New lecture timetables and seminar hours meant that the republican chapter meetings had been moved to Thursday afternoons, and Sowon and Sehun were enthusiastically setting up a debate for three weeks’ time, drawing together a panel of some of the country’s best political commentators, to discuss whether the Emergency Dictator decree ought to be used in a situation like the current one where there was no official royal or non-royal functioning head of state, and who could or should invoke it (and whether invoking it impinged on democracy).  To Sowon’s eternal stress and Sehun’s delight, the idea had taken over the campus like wildfire when the student newspapers had found out about it, and every time they thought they’d arranged a big enough venue, they had more requests for seats and had to move it.

“I think we might even have to ask about booking out the graduation hall,” Sehun said, scrolling through the ticket requests he’d received just that afternoon.

“Sehun, I swear, if you move it one more time—” Yeonhee began, glaring at him from the table where she was designing the graphics to go on the advertising flyer for the event (they probably didn’t need any extra publicity, given how many people were already interested).

He gave her a winning smile.  “This is the last time, I promise!”

If they managed to get the graduation hall, then he would probably be right unless they moved the event off campus.  Otherwise, it was in danger of being jostled back and forth for security and safety reasons.  Outdoor protests were significantly easier to organise.

“By the way,” said Jiawei, “apparently the princeling’s new government is supposed to be meeting for the first time next Thursday and he’s chairing the skeleton cabinet, which isn’t even full.  Are any of us joining the demonstration outside the administrative palace?  If there are enough of us, I can get permission to use the university minibus to take us over.  The protest’s supposed to be going on all day and it’s not like all of us are especially busy on Thursday afternoons – it could just be our thing for next week instead of the meeting.”

Yeonhee almost winced at princeling.  It didn’t feel fair to be so disparaging and belittling towards somebody who worked so hard.

“I’m down for that,” Sehun said.  “Other than location all we need to do for the debate is confirm the last two panelists and get the publicity out there, but none of that is in my hands, so I’ll definitely be free.”

The others all cheerfully volunteered, but Yeonhee kept quiet, troubled.  She was still convinced that the best mode of governance for the country would be one where all the leaders and figureheads of state were elected, but at the same time, she knew that the current solution the prince was trying to work with the skeleton government was the only feasible one to keep the country together, and if the country tried to separate in its current state, it would be too messy for it to possibly happen well.  Knowing that, could she really turn up and protest what the prince was doing?

“Yeonhee, you’re coming too, right?” Sowon said.  She glanced up to see that they were all looking expectantly at her.

“Maybe,” she said.  In good conscience, she didn’t think she could.  Not when the prince had been asking for her thoughts on how to improve life for the Hanmi community and had mentioned seeing which areas he could try to implement policy.  It would feel like she was betraying him.

Everybody looked surprise at her response.

“We can’t really go without our Face,” Sowon pointed out.

Yeonhee tried not to grimace.  “I’ll check my schedule and if I can afford the time off, I’ll come.”  She could just say she was busy nearer to the time.

It appeared to be good enough, and nobody pressed it.

There was a rose attached to her door handle when Yeonhee got back to her room.  It had a small card no bigger than her palm tied to it, which she opened with a bit of a wince.

In the same handwriting as whoever was leaving her the To Yeonhee gifts, somebody had written a flower to complement your beautiful smile.

Yeonhee stood there, frowning at the card and the rose for quite some time.  She was flattered, but at the same time rather confused.  She had absolutely no idea where (or who) all these little gifts were coming from; she didn’t particularly have somewhere to leave a note telling the person thank you but please stop; and in all honesty, it was weird and uncomfortable having somebody try to hit on her when she was interested in somebody else.

Nevertheless, she took the rose inside, placed the little card on her desk with mixed feelings, and put the rose into the water glass she usually kept on her bedside table.  It actually looked rather pretty there.  She was going to have to get herself a small plant or a small vase of flowers or something.

Sowon, as chapter secretary, shifted the next republican meeting to Sunday afternoon so that they could organise going along to protest at the first skeleton government meeting.  A number of students had signed up to go, significantly more than Sowon had expected, leaving her with the problem of deciding whether to take two university minibuses or hiring a coach for thirty people, the former of which was complicated by the university not wanting to be marked out as anti-royalist and the latter of which was a problem in terms of finances.  This had quickly caused discussion among the students, some of whom thought it would be more worthwhile just taking public transport, and Yeonhee was feeling increasingly more uncomfortable just being there.  She wasn’t sure whether most of that came from the fact that she was expected to be enthusiastically joining in the protest when she didn’t even know where she stood on it, or because Taehyung was there.

He admittedly was leaving her alone, which Yeonhee supposed was a massive improvement on the last time they’d been in the same vicinity, but every so often Yeonhee caught him stealing glances in her direction.  Sehun clearly wasn’t too happy about Taehyung’s presence either, since he’d stuck to Yeonhee’s side like glue from the second they’d both walked in and spotted Taehyung already there.

“I wish he’d get lost,” he said, catching Yeonhee spotting Taehyung glancing over at her, “but unfortunately he’s the one with connections to three of the panellists we’ve got for this debate and so we can’t just axe him from anything republican.”

Yeonhee sighed.  “It’s fine.”

“It’s not, though.”  He squinted at the lines of code in front of him on his laptop.  He’d mentioned something about revamping parts of the website and as soon as the code had appeared Yeonhee had been lost, but he seemed to know what he was doing, which was more than Yeonhee could say about the direction of her life in general at the moment.

“By the way,” Sehun added after a few minutes, “our main banner took a lot of rain damage and it also has a few rips in it – will you have time to make us a new one before Thursday?”

It was a straightforward question, but Yeonhee did not have an easy answer.  It was one thing debating over whether to attend to the protest – could she get away with just making a new banner?  Time-wise she could probably squeeze it in.  But if she decided not to go to the protest, wouldn’t making a banner for it completely undermine the act of not going?

“Okay,” said Sehun, closing his laptop lid.  “What’s going on?  Why do you not want to go to the protest?  You’ve been a bit funny about stuff since before Christmas now.”

“I just don’t think it’s the right time for activism,” Yeonhee said.  She wasn’t sure how much she believed it, but she had to say something.  “We’re in a really precarious politically partisan situation with the country at the moment, which is potentially ungovernable, with radical ethnic movements that are causing problems and—”

“This isn’t about playing fair,” Taehyung suddenly butted in.  “If we’re actually going to get anywhere, we need to capitalise on our advantages.  If we don’t, then the radicals will.”

Yeonhee nearly burst out with but undermining and getting rid of the royal family right now will leave us in a situation where the country is bound to split and that’s not going to end well for anybody, but it really was not something she could say in present company (especially not since a protest was very unlikely to bring down the monarchy all by itself).

“You’re our president,” Taehyung pointed out.  “You wanted this position.  You ran for it.  You can’t just not show up to something important like this.”

Everybody else was beginning to take interest, and Yeonhee saw Sehun shooting her a concerned look out of the corner of her eye.

“Everybody studies differently when it comes to finals,” he said.

Taehyung scoffed.  “Yeonhee skipped revision for some of her first year exams and dates with me to be involved with republican activities that were much less important than a demonstration outside the administrative palace—”

“Be real, Taehyung, any normal person would skip dates with you,” Sehun snapped.  There were several loud oohs and intakes of breath, and Yeonhee felt the blood draining out of her face.  Sehun was as loyal a friend as you could get, but the last time he’d defended her in front of Taehyung the two boys had nearly ended up in a fight, and sooner or later, if this kept up, they actually were going to come to blows.  The last thing she wanted was Sehun to get hurt on her behalf.

“My point isn’t the dates,” Taehyung snapped back, suddenly every bit as angry as Sehun.  “My point is your point, which is that Yeonhee’s being weird about going to a protest she never normally would have m