Minhwan, Jinsu discovered, was surprisingly pleasant when it was just him and his mother.  She wasn’t sure whether this was how he naturally was or whether it was his mother’s good influence, but once she’d got over how disconcerting it was, Jinsu decided she quite liked it.  When she went back on the Sunday afternoon, this time without Baekhyun as he was on shift at the restaurant, Minhwan sat in the room with them fixing his mother’s printer, but happily petting the cats and chipping in with bits of information every so often.  Mid-afternoon, he disappeared unbidden for some time, only to come back with watermelon and fruit juice for the three of them.  The most surprising thing of all was his offer to walk Jinsu to the nearest transport hub to make sure she got off home safely.  It was so strange to hear those words coming out of his mouth that Jinsu refused, almost panicking.  He didn’t seem offended.

Later that night, having fended off her mother’s curious questions as to where she’d been out so late two nights in a row, and her father’s single, more awkward one of what she’d spent his money on, Jinsu curled up in bed on the phone to Baekhyun.  Even though it hadn’t been a stressful day in any way, it was incredibly soothing to bundle up warm in a duvet and listen to Baekhyun’s smooth voice chatting in her ear.  It would have been better if he was actually there, but one couldn’t have everything in life.

“Yunseo said our best case will be an appeal,” she informed him once the talk had turned back to Minhwan’s mother.  “She says there’s enough evidence to mount cases of child abuse and spousal abuse, but that it’s not substantial and would probably be written off in court, and that wouldn’t do anything for you or your family either.  Behind an appeal, our best case would be one of perjury, but that would just indict my dad rather than repealling anything for yours and considering so many of the proceedings are still classified, we might have difficulty getting hold of court records for some of the things we need.  Yunseo just wants to check the statutes of limitations on the case because there’s apparently a ten-year deadline for most appeals and if we’re already past that, we’ll likely have to go in for the perjury case instead.”

Baekhyun hummed softly.  He sounded tired.  When Jinsu had asked him about his waiting shift earlier, he’d said it was a difficult one with lots of pushy customers, which likely explained the fatigue.

“Did you speak to your dad?” Jinsu asked him.

“Mm.”  Baekhyun stifled a yawn.  “He’s. . . a bit hesitant.”

Jinsu was puzzled.  She would have thought Baekhyun’s father would leap at a chance to rectify things.  “Why?”

“He doesn’t want to put the family through a humilitating loss again.”  There was rustling at the other end of the line as Baekhyun moved about.  “You can bet the press is going to get wind of it.  It’ll be high profile when it gets out.”

“We’ll only lose if the judge is bought.”

“That’s what Dad’s worried about.  That and concrete evidence.”

“We’ve got the recording.”

“There’s the recording, which is fairly solid, and then our word for it.  I spoke to Yunseo this morning and she said that would likely have to come with a character testimony for the fact that we used to hate each other, so banding together on the same thing makes it more likely we’re telling the truth, and also that we’re truthful people in the first place.  We also need to have flight records from the Attayear showing we went back in time that far, so we need to make sure Minseok doesn’t destroy them, but that’ll also then mean your father has a case against my cousins and it’s all kind of a big mess.”  He sighed.

Jinsu mimicked him with a loud sigh of her own.

“Yunseo did mention the video to me,” she admitted.  “Dad was with me when Minseok was first explaining his theory of there only being one soul after he did a ten-minute pilot of the Attayear back into the past, so if we produce the video, he has a strong case for saying things went differently to how they went in the video on the basis that neither you nor I, but particularly me, didn’t exist in the version of the past that video was filmed in, so in that past he could have stolen them but this one he didn’t, or something.  And we wouldn’t be able to use the Attayear to verify or check for the same problem unless somebody completely unrelated went into the Attayear for it.”

“So we need either your mother or your brother to testify alongside the video, and to testify that it’s the truth.”  Baekhyun yawned loudly.  “Sorry.  Tired.”

“Basically.”

“Do you think you could get them to do it?”

Jinsu sighed.  “That’s the problem.  I don’t even know how to approach it with my mum.  We’re not that close and I don’t know whether or not she’d tell Dad.”

“But it looks like he’s horrible to her.”

“It also looks like my dad is keeping her and Jimin under his thumb by playing them off against each other,” Jinsu reminded him.  “Most likely via blackmail.  And even if she said nothing, she might just not want to do it for whatever reason.  Jimin’s more likely to, but he’d have to come back from his business trips early and I haven’t been able to get hold of him yet.”

“That .”  Baekhyun’s voice was beginning to sound even more drowsy than before.  “What time is it?”

Jinsu checked her watch.  “Half midnight.”

“You should go to sleep.”

“Speak for yourself!”

Baekhyun just yawned into the phone.  “I’m looking out for you.”  He paused.  “We’ve been on the phone for one-and-a-half hours.”

“And we have school in eight.”

“Mm.”  He yawned yet again.  “We should sleep.”

“We should.”

“Goodnight.”

“Goodnight.”

There was a pause of almost ten seconds.

“Are you going to hang up?” Baekhyun asked her.

“I was waiting for you to,” Jinsu admitted.

He groaned.  “We’re turning into one of those couples.”

“What couples?”

“Those couples where you have to have an agreement over who hangs up first to stop your phone bills from skyrocketing because of the whole you hang up no you hang up thing.”

“You hang up, then,” Jinsu told him with amusement.

“I actually will,” he threatened.

“Prove it.”

“Goodnight!”

“Goodnight!”

There was another gap of ten seconds before Baekhyun spoke up again rather than cutting off the call.

“Do the wall hangings look good?”

“Yeah.  I’ll show you next time you come round.”

“Because your father would love to have me round for dinner,” Baekhyun joked.  “Okay.  I’m actually hanging up this time.”

He actually did.

School on Monday, for the first time in years, was actually pleasant.  The main troublemakers were gone and the weekend had allowed time for everybody who was unhappy about it to simmer down.  For the classes Jinsu didn’t have with Baekhyun, a very sympathetic Kyungsoo had started typing up his notes (“seriously, anybody who can read my handwriting can’t possibly be human”) for Jinsu to use, and Chanyeol had offered his locker as a place to dump things because even with a substantial spraying of lynx (Sehun’s idea, and not a recommended one), Jinsu’s own locker smelt intolerably foul.  Personally, she thought the lynx had contributed to that rather than detracting from it, but she didn’t dare say.

Out of sheer habit, and to everybody’s consternation, Jinsu spent most of her breaktimes that day trying to tidy up parts of Chanyeol’s locker for him.  He looked utterly lost when he how neat it was, complaining about organised mess and how he now had no idea where anything was.

“Resist the tidy,” he whined at hometime, dragging Jinsu backwards so that she couldn’t stack the books in a pattern of symmetrical height.  “Come on, Jinsu, I swear this isn’t healthy.  Do you even know which books are yours?”

“Every third one,” Jinsu said distractedly as she tried to free herself from his grip, sizing up where to place her new physics book.

“No,” said her cousin, interrupting himself mid-complaint about never being able to remember which book belonged to who if she wasn’t just going to keep to one side of the locker or the other.  “Seriously, I’ll eat it if you don’t stop.”  He held the book up to his mouth.  Jinsu burst into a fit of giggles.

There was a crash and a ball bounced off a locker before bopping off down the corridor.

“Hallelujah!” Sehun exclaimed.  “Our Attayear princess has hit the laughing gas!”

“Attayear princess?” queried Minju’s voice.  “Who came up with that?”

“Jongin,” said Kyungsoo.  Jinsu turned in time to see Minju rolling her eyes.  She’d clearly met Jongin before.

“Sehun has a basketball