying about Jongdae’s kind-of girlfriend.  “To be honest, Jongdae’s not a bad match if it has to go through.  You could do a hell of a lot worse.”

“He’s too close,” Jinsu said.  “He’s just like a younger, more boisterous version of my brother.”

Baekhyun hesitated.  “And what’s your brother up to these days?”

Jinsu slumped back on the park bench they were sitting on.  “Dad sent him on business trips that’ll keep him abroad for at least a month.”

Baekhyun seemed to sense it was doing for her mood and changed the subject.

It was only when they arrived back in the central train station in Seoul, shortly before dinner, that Jinsu had a minor brainwave.  Baekhyun had been carrying a couple of wall hangings he’d eventually persuaded her to buy to brighten up her room (“it’s not still like it was ten years ago, is it?”) with her father’s money, since they’d already broken into it and he thought it would be a shame to just not use it at all, and was trying to say goodbye to her when she abruptly remembered that Minhwan’s mother lived in the area.

“Wait a minute,” she told him, ducking out of the way of a hug as she rooted in her handbag for the notes Saeeun had gave her, which she’d put there for safekeeping just in case her father decided to root through her room. “Saeeun said she went to visit Minhwan’s mum somewhere near here and she gave me her address – if you have time, we could pop by and see her.  It’s the weekend, so she might be home.”

“Who’s Saeeun?” Baekhyun asked, standing back to give Jinsu space.

“My maid,” Jinsu said distractedly as she searched.  “Though she’s more of a friend.”

“Why does she know Minhwan’s mum?”

“She wanted to help out.  Ah, here we go!”  Triumphant, Jinsu pulled out the business card, which she flourished in Baekhyun’s face.  He immediately began searching for the address on his phone.

“We can walk that.  It’s not far.”

Two minutes later, they both agreed it would have been a better idea to take a cab, since the drizzle from that morning had turned into a bucketing downpour.  It did, however, give Baekhyun an excuse to wrap his arm around Jinsu’s waist as they walked along, since her umbrella was a small one and only really designed for one person.

“You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?” Jinsu commented a couple of streets later when she looked up to see him smiling.  Baekhyun gave a smug little nod.  Jinsu almost elbowed him in the ribs in embarrassment.

“If I didn’t know better, I’d think you planned it.”

“The route guidance did offer rainsafe options, but they all cost money.”

“I could have paid.”

They walked a few paces in silence before Baekhyun spoke again.  “I’d rather you didn’t.”

“Why?”

Baekhyun took a moment or two to formulate his answer before giving a loud sigh.  “When your family’s spent years living below the breadline, you sort of learn the value not just of money, but of what everything in the world is worth,” he said.  “The cheapest way to do anything is ultimately to do it yourself.  The fastest way, if you don’t want to or can’t do it yourself, is usually to throw money at it.  I don’t particularly want to start doing that for the smaller things in life, and I definitely don’t want to get used to it.”

Jinsu frowned.  “That sounds very masochistic.”  Out of the corner of his eye, she could se