By the time they’d descended a floor to a charming tearoom with an aesthetic similar to Tempe, Yeonhee had started sorting out the oddity of the past ten minutes in her head.  Chen had chosen a booth towards the back of the shop, sitting so that Yeonhee was hidden but he had a view of the door, and within a few steps of the bathrooms and staff-only areas on the off-chance they needed to make a quick getaway.  He’d ordered them both herbal teas, and Yeonhee could feel herself unwinding just by inhaling the warm scent.

Once he was settled, slumping back in his seat with visible relief, Chen handed her shopping back.

“By any chance,” said Yeonhee as she tucked it her chair, “did you ring the sales assistant in the art shop?”

He nodded.  “I had to get you out of there safely.”

“But why—?”

“May I start from the beginning?” Chen interrupted.  “You may find some of your questions answered.”

Mumbling an apology, Yeonhee nodded.

“First of all,” Chen said, “as of last Wednesday when he found out about the watch, the prince has requested you have bodyguards.  He wants to talk through it with you so that you’re comfortable with the bodyguards in question and what kind of proximity you want them at, but currently I’m detailed to you during weekdays and Minseok is covering you for weekends when you’re not with his highness since he has an easy excuse to be on university campus.”

Yeonhee knew she’d have to be absolutely foolish to object to such a measure.

“Wait a second,” she said.  “You were the concert – I knew I recognised you from somewhere.”

Chen flashed her a grin.

“Your hair wasn’t bleached then, though,” Yeonhee pointed out.

“Yeah, I got it done over the weekend,” he admitted.  “As of this morning I am officially a hippy research student in computer science at your university and you have to call me Jongdae.  Jongdae’s actually my real name.”

“Wait, you’re Hanmi?”

Chen smirked.  “You didn’t know?”

“Well, with a name like Chen, I just assumed. . . I’m pretty sure Junmyeon or Minseok told me you went to the best Zenyu university in the country.”

“It had the best computer science course in the country,” Chen explained.  “I actually overlapped with his highness for a year.  He had a small room for privacy in the third-year accommodation since he lived at home during his degree, but I fixed his laptop for him a couple of times and then he recommended me on to the intelligence service when I left and I ended up assigned to the palace because they thought I was awesome.”

He took a long draught of his tea, and Yeonhee copied him.

“Now, about those three people following you,” he said, “all from ZPX.  Two I’ve already confirmed are on a watch list and I’m currently checking the third.  I’m not yet sure how they picked up on you since you don’t have any electronics on you.  My guesses so far are your credit card, somebody tipping them off, and blind luck.”

Yeonhee blanched.  “Are they really likely to be tracking my financial transactions?  Isn’t it illegal anyway?”

“That’s how I discovered you’d left campus.”  Chen raised an eyebrow.  “Admittedly I have security clearance for it and it’s not something I like to do – you were supposed to be on campus all day and I was planning to pop by to introduce myself once I’d finished unpacking my stuff and sorting out my cover – but I don’t think ZPX cares about legality.  It looked like they were trying to kidnap you today.”

Yeonhee almost felt the cartoon brick drop on her head.

“Why didn’t you get me away sooner?” she asked weakly.  “I saw you in at least five of the shops I went into – you could have—”

“Caused a scene?” Chen interrupted.  “They would just have followed both of us and it would have been much harder to lose them, which would have raised the chances of having to fight them.  It took me a few shops to be sure they were actually tailing you rather than it being coincidence, and then I had to find out who they were and what they might want.  They made a few moves towards it beforehand, but it was only when you were in the art shop that they actually looked like they might do it.”

“How?” demanded Yeonhee.  “The sales assistant was there—”

“One in the shop to silence him, two in the doorway to stop you getting out.  There were massive posters in the window advertising the opening of the shop.  If they’d got you behind one of them, they could have knocked you out without anybody even seeing.  Then they tried to get you back into the shop when you left it so they wouldn’t have as many witnesses.  They did try to get you in the crowd as well but that was much more risky.”

“But what do they even want?” asked Yeonhee, frustrated.

Chen sipped at his tea for several long moments.

“I have a working theory,” he said slowly, “that they think you’ve been recruited to the intelligence services.”

In shock, Yeonhee dropped her cup back onto its saucer with a clatter.  “You what, now?”

“Hear me out,” Chen said patiently.  “It’s only a working theory, but think about it.  You’re bright and you’re discreet, plus you’re involved in political movements, which the government tends to want to keep an eye on – you’re just the kind of person the intelligence agencies would approach.”

“But I’ve dropped out of that kind of stuff.  Publicly, too.”

“Very abruptly, and in a manner say some is uncharacteristic of you, to focus on your exams,” said Chen.  “You need very good grades to go into intelligence, believe me.  Plus your latest organisation is a para-organisation in touch with lots of different organisations, a number of which are political in some way.  It gives you a thumb in every pie and there’s no guarantee you won’t go back to activism of some kind once the exams are out of the way.  It could be a reason why you’re not joining Antiroyo when for all intents and purposes it resonates perfectly with the views you’re known to hold, and why you sometimes disappear from campus at odd hours, not to mention the tech security you have, which is well beyond what any normal student would have even if they were a computer scientist, and the contacts you have to analyse and dispose of the weird stuff they sent you.  I’m pretty sure half the gifts they’ve given you have been targeting me as well as you.  They’re trying to work out who’s behind you.”

Calmly, he drank more of his tea.  Yeonhee felt far too nervous to be able to pick up her cup without spilling the drink all over her.

“But if I’m possibly a spy, why are they so keen on getting hold of me?”

“To turn you.  To find out what you know.  To hold you for ransom in return for various key demands that they have.”  He turned his cup around.  “At this stage, I think we also have to operate on the assumption that they at least suspect a connection to the palace.  My counter-hack back into their machines revealed no audio recordings of your conversation with Sehun, but there was somebody live on the other end going after the mics and webcam, and even if control was passing back and forth a couple of times a second, it’s possible that he heard the prince mentioned and they’re looking into it.  One of them did say they were looking for confirmation from you on something.  It won’t go to the press until they have that confirmation because otherwise nobody will believe it, but they’re probably also hoping they missed the context of ‘prince’ and that they still have a chance of getting you on board with them.”

He sighed.  “Of course, they would have leverage whether or not you were a spy or had any connection with the palace if the