Joy and Jisoo were sitting in the parlor talking when the doorbell rang. As Suyeon was still not back from Mr. Kang's, Jisoo was getting up to answer the door herself when Joy stopped her. "No," Joy said, "you're in mourning. I'll get the door." Joy was gone just a few minutes before returning carrying a basket. "That was Mrs. Lee," Joy said. "I tried to get her to come in, but she wouldn't. She said she wouldn't intrude on you with your grief so fresh and her barely knowing you, besides she had more dinners to deliver, but that she would be back to see you soon, to see if there's anything she can do to help you." Jisoo stared numbly at the basket. "I should be the one out there doing that," Jisoo said, "especially since all those women lost their husbands because of me." "That's not true and you know it," Joy said sternly. "This was because of Jin-Young, not because of you. Besides which, Mrs. Lee volunteered to take over the captain's wife's traditional duties and Mrs. Baek practically ordered you to let her. We're going to have quite enough to do getting out of this alive. You don't need to make it harder by wallowing in guilt." When Jisoo looked up at Joy, there was a new determination in her face, a steeliness in her eye. "You're right," she said. "And we will get through this. All of us." "Now that's the Jisoo I know," Joy said. "So what's the plan?" "I don't really know," Jisoo said. "Until I hear back from Madame Park, all we can do is wait and react to anything that happens." "And until something does happen," Joy said, "let's go to the kitchen and warm up the dinner Mrs. Lee brought. It smells delicious, and if I have to hold this basket much longer, I'm liable to just open it up and start eating things cold." "Good call," Jisoo said, standing up and taking the basket from Joy, then leading the way to the kitchen. "Until this whole situation is resolved, we don't knew when we'll be able to eat or sleep, so we should always be sure to do both whenever we do get a chance." The package from Mrs. Lee contained pajeon, kimchi, rice, and several banchan. Jisoo and Joy had just finished warming everything up when Suyeon came in, carrying a large package. "What's that?" Jisoo asked, eyeing the package suspiciously. "Our mourning clothes," Suyeon said. "As soon as Chung-ha heard about the explosion, she started work on them. She said to tell you she even included all the extra features you usually ask for." Suyeon then looked at Joy and added "Chung-ha said yours might not fit as well as you'd like, as she had to estimate your measurements just from having seen you, but she said if that was the case, just to come back whenever is convenient and she'll alter them while you wait." Jisoo smiled and shook her head. "Chung-ha really thought of everything." She took the last of the pajeon out of the skillet and stacked them on a platter. "Since the food's warm, we might as well eat now and then get changed." The next few days were a constant round of watching and waiting. The fact that they didn't see anything out of the ordinary and didn't receive any new information didn't serve to calm their nerves. If anything, it only served to set them more on edge. Joy checked the door and window locks several times a day and even woke up a couple of times a night to check them again. Suyeon started to jump at the slightest noise. Even Jisoo, the calmest of them, would fall silent from time to time as she listened intently for any unusual sounds and would frequently look around, taking mental stock of all the things in whichever room she was in that could be used as weapons, making mental notes of where they were and whether there were any impediments to obtaining them rapidly. On the morning of the fourth day, when Jisoo was starting to feel certain that they'd all go quite thoroughly mad if something didn't happen soon, a midshipman arrived with the invitation to the memorial service, followed soon after by one of Mr. Kang's sons with a packet of dumplings, at the bottom of which was an envelope wrapped in wax paper. Joy and Suyeon went to plate the dumplings and make some tea and a dipping sauce to go with them, while Jisoo immediately opened the envelope and set about decoding it. To Jisoo's surprise, it wasn't encoded with Birds of Korea, but instead was in the most secure of the standard ciphers. As she decoded the message, the reasoning behind this became obvious to Jisoo: Madame Park didn't know whether or not they had been forced to vacate Jisoo's house, which would put her copy of Birds of Korea out of reach. Fortunately, the message was short, so Jisoo was able to decode it quickly. She then immediately burned the letter, the decoded version, the sheet of scratch paper she had done her calculations on, and the top two sheets of her blotter pad, in case her writing had left behind an impression. On a whim, she added in a couple of extra sheets of paper and two half-sheets torn from that morning's newspaper, in order to increase the amount of paper ash in the fireplace. Not that she expected anyone to have the opportunity to dig through her fireplace for unburned paper, nor that she let any of the paper remain unburned, but simply because she had been taught never to skimp on operational security. Jisoo had just seen the last bit of the paper consumed by the fire when Joy came in and announced that luncheon was ready. As luncheon came to an end, Joy said "I can tell from your face that you don't like what Madame Park had to say. What did she say?" Jisoo shook her head, as if startled back to attention. "Oh, yes, sorry," she said. "I was so busy pondering the consequences of her message that I quite forgot to tell the rest of you. Madame Park instructs that as soon as we can possibly do so without attracting undue attention, Suyeon and I are to travel by hired coach to her academy. Joy, she says you are to remain with us as far as Miryang, then stay at the inn there until an agent makes contact with you, at which point they will you back to Madame Young's." Joy shook her head. "I don't like that either. Do you think we should write back to Madame Park and try to convince her to let me come all the way to her academy with you?" Jisoo pondered this for a moment, and then surprised Joy and Suyeon by turning to Suyeon and asking her opinion of Joy's idea. After pondering it for a moment, Suyeon said "From what you've told me of Madame Park, she always has a reason for doing things the way she does, so I'm inclined to think she has a reason for this too." "And what might that reason be?" Jisoo asked. Suyeon thought for a longer time this time, even eating a dumpling to draw out the time she had available for thinking. Finally, just as Jisoo was about to take pity on Suyeon and tell her, Suyeon's eyes opened wide and a smile lit up her face. "Joy is the senior student at Madame Young's academy," Suyeon said. "Madame Park must think that it's necessary for Joy to return to Madame Young's in this time of crisis to help protect her sunbaes." "Exactly so," Jisoo said, nodding in satisfaction at Suyeon's assessment of the situation. When she turned back to Joy, she noticed a stricken look on Joy's face. "Joy, what's wrong?" she asked. "I should have thought of that," Joy said. "I shouldn't have had to wait for your student to tell me. What kind of agent am I going to be if I miss things like that?" Jisoo reached out and took Joy's hand. "You're going to make a perfectly wonderful agent," Jisoo said. "This is far from a typical situation, and I wouldn't be doing as well as I have been if Jin-young's repeated attacks hadn't put me through a crash course of advanced studies. I have every confidence in you." Joy smiled. "It's funny," she said. "When I look at you, I still see the sweet, innocent girl you were when I first met you, but then I hear you talk or see you act and it becomes obvious that you've grown into so mu