It was Tuesday before Jongin caught up with Yeonhee.  Baekhyun and Mihae were being obnoxious about her “pirate friend” from Saturday and even Sehun was beginning to ask questions he never normally would have done, and in order to avoid all her friends and usual haunts, Yeonhee was getting up before six and then taking herself off to Tempe for the day to work.  It only worried Baekhyun and Mihae further because she was missing lectures, but she really didn’t care.

To her surprise, Jongin tumbled into her Tuesday mid-morning by sitting down in the chair opposite her as she worked away in the booth that was marked out by bamboo.

“This place is really nice,” he said, almost making her spill her tea in shock at his sudden arrival.  “I can see why Minseok recommended it.”

He was looking around him with interest.  Yeonhee clutched her book on Keynesian economics to her chest.

“Where did you spring from?!”

“Was that really the prince on Saturday in the pirate costume?”

Yeonhee gulped.

“Minseok won’t say,” said Jongin.  “And also, Taehyung is being a git and trying to find out who it was.”

Yeonhee knew that much, because Sehun and Jiawei had both told her so.

Jongin took her non-response as a yes.

“What was he doing on campus?” Jongin asked.  “I couldn’t really see from where I was, but Baekhyun and Chanyeol both said it looked like he couldn’t take his hands off you.”

“He had his arm around me most of the time,” Yeonhee said wearily.  “He came to listen to you play because he likes your music.”

Jongin raised his eyebrows as if to say just that? but he didn’t press it.

“Whether or not you’re dating,” he said, “he’s got to know what kind of scandal it would cause if he gets caught.  I mean, it’s one thing that he’s sneaking onto university campuses for the debauchery of a club night.  It’s quite another if people think it’s because he’s interested in a girl, and the media will have an absolute field day if they think it’s because he’s coming to see you.  And even if you aren’t dating, that’s how they’ll spin it, especially if you look as close as you apparently were on Saturday.”

“I’ve tried to tell him that,” said Yeonhee.  “But he doesn’t seem at all bothered.”

“That won’t go down well with the tabloids either.”  He folded his arms and leant back in his chair, that adorable grin of his spreading across his face again.  Yeonhee couldn’t help smiling back.

“Anyway, since you’re avoiding Baekhyun and nobody else has been able to find you, I’m here with a proposition.”

Yeonhee put her book down expectantly.

“Kyungsoo’s been sending our tracks off to record labels,” Jongin said.  “We only found out yesterday, but there’s one that’s interested enough to pick us up and produce a couple of albums for us out of the stuff we’ve already done.  Sehun’s looking over the contracts for us and we were wondering if you could maybe design us a logo and do us an album cover?”

Yeonhee’s jaw dropped open.  “That’s fantastic, Jongin.  I’d be honoured.”

“Well, Baekhyun says you’re the most versatile artist he knows, so we’re looking forward to this.”

“Do you have any direction for what you want?”

Jongin shrugged.  “Not really.  Something quirky?”

That meant something vaguely cartoonish or in caricature style.  Yeonhee reckoned she was best off trying out a few different designs and styles and seeing which one they liked best.  The record label might differ in opinion, but she supposed she could tell Baekhyun that if they had difficulty negotiating, they could say that Pencilmania was doing the artwork for them.  After the apology-reconciliation picture had gone viral, followed by her sketch of her grandmother, as well as the caricature of the king, Pencilmania had a bit of a name and following in the mainstream, and it wasn’t like they’d be cutting costs by going elsewhere.

“Also, do you want a lump sum for the commission or ten percent of royalties?”

Yeonhee blinked.  “Wait, you’re paying me?”

Again, Jongin gave a shrug.  “Well, I did say it was a proposition rather than a favour, didn’t I?”

A possible design for an album cover and a logo occupied Yeonhee for the rest of the day.  The logo couldn’t be something too complicated, had to be something that stood alone but could be integrated into the main design.  Then there was the stylisation of the name as well (that much was easy – a quick google of music notation and she had the name spelt out with snazzy letters for the first word and using notation for Rolls, courtesy of a rest for the capital R and giving the final stylised L a quick snare-drum-roll tremolo squiggle.  It looked pretty good and she was proud enough of herself to see if she could do something with that for the logo.

After a number of late night coffees and asking Juan for opinions, she finally settled on a logo she liked.  Not just liked, but thought was pretty awesome.  The rest symbol that she’d just for the R she’d touched up just a bit and enlarged, then drawn half of an electric guitar.  A little smudging and the effect was as though the guitar was half on fire, or that it had been given a speed blur.  Still enthused, she made a colour version of it.  By three, she was yawning and ready to go to bed, so she snapped a quick photo both of the sketch and of the colour version, which she’d done in watercolour pencils but would probably paint for the final version, and sent the images to Baekhyun.

Once she had tumbled out of the shower in her pyjamas to a reply, she realised that she was so tired she’d sent it to the wrong person.

From: Private number, 3.07

What’s this for?  It looks really cool.

Yeonhee began typing back whoops, wrong number, but then deleted it and began again.

To: Private number, 3.13

It’s for Baekhyun’s band.  They might be signing with a record label for production and distribution.

She sent the images to Baekhyun correctly this time.

From: Private number, 3.14

Wow, good for them.  I take it you’re doing the artwork?

To: Private number, 3.14

Yup ^_^

From: Byun Baekhyun, 3.15

This looks amazing.

From: Byun Baekhyun, 3.15

Wait.  You’ve been ignoring me for the past few days.  I’m not talking to you until you apologise.

From: Byun Baekhyun, 3.15

But this still looks amazing I love you

Tutting with amusement, Yeonhee fired back a text saying that he was welcome.  Another message came from the prince telling her to get some sleep while she was replying to Baekhyun’s next message which required her presence at the university fairtrade café the next morning for coffee, and she had to check carefully that the message she’d sent banning all talk about sugar daddies and Saturday Pirates went to the right person.

It was actually more of a consultancy than a coffee chat on Wednesday morning.  Baekhyun had sent Yeonhee’s designs round the rest of the band and she’d brought along her sketch pad with everything else that she’d done, and they spent the best part of an hour poring over what she’d done.  Despite the late night, Yeonhee had woken up early and had had a leisurely breakfast trying out different stylisations for the name and also one or two funky sketches for an album cover.  It had proved rather difficult, since she didn’t know what name their album would be marketed under, but they all seemed to like the four cartoon heads of themselves sprouting out of a storm cloud with their instruments between them and lightning in the background.

“We are pretty electrifying, I suppose,” was Kyungsoo’s comment on it, and after Chanyeol had said the album name, once it was decided on, could either be added on the cloud or towards the base of the picture, they all voted that that was what they wanted and could they please have a colour version.

Yeonhee took Baekhyun aside when the others finally filed out.

“Baek,” she said.  “I know that record companies don’t often allow a lot of choice and flexibility on the part of the artist, so if they give you trouble, you can tell them that I’m Pencilmania and I’m offering the artwork for free for this album.  Unless they really hate it, I don’t think they’ll turn it down.”

He beamed at her and ruffled her hair.

“Like I said last night, Yeonhee, I love you.”

“Ew.”

By the time Yeonhee was rushing to get out of her room to meet the prince that evening, there was a bouquet of red roses along with a card outside the door.  Yeonhee was already late, so she just nudged them inside and took off at a run, tugging her hat further down over her ears to keep them warm.  Spring might be round the corner, but winter was gasping its last, very cold breath, and she’d even had to pull on her gloves.

The prince had requested a walk rather than drawing, because he’d been greeting foreign dignitaries all day and his bruised fingers, which had been healing, had suffered under all the hand shakes.  Accordingly, Yeonhee took the tram into the centre of town.

Neither of the bodyguards were ones she knew well, and she felt a little put out that she hadn’t really seen that much of Junmyeon