First of all, a very happy birthday to mblaq_lover12 and LayIsMyStyle for the past couple of days, and also to aliceanonymous for today!

There are a fair number of birthdays in March.  I have no internet for a while, so since I can't update for the next couple of weeks, happy birthday in advance also to inlight, yazias, DianaLefeu, taohunhun, blueface, MimiDG, Sachixia, camyeollie, FireRose800, Liajiya and anneke329!  I hope you all have fabulous days (especially since one of you has told me you're turning 18, so I hope you have an absolutely fantastic time, my dear!)!  I don't think I've missed anybody off, but if I am, first of all, I'm very sorry, and secondly, have a wonderful birthday!

Jongin actually met them down in the underground carpark rather than at the university.  He was dressed casually in a zip-up hoodie and jeans and whistling cheerfully through his teeth.

“Morning!” he greeted them, unhitching himself from the side of the car and turning to Semi.  “Sehun told me I could punch him.  Can I punch him?”  He jerked his head at Xiumin.

“No,” muttered Semi, pushing past him to get in the back.  “It’ll make me pity him.”

And that was the extent of any conversation until she and Jongin actually set foot on campus.  There was a brief moment as she and Jongin left the car in which Xiumin looked like he wanted to say something, but in the end he just waved and drove away again.  Semi headed off in the direction of the lecture theatre, Jongin practically bouncing on her heels.

“Did you know,” he began, “that before A.D. and then B.C.E. became ways of counting years from a specific point, people used to count from the foundation of Rome seven hundred and fifty-three years before and label the years ab urbe condita?”

Bemused, Semi came to a halt.  “How is that ever going to be useful to my life?” she asked.  “What does it even mean?”

“It’s Latin for from the foundation of the city.”  Jongin grinned at her.  “According to Wikipedia.”

“Great.  I always wanted to—”

Jongin moved so abruptly Semi was left blinking in his wake.  She turned to see what it was that had grabbed his attention and found him pretty much holding Tao up by the scruff of the neck, the boy’s hands still outstretched as if to grab Semi to surprise her.

“Dude,” Tao addressed Semi in evident admiration as Seulgi and Wendy came running up.  “Semi, who is this bae?”

“He’s definitely a friend of yours?” Jongin asked dubiously after a couple of seconds.

Semi sighed.  “Yes.  Put him down or he’ll kick your into next week.”

Smirking, Jongin set Tao back on the ground.  “Not likely.”

Wendy whistled.  “You know wushu or something?  Don’t challenge him otherwise.”

“I’m a professional,” Jongin told her without going into any further detail.

“In what?” Seulgi asked at the same time a starry-eyed Tao piped up with: “Who are you?  You’re not Semi’s brother or husband, so—”

“Are you her new boyfriend?” Wendy asked, flashing Semi a curious look.

“N—”

“Wait, you’re cheating on Minseok?”  Seulgi looked scandalised.

Jongin burst out laughing.  “Nah, I’m the brother-in-law.  Kim Jongin.  Minseok’s about seven years older than me.”

Seulgi immediately turned to Semi.  “You never said he had a brother.”

“Would you talk about me if you had a brother like me?” Jongin demanded, resulting in an immediate “yes!” from everybody except Semi, who planted her face in her palm.  “Wow.  You all trust me way too much for somebody you’re literally just met.  I could be an axe murderer or something.”

Wendy looked a bit disturbed and cast another glance at Semi.

“What are you doing here?” she demanded.

“Coming over to visit my beautiful family and to see what Semi’s uni looks like.  Mine’s a large campus thing over in the States.”

Wendy was beginning to look more and more confused.  Semi eventually ended up mouthing to her in English that Jongin was there as a bodyguard, which took several attempts for Wendy to understand, and Jongin began teasing them both for the awful faces they were producing as a result.

It was almost astonishing to see Jongin back to his usual cheerful self, especially after how grim he’d been following Song Qian’s death.  Semi wasn’t sure how much of it he was putting on, but it warmed her heart.  He reacted with the same horror everybody else did to the ridiculously boring first lecture of the day and spent most of lunch flicking sticky kernels of sushi rice at Tao, who ended up throwing back entire rolls that Jongin happily caught in his mouth.  Eventually, Wendy took it on herself to satisfy her curiosity and piped up in English.

“Where exactly are you from?” she asked.  “How did you meet Semi?”

Jongin looked up at her and promptly got a sushi roll in his face.  “We’re family friends.  So technically, I’m from Seoul, but I want to be a diplomat, so I decided to perfect my English by studying in the States.”

Disappointed she wasn’t getting the full story, Wendy backed down.  Jongin seemed to sense this, because he continued.

“It was kind of funny, though.”  He began picking rice off his face and it off his fingers.  “My English teacher was awesome, so when I arrived in the US, nobody believed I was a foreigner.  The first bunch of people I made friends with were shocked when they took me to a shooting range and I wasn’t able to do anything because I didn’t have the right ID because I wasn’t from the US.  I still got to use a gun and they started this joke I was a secret agent because I figured out how to handle the weapons pretty quickly and I’m not a bad shot, so we have this whole story about how I was abandoned by my family as a kid and picked up by the FBI and trained to be a special agent to sneak in on campuses.  Wow, there is a lot of wasabi on this.  Yum.”

Seconds later, he choked and reached for Semi’s yoghurt.  Rolling her eyes, Semi let him take it.

“You know you can’t handle spices, you dimwit,” she scolded him gently.

“I can handle them,” Jongin protested, his eyes tearing up.  “I’m just moved by how amazingly delicious they taste.”

Everybody snorted with laughter, and Tao compassionately moved some plain rice onto Jongin’s plate to help him with the burn in his mouth.

It was raining heavily when Xiumin left the apartment to go to the shops and buy more food.  He knew it was likely he would be followed, for his own safety as much as to ensure that he wouldn’t do anything funny, but once he was mostly done with the food, he rang Luhan anyway, careful to use the headphones so that he could keep the phone in his pocket so that his tail wouldn’t try to get too close on seeing it.  To most people, it would just look like he was mouthing along to music.

“It’s been ages,” Luhan told him when the call connected.  “You didn’t make the drop on Sunday.”

“I’ve been kept on lockdown,” Xiumin told him, adjusting the food bags on his arm and wandering towards the exit.  “Today’s literally the first day I’ve been allowed out.”

“What happened?” Luhan sounded alarmed.  “Have they—?”

“I had an argument with Semi, basically.”

“Is she actually