Xiumin discovered the next day that Semi was the kind of person for whom trauma set in later – and when it did, it was bad.  He’d fallen asleep with her snuggled up against him, like usual, and woken up to find her missing.  Ten minutes of frantic searching ended up with him trying to coax her out from under the dining room table (he swore he was going to burn the tablecloth because it made him extremely claustrophobic), where she had curled up in a shivering wreck in the duvet from his room.  A lot of hot chocolate and crying later, she seemed to wear out and just wanted to watch TV.  Xiumin was happy to let her do so until flicking through the channels nearly sent her into a panic attack when she ended up watching a clip only seconds long of a Korean dubbed version of Saving Private Ryan and the gunshots almost sent her over the edge.

“You know what?” Xiumin said when he was sure that she was breathing normally.  “We need a Nerf war.”

She looked at him like he’d just said aliens had landed.

“I got a couple of Nerf guns for Taeyong,” he added.  “We can use them.”

It didn’t elicit the excited response he’d been hoping for, but she was at least reacting less like a zombie a few hours later.  But it wasn’t enough, he knew, even when she turned up in the kitchen that evening after dinner looking almost back to normal.  There was a dead expression lurking in her eyes, and she seemed unnaturally focussed on her phone.

“I’m going out,” she announced, pulling her coat on over her short dress.  Xiumin eyed her warily.

“I really don’t think it’s a good idea.”

“I’m going out with friends,” she emphasised.  “I want to be around people my own age for a bit.”

Xiumin had to admit she probably needed it – or at least somebody who’d known her a long time and understood her.  His eyes lingered on the skimpy dress, which was not weather-appropriate, for some moments before returning to her face.  An overwhelming part of him wanted to tell her to wear something warmer, but he concluded she was probably going clubbing.

At least that hopefully meant it was the same group of friends as last time.  Granted, they hadn’t exactly known what to do with a panic attack, but he reckoned he could probably trust them to look after her.

“Where are you meeting them?” he asked.  “I don’t want you being on your own anywhere at this hour.”

“What, because somebody might jump me?” she scoffed.  “Would you even care?”

“The statistics of a stranger doing that are actually extremely low,” said Xiumin calmly, returning to unloading the dishwasher, which he’d originally been doing when she first came in.  “And yes, actually, I would.”

She scoffed again, and Xiumin blinked, a little bewildered.  He’d seen her sarcastic and he’d seen her bitter, but he didn’t think he’d come across caustic Semi before, and for some reason, the combination didn’t sit well with him.  She might actually do something stupid if she went out in this mood while she was still pretty much in shock from the previous day, and he probably wasn’t helping her mood by his mere presence.

“Ring your friends before you leave so you know for sure you’re not going to be hanging around on your own, even if it’s just for a few minutes,” he told her, “and make sure you don’t have too much to drink.”

Later, he wasn’t sure if she’d just ignored this last piece of advice or if she’d deliberately done the exact opposite, because when he realised at two in the morning that she hadn’t said when she planned to be back – and that he hadn’t even asked her – he discovered that she was drunk out of her mind.

“Valar morghulis,” a male voice greeted him when he rang her and the phone eventually connected.

“What?”

“Valar morghulis,” the voice repeated, sounding just a little slurred.  “I understand I’m speaking to Jaqen H’ghar.”

Xiumin had absolutely no idea what to make of it.

“Why have you got my wife’s phone?” he asked eventually.

“Oooooooooooh!”  The boy hiccupped.  Xiumin tried to recall the boy’s name, but he only remembered it being Chinese, nothing else.  “Good!  I was waiting for you to ring.  Seulgi said I should call you, but nobody knows Semi’s passcode and she never saves us under our real names.”

Xiumin grimaced.  “Is everything okay with you guys?”

“Yup!”  The Chinese boy sounded way too chipper and Xiumin almost snapped at him not to lie.  “Semi’s crying, though.”

Supressing a sigh, Xiumin headed for the apartment door, grabbing the car keys en route.

“Why is that?” he asked.

“Dunno.”

At a guess, he would have said the boy was shrugging.  “How much has she had to drink?”

“Muuuuch more than me!”  He let out a little giggle.

Xiumin nearly groaned.  He hated dealing with depressive drunks.  “Where are you?”

“Erm… dunno,” the boy admitted.  “Waaaait!  Hongshik Daeguk.  Hongdae.  All the clubs for twenty-thousand won!  We did a club crawl.”  He giggled.  Cursing, Xiumin took the stairs down to the car.

“Look,” he said.  “Can you get your friend Seulgi to look after Semi and go check the name of the club?  I’m coming to pick Semi up.”

“You’re nice,” the boy told him.  “Wendy says you’re not nice, though.”

“Wendy must be psychic,” Xiumin said sarcastically.  “And I guess you can take your time.  Hongdae’s miles away from me.”

Tao was a little more sober by the time Xiumin arrived at the nightclub.  He very nearly didn’t recognise the boy – after all, he’d only seen him for a few minutes when Semi had had that panic attack, and at some point after the end of term, Tao had cut his hair short and dyed it platinum blond.  Tao definitely recognised him, though.

“You!”  He lurched forward with a grin, a bottle of soju in one hand, and grabbed Xiumin’s wrist the instant he saw him.  “Semi’s inside.”

Wordlessly, Xiumin followed him into the club and to a corner at the back of one of the