AN: Somehow missed uploading this chapter?

Queen's Favor

Chapter 11

"Ow-!" She hissed as she yanked her hand back and immediately stuck her finger into her mouth - as if she hadn't just stuck the handle of her duster there five minutes before and her mouth was a sanitary sanctuary untouched by bacteria.

Maybe it was her own fault for losing focus, but she still glared at the previously jammed vacuum anyway. The blood sacrifice of biting her finger had apparently sated it, and this time when she put it back together it started and spun its brushes freely. "I'm not resetting the calendar for you, we're not counting this one."

No one was in the room to hear her admonish the equipment, but that worked just fine for her: it meant no one was in the room to see the injury, so she could claim she slipped going up the stairs before she got into the penthouse at all. If anyone asked. Though the bigger concern was that she couldn't exactly bleed all over Elizabeth, and her boss didn't want her to handle the cat with latex on her hands. Technically that probably applied mostly to the dish gloves and other things she wore, not a simple band-aid, but there was always the chance that the cat was just so pampered it'd never encountered latex before and might even have an allergy. Or maybe Mr. Han did?

Well, the important thing was, she'd have to handle the cat with one hand today.

"Next time don't sit around fantasizing about pretty boys while you work, and you won't make it harder on yourself, now will you?" She scoffed at herself, shaking her head as she turned and made her way to her equipment back to dig out the necessary bandage.

Really, though. It wasn't the first time she'd messed up something that day, just the first time she'd injured herself. Arguably, she was too distracted to do her job properly...but 'I'm too distracted thinking about the wallet I lost and then found again' wasn't really a valid excuse for leave no matter who she spoke to about it. Even she wouldn't approve of it.

It's just...

Why had her wallet been in the middle of the floor? She never carried her purse over there, so how did it even get there? Between going to the convenience store for a late night snack a couple of nights before that and her near-death walletless encounter, how had it moved from the purse she kept by the door to the floor several feet away from it? It was even in the open, and sure she wasn't getting that great sleep but did she really miss it that many days without even looking at the floor? Was she becoming a slob in her own house as a consequence of being a hyper-vigilant maid elsewhere?

But she never took her wallet out of her purse in her home, and she always took her purse with her...

A rolling 'mrew' broke through her thoughts and she blinked, looking up at the still sealed bandage in her hand. "Ah-"

Elizabeth sat next to her, blinking up at her with those curious blue eyes. Rather ominously close to her cut hand. Before the cat could get any ideas - and she find a way to end up in the hospital for something even more embarrassing than last time - she quickly pulled her injured hand up out of reach of the cat. "Don't look at me like that. You know, I have fifteen more minutes of me time before it's your turn."

She blinked, and then gingerly reached out to pat the cat on the head with her uninjured hand before standing up. "Don't tell you father about what I just said." As far as she was concerned 'focus on work, not cat' counted as 'her time', but she doubted her employer would feel quite the same about her referring to her actual job as something like 'me time' - especially while she failed to actually do the job properly.

She managed not to drift off into pointless thoughts through the rest of the day, and therefore not injure herself further or mess up entertaining Elizabeth with just one hand. Still, she'd wasted some precious time early on and had to hustle to catch up to her schedule. Rather than have a decent chunk of time left before the owner of the penthouse got back, she was left with only a few minutes before her deadline when she was finally done. She'd blame it on the fact that it was Monday...but she knew full well Mina did the penthouse on Sunday. She had no one to blame the rough day on but herself and her own ridiculous imagination.

At the end of the day, there really wasn't any other answer to how her wallet got to the middle of the floor from her purse than that she somehow spilled it out of the purse at some point. Maybe when she was tired and frazzled on Saturday night after she'd walked all over creation chasing that one street jerk. It was possible, at least, and that was better than literally any other idea that came to her.

She flumped over onto the couch in the most dramatic way possible - knees on the rug, face and arm buried into the leather cushion. She could technically leave right now, but she didn't have to, and if she was going to catch her breath after a harrowing day of being her own worst enemy, it was much more comfortable to borrow the penthouse to do that than wait until she could lay on her own threadbare bed to do it.

A soft thump and shift of the cushion told her the cat followed her.

She peeked up from her arm to the cloud of white and two bright blue eyes looking down at her. Ordinarily, she'd use the hand her face wasn't pinning to the couch to pet the cat with, but that one happened to be the no-no latex one, so staring contest it was. "I know, he'll be here any minute, but I think we both can agree this isn't the weirdest position hes walked in on me in."

Elizabeth meowed directly in her face. It smelled of fish.

"Yes, well, you'll have to pet yourself with my hand, because I'm not getting up yet."

The cat flopped to the side, head on her wrist.

"That's just lazy."

Elizabeth huffed and twisted onto her back. And bapped a cat paw directly to her cheek. All pad and no claw, at least.

"That isn't a counter argu-"

The door choose precisely then to open. Which didn't mean Elizabeth won. They could continue the conversation next time. The cat rolled itself right off of the bed and sprinted over to the legs of the penthouse's owner, and she spared a glance over her shoulder up to meet his. She didn't know if she should feel ashamed over the complete lack of surprise or intrigue in his eyes, considering she hadn't moved at all from where she'd been.

One day she'd get him to look surprised at what he walked in on, and on that day she'd probably die from whatever it was she'd have gotten herself into.

She really was tempted to just put her face back into the couch and stay there for a while, but while her employer gave no sign of disapproval that she'd yet to leave - she was pretty sure they'd long ago crossed the line to where her being literally present in the penthouse at the same time as him wasn't really a concern - that wasn't exactly an open invitation for her to remain, either. She was the help, not a guest. Alas, she had to bid farewell to the comfortable sofa and rug, and go collect her things. She brushed off her pants - no matter how much effort she put in, there was always cat hair to be brushed off - and gave her employer a small nod as she strode across the room to get her bag of stuff.

"I'm already finished, so I'll be off."

"I won't be working tomorrow." His voice was smooth and matter of fact, but still somehow managed to startle her.

"Huh-? But my schedule said-"

He nodded, casually undoing the buttons of his overcoat, before reaching down to collect the cat in his arms. He didn't even bother to take the coat off before picking her up. The words his dry-cleaner must have had about him... "It is uninterrupted, yes." He tilted his head slightly, and the rare flicker of a smile passed over his lips. "I believe...I may be able to avoid getting in the way for one day, at least."

She wasn't even sure herself if her brief laugh was out of amusement or disbelief.

"I'll be sure to report any unruly disturbances to you immediately."

His eyes squinted, just slightly, in what she chose to assume was amusement, rather than disbelief. "Do so."

–

The springs of her bed - which doubled as her couch - squeaked in protest when she settled down on it, and...yes, it really wasn't anywhere near as comfortable as the one in the penthouse. Somehow, the apartment wasn't that big and yet the remote for the television was still out of reach from where she sat. Did she really toss it that far away last night, or had she turned into such a zombie in the mornings that she kicked it across the room just getting ready and hadn't noticed it?

Really, it wasn't that strange to work with the owner present. Many times that was just part of the job, actually. Only Jumin Han's own eccentricities made it feel like something strange to work in the house when he was present. Well, that, or she still nursed some suppressed trauma over the time she got a concussion. One of those, anyway. Though it did make her wonder if she'd walk in on him doing something strange for once this time.

Granted, if she did, she couldn't help but expect there'd be an immediate NDA or something slapped down right in front of her face immediately after. Somehow he'd still manage to be the one who came out on top, even if she walked in on him half dressed and covered in strange tattoos, hunched over a pile of burning books and eating half of a rabbit or something.

Wait, no...

That image was just terrifying.

The phone lit up as she shuddered.

She glanced down immediately, train of thought broken from the sudden burst of light in the darkness of her apartment. That actor, Zen, had sent her a friendly text the night before to test whether her number actually worked, so if he put in that much effort he probably hadn't done it just out of some kind of weird sense of politeness. Follow up texts were always possible.

-No, it was just some unknown number. Really, who gave her number away to some spam company? She just kept getting random phonecalls from weird numbers recently! And they were mostly late at night, too, so probably some foreign based companies.

I bet it was that glasses jerk...

She clicked her tongue and tossed the phone to the nightstand next to her bed, flopping back onto the mattress lengthwise. "I didn't almost die today." That was an improvement over the weekend. If she managed not to injure herself in front of her boss tomorrow, she might actually be set for a completely normal day - nay, perhaps a week even.

Her own laughter cut through the rare quiet of her room. "Thinking about attractive men at work and then about your employer at home, really? You really are a mess."

Ah, yes. Her thoughts were full of a random man who rescued her from death, a ridiculous self-created mystery about her own wallet, and about her work. And she talked to herself when she wasn't talking to a cat. Her social life was in shambles.