Sejeong is still nowhere to be seen and it's well into evening. And with each hour that she's gone, my anxiety gets incrementally worse. I push the last of my dinner around on my plate as I fidget in my chair at the round table in our living room. Everywhere I went this afternoon the guards were watching me like hawks. To top it off, I've been so tense I haven't had an inch of space to process what I saw and what's happening.

The door to the suite swings open and my head snaps up from my plate. Only it's not Sejeong, it's Sehun. I stand up so fast I almost knocked my chair over.

"Are you crazy?" I hiss at him. "Don't you think it's basically the worst idea in the world for you to be here right now - especially alone, without Sejeong, on the day that they're questioning everyone?" The shock is obviously in my voice.

"it would be, if I were the type to get caught. But fortunately, I'm not that type," Sehun says, sounding as calm as I am nervous. "Or at least I wasn't until someone talked to the headmaster and I receive three marks." He walks past the couch and fireplace, stopping a few feet from me.

I rub my forehead. For a second I wonder about Yoo asking me if Sehun told me which way to go and if Sehun did have something to do with the murder. Could Sehun have set me up? "You know I can't lie without it showing on my face."

"So you didn't lie during your interview?"

"Well . . ."

He looks at me like I'm an open book. "You lied for you, just not for me?"

I fidget. "That's not exactly how it went, either."

Sehun takes a step closer and I'm suddenly aware that there are a table and a window behind me and nowhere for me to go if I need to. "As far as I understand it, you didn't do me the courtesy of telling Kang that I was headed to the boys' dormitory. And not in any way headed in the direction of the hallway where you found Taehyung's dead body."

I can feel the color drain from my face. "Aish, you didn't tell her that -"

There's a light knock on my door, and we both turn. "May I come in, miss?" Sohee's voice calls, and as the latch starts to lift all I can think is Please don't let her have just heard Sehun say that I saw a dead body.

Sehun ducks into my room and I sit back down at the table, trying as naturally as I can to push my food around on my plate the way I was doing before he showed up.

"Oh, you're not finished," Sohee says. "I'll just turn down your bed and refresh your water -"

"No, I'm done," I say quickly, and stand up. I smile to ease the nervousness in my rushed expression. "Please feel free to take the plates. And there's no need to turn down my bed. I've got it."

She looks doubtful as she collects the rest of my dinner onto a silver tray. "It won't take more than a minute."

"Really, truly," I say, and keep up my smile until she pulls the door closed behind her. I run into my room, my heart pounding a mile a minute, only to find Sehun lounging on my bed with his arm tucked behind his head.

He reaches out and touches my water glass on my bedside table. "You should have let her give you more water. You're actually running low."

My mouth opens. "What is your . . . What are you doing?"

He looks amused. "Talking to you."

"How can you be so calm about this? Do you know how serious this all is?" The words coming out of my mouth take me by surprise. Usually it's Jisoo saying some version of this to me.

Sehun props himself up on his elbow - the picture of leisure. "I understand better than you do. But flailing about like a ball of nervous energy isn't going to make any of it better."

"Oh, and letting Sohee come in here while you're lounging on my bed would have been a fantastic idea. You could have gotten us both in trouble again," I say in frustration.

He stands up. "It's funny, I didn't take you as the risk-averse type."

I bite my lower lip. "Normal risk? I'm all in. Death risk? Not a chance."

Sehun steps past me and locks my bedroom door, and I immediately realize my mistake. I willingly sen Sohee away, which means I'm now alone with him when I have every reason to be suspicious of him.

He raises his eyebrows, and I'm guessing that my nervousness at being locked in this room must show on my face. "Then what are you doing at this school? Our entire lives are a death risk."

Sehun is standing so close I could count every one of his eyelashes if I wanted to. And when I hold breath for a second too long, I'm positive he notices.

"You know what I mean," I say in the steadiest voice I can summon.

"No, I really don't."

I look  from him to the locked door and back again. "Why are you even here, Sehun?"

"Sejeong made it clear to me that I had to take responsibility for asking you to meet me last night." His expression actually looks sincere for a moment, not like he's trying to charm me or analyze me.

I feel an immature twinge of relief that Sejeong's also mad at him and not just at me.

We stare at each other for a few seconds.

"Did she tell you that I found Taehyung?" I ask, even though I already know the answer.

"She did."

"Please tell me you didn't repeat that to Kang." I can hear the fear in my voice and I'm sure he can, too.

He hesitates for a second before answering. "The only thing I told Kang was that we were both in such a rush I didn't see which why you went."

I exhale. "I said essentially the same thing."

"I know you did. I could tell by her expression," he says.

I shake my head. "I'm a little jealous of you right now. You know these people. You know how to be strategic in a situation like this. And here I am left spewing half-truths and blabbering confusion to get through it." I rub my forehead near my eyebrow.

He considers my words. "I'm pretty sure I know most of what you said, and you didn't do as badly as you think you did."

"How do you know I think I did badly?"

"Are you saying I'm wrong?"

"No, I'm saying you're annoyingly right."

"The way you just touched your forehead."

I stop fidgeting. "What?"

He imitates my gesture. "This. You did it with your fingers out, shielding your eyes. It's often linked with the shame of lying - metaphorically trying to hide yourself from being looked at."

My eyes widen. "Doesn't it get old always knowing what people are thinking? Don't you want to be surprised sometimes?"

He scans my face. "The third mark I got was for conspiring to date another student. Now that was a surprise."

"Oh, shoot," I say, and laugh, even though there is nothing funny about this situation. "Yeah, well, telling them I was breaking the rules because you are attractive seemed less likely to cause a tizzy than telling them I wanted to learn as much as I could about other students."

Sehun looks far too pleased. "So you told Kang you're attracted to me? I have to say that's not a usual tactic. I'm fairly impressed."

I put my hands. "I totally see what you're doing, changing my words and then watching my response. I said you're attractive, not that I'm attracted to you. There's a big difference."

By the look on his face I can tell he's used to girls admiring him and that this whole situation just became more interesting. And I know this, because I would do the exact same thing. In some ways Sehun is more similar to me than I would like to admit, and I want to tell him to step off my personality. I'm supposed to be a snowflake.

"I want to propose something to you," he says, turning serious as he sits down on my bed.

I give him a wary look. "The last time you proposed something we wound up sneaking outside on the same night someone got murdered."

"That's exactly my point," he says. "As of right now, I don't know who killed Taehyung or why." I can feel him reading me. "But I do wonder about the timing. Strategia are never random, and I would bet anything that you were meant to find Taehyung."

My stomach drops like I'm on a bad carnival ride. "You think someone is setting me up?"

"Or me. I don't know. I'm just saying that we can't ignore that possibility." He looks way less put out about the whole thing that I am feeling.

I brush some flyaway hairs from my forehead. It's suddenly hard to breathe. "I'm stuck here," I barely whisper, thinking back on Kang's refusal to contact appa.

"Huh?"

I rub my hands over my face. "Nothing. What are you proposing?"

"That we find Taehyung's murderer," he says.

My heart thuds. I've always thought of my myself as a thrill-seeker, but in less than one week here that's been proven wrong in every conceivable way. "You want to actively seek out the person who stabbed another person with a knife and possibly has reason to set me up for it?" I pace back and forth. "Can't we just, I don't know, let Kang do her investigation? If she's half as good as you are at reading people, don't you think she'll be able to sort it out? If we just keep our heads down and don't break any more rules, as difficult as that might be for you, don't you think it will get resolved?"

Sehun's expression turns hard. "I know you use your open and seemingly trusting demeanor to disarm people, but if you actually believe half of what you just said, you'll without a doubt take the fall for this."

I don't need Sehun people-reading skills to know that this time he means exactly what he says. The room spins and I sit down next to him on the bed. Under normal conditions, if I were sitting on my bed with a boy who looked like Sehun, all I'd be able to think about is whether I could be executed for a murder I didn't commit.

"We're going up against the best-trained deception and tactical experts in the world. So I suggest you get in the game immediately. Everyone else is on the playing field and you're sitting in the stands eating popcorn. Don't think for a minute that your interview today with Kang was the end of it. The worst is coming." Sehun's usual smooth-talking charm is absent.

I nod, because as much as I'd like to hide under my bed until this all goes away, his point is fair. "Okay. I'm obviously going to do what I have to in order to avoid taking the fall for murder. But I'm not going to this dance with you, where you try to pull information out of me in ten kinds of sneaky ways. First nice, then serious, then pushy." I pause. "If you're right that someone wanted to implicate me, then someone knows or thinks they know something about me personally. And yes, gathering that same information is probably ninety percent of the reason you're here right now, offering to work with me on this."

Sehun opens his mouth, but I raise my hand before he can say anything.

"No, let me finish. You know this school and these people better than I ever will. You've also had the training to give you tools to deal with this. You don't need my detective skills; you need information from me. But I need information, too. You said you would tutor me in history if I told you personal things. Well, I'm not going to make it that easy. If I agree to do this with you, you've got to give something up, too. And you need to stop manipulating me."

He watches me closely with his "I see your inner soul" expression that drives me crazy. "Perhaps."

"I'm serious. No more toying with me. The first day we met you told me that I shouldn't trust you, but here you are asking me to work with you to find a murderer." I point at him. "And I don't like that you look at me like you're reading my mind. I feel like I'm always on edge of a cliff when I talk to you."

For a split second there's something akin to shock in his expression. "You really enjoy bringing things out into the open, don't you?"

"As much as you enjoy hiding them."

He spreads his hands out and hold them out like he has nothing to hide. "What do you want to know?"

I look at me pointedly. "Something of equal value to whatever I tell you."

"As long as I get to be the one who decides what is equal," he says.

"You are a piece of work," I say.

He smirks. "At least I'm not predictable."

"You can say that again." I chew on the inside of my cheek and shift my focus to the flickering candle on my bedside table, watching it cast shadows on the navy blackout curtain behind it. Part of me fears I'm making a huge mistake. But if I'm stuck here with no way to talk to Appa and the administration suspects I was involved in a murder, I can't just sit around and wait for the chips to fall. Especially after what I learned from Sehun last night: Strategia have managed to shape the world and Korea events for the past two thousand years. Compared to manipulating leaders, I must seem like easy pickings. I sigh and look back at Sehun. "So, who was his roommate?"

"I beg your pardon?"

"Taehyung's roommate. If we're going to figure this thing out, wouldn't that be a logical place to start?"

Sehun looks at me sideways, like he's surprised I had to ask. "Jungkook," he says, and the moment his name comes out of Sehun's mouth I'm positive this is the worst deal I've ever made.