Chapter 21

Jinsu wasn't sure what kind of checks or measures were put in place for Jino to decide it was safe for the students to venture out again, but it didn't bother her too much as she was going to be staying in the Attayear and the clearing for the day. Eunho approached to ask for directions back to the healer's, since apparently none of them had decent memories, but once he and the others had departed, the Attayear became wonderfully calm.

"Quiet, isn't it?" Noah observed as he and Jinsu settled in adjacent seats in the circular computer room. "We only have a very low-power generator running at the moment converting sunlight into the electricity you all need."

Twenty minutes later, Jinsu was more or less in seventh heaven. The codes were phenomenal. Beautiful. Perfect. They were neat and orderly and they made sense.

And they went on forever. But given the scale of the Attayear project, that was only to be expected.

Noah watched her as she zoomed from computer to computer, which Noah had set up to have different parts of the base code on each screen.

"Well?" he prompted after a fair amount of time had elapsed. "How much of it do you understand?"

"A little," Jinsu said vaguely, much more interested in the rows of characters in front of her. "Not very much." Then she pointed to the screen on her right. "I can tell that's the code that programmes the doors, but that's about it. As soon as it starts hitting the different alphabets..." She blew out air through her lips, eyebrows raised.

"And as a computer scientist, what do you make of it?"

Jinsu sat up, eyes sparkling. "Well, I can tell there are strong influences from JavaScript, C and PHP, which I always thought didn't really mesh well together, but there's another one I remember learning about during the orientation module at school whose name I've forgotten—"

"Python," Noah supplied, twisting his chair from side to side.

"Yeah, that. Except, what's with all the non-Roman alphabet letters? I mean—"

"You'll figure that out soon enough."

Jinsu wasn't convinced, but she resumed studying the screens. "Is the third alphabet Cyrillic?" she asked after a moment or two.

"Yup. Roman, Hangul and Cyrillic."

"The numbers are all binary," Jinsu murmured to herself. "And the frequency..."

It was another hour and a half before she worked out that each room in the Attayear had its own unique programme and coding, and a total of five hours before she twigged that the large parts of it in Cyrillic, once Noah had written the script out phonetically for her, were to do with the time aspect of the time machine.

"And Hangul is location. Or flying it, or whatever," she concluded. "And the Roman script is everything else." She looked at the screens with renewed interest. "Wow."

"See if you can figure out how the language works," Noah encouraged her. "If you can understand that, you could potentially control the Attayear. Not that I'd ever let you, but maybe when we're back in the present and your father's stopped being a misogynistic snob."

"That's code for never. Does the language have a name?"

"You're gonna like this one." Noah grinned at her. "Tardis."

It figured.

Jinsu's paradise of nerdship was rudely interrupted by Yejun crashing into her room at about six o'clock.

"Yoooooo!" he called loudly, flopping onto her bed. "I met a friend of yours today!"

Jinsu threw him a quizzical look. "I don't have any fr— oh my God, Yejun, there's blood on your hands; get off my bed and go wash it off!"

"Chill." He held up both hands with a lazy grin. "It's actually clothing dye. You're lucky I changed before I came in because otherwise I'd stink to high heaven still. But yeah. Lu Han. Said he knew you. Something to do with that tiger you were telling me about yesterday, I think."

Jinsu wasn't sure how to react to that.

"Well, I don't think, I know. He was actually wearing a tiger skin and celebrating or something. It looked pretty fresh." He caught sight of Jinsu's rapidly paling face. "But I'll shut up about that now. How's your day been?"

They were interrupted by the door banging open, a breathless Junmyeon standing there. "Kyuhyun said you were given a composite bow by this Han person everybody is bumping into! What the actual f*ck?"

Yejun sat up, revealing that said bow was strapped to his back. "Jun, you know it's considered rude to barge into a lady's room without knocking. What if Jinsu had been changing?"

Jinsu snorted, half at the fact that Yejun hadn't knocked either and half at the idea that she'd get changed without locking herself in the bathroom, especially when it was already so difficult for her.

Once Yejun had had a chance to show off the bow and Junmyeon had had a chance to fawn over it – his main concern being over whether Yejun would be required to submit it to a museum when they got back or if he'd be allowed to keep it (Yejun reckoned the latter as he'd apparently been regional champion of archery for the past couple of years) – conversation returned to what Jinsu had been up to, since she hadn't gone to one of the three nearby towns that had been discovered. Yejun looked a bit freaked out at how animated she became over the Tardis script. Junmyeon was much better versed in that kind of discussion since he was also a computer scientist, but it became evident within a few minutes that Jinsu knew a lot more than he did.

Between the two of them, the step-brothers managed to convince Jinsu to go down for dinner with them. Jinsu wasn't particularly keen on the idea, but she'd apparently been missing out on some fun stuff by not staying the whole of the evening before, and that was deemed unacceptable.

As far as Jinsu was concerned, dinner was just awkward. She didn't really know Yejun's or Junmyeon's friends, and since Minhwan was in the Junmyeon's group from the competition, he was sitting pretty nearby. Yejun was also talkative by nature, and easily distracted by the conversations going on around him. Minho was sitting next to Junmyeon and the two ended up deep in discussion for most of the meal.

Once everybody had eaten, a handful of boys moved to do the washing up with great reluctance, and Noah stood up to make some housekeeping announcements. Hamin had returned to the group and was apparently well enough for them not to have to make an emergency return to the present. Nobody had been stalked or attacked by tigers (or bears, or leopards). They were to keep with the cover story of being on a religious pilgrimage through the woods, and were not allowed to insist on being mercenaries or obtain weapons, unless under special circumstances. Objections to Yejun's bow were brought up, but since he did archery as a sport, Noah and Jino considered the weapon in Yejun's hands to be a good investment rather than begging for trouble.

Then came a reminder that when it was time for the lights to go out, it was time to sleep and that it was discourteous to be noisy and keep everybody else awake, and also that they couldn't forget to do their chores just because they'd had a fun day. Somebody had forgotten to clean up in the lounge, which was apparently full of discarded wrappers and plastic cups.

A boy called Jisung, who was sitting next to Minhwan and to whom the latter had been whispering while Noah was talking, raised his hand. "Yo, Hyung, you keep talking about chores to make life easier for everybody and how even you're doing your part, but why is Park Jinsu getting the princess treatment while we actually help look after the place?"

Noah gave a loud sigh, almost as if he'd been expecting the question. "As the intelligent among you will have noticed, Jinsu's hand is broken. She's helping out with tasks that require skills not involving two hands. If you have any objection to this, I'll take it you need help learning to empathise with her and are requesting somebody to break your hand, which is dumb. Any questions that are actually useful? No? Good. Night, then." He turned and left.

Jinsu noticed a ripple of laughter and smirks – surprisingly including Byeong joo – before she was distracted by a comment from Minhwan further down the table.

"You're right. I don't know why they didn't leave her for the tiger. Everybody knows your chances of survival go up if you sacrifice the weakest link and Hamin wouldn't have been injured. She's already a cripple."

His voice carried enough for everybody to hear, and the room went deathly silent. All eyes turned to Jinsu, and she could feel her face heating up and her eyes prickling. Yejun looked furious, but just as he opened his mouth to say something, there was a loud scrape as Chanyeol's chair flew back and he got to his feet.

"That's my cousin, you a*hole. Watch your mouth."

Minhwan looked up at him, turning a fork lazily around in his fingers. "Dear me, weren't you embarrassed about being related to her just yesterday?"

Yejun slammed his fists down on the table, also standing up. "Family tensions are none of your business. Apologise."

Minhwan raised an eyebrow and smirked, attention going back to his fork. Jisung spoke up instead.

"You're not related to Jinsu either, so that would make it none of your business too."

Mortified, Jinsu tugged on Yejun's shirt in the hopes he'd sit down before this escalated out of control, but he refused to be placated.

"I'm not butting in," he snapped. "I'm making the point that on personal issues, it is basic human dignity to butt out."

"Ooh, human dignity. Fancy. I'm scared."

"Human dignity?" Minhwan's tongue poked out of the corner of his mouth as his eyes lit up mischievously. "You talk like the Park family actually has some."

Chanyeol lost his cool. It was funny, Jinsu thought, because he was usually such a placid person, and up until that moment, Jinsu would also have said that he just sucked when it came to standing up for people. But at that particular point in time, it would have been more accurate to compare him to an enraged bull. A few obscenities escaped him – and Yejun, for that matter – and then people were diving for cover. Three seconds later, two chairs were in the air and a table had been overturned, and Kyungsoo and Byeong joo were physically trying to restrain Chanyeol from getting to Minhwan.

It was a good half minute of chaos and fear. Yejun disappeared somewhere and Jinsu found herself cowering under the table as a brawl broke out. She could hear things breaking and smashing and hitting things and people and boys yelling and it was just altogether unpleasant, especially when splinter fragments began to find their way underneath the table with her. It was either moments or minutes – Jinsu wasn't sure, but the fight was escalating – until Noah was back in the room yelling at everybody, and as though he had flicked a switch, everything died down.

Jinsu peeked out from under the table. Standing beside Noah, Yejun spotted her and came over to usher her out.

"Explain," she heard Noah snapping, and she looked back over her shoulder.

A number of the boys were already sporting bruises. Changmin and Eunho were both bleeding from what looked to be shallow head cuts and several boys were trying to surreptitiously put down chairs and other things they'd been planning to use as weapons. Minhwan's smirk was more controlled. Chanyeol had stopped struggling in Kyungsoo and Byeong joo's combined grip.

Byeong joo jumped in to tattle before anybody else could.

"Minhwan said it would have been better to leave Jinsu as a sacrifice for the tiger and Chanyeol got angry that he was talking about his cousin like that. I didn't see who threw the first chair but I think it was Junho."

Jinsu flinched at the slight inflection at the word cousin, trying to convince herself that it was just a figment of her imagination that Byeong joo's upper lip seemed to curl contemptuously. Yejun thought it was a good moment to remove her from the room. As the door swung shut behind them, she could have sworn she heard Noah groaning something along the lines of "oh God, I'm surrounded by idiots, please help me", but then she heard him raise his voice again and figured it was just Disney movie deprivation. She wouldn't even mind Jimin's cheesy appropriations every now and again if it meant she wasn't in such a hostile and unpleasant environment.

"You know," said Yejun, "I really want to know what it is, this sin they seem to think you've committed. I know Byeong joo's an arse because of the family feud, but Minhwan genuinely just seems to revel in being an absolute d*ck."

"Me too," Jinsu mumbled. "Me too."

And inside, her heart was crying why me?

Chapter 22

Jinsu wasn't entirely sure why she had cried herself to sleep the previous night in the aftermath of the brawl. It was the first time she'd had two boys actually fighting over her, and it was also such a rarity for somebody to stand up for her so fiercely that a large part of her brain was telling her she ought to be happy.

And yet she wasn't.

She decided to attribute it to homesickness. It was rare for her to be away from home for so long without either her mother or her brother there.

It's just five days, she reminded herself. It'll be four when you get to this evening. Just bear with it.

It wasn't altogether a surprise to find another breakfast waiting for her when she opened her bedroom door, distinctly more awake than she had been at the same time the previous day. The set-up was a little different this time: on a plate on the left was a plate with three mini-croissants – one plain, one buttered, and one ham and cheese – and a large pain au chocolat. A sideplate next to it had a neatly sliced apple – perfect twelfths, Jinsu was impressed to notice – and another held five finger soldiers next to an eggcup with a boiled egg, capped like the previous day. On the right were three plates: one had diced hash browns and bite-sized chunks of fried potato. The second was loaded high with button mushrooms and bite-sized pieces of bacon. The third had at least three inches in height made up entirely of sausages. Just from the size and texture, Jinsu figured they were different flavoured ones, probably at least three. There was a piece of paper in front of each side, too: in handwriting she didn't recognise (not that she would have a chance of recognising the handwriting of anybody on the Attayear other than herself), the left side proclaimed itself to be finger food and the right to be chopstick food. She smiled and bent to pick it up, a couple of boys shuffling past her with large yawns.

It was as she was turning to go back into her room that the little bubble of happiness was popped.

"Wow," a boy a little further down the passage observed, his name tag proclaiming him to be Kang Seungho. "Minhwan is sentenced to hard labour and the Parked Car gets the princess treatment and some willing slave to make her breakfast."

"Yeah, which poor f*cker did you screw over?" demanded his companion – Youngdo, according to his tag. "Or just screw, come to that?"

Jinsu contemplated giving them both the finger, but it was impossible unless she wanted to drop her breakfast.

A hand snaked out and plucked two pieces of sausage off the plate.

"You call being made to clean all the windows hard labour?" Eunho scoffed around the food he'd just popped into his mouth. "We're in bl*dy Balhae, guys, twelve hundred years before our time. If you want hard labour, literally all you have to do is step outside and go down to the quarry or find the lumberjacks I saw yesterday and you've got proper hard labour staring you in the face. Window cleaning is not going to break anyone's back." He grabbed a handful of hash browns off Jinsu's plate and shoved them into his mouth before moving on past. A few moments later, he had a delayed reaction and looked around at Jinsu mid-chew with his eyes wide. Then he swallowed and grinned at her. Jinsu wasn't entirely sure what it meant and figured it was best to just forget about it and ignore Minhwan's friends, so she returned to her room.

Chanyeol appeared without knocking about five minutes later and promptly drew up the spare chair at the desk she was already sitting at, peering at her face before, apparently satisfied, he reached out for a slice of apple. Jinsu tried not to cringe at him breaking the perfect star the pieces had been arranged into.

"You look like you got some sleep," he told her with relief, going for more finger food. "I tried to check on you last night but the door was locked, so I got a bit worried."

Jinsu gave him a blank look, unable to remember anybody trying to get into the room. Either she'd been wallowing in too much self pity to pay attention to the wider world or she'd been sleeping like the dead.

"What time was that?"

"Late. Noah gave us all an absolute b*llocking. I had to see him seperately as one of the perpetrators, too, but he was more happy I'd – his words – grown a f*cking pair and a half and wanted to treat me. So I have a stash of chocolate." He reached into his hoodie pocket and pulled out a large plastic bag of chocolates. "Take your pick."

Unsure, Jinsu hesitated.

"Really," Chanyeol insisted. "I know you like chocolate. And besides, it's not like I can eat all this by myself."

"What about your roommates?"

"Then it's not like I'll be able to eat any of it full stop. Eunho's a bottomless pit. Hamin's two."

Jinsu laughed.

Jinsu learnt a little later on that everybody who had been directly involved in the brawl had been put on a thorough spring clean of the Attayear as punishment (she heard somebody complaining about Noah and why does chores and cleaning make us adults? Like, what is his obsession with it?), meaning only twelve of them had permission to go out for the day, and groups naturally had to be rearranged.

Yejun invited Jinsu to join him and Junmyeon with Minho the second she got down to the atrium with a small pouch of gold (in case of emergency or treasure find) tucked into a pocket of her hanbok. She'd looked through the clothing her father had provided her with to discover that practically all of it was silk. He really couldn't be more ostentatious. Except perhaps if the hanboks had all been bright orange or something. This one was at least a rather quiet lime green.

"Let's go!" Yejun enthused, leading them past another group that was getting ready. The doors hissed open.

"Jinsu."

Jinsu turned, surprised, and the boys with her stopped. Her group from the first day was standing there. Kyungsoo's expression was neutral, but the other two – if Jinsu was seeing things right – actually looked a little put out.

"Are you not joining us?" Eunho asked.

Jinsu glanced between them and the three she'd agreed to join for the day. They were all looking at her expectantly, even if Yejun was waving an absent hand at the sensors to get the automatic doors to open and close again.

The attention made her feel like a rabbit trapped in headlights. "I—I..." she stuttered.

"It's okay," Kyungsoo said abruptly. "Just remember if we actually wished you dead, you'd already be dead. Have fun."

"He's nice," said a dubious Minho as they headed out into the sunshine.

"He's the son of the motoring entrepreneur, isn't he?" Junmyeon checked. "Isn't his mother a politician?"

Yejun nodded in agreement. "Famously laconic."

"And awkward," said Minho. "You cannot forget that Do Kyungsoo is an awkward human being."

Jinsu was only half listening to their discussion. Kyungsoo's tone had lacked its usual sardonic bite. At face value, his words were bland at best and a little hurtful at worst, but Minho was right that he was awkward and it was also pretty common knowledge that Kyungsoo was as emotionless as a car bumper unless he got on with you really, really well. For all his brusqueness, she wondered if he was possibly being nice to her in his own weird way, like the time when he'd flicked chewing gum into Do Minyoung's hair.

"By the way," said Minho, starting her back into reality as they returned to shadow under the trees at the edge of the clearing. "I'm not saying this as a pervert, but how do you manage to get dressed by yourself with only one hand? I sprained my wrist really badly a couple of years back and I couldn't do anything by myself."

Jinsu had a feeling it was going to be an awkward day.

They ventured further afield than Jinsu had done on her first time out, in part because Yejun had gone to a village slightly further away the previous day and wanted to go back. Just a few yards from the village gates, they were surprised by Han stepping out of the forest, beaming from ear to ear and with a deer over his shoulders. He recognised them at once, and he and Yejun immediately got into a conversation about different types of bow and their efficacy for hunting that went on for several minutes. In the end, they all trailed into the village together.

It turned out to be market day, and the village square – though the place was more of a small town – was absolutely heaving. Cattle were braying and refusing to move; stallholders were insisting their food was the best quality; vendors wandered around trying to sell trinkets. Jinsu found herself separated from the others and confronted by a lady trying to insist she buy a jade pendant that really didn't go with her hanbok colour.

The pendant itself was beyond exquisite, and Jinsu knew that it would be worth several million won (possibly several tens of million won) in her own time. It was about three quarters of the size of her palm, in brilliant green with three paler veins across it, but carved with such finery and detail that the precision was almost laser-like. She also didn't think she could afford it.

The woman was persistent, though, and Jinsu eventually found herself handing over twenty-five gold coins. She was unsure what that translated to in modern terms, and no sooner was she left turning the pendant over in her hands than another jeweller pounced on her, wanting to sell her a silver chain for her new acquisition. Seeing as he had a number of chains suitable, Jinsu accepted, paying a fraction of the amount she'd paid for the pendant. She tucked both into her pocket.

Still, the detail of the jade lotus flower with characters from Korean folklore nestling among the carved petals remained etched on her mind. She wondered if she'd have to submit it to a museum or if she'd be allowed to keep it, because there was no denying how pretty it was.

There was still no sign of Junmyeon, Yejun or Minho, but knowing Yejun, Jinsu reckoned he'd probably be looking for her and that it was best to find somewhere nearby but a little less crowded to sit down so that he could find her. After all, moving around would only make it more difficult (and Yejun was hyperactive, so it was unlikely he'd be the one to stay still). She made her way to where the crowd began to thin, careful to keep her broken hand tucked away against her body, and eventually found herself in a pleasant little square not far off the market street with a fountain in the middle of it. She stopped, surprised, because fountains weren't something she'd associated with the first millenium. Wells, yes – and she'd seen plenty of them around, too – but she hadn't been aware that the technology existed for fountains. That said, she thought she remembered reading somewhere that some of the ancient civilisations in Europe had had fountains for centuries and centuries and centuries, so she supposed it wasn't implausible.

Lulled by the merry tinkle of water, she sat on the stepped basin of the fountain with her back to it and pulled out the pendant to look at it again. It glinted in the sun, and she looked carefully for some kind of hole or fitting that would allow her to attach the necklace to it. Careful inspection revealed that a smooth, round hole a few millimetres wide had been bored through near the top of the pendant, so she got out the chain with the intent of threading it through.

It was, unfortunately, impossible to do with only one hand. The pendant slipped and nearly tumbled off her skirt even when she tried to clamp it between her knees, or turned because there was too much pressure behind the silver necklace, which wasn't that much slimmer than the hole. After several minutes, she gave up in frustration and tilted her head back to let out a sigh.

She let out a shriek instead. Kyungsoo was standing over her, sucking on what looked like a cube of ice, and frowning at the jewellery in her lap. He picked them up, mumbling something that sounded a bit like "you need help" – or may it was a question (Jinsu was unsure from his tone) – and in seconds, the pendant was threaded and he was doing up the clasp at the back of her neck.

"That clashes atrociously," he told her, even though Jinsu already knew, and completely killing the thanks she'd been about to voice in her throat.

"You're the one who put it on me," she retorted waspishly, smoothing down her silk skirts and getting to her feet.

His eyes widened with the realisation that perhaps she hadn't wanted to put it on. "Yejun's looking for you," he grumbled, turning away.

"Where?"

He just started walking off. Annoyance overtaking her, Jinsu chased after him. She was about to grab his arm to make him answer her question when he looked over his shoulder, as if to check she was following, and slowed a little to match her pace. Jinsu was reminded that he was just quite awkward when it came to talking to people and tried (and failed) to smile at him.

It transpired that a search had been launched for her when she'd gone missing in the market. At least, that was what Jinsu assumed when first Minho came skidding up with a loud "there you are!" and then Eunho nearly tripped over the three of them and started windmilling his arms around, yelling "I've found her!" and startling several nearby chickens and a grandmother out for an afternoon stroll. They were almost at the main square at that point, and before Jinsu quite knew where she was, twelve boys surrounded her and Yejun draped a heavy arm across Jinsu's shoulders, knocking Kyungsoo out of the way. Kyungsoo drifted back to join a disinterested looking Byeong joo on the edge of the group.

"Your friend Han is such a fusspot," Yejun grumbled. "That or he has a crush on you, because he popped up about twenty minutes ago and sat on my shoulder like a parrot going "where's your lady? Where's your lady?" and I swear, I could not get rid of him. I already knew you were missing."

"I was ambushed by an aggressive saleswoman," Jinsu sighed. "I think it's actually easier to shake off annoying people trying to get you to give to their charities. At least with charities you know it's likely to go to a good cause."

"What did you buy?" Yejun's eyes dropped to her chest. "The pendant?"

Jinsu nodded. He squinted at it.

"It looks like it's pretty, but you need a new hanbok, dear."

A chuckle escaped Jinsu and he patted her happily on the shoulder before looking around, apparently for where to go next. Or possibly for Han, in case anybody needed to escape the man again. Jinsu also looked around, snippets of conversation from the others filtering into her hearing.

"... Asked if I could go back to see him tomorrow and he said it was okay..."

"No, Eunho, you can not give them the recipe for ice cream because it's anachronistic—"

"But ice is expensive—!"

"... Reckon I'd be allowed to bring a horse back if I paid...?"

"...Second daughter of the Lord of the Manor up the hill at the market today and she's freaking hot, I'm telling you..."

Jinsu tugged on Eunho's sleeve. "How long is it going to take us to walk back?"

He shrugged. "An hour or two, I guess? That's how long it took us to get here."

She pointed at the sun, which was well past its zenith. "It's still spring, so sundown will be between five and six except we're on the west side of a mountain and in forest, so it'll be darker for us much sooner.

Yejun glanced around before surreptitiously pulling back his sleeve to check his watch. "We should start back within the next quarter of an hour, then."

Even though they were all already there, it was another twenty minutes before they were moving again. One or two people attempted to drift off back to where they'd been before, and several others wanted to take photographs, which was an operation that involved everybody to be on the lookout and stationed strategically so that the locals wouldn't notice cameras and phones. Then some of the town militia came through on horseback shouting some kind of warning about some dangerous murderer a couple of villages further down the mountain, giving a description so everybody knew to avoid the man, and finally, everybody was good to go.

Dinner was a much calmer affair that evening. Jinsu found herself sandwiched between her cousin on her left and Eunho's friend Taehyun, who had been out with them that day, on her right. Once he got passed the awkwardness of small talk (which he initiated, since Jinsu had learnt from experience that she Shouldn't Start Talking To Strangers Who Knew Her Classmates), he was an easy person to chat to and he asked (teased? Jinsu wasn't sure) her about the cult she and Kyungsoo had invented, and exactly what and how they were supposed to be worshipping. Jinsu had fun making up a story about it with him, at the end of which he revealed a Buddhist monk visiting the town they'd been in had quizzed him on their group's supposed religion until he'd been rescued by – surprise, surprise – Han passing by and offering him a deer haunch to take back to feed the group if he wanted it. The monk had been so disapproving of any kind of lifestyle that wasn't vegetarian that he'd turned his nose up and gone.

"Well, he'd get on with Junmyeon," Jinsu said, amused. "Maybe he ought to be our religious representative or something."

Chanyeol elbowed her in the ribs at that point to draw her attention to the discussion that Byeong joo and Kyungsoo were having with Changmin.

"What if it's his only copy, though?" Changmin was asking.

"But we don't have a history of Balhae and this is a retired scribe from the royal court!" Kyungsoo insisted, an animated glint in his eye. "This is quite possibly the most precious thing we could bring back."

"Wouldn't it be some kind of grandfather clause to suddenly start learning all this new stuff of the time period?" Byeong joo asked curiously.

"No. It's history. It wouldn't affected much, just our understanding of the times." Kyungsoo dragged a hand through his hair.

"That kind of thing isn't mass produced, though," Changmin fired back. "So you would be messing with a grandfather clause. And because we don't have contemporary reports from this period, we have no idea just how much taking his diaries and reports and the history he's writing away from him would be."

"If he has a second copy, I'll buy it from him. If he doesn't, then, I don't know, we could create some kind of distraction so I'd at least have a chance to photograph the pages. But really, you don't understand—"

Jinsu couldn't take it any longer. "What is this?"

All three boys turned to look at her. Kyungsoo didn't really appear to have registered who'd asked the question, because he explained in a heartbeat.

"I was chatting to somebody at the market today and discovered he's the grandson of the retired chief scribe and royal historian at the royal court," he said. "Apart from keeping the court diaries, he's also compiled a history of Balhae from what he considers to be its founding up until the present day – he's still in the process of writing it, but we have nothing in the way of historical records from this time, and as a historian I think it would be the best thing we could possibly bring back from the past. Losing such knowledge as this is an absolute tragedy."

"Did you get to see it? Or meet him?" Jinsu asked.

"His grandson took me home with me and so I spoke to him a bit and said I was interested in the whole subject and he let me take a peek. It's all on vellum and in Chinese characters, though, so I only understood a couple of words here and there. And then when I left everybody was frantic because you'd gone missing." He shrugged.

Chanyeol nudged her again. "You do history," he said. "What do you think about this?"

"It's a question of morals and principles," Changmin said. "We all had to sign an agreement not to do anything that will drastically affect the past, present or future before we boarded, and that would be a significant effect on the present and on the future."

"But it would be a good one," Kyungsoo stressed.

Changmin raised his hands. "As soon as you start saying that, you get onto dodgy philosophical and moral territory. Define good. What is good? How do we know what we're doing is good? Is 'good' subjective or objective? If it's objective, how come laws and people's opinions on things like abortion and drugs change from culture to culture? Are there different forms of good? Is my good better than your good? Is what you say is 'good' a construct of your culture, or just according to you, or an absolute good that's morally indisputable? But then, how do you know that your morals are absolute enough to judge that? Can you have absolutes when it comes to morals—?"

"Well, I think everybody's agreed that killing people is morally reprehensible," Byeong joo interrupted.

Changmin cut him off again. "Abortion. I rest my case."

"Is abortion murder, though?" Eunho suddenly chipped in. "Some people would say no."

Byeong joo scraped his chair back. "I'm out of this. I'll talk about the morality of history and grandfather clauses, but every time abortion comes up in a debate like this people just end up talking past each other quibbling over what makes a scientifically living being a person and it's frustrating, so good night."

All the boys immediately turned to Jinsu, almost as if they were expecting her to launch into a "my body, my rights" speech. She just looked blankly at them and chopsticked kimchi into her mouth. With that, tension she hadn't even realised was there shattered and Eunho started laughing.

It was the first mealtime Jinsu had had without her brother or Yejun that she hadn't wanted to escape from as fast as possible.

Chapter 23

*Possibly a double update*

After an altogether pleasant day and a good night's sleep, the next morning was not a very pleasant start for Jinsu. The mystery chef had put a little more effort into the food's presentation than previously, setting it all out (except for fruit and kimchi) in a lotus flower shape on one big plate. Whoever it was had mashed a fair amount of potato as natural glue and then formed the lotus flower by hollowing out the middle enough to fill it with mushrooms and half-sausages sticking up, and the petals had been made with triangularly cut pieces of bacon. There was a spoon as well as chopsticks by the plate and baked beans surrounded the food flower. Jinsu was unsure if the beans were supposed to be leaves or water, but it was an altogether aesthetically pleasing dish.

Until Minhwan showed up and made her ruin it just as she was crouching to pick it up.

"What this?" he asked, pausing alongside her. He was munching on toast (there was no toast or egg today, Jinsu realised with a bit of sadness, as the soldiers had been one of her favourite parts of the breakfast) and his hair was damp. Judging by the towel on his shoulders, he was freshly showered. "Who've you managed to turn into your b*tch?"

Jinsu shut her eyes, trying to to quell the feeling of frustration rising inside her, but Minhwan just didn't know when to stop.

"Hey, boys!" he bellowed along the balcony corridor, to the instant result of doors opening all along it to see what was going on. "The b*tch has got herself a b*tch! I didn't realise there was somebody willing to hire themselves out as a slave for the girlie who can't get anywhere without Daddy's money."

The only reaction Jinsu heard was laughter. She forced a smile. Be the better person. You can try to solve this nicely. Do not throw your food at him because Mystery Chef is probably watching and it might offend him.

Feeling disgusted with herself, she looked up at Minhwan. "Is that a childish-tantrum way of saying you'd like some? If you ask nicely I have no objection to sharing good food with you. Would you like some?"

Silence descended on the corridor. The shock was almost palpable. Minhwan looked distinctly taken aback, then interested in the food, then wary. It was an effort to keep the smile, but Jinsu did so as she took a deep breath and scooped up a spoonful of baked beans and potato, complete with a bacon petal.

She made the mistake of looking down at the lotus food flower that she'd just wilfully destroyed for somebody other than herself, and suddenly the frustration was back, much stronger than before. Minhwan had edged a little closer, his desire for piping hot foreign food apparently overriding the fact that it was coming from somebody he considered well below his dignity, and something deep inside Jinsu snapped.

To hell with it, she thought, the smile wiping from her face, and she twisted her wrist to flick the food off the spoon at him. He let out a shrill yelp of pain as it struck in on the jaw, the mash sticking there and the beans and bacon dropping off to land on his towel.

Jinsu froze, partially in fright and partially horrified at herself for wasting good food and potentially offending whoever'd been making her the food for so long. She didn't really have chance to full process that before Minhwan was snarling obscenities at her and then full-on body-slammed her into the wall, making her stumble over the breakfast tray.

Alarmed yells broke out all down the corridor, followed by a mass of stampeding feet. It was only seconds before Minhwan was pulled off her, but Jinsu was dazed from her head cracking against the wall, and all she could really think was that yes, Minhwan really was that much worse than Byeong joo because the closest Byeong joo had ever come to physically harming her was throwing a ball at her locker.

Somebody had ushered Jinsu back into her room before she regained proper coherency, and then she was presented with a glass of water.

"I'll get painkillers," said Yejun's voice. The arm around her shoulders remained, though.

"Are you okay?" Chanyeol asked her. "I can't see any blood..."

Wincing, Jinsu raised her head. "You have four fingers," she told him.

He jumped. "F*ck, I forgot to check for concussion! Thanks!"

Jinsu managed a wan smile. "I think I'm okay. I want my breakfast, though. I don't know why I wasted it on him."

Still looking a little anxious, Chanyeol grinned at her. "I'd go get it before somebody else eats it, then."

It was a good point, but it reminded her of the laughter and Minhwan's scathing judgement on whichever kind person was leaving her the food on a daily basis. She wondered if it might not be a better idea to ask the person to stop. Or she ought at least to write them a note of appreciation and apologise for using the food as a weapon. But as touching as it was, she didn't want Minhwan using somebody's kindness to bring them down.

When Jinsu opened the door, it was to discover Chanyeol's warning wasn't without foundation. The momentary fear of finding twenty boys fighting over it was no way near accurate, but Byeong joo was standing there as though he was about to walk away with the tray in his hands, chewing thoughtfully on a sausage and with his fingers poised to pluck away a piece of bacon. He whirled around at the sound of the door opening behind him, miraculously not sending the tray flying (most likely due to waitering skills), and gulped visibly, looking like a rabbit caught in headlights. With an almost comical pop!, he sucked the remainder of the sausage into his mouth and choked, his face turning red, before almost pitching the tray at her. Jinsu stared at him.

He bolted. Jinsu stood there for several moments longer, trying to process what had just happened. It was by far the strangest interaction she'd ever had with the boy.

He'd also completely ruined the centre of the lotus flower.

Within the space of ten minutes, Noah got wind of what had happened and announced that he was confining Minhwan to the Attayear again for the day for chores. Several of Minhwan's friends volunteered to stay behind and help. Noah pulled Jinsu aside when she came downstairs to join the groups to go out.

"I'm not saying you weren't provoked," he said, "but do try not to respond violently to idiots like Minhwan in the future, because I don't want to have to ground you as well."

Jinsu mumbled an apology. He clapped her on the back.

"Good to see you standing up for yourself, though. It must have been painful to part with your breakfast like that."

"It was only a spoon," Jinsu said regretfully. "Not the full plate."

Noah patted her back again and pushed her gently back towards the gathering boys. As he strode away, Jinsu could have sworn she heard him say, "Shame, that, really."

"You are a historian," Kyungsoo announced, grabbing her elbow as she attempted to drift towards Yejun's group when they all stepped out into the clearing. "You are coming with me to meet this retired court secretary and convince everybody that I'm right and that we need some kind of copy of this history to take back home."

"Absolute lady-killer, you are," said Hamin. "Is this how you ask people out, Kyungsoo?"

Eunho let out a hoot of laughter and linked arms with Hamin, dragging him away to the side. "You are coming on a date with me!" he insisted, mimicking Kyungsoo's most stoic expression and tone of voice. "You are not allowed to choose where or say no!"

Hamin detached Eunho's arm firmly and patted his hand. "Bae would be upset. I know we're in a completely different timezone, but Minju still a non-negotiable part of my life."

Eunho was completely unable to keep a straight face, and Hamin didn't fare much better before they were both doubling over with hysterical laughter. Kyungsoo glanced over his shoulder at them.

"Idiots," he muttered, tugging Jinsu along. She tried to suppress a smile.

Because the tomfoolery didn't stop, Kyungsoo and Jinsu ended up walking a good few metres ahead of them the entire way. At first, Jinsu felt awkward about it, especially the silence, but then the silence began to feel comfortable, and she started looking and listening for wildlife instead. Butterflies darted in and out of the dappled shadows, and she could have sworn that once she saw the pale fur of a fox vanishing between the trees, which excited her for a moment as she knew that back in the present, the foxes native to the Korean peninsula were an endangered species.

Rustling to her left drew her attention to Kyungsoo stuffing his phone back into his pocket. Jinsu wondered if he'd seen the fox too and taken a photo of it.

They were over an hour into the walk before Kyungsoo spoke up.

"By the way," he said, "Minhwan had this little red heat rash on his jaw when I saw him last and it looked hilarious."

It took Jinsu by surprise. She swallowed, unsure what to say.

"Also, violence is bad," Kyungsoo droned, but it looked like he was smiling. Jinsu wondered if she could take it as some kind of approval for losing her cool that morning.

"Is it serious?" she asked him. He gave an amused-sounding exhalation that wasn't quite strong enough to be a snort.

"Wouldn't even classify as a burn. I wouldn't worry."

"Okay." Jinsu nodded. "Thanks."

Kyungsoo sighed. "You're one awkward little fishing cat, aren't you?"

"What?" Jinsu almost tripped. He steadied her with one hand, but went back to being silent. He only spoke once more before they got near the town, when he dragged her off to point at something on the ground.

"Ooh, look, wolf prints."

Jinsu began to wonder if something was wrong with him.

"No, that's just Kyungsoo," Chanyeol assured her when he insisted on a family lunch at a secluded tavern he'd found. "You'll get used to it."

"I knew he was strange," said Jinsu, "but not this strange."

Chanyeol used his spoon to nudge chunks of beef around in his stew, trying to find a spring onion instead. "He's just an introvert and not very good at being smooth about making friends with people."

Jinsu nearly dropped her spoon into her rice. "But why would he want to be friends with me?"

Chanyeol looked a bit irked. "Byeong joo's got beef with you, yes, but that doesn't discount everybody he knows from wanting to be friends with you. They were worried about you after the tiger incident, you know. Wouldn't stop talking about it in our room at night. Eunho even said he's been having nightmares about it."

"I just..." Jinsu stared at her food, trying to sort out the muddle of feelings in her head.

Chanyeol stuck his spoon into his stew, scooping out some meat, and extended it towards Jinsu. On autopilot, she accepted the offering. He apparently thought this was a good thing, because he pulled her bowls towards him and started feeding her.

"I found a lady who makes some really pretty jokduri," he told her as she chewed on some rice. "I thought maybe we could go there tomorrow. There'll be some you like and there are loads of different types, so we might be able to find some to bring back with us."

Jinsu nodded.

"Anyway, how's your day been so far? Did you find that historian person?"

Jinsu swallowed the rice. "No, we're doing that after. Kyungsoo made friends with the town militia and I think he's stalking them for their rounds of the town until about two. He said we want a proper length of time with this man."

"And what are you planning to do about the records or history or whatever he's writing?"

Jinsu shrugged. "We'll jump that hurdle when we get to it."

Chapter 24

Chanyeol ended up coming with them to the retired court scribe's house. It was a little way out of town, just uphill near a little grotto that had been built to the Buddha, and Kyungsoo looked quite happy at having got rid of Hamin and Eunho, who were still giggling like they were on laughing gas when the other three ditched them in the square with the fountain.

The elderly gentleman welcomed them in, and Jinsu, much to her and the boys' irritation, was immediately whisked away by his wife for a tea ceremony which she insisted she had to do with such a lovely guest. Once she had got over her initial annoyance, Jinsu allowed herself to relax and take interest. It wasn't as formulated as tea ceremonies she'd gone along to back home – and she remembered reading somewhere that the current form of the tea ceremony actually had its origins more in the Joseon dynasty. As far as she could make out, this one was more rooted in an offering of thanksgiving to some ancestral god for her safe arrival and for the health and wellbeing of her fellow group of religious pilgrims.

"We've all heard about you all over town," the lady told her enthusiastically. "Do tell me more about yourselves! It's amazing that so many of you so young are making such a journey for the gods."

Mentally thanking Taehyun for the conversation the previous night, Jinsu launched into the vaguest explanation she could give of their imagined religion, aware that if the woman found it interesting enough, she would probably tell her husband and he would probably put it into his history and then they genuinely would have created cult in a manner that would effectively be a grandfather clause. The woman was delighted and asked questions, but as soon as she could, Jinsu steered the topic back onto more neutral ground by asking about the Lord of the Manor and his daughters who she vaguely remembered overhearing about the previous day. The woman pursed her lips.

"Lord Hae is not well-liked here," she said after a moment or two. "I wouldn't normally say this, but you're not from round here, so it doesn't really matter. He's a bully and very manipulative. We've seen fifteen people just in the last year he's managed to kick out of their homes with all their families, and innocent people he's locked away in his prisons. He sucks up to the king all for his own benefit." She shrugged and laid her teacup aside. "Still, he's not as bad as his son, probably because he spends most of his time at court. The son more or less runs the surrounding area and we're all praying he'll stay out too late or have a hunting accident and meet a very angry leopard, but the gods don't seem to want to arrange that."

Interested, Jinsu set her own cup down and leant forward. "Why? What does he do?"

"As far as he's concerned, his word is law." The woman grimaced. "And as far as he's concerned, he can treat any woman as though they owe him marital responsibilities. There's a gisaeng house here that was more or less established because of his habits." She pursed her lips, looking over Jinsu. "You'd do well to stay with those young men you came with, because you're a pretty little thing and if Hae Insu spots you on your own, he might decide he's partial to you and that would be tragic."

Jinsu didn't bother to hide her expression of disgust. Until she'd been hauled away from Chanyeol and Kyungsoo, she'd forgotten that she was in a more gender-segregated society than she was used to, and also that the bad parts of humanity were just the same down the ages, even if the forms were only slightly different or the cultures around them viewed them with different degrees of acceptability to what she was used to.

The sun was beginning to set when Kyungsoo and Chanyeol finally came into the room Jinsu and the lady were sitting in. The three of them courteously took their leave and bade goodbye to the master of the house as well before starting out. Kyungsoo looked quite satisfied.

"How did it go?" Jinsu asked, more to her cousin than to Kyungsoo, but it was the latter who responded.

"Quite well. We asked him about what he was writing about and to talk about his favourite parts of that and recorded it all, and then he dozed off so we took stealth photos of what we could." He beamed and tilted his gaze up towards the sunset. "I don't think I've ever met such a polymath before. He knows everything."

"I tried out Fermat's Last Theorem on him and it didn't phase him at all," Chanyeol agreed.

"He was confused by the Roman numerals," Kyungsoo pointed out. "You did have to explain that a few times."

Jinsu felt disappointed that she hadn't had the opportunity to speak to him.

Kyungsoo was much more talkative on the way back, but just after they were about halfway there, the forest descended into a deep twilit gloom. The three of them unconsciously picked up their pace, Kyungsoo and Jinsu both drifting closer to Chanyeol for protection since he was the biggest. The daylight sounds of the forest were no longer, and each rustle or cracking twig had them jumping and their heartbeats racing.

Other noises began to start up. Insects first, soft buzzing and clicking arising from either side of the path. Following that was a harsh chattering-squeaking sound Jinsu had never come across before, and from the bemused looks on the two boys, neither had they. Then the dim hoot of the odd owl began to join. Dark shapes would scurry across the track in front of them, or they'd hear animals crossing behind, and occasionally something would swoop between the gaps in the trees.

They had been walking for nearly half an hour in the dark before Chanyeol's head was clipped by the wing of something the size of a small bird and he let out a horrified squawk, which upset a number of small animals in the nearby undergrowth.

"What was that?" Kyungsoo asked.

"Bat." Chanyeol's voice was weak. "I think."

"Hmm." Kyungsoo didn't sound too bothered, but Jinsu shuddered. They really ought to have started back much earlier.

Kyungsoo started showing active signs of discomfort at the first wolf howl ten minutes later. Jinsu could have sworn she saw him reach for Chanyeol's arm for reassurance, but she didn't judge him because she was already practically attaching herself to her cousin for the exact same reason, and poor Chanyeol didn't have anybody to cling to.

"Sh*t," Kyungsoo mumbled. "Han said locals had reported hearing wolves but I was hoping it wasn't true."

"You spotted a wolf print earlier, though," Jinsu pointed out in a shaky voice.

"It is different when they are nearby!" Kyungsoo snapped at her. As far as she could make out in the darkness, he looked a little pale.

There was an answering howl to the first one that may or may not have been closer – it was hard to quantify that kind of thing rationally when they were all afraid – and the three of them picked up their pace to a near run.

Eventually, they reached a part of the forest where foliage was so dense that they genuinely couldn't make any headway without some kind of light, and Chanyeol reluctantly pulled out his phone to use as a torch. Two pairs of eyes reflected back at them from the ground not that far in front and Jinsu almost screamed, until the animals abruptly darted away.

"I think that's the first time I've seen a hare," she managed.

"I thought it was something dangerous," Chanyeol admitted, his hand shaking. Kyungsoo grunted. It was unclear whether it was agreement or disapproval. They continued on.

Enough of them had been from the clearing down to the path for something a little like a deer track to look like it was in the making, and even despite everything appearing different at night, the three of them managed to find it. They hurried along, uncaring of the racquet they made as they charged through the undergrowth, because they knew it wasn't a long way back to the Attayear now.

Blessed moonlight began to filter through the trees, and then they burst out into clean air, a full moon hanging above them and shining off the Attayear's proud white shell. Breathing a sigh of relief, they slowed to a normal walking pace and headed towards the doors.

It was Chanyeol who spotted them first, coming to a halt and pulling the others to a spot with him.

"Look," he whispered, raising a trembling arm to point.

In their excitement and relief at their end goal coming into sight, none of them had spotted the visitors sitting calmly between them and the time machine. A long, thick tail covered with black spots twitched gently back and forth. Two cubs were gambolling about on the grass of the clearing while a third was subjected to a wash by its mother, and one it clearly objected to because it kept trying to sidle off, resulting in the big cat patting it back into range with its paws so it could pick it up in its mouth by the scruff of the neck and deposit it where it was supposed to be. The mother herself had sleek, glossy fur which rippled over well defined muscles every time the cat moved, the spots seeming to change size against the pale background each time it did. Jinsu could sense the raw power the animal had even as it lay on the ground.

"Wow," murmured Kyungsoo, already with his phone out and taking photos. "That is a leopard. Never thought I'd see one."

"Never wanted to see one," Chanyeol muttered. "At least, not between me and safety."

"So what do we do?" asked Jinsu.

Chanyeol turned to Kyungsoo. "Is it likely to attack us?"

Kyungsoo slowly lowered his phone. "If we go near the cubs or get between it and the cubs, then I think it's safe to say we're screwed. Otherwise, no idea. But so long as it's not bothering with us, I think we're okay."

"Do we want to move or stay here?"

The problem was solved by the mother leopard abruptly lifting her head, turning her gaze towards the forest as if she could hear something out of human capacity. Then she let out a low bark and grabbed the cub she'd been washing by the scruff of her neck and bounded off. The other two cubs zipped after her. She vanished into the trees just a few metres away, leaping what must have been almost ten feet to get up into one tree's branches. The cubs followed her up.

For several moments after, Jinsu and the two boys remained standing there.

"You know what?" said Kyungsoo, shattering the silence. "I think that's actually the most beautiful thing I've seen in years."

They headed into the Attayear to find several of their excited peers who'd seen the leopards and taken photos, and Noah, who'd been very worried about them not coming back and who'd decided it was best to assume they'd stayed in the town for the night. He was more grateful that they'd arrived back safely, though.

After a quick dinner, Jinsu headed upstairs, yawning and prepared to hit the sack. She fumbled blearily with her door handled and almost stumbled inside, only to trip over something lying on the floor.

That shocked her into awareness, because she never left anything lying on the floor, and she raised her head to look around.

What she saw was far worse to her mind than a potentially lethal female animal of prey just a few metres away from her, and her breaths began to shorten as she backed up into the wall.

Somebody had trashed her room while she was out.

Chapter 25

It was the sharp rap on the door that prevented Jinsu from going into a total panic. Somehow, she managed to let the person in and they flicked on the lights.

"Oh, good God," said Yejun. "Which f*ck-up did this?"

Jinsu just shook her head, trying to swallow against the lump in her throat that was making it difficult to breathe. It was just so messy and it felt like she was drowning in a swamp of clothes, and it was all disordered and nothing looked right and everything was irregular and—

Yejun grabbed her shoulders. "Hey," he said gently. "Look at my ugly face instead."

Taking a deep breath and holding it, Jinsu attempted to look up at him. Yejun placed his hands to either side of her face, blocking her eyes from looking anywhere except forward, and leant closer so that his head filled her entire vision.

"It's okay," he told her. "It's okay. I'm going to help you tidy this all up and then I'll take anything you want down to the laundry. If you want, you can sit in the bathroom while I get this place into a reasonable state."

Jinsu let out the breath she'd been holding and nodded, her shoulders deflating with her lungs. Yejun slipped one of his hands behind her head and pulled her close, giving her a hug that she really needed at that particular point.

In the end, Yejun plonked her on her bed and wrapped her up in her duvet before setting about clearing the place up. He did it mostly by reassembling the furniture that had been taken to pieces and folding all the clothes as neatly as possible, and then asking Jinsu to tell him where she wanted everything to be put away.

"Why are you so good at this?" she asked him as he poked his nose into the bathroom to make sure that was okay. He walked in and Jinsu saw him putting things back into her wash bag.

"Don't kill me," he responded, replacing the last couple of things before he came back out, "but your brother gave me a briefing the morning we boarded this thing and told me some of the things he does to help you, and I looked it up on the internet."

Jinsu surveyed him for a few moments.

"You're nice," she told him.

He grinned bashfully. "So are you."

It was enough to make Jinsu smile. "Thanks," she said softly.

He just gave her another bashful grin and headed for the door. "Sleep well. The sooner you sleep, the sooner you get another of those mystery breakfasts."

That reminded Jinsu about writing to whoever was leaving those breakfasts. She waited until Yejun was gone before climbing out of bed and rummaging through the desk drawers for paper and a pen, which she chewed absently as she wondered about the best way to phrase things. It had been twice now that the wrong people had seen her coming out and getting the breakfast, and if Minhwan and his goons were as bad as they seemed to be, it was only a matter of time before they decided to find out who it was. Given the way they treated Jinsu, she had no doubt that this person would receive the short end of the stick too for being nice to her. She didn't want anybody going through that. Not even Byeong joo.

Well, okay, maybe it wouldn't bother her too much if Byeong joo got one session of it in karma.

She tried various different messages, and eventually settled on one to write out neatly.

Dear Mystery Chef,

I want to apologise for wasting a spoon of your hard work yesterday morning to throw at Minhwan. I also want to thank you for treating me to such wonderful food every day so far. I don't know who you are or why you're doing it, but it is one of the kindest things anybody's ever done for me. A friend also told me that some of the food you have been giving me is imported and consequently expensive, and I am truly honoured that you have been using your personal supply of food on me.

That said – and I don't know how to say this without coming off as rude, even though that is the opposite of my intentions – it really isn't something you have to do for me, and I'm worried Minhwan or somebody might find out who you are and target you for it. It would be awful for such an act of generosity on your part to be used against you like that. I also feel bad since I know this is your personal food, and you cook so beautifully and give me so much, even though I'm not really a breakfast eater.

God bless you, whoever you are.

Jinsu

P.S. I don't know if it was intentional, but when I want a large breakfast, English breakfasts are my favourite.

She folded the paper over, wrote To the fabulous breakfast chef on one blank side of it, and went out to stick it prominently on her door with the other pieces of paper that were already there. She knew there was a good chance the wrong person would see it and read it, but it was better than nothing, unless she wanted to lie in wait for this person, which she was almost positive he would not appreciate.

Job done, she went to sleep.

She had half expected the mystery chef to read her note and then take breakfast away to eat it himself or share among friends, or just to ignore it, but when she discovered the tray of piping hot food that morning, Jinsu was definitely not expecting a letter back. As with the previous time, she had no idea whose handwriting it was, and Chanyeol and Yejun had been unable to identify it either, which left her in the dark.

We both know you're uncomfortable enough around most people on this machine to avoid eating with us where you can.

Your shelf in the fridge is empty, which means you brought no food of your own, which means you're living off communal supplies or you're skipping meals when you don't want to eat with us, and that's unhealthy.

I don't care about Minhwan. If he has a problem with me cooking you breakfast, he can get lost.

Don't turn down good food, especially if you like it.

Breakfast is the most important meal of the day and you should eat a good-sized one daily whether you like it or not. Numerous scientific studies concur that it has long-term health implications, good and bad, and in women especially can help regulate or prevent heart disease, diabetes and obesity (whereas skipping promotes them). Dinner until breakfast is also the longest period that the body goes without food, so not eating it or not eating adequately makes you an idiot. The typical person will go between ten and twelve hours between dinner and breakfast, which is about half a day. You may not be as active during the night as you are during the day, but the night is the time when the body heals and restores itself (assuming you sleep) and that depletes your blood sugar levels because it's working with slow-burn carbohydrates, meaning if you don't eat properly, you are attempting to function when your body does not have energy levels that are functionable (which can lead to developing type II diabetes). This is a stupid idea. Furthermore, you then expect to starve yourself an extra four to six hours, depending on when you get up and when you each lunch, and this means you are likely to snack, and under these circumstances, most people will snack unhealthily on sugary foods to give them a quick energy fix, raising the likelihood of obesity, and, because these snacks also involve large quantities of fat, heart attacks. Therefore, not taking breakfast seriously can kill you, so just eat it if it's put in front of you.

Given the quantity of food I've been cooking for you, do you really think I could eat everything I have by myself? This is a good cause. Please just accept it. Sharing is caring, or so they say.

What looked like a smiley face had been scribbled out in biro. A little charmed, Jinsu escaped back into her room with her breakfast before anybody else could appear, and absently turned the paper over as she dipped the toast fingers into the soft-boiled egg that had reappeared.

P.S. I've added scrambled eggs since I know you don't like them, therefore you have no need to feel guilty about throwing food at Minhwan.

It made her laugh, but the realisation came at the same time that the mystery chef was really paying attention to the foods he was giving her. Scrambled eggs had disappeared after the first day when she'd vaguely mentioned something about not being too keen on in a more or less public space. "Chopstick food" and "finger food" had appeared the morning after Noah had reminded everybody on the Attayear that she had a broken hand, presumably so that she wouldn't have to use a knife and fork. To some degree, it was unnerving that someone she didn't know was paying such close attention to her. But on the other hand, didn't this mean that person was more or less on her side? Maybe Yejun or Chanyeol had been lying to her about not being able to cook.

Yejun reported the state of her room to Noah, who declared it vandalism, and Jino got involved. Jinsu and Chanyeol, as the only ones it couldn't have been, headed off towards the town with Kyungsoo and Yejun while everybody else was hauled in for investigating. Jinsu couldn't help feeling a little embarrassed at such a big deal being made of it, but as Chanyeol pointed out when she told him about it, it was the equivalent to somebody breaking and entering and trashing her house. There probably wasn't going to be a massive penalty on whoever it was beyond being put on human dishwater duty for the rest of the trip, but it was still something not to be tolerated.

It was an altogether pleasant day in the town. The sun shone brightly and several musicians were playing in the streets or singing, attracting crowds of listeners. Chanyeol wandered through the streets with her, and arm around her waist, while Yejun disappeared off somewhere unknown and Kyungsoo announced he was going to see if he could record any more interesting things from the retired royal secretary. Once the cousins had found the jokduri-maker and Jinsu had walked away with six or seven incredibly pretty jokduri (three for herself because Chanyeol insisted and four for whichever historical association back home wanted them) and Chanyeol had surreptitiously recorded the conversation Jinsu had had with the lady about the way the jokduri were made, they found themselves talking to a local potter who initially mistook them for a newlywed couple from the nobility. He gave them a large and very pretty glazed jar that had come out purple due to the clays used in it when it was glazed. Jinsu had the presence of mind to ask him to stamp it and then took an interest in various other pots and jars and ornaments he was making, wondering if it was worth buying some to bring back. It was awkward until they were out of the shop, but once they were back in daylight, they both couldn't hold back their laughter.

As the day wore on, they began to bump into people released from the Attayear since it had been determined that they weren't the vandals. Jinsu was alarmed to see Minhwan in the street with a couple of his friends, especially since he was the person who was most likely to have done it, and she let out a squeak and dragged Chanyeol into a side-street, where they collided with somebody who was also lurking and ended up in a tangle of limbs on the ground.

Chanyeol was the first to sit up, spitting out dirt.

"Byeong joo?" he asked in surprise. Jinsu froze.

"Get off me, you fat lump," Byeong joo protested despite the fact that he was clinging to Chanyeol in what looked like relief. "Would they even say fat lump here?"

Chanyeol pried Byeong joo off him and got to his feet, hauling the other two upright by the scruffs of their necks. Jinsu tried to sidle behind her cousin.

"Why are you skulking in the back alleys?" Chanyeol asked.

Byeong joo jerked his thumb towards the main street. "Resident douchebag is out and about. He's not pleased because I ratted on seeing him sneak into Empress Snobbery's bedroom with a friend last night. Wasn't going to say anything initially but Jino got Noah to lock us all up in solitary confinement in separate rooms in the Attayear and I was bursting for a piss and had no access to a toilet so I had to bargain with the information. I think Minhwan's managed to pin the blame on somebody else, but I'm worried he might know it was me." He dusted dirt off his knees. "Lowering my standards, I am," he muttered. "Helping Jinny Park because I needed the bathroom. God."

"Er..." Chanyeol cleared his throat. "Well, I guess Minhwan—"

But Byeong joo's gaze had slid past his tall friend to the girl cowering behind him.

"Should have known," he muttered. "Well, you owe me, so you can be my b*tch for the day."

"Byeong joo!" Chanyeol interrupted. Byeong joo flashed him an unconvincing smile.

"It's okay, I don't want anything to do with your cousin. I'd get contaminated."

"Can you just..." Chanyeol closed his eyes. "Maybe... shut up or something?"

It was apparently the wrong thing to say. "What, like the way your uncle shut me up, Chanyeol? I don't hold anything against you, but her?" He jabbed a finger at Jinsu. "Don't make me laugh." Without bothering to check whether Minhwan had gone, because apparently being in Jinsu's presence was worse than potential repercussions from Minhwan, Byeong joo stomped off into the main street.

Something of Jinsu's disappointment with both herself and Chanyeol in not challenging Byeong joo on his insidious statements must have showed in Jinsu's face, because he massaged his temples and apologised.

"I kind of feel like Lelouch," he mumbled. Jinsu stopped feeling sorry for herself to shoot him an inquisitive look. "You know, Code Geass?"

She slowly shook her head.

"It's set in an alternate universe and Lelouch is this exiled prince—" Seeing her blank look, Chanyeol cut to the chase. "Basically, there's this one part where he tells somebody he can't be friends with a goddess because he has signed a contract with a devil. And I kind of feel like that right now with you and Byeong joo, except Byeong joo isn't a devil – that would be Minhwan – and I haven't signed a contract with him and he's actually my best friend and normally really nice, but still, you get what I mean."

"But he talks like that about me normally, doesn't he?"

Chanyeol grimaced. "Yeah. When he talks about you at all, which isn't often."

"I want some scrambled egg to throw at him," Jinsu muttered.

It took several seconds for Chanyeol to process what she'd said. "What?" he asked. "Why? Why would you want to waste food like that?"

Jinsu ended up telling him about her little written exchange with the mystery chef. Chanyeol just looked even more confused when she'd finished.

"You'd willingly part with a gourmet breakfast every morning because Minhwan's a d*ck?" he demanded. "Jinsu, we need to go find you some brain cells here."

"You don't understand—" Jinsu attempted to re-explain, but Chanyeol was already marching off on a pretend search, dragging Jinsu along with him. He turned to raise an eyebrow at her.

"There's nothing to understand here," he told her. "You tried to reject good food for no reason. That's all there is to it."

Jinsu stopped struggling and let him tug her along.

"Jimin once told me that the only way to get a boy to understand you is with food."

"D*mn straight."

She sighed.

"Everybody knows the best way to a boy's heart is through his stomach."

At Chanyeol's words, a sudden thought struck Jinsu. It was such a weird notion that she wasn't surprised she hadn't thought of it before, and she wanted to dismiss it.

"Chanyeol, you don't reckon the mystery chef's trying to hit on me, right? Or make it look like they're hitting on me to humiliate me later?"

That gave Chanyeol pause for thought. "You'd probably know who it was if they were hitting on you to humiliate you," he pointed out. "They'd want you to get cosy with them so they could hurt you."

Jinsu gulped. She didn't really like the prospect of somebody on the Attayear having a crush on her. It was either somebody she barely knew who had been paying almost stalkerish levels of attention to her, or (very unlikely) somebody who had turned a blind eye to Byeong joo bullying her. Either way, it was also likely that they'd just stood by while Minhwan got to work, too. Yejun and Chanyeol were the only exceptions, but both had confessed to being awful cooks – not to mention Chanyeol was related to her – and she knew that both she and Yejun were way too platonic to be comfortable with anything being romantic. The only other people who'd been reasonably nice to her (which didn't necessarily indicate a crush) were Hamin, Kyungsoo and Eunho. Hamin was out (sadly) since he had a girlfriend already and had been in the village overnight and she'd still been given breakfast on that occasion. Eunho and Kyungsoo she wasn't sure about, but she knew by reputation that Eunho was a bit of a ladies' man – she'd heard rumours about a girlfriend, too – and even though Kyungsoo was being unusually nice to her, she figured she knew him enough to say that his response to the letter she'd written the mystery chef would most likely have been shut up and eat the f*cking food. Eunho probably wouldn't have crossed out a smiley face. Kyungsoo would never have put one there in the first place.

Oh, and there was Junmyeon. He'd been fairly nice to her. But he was vegetarian, and Jinsu believed Yejun when he said his step-brother wouldn't go near meat with a bargepole.

"For what it's worth," Chanyeol told her, "at the prizegiving dinner, a lot of people thought you looked really hot. I tried to tell you but then your dad showed up and just nope." He looked around. "Where are we?"

"Have you got us lost?"

"...No?"

"Chanyeol!"

"Maybe?"

"Why am I related to you?"

"Yes."

Chapter 26

To Jinsu's relief, nobody had been in to mess up her room again while she was out in the town. After washing as best she could and changing into clothes from her own time, she set about tweaking her room to the perfection it ought to be (Yejun had done a good job; he just wasn't a perfectionist), she began to prepare what she was going to wear and need for the next day.

She spent a long time deliberating over her camera. Not having two functioning hands meant that she was at much greater risk of being caught with it, and also that she couldn't hold it completely steady to take a photo, which would mean the quality wasn't good enough. She wondered how Kyungsoo would respond if she asked him to send her some of his photos. He seemed to be snap-happy, and she knew he had some good ones. Eventually, she set her camera aside and got together the things she needed. They only had two days left in Balhae and she needed to get a sizeable collection of souvenirs to bring back for the historical society her father had given her money on behalf of.

That was when she discovered that the sack of gold he'd given her was missing. Due to its weight, Jinsu had only been taking a pouch with her after the episode with the tiger, and she'd been refilling it as and when needed. She hadn't spent enough the previous day to need to top up, but with Chanyeol's help, she'd almost cleaned herself out of money.

Jinsu's initial instinct was that Yejun must have put it somewhere strange when he'd been tidying up her room for her, but in the back of her mind she knew that he'd never asked about the sack's living place, and she'd never seen him pick it up. Nevertheless, she searched through her room and the bathroom, and then again more frantically, and then again a third and a fourth time, in her distress doing something she never did: pulling things out haphazardly and casting them aimlessly aside, because the money had to be there somewhere.

Except it wasn't.

Jinsu could feel her heart beginning to race. If she didn't bring back enough souvenirs, her father would be angry with her, but if he found out it was because she'd lost the money, he'd go ballistic. In fact, he'd go ballistic over her losing the money whether or not she'd brought back enough souvenirs. Panicking, she scrabbled through her belongings again, her broken hand beginning to protest.

Admitting it was useless when nothing showed up, she left her room in a fluster to see if Yejun was in his and he could help, but he wasn't. Jinsu found herself turning to her cousin's room instead and pounding on the door, trying to hold back her tears. It was opened by Hamin.

"Whoa," he said, looking her up and down. "You okay?"

"Chanyeol," she told him frantically. "I need Chanyeol—"

He opened the door and stepped back, giving her a blurred view of the room. It was surprisingly neat for a space with four boys cramped into it. Byeong joo was sprawled on his bed, one foot propped on a bent knee as he read a book while Kyungsoo looked up from where he was lying on his belly on the bedding that was on the floor to see what the commotion was. As Jinsu hastily rubbed her eyes clear, she thought she saw him frown. Chanyeol distracted her by appearing, though.

He was instantly alarmed. "What happened?"

"I-I—" Jinsu struggled to swallow, aware that she needed more air. "It's gone, Yeol – Dad's gonna kill me; I don't know what to do—"

Chanyeol looked puzzled. "What is?"

A sort of squeak escaped Jinsu, but the lump of terror in her throat was too big for her to talk around, and she just shook her head, quivering like a leaf. A hand landed on her back and started rubbing soothing circles.

Jinsu burst into tears, beyond feeling humiliated by it. "He's going to be so angry!" she managed between her sobs. She felt Chanyeol folding her into a hug and sank gratefully into the comfort of his chest. The other hand was still patting her back gently.

"It's all right," Chanyeol murmured.

"No it's not! You don't know what he's like!" Suddenly, Chanyeol's arms were suffocatingly close. It barely even registered to Jinsu that it had only been a couple of seconds of physical contact, but it felt stifling, threatening, and she tried to push him away so that she could pace out the nervous energy. "I-I-I can't do this – he's going to think I'm a failure again – he's going to start thinking that women shouldn't be involved with money as well as science—"

Bedsprings creaked as Byeong joo got up, setting the book aside, and left the room. Chanyeol managed to grab Jinsu back again and pull her to a halt.

"So..." said Kyungsoo, taking advantage of the silence, "why is your dad a prospective w*nker for when you get back home?"

Jinsu just shook her head frantically. Kyungsoo was going to agree with her dad, she was sure of it—

"Wait." Kyungsoo put down his phone. "Money... is this something to do with the massive sack of gold you had on the first day?"

Relieved that she didn't have to say anything, Jinsu nodded.

"And it's gone?" Kyungsoo confirmed.

Jinsu nodded again. Hamin whistled.

"That was a lot of money," he observed.

"Eunho and I didn't tell anyone about it," Kyungsoo said, "because then everybody would want it. Did you?"

"Of course not." Hamin sounded insulted.

"I-I had it... yesterday," Jinsu got out.

"And then Minhwan trashed your room and stole it," Chanyeol pieced together. "The f*cker. We all get given about fifty gold coins to spend every day if we need to. He doesn't need anymore."

"Minhwan is a d*ck," Kyungsoo said as though it solved everything, picking his phone back up. "I'd leave him alone with a tiger any day."

"We should probably tell Jino," said Hamin. "Or we could just break into Minhwan's room during dinner and get it back."

"He's probably spent some of it by now, though," Chanyeol pointed out.

"Great," said Kyungsoo. "Jinsu has a personal slave to pay off debt."

It was enough to make a small hiccup of laughter bubble up through Jinsu, and even though he was engrossed in some kind of onscreen game, Kyungsoo grinned. It was a gentle expression, one that Jinsu barely saw and that shaped his lips almost like a heart.

"Made you laugh," he declared with the pride of a five-year-old child, making Hamin and Chanyeol both snort.

It was beginning to get embarrassing just how many times Jinsu had to go to the grown ups about some kind of problem, and she wasn't sure it would solve anything. Jino didn't look particularly thrilled about having to quarantine boys yet again so that it was possible to find the money bag, but he agreed that over supper, he'd announce a room search because some boys had been bringing back some things they shouldn't have done (he said this staring at a large pile of plant leaves and Hamin whispered to Chanyeol that he thought they might be drugs or hallucinogenics).

"Some of the boys who went west rather than east like you found a shaman living on the mountain," Jino said with blatant disapproval. "He's not far past the Attayear and they probably weren't the only ones."

Hamin immediately raised his hand. "If we pay for the services and otherwise don't do anything like bring back funky plants, can we ask this shaman to read our fortunes."

Jino threw him a withering look.

"Just asking," Hamin muttered with irritation.

"Byeong joo went," Chanyeol murmured. "Said the guy declared he couldn't exist because he couldn't get a reading on him. He thought it was hilarious."

Jino didn't think it was quite so funny and kicked them out to go to dinner.

Unlike previous evenings, where one or two very kind people had taken food out of the communal fridge and cooked for everyone, dinner was in dribs and drabs that night depending on who wanted to cook what and when. Jino cobbled people at the door to tell them about a room search, and then that the Attayear was locked and that nobody was going outside when some of them panicked. Kyungsoo had remained upstairs for whatever reason, but Hamin didn't seem to see any problem with sitting with Jinsu and offered to get food for her and Chanyeol if they both found somewhere to sit.

"Your hand looks sore," Chanyeol noted, reaching across the table for it before Jinsu could pull it away and out of sight. She just nodded, a bit out of it. There wasn't very long before they were going back, and money was easily spent. Who knew if she'd actually get anything back?

They had just started eating when Minhwan and a couple of friends came in, laughing with each other. Jinsu immediately shrank down in her seat when she heard them, trying to become invisible. Hamin tugged at her sleeve.

"He's not looking this way."

"But if he got in trouble for messing up my room, he's going to be worse," she complained in a weak voice.

"You can stay with us until you want to go to sleep, then," Hamin told her, going back to his own food. "He probably won't bother you if you're with friends."

His use of the word friends brought Jinsu up short, and she swallowed. Was five days of her being foisted on their company enough to classify them as friends? Why would somebody like Hamin even want her as a friend? Hamin appeared blissfully unaware of what he'd just said, but the paranoia remained with Jinsu for the rest of the meal.

Jinsu almost took Hamin up on his invitation when the three of them went back upstairs, but she knew that she was going to have to tidy her room or she wasn't going to be able to concentrate on anything that night, much less have fun, so she said goodbye to Hamin and her cousin outside her door and slipped inside, eyes closed and taking a deep breath to brace herself.

When she opened her eyes again, it was to find calm. Neat, tidy calm everywhere. Nothing was scattered on the floor as it had been previously. Bewildered, she looked around her room. Someone had been in there, clearly, but... they'd picked up and folded all the clothes she'd flung around in her panic and put them on the bed. All the other non-clothing articles she'd cast aside had been lined up in height order on her desk.

For the first time in weeks, Jinsu felt her eyes prickling with tears that weren't from emotional pain. Gratitude washed over her, and she made her way over to the desk chair and sat down heavily in it, trying to process what had happened. Her immediate thought was Yejun, but then she caught sight of the note on the desk.

I don't know where anything goes, but I know that if you came back to the condition your room was in, you'd have another meltdown and I figured this was better than nothing, right?

It was the same writing as the mystery chef. Jinsu looked around, as if it would give her a clue as to who this person was.

Her eye fell on the sack that had been propped up beside the desk, and she gasped, reaching quickly towards it to open it up. Another note lay inside, on top of a depleted store of gold and coins, but the sack was still about half full, which was better than nothing.

Dashing away the tears of happiness and relief, Jinsu picked up the note and held it up so she could read it.

I risked my life for this, it read. You owe me.

Jinsu chuckled. She wasn't sure how the mystery chef had found out about the missing money, but to go to all this effort to help her was incredibly kind. In particular, tidying her room for her was well beyond the call of duty.

There was a soft knock at the door and Yejun poked his head around. Jinsu beckoned him in, still smiling at the two notes.

"I don't want to marry you anymore," she announced. "I want to marry whoever this person is who's been cooking me breakfast."

"Good choice," Yejun said at once, taking the notes out of her hands. "He'll look after you much better than I ever would. Is this him?"

Jinsu nodded. Yejun's eyes scanned rapidly over the notes and he turned them over before letting out a melodramatic sigh and putting them down again.

"Disgraceful," he announced. "I was expecting a love sonnet at the very least."

Jinsu beamed. "He went into Minhwan's room to get my money back."

Yejun dropped the jokey act. "Do you have any idea who this might be?"

"No."

"Don't you want to know?"

Jinsu thought about it. "I don't think he wants me to know."

"This isn't about what he wants."

Jinsu bit her lip. "I think it would break the magic," she murmured. "Maybe on the last day or once we're off the Attayear, but not until then."

Yejun nodded. "Fair enough, I guess." He looked back down at the first note. "Why was your room a mess?"

Jinsu pointed to the money sack. "I realised that was missing and I was trying to find it."

"So you messed it up?" A frown creased Yejun's forehead. Jinsu nodded. "Let me see your hand."

She held it out to him. He inspected it and then sighed. "It's swollen up a little. What was going through your mind to make you do that?"

Hesitating, Jinsu looked away. "Well... my dad."

"The b*stard," Yejun muttered angrily.

"But he didn't do anything—"

"Jinsu, how badly does he treat you for you to mess up your own room trying to find something when you freak out the second something's a millimetre out of place?" Yejun's voice rose angrily. "Who cares if he's here? If that's the kind of effect he has on you, that's appalling!"

Jinsu didn't have an answer to that.

"You know what?" said Yejun. "When we get back home, if it gets you out of that house and away from that man, I'll happily be your fiancé or marry you. Once you're safely out of his way, if you find somebody else, you can go on and marry them instead, or we can find some way to set you up as a fabulous single lady, but this just isn't right. At the very least, he can't threaten me with cutting off financial aid or disinheritance or anyth—"

He stopped talking abruptly. Jinsu frowned, curious.

"Why would he threaten to cut you off financially? Your family's extremely rich."

Yejun's adam's apple bobbed. "Forget I said that." Puzzled, Jinsu dropped the subject.

It wasn't until several hours later, as she was lying in bed chasing vainly after sleep with his words going round and round in her head, that Jinsu put two and two together.

Disinheritance.

Jimin.

Her father was trying to put some kind of wedge between her and her brother.

Chapter 27

*Warning: the latter half of this chapter contains unpleasant insinuations and propositioning minor harrassment. Nothing graphic, but I've marked the passage with * at the open and close for anybody uncomfortable so they can skip/miss it if they want.*

Jinsu didn't know which she was more taken aback by when she opened her door the next morning: the note from the mystery chef or the visitors.

The previous night, after Yejun had left and Chanyeol had come knocking to see if she was okay and then left to inform Jino that the money had been returned, Jinsu had left a very short, very simple note to the person saying I can't thank you enough. The response she'd got was I'd really rather you didn't try. She couldn't work out if the mystery chef was being dismissive or modest.

But she hardly had time to try because of the three boys outside her door.

Kyungsoo and Eunho were sitting cross-legged on the floor with knives and forks in hand, gazing up at her expectantly. Hamin was attempting to haul them away, his face flame red with embarrassment.

"You have lots of good food," Kyungsoo proclaimed.

"Feed us!" Eunho agreed, opening his mouth like a hungry baby bird. Jinsu stared from her tray to the boys.

"I am so sorry for these two idiots," Hamin apologised, giving up on attempting to drag them both away at the same time and grabbing Kyungsoo by the back of the collar with both hands instead. He managed to pull the boy backwards a couple of steps before Kyungsoo squawked and went comically cross-eyed, pretending that Hamin was strangling him.

"But Jinsu has more than enough food for one person," Eunho protested stubbornly. "She has at least enough for three."

"Friends share," Kyungsoo piped up, eyes bright, as Hamin let go of him.

Jinsu looked back at the tray again. She could probably give them the scrambled eggs, since there was no Minhwan to throw them at—

"Friends do not steal and eat all of each other's food," Hamin said firmly, this time trying his luck with Eunho, "and you are a bottomless pit."

"But Jinsu has Cumberland sausages!" Eunho protested, flailing. "Cumberland sausages are delicious!"

"Exactly why she won't want to share them with you."

Bewildered, Jinsu watched the bickering for several moments, wondering how on earth her life had ended up like this.

"Er..." Jinsu's brain went blank, and she stepped back, pushing the door open. "Come in...?"

Correctly interpreting it as an invitation to join Jinsu for food, Eunho and Kyungsoo both shot off the ground and into her room, Eunho dragging Hamin along with him.

"Wow," said Eunho, looking around and moving to the desk to absently move things about. "This is ridiculously neat."

Hamin slapped his hand back to his side. "Don't mess up her stuff."

Eunho jumped, looking chagrined, and smiled apologetically. Something about the interaction had Jinsu gulping. People at school joked about her having OCD all the time and made fun of her for it, possibly not realising the extent to which it was damaging, or just finding it amusing, but it looked like somebody had told Eunho that it was actually severe, and the only two people Jinsu reckoned would have mentioned it were Hamin and her cousin.

Kyungsoo, by contrast, looked like he didn't quite know where to put himself, and from the way he glanced at her for permission before gingerly sitting on the spare bed, Jinsu knew that he must have been brought up to speed on her condition as well. Hamin was the only one who seemed anything like comfortable.

"Are you sure you're okay with this?" he asked dubiously, keeping his weight off his bad leg. "We can eat downstairs. They're just being tools."

"What a nice thing to say about your friends wanting to keep somebody company," Kyungsoo said blandly.

"You were the one who said she wasn't in a good way yesterday," Eunho added, flinging himself down on the bed next to Kyungsoo, "and we have to look out for the Attayear's princess because she's our group buddy, not just because a tiger might eat her."

Hamin plonked himself down in the spare chair, looking like his leg wasn't going to take him standing for much longer. Jinsu wondered how he'd managed to walk as far as the town in the condition he was in the previous day.

"Chanyeol said you got the money back," Hamin said.

Unsure what to do with herself, especially with so many people in the room, Jinsu hesitated before crossing to the desk and putting the tray of food on it.

"Yeah," she murmured. After a few more awkward moments, she sat down in the remaining chair. It was unnerving to have the boys' undivided attention in a space that she considered her own. "Someone brought it back."

The silence that followed was stifling.

"That's good," offered Eunho, and the others nodded. Jinsu nudged the tray in the direction of Eunho and Kyungsoo.

"Help yourselves. This is what you're here for, right?"

Both of them looked absolutely scandalised.

"We're not having a bite until you've had some."

"Yeah, we were only doing that as a joke to cheer you up," Kyungsoo explained. "Not eating breakfast is really bad for you. Stuff your face."

The prospect of them sitting there and watching her eat was even more awkward than the situation currently was. Hamin seemed to realise this and sighed. He reached out, breaking a sausage in two, and popped half into his mouth before offering the other half to Jinsu.

"Hamin!" Eunho complained as Jinsu took the half sausage, her fingers brushing against Hamin's greasy ones.

"I'm trying to keep the atmosphere comfortable." He glared at the other two. "Nobody wants people sitting there staring at them while they eat a plate full of food."

"Good point." Kyungsoo reached for a mini hash brown. Come to that, apart from the sausages and the eggs, everything had been sized as finger food again.

Eunho shrugged and went for the food with his fork as well. Jinsu was surprised when he shoved the square of bacon towards her instead, leaning across a protesting Kyungsoo to do so.

"Did you know you were going to be designated the youth ambassador for science before you turned down the top prize at the competition?" he asked her curiously, now getting a sausage for himself. "I can't think why any sane person would turn down the opportunity of a lifetime to go into the past. You must've known it was going to be part of the prize."

"Noah even said you'd designed some of the interior," Kyungsoo agreed.

Jinsu shifted uncomfortably, unsure really what to say. Did she really want more people knowing about her relationship with her father?

"See," said Eunho, "I heard from a reliable source that your father is an absolute a*hole – no offence, of course – and that he forced you into giving up the prize."

"It does feel a bit weird there were no female winners," Hamin agreed. "I saw in the stats that there was a 70:30 ratio of boys and girls who entered and that was pretty obvious in the prizegiving hall as well."

"On the flip side, it would have looked like nepotism if you'd won," Kyungsoo pointed out, helping himself to some scrambled egg, "but not nearly as nepotistic as getting you the ambassadorial role looks."

"That was weird, though," Eunho murmured. "That feels more like a sore loser saying 'my daughter ought to be on here, but she didn't win, so I'm going to do it some other way', no?"

Kyungsoo looked up at him. "Remind me who's on my winning team again?"

"Oh, sh*t," Eunho realised. "Kim Byeong joo." He turned to Jinsu. "God, he really threw you under the bus, didn't he? Did he force you on here because he couldn't take the prize away from Byeong joo? What a d*ck."

"Eunho!" Hamin glared at him again.

Eunho retreated his fork, looking a little abashed. "Ah, sorry... We probably shouldn't be talking about your dad like this in front of you, should we?"

"I honestly don't think she gives a f*ck," droned Kyungsoo. "Do you give a f*ck, Jin?"

It took Jinsu several moments to reply, since the surprise at hearing her brother's pet name for her coming from a classmate was something she had to process.

"Not really, no," she admitted.

"You are cold and unfilial," Kyungsoo told her with a completely straight face. "Well, there you have it, guys. Jinsu doesn't give a f*ck, so we can continue to think that her dad is a b*stard."

It took slightly longer to realise that Kyungsoo was joking, because Jinsu still wasn't used to his sense of humour, but she allowed herself a small smile.

"You're right," she told Eunho.

"See?" he fired at Hamin. Hamin raised his hands defensively.

"After the state she was in last night, I didn't think it would be a good idea to bring her father up. I admit I was wrong. Can I have a croissant?"

Breakfast was far from a quiet affair. Chanyeol showed up just a couple of minutes later to check on her, and Yejun breezed in a few seconds after, followed by Junmyeon, who paled at the amount of meat on Jinsu's tray and stood a little over to the side of the room. The response of the newcomers to the boys in Jinsu's room was identical to the boys-already-there's response to the newcomers: what are you doing here and why are you eating Jinsu's breakfast?

"You should have told us you were cribbing off your cousin for food," Kyungsoo said to Chanyeol around a very large mouthful of said food. "This is delicious."

Chanyeol looked a bit annoyed. "This is the exact reason why I didn't."

Yejun immediately started fussing with the food on the plate, swatting away hands as he moved things onto the now empty sideplate that had contained the pastries. He put it in front of Jinsu and moved the boiled eggs and toast towards her.

"Kick them out next time," he told her. "Do Eunho is a bottomless pit."

"Why does everybody say that?" Eunho protested, deftly stealing a finger of Jinsu's toast.

"Because it's true," Junmyeon said from the wall. "Literally the only thing I've seen you refuse to eat was a gluten-free chocolate brownie—"

"Stop." Eunho held up a hand. "That brownie was gluten-free, dairy-free, egg-free and taste-free. If you call that food, you are doing a disservice to humanity."

Everybody laughed at Eunho's indignant tone. Grinning to herself, Jinsu took another finger of toast and loaded it up with scrambled egg, presenting it to the human dustbin.

"Gluten-rich, dairy-rich, egg-rich and taste-rich," she announced. "Brownie for you."

Kyungsoo snorted with laughter as Eunho stared at the proffered food in confusion, and then gave Jinsu a rather worried look.

"Please never cook for me," Eunho whimpered.

Hamin grinned. "You were asking for that one, Eunho. Shall I see if I can find some chocolate sprinkles for your brownie?"

Everybody laughed at the horrified look on Eunho's face.

"That is a crime against food! Never put chocolate on anything savoury, you tasteless person!"

"No brownie for you, then." Hamin plucked the eggs-on-toast finger out of Jinsu's hand and crammed it whole into his mouth. He looked so pleased with himself it was almost sickeningly cute.

The upshot of being gatecrashed meant that Jinsu felt much more comfortable setting out into the forest with Eunho, Kyungsoo and Hamin almost an hour later. A cynical part of her brain tried to insist that they were just faking it, and that it was only temporary and that they were going to let her down, or that they were doing it out of pity, but that was much harder to believe than it had been on previous occasions.

"Who wants to see the shaman?" Hamin asked excitedly as the main track came into sight. "I want to see the shaman. Let's all go see the shaman."

Almost as if it had been planned, Kyungsoo and Eunho grabbed Jinsu's arms.

"We're off to see the wizard!" Kyungsoo belted out as he and Eunho danced along the track, pulling Jinsu along with them. Several nearby birds squawked and took flight.

"The wonderful wizard of Oz!" Eunho yelled, not even tuneful.

"Anachronology!" Hamin bellowed from behind them.

Kyungsoo turned to look back over his shoulder. "You're just salty because you're the scarecrow."

Huffing, Hamin caught up with them. "How am I the scarecrow?"

"Everyone knows I'm heartless, which makes me the tin woodman; Jinsu's got the longest hair so she has to be the cowardly lion; and Eunho has the prettiest eyes and several hundred dogs, which necessarily makes him Dorothy," Kyungsoo explained, as though it was blatantly obvious. "Ergo, you must be the scarecrow. You're tall and lanky, so you fit the bill."

Jinsu tried not to giggle, but it was futile.

"Jinsu agrees with me," Kyungsoo added, in a tone that said case settled.

"You look pretty when you laugh," Eunho observed absently, taking Jinsu by surprise. She felt her cheeks flooding with colour and looked away.

"She's going to think you're hitting on her if you say that," Kyungsoo said at once.

"Stone me for telling the truth," Eunho grumbled.

The other two boys snickered, and for the next few minutes, they walked without talking, taking in the sounds of the forest instead.

Kyungsoo was the one who stopped them, halting and letting go of Jinsu. "Did you hear that?"

Eunho also let go, moving forward a little as if to hide Jinsu and Kyungsoo, being the smaller two, from view. There were sounds nearby, as if a large animal was moving about.

"Relax," Hamin told them. "I think that's a horse. I can hear human voices."

Kyungsoo's shoulders did relax. "Yeah, I think you're right," he admitted.

They continued walking again, and not long after, they rounded the corner to a wider part of the path to see a trio of men sitting on tree stumps eating what looked to be lunch. Three horses were tethered to a nearby tree and nipping at the scant grass. All three men were armed.

Deciding they probably weren't too dangerous, as they didn't look like brigands, the four from the Attayear greeted them and continued on up the track. The three men greeted them back and simply continued on with their meal.

It was another half hour before they reached the shaman's shrine. Hamin was a little pale in the face as it had been quite a steep uphill climb, and he was using an unprotesting Kyungsoo as a crutch. They passed through a gate made of wood, which consisted of a short fence-like construction to either side, no more than a couple of metres long, and what looked like a doorway set into the air rather than a wall, the familiar bowed Korean roofshape as the lintel. Behind was the shrine itself, the colours of the building familiar in their greens, reds and yellows. Jinsu noticed the taegeuk symbol over the doors.

The shaman was sitting in what looked to be the lotus position on the steps down from the doors, eyes closed. He was wearing an extravagant hat and very colourful robes, the combination of which was enough to make anybody's eyes water. Jinsu was glad she wasn't the only one wincing: out of the corner of her eye, she saw Hamin and Kyungsoo both cringe.

As they came closer, the shaman's eyes snapped open, and his gaze went straight to Hamin.

"I sense you have come for healing," he said in a deep voice. Hamin jumped.

"Yes?" he said in a voice that screamed I have? Somebody, help!

"Come," the shaman intoned, getting to his feet and heading up the steps into the shrine.

"I'm not going in there alone!" Hamin hissed as Kyungsoo pushed him forward.

The shaman turned in the doorway. "Come," he repeated.

Exchanging wary glances, the four of them followed. Kyungsoo immediately busied himself with his phone, murmuring something about rituals and need to film this before tucking the device down the front of his top, which he rearranged. It looked like he'd done it before. Jinsu wondered exactly how much of the stay in Balhae he was recording, but she had to admit that it was a smart idea.

It was incredibly dim inside the shrine. , and that wasn't helped by the fact that it had been so bright outside. As Jinsu's eyes adjusted, she noticed two braziers with small fires in them, and copious amounts of incense or something similar cloyed the air, also making it difficult to see. The shadowy figure of the shaman turned to them in the smoke, casting something onto a small raised area. She flinched as it landed with a squelch, hoping that it wasn't what she thought it was.

But who was she kidding? She knew enough about the ancient religions of her country to know that these were probably entrails, and her stomach responded by churning.

The shaman turned back to them, pulling a petrified-looking Hamin forward. Kyungsoo and Eunho drifted after him, but as Jinsu summoned up the courage to go closer, the shaman held up a hand.

"No girls," he declared.

"But Jinsu's male," Eunho tried unconvincingly.

"And you are female," the shaman said, blatantly unconvinced.

Kyungsoo coughed out something that sounded very like Dorothy.

"It's okay," Jinsu told the boys. "I'll wait outside. I can't breathe properly in here anyway."

Even just a few moments inside the smoke-filled shrine was enough to have Jinsu gasping the fresh air in in relief when she stepped out into sunshine again. Wandering a little further into the clearing that the temple was in, she found herself a log to sit on and take stock. She had no idea how long the boys were going to be there for, but she was going to have to entertain herself somehow. Maybe by making daisy chains, except there were no daisies. There were plenty of other spring flowers in the grass, though.

From the shrine, she heard the shaman start a sing-songy chant. An image of Hamin's terrified face flashed before her, accompanied by a very disapproving one from Kyungsoo and a bemused one from Eunho, and she let out a little giggle.

"What's a pretty little thing like you doing out here all alone?" asked a voice from behind, making her jump. There was a soft whicker.

Turning, she saw that one of the horsemen from earlier was there. He had dismounted and was holding his horse by the reins. The horse itself looked far more interested in the grass.

"I'm just taking some fresh air while I wait for my friends," Jinsu explained.

Without asking if she minded him joining, the man sat down on the log beside her. "They'll be with the shaman for a while. He's never quick."

"Is that so?" Heart sinking, Jinsu fiddled with the material covering her lap. She could feel the man's eyes on her, almost as if he wanted her to turn and talk.

She did so, opening her mouth to ask him something, only to see the way he was looking at her. He was scanning her up and down in a hungry, almost predatory way that made her feel like a piece of meat. Unconsciously, she shifted further away from him.

He noticed and reached out to grab her wrist. "No need be so afraid. I won't do anything to you that you'll dislike."

Had that come from somebody like Hamin or Kyungsoo, Jinsu probably would have trusted it. Potentially even if it came from Byeong joo. But the gleam in this man's eyes was empty, utterly dead, and on instinct, Jinsu would have placed about as much faith in him as she would have done in Minhwan.

And coming from somebody like Minhwan, she actually would have taken that as a very nasty sexual innuendo. Deciding it was better safe than sorry, Jinsu got to her feet.

The man immediately stood up too. "Why don't I escort you to the nearest village?" he asked, gaze dropping from her face to her bust. "As I said, it will be some time before your friends are finished." He jerked his thumb towards the shrine, eyes drifting up towards her collar. "Besides, I have a horse, and it will be a quick ride down. I can bring you back again when everything is over."

Jinsu took a step back. "It's a kind proposal, but I'm afraid I'm not interested."

"In that case, how about a walk through the trees to pass the time?"

The man's insistence was beginning to ring alarm bells in Jinsu's head. Why would some random stranger be this bent on... whatever he was bent on – getting her away from the shrine? Getting her somewhere alone with him that was out of the way? And the way he was staring at her, almost as though he was undressing her with his eyes—

He stepped closer. "I don't think it would be a wise idea for me to leave you alone. There are predators in these woods and just a few days ago some travellers were nearly killed by a tiger. I can protect you—"

Jinsu threw caution to the winds and backed further away, towards the treeline. "At the moment, sir, you seem to be behaving like one of those predators. I told you I was not interested, and I object being looked at as though I'm a piece of meat."

He laughed. It was a cold sound, and Jinsu shuddered.

"Well, well, you do think highly of yourself if you just assume I'm interested in you like that." His eyes met hers, and that predatory gleam was back. "I like a girl with a bit of fire. It makes the conquest after the chase so much more worthwhile."

Jinsu's jaw nearly dropped at how surreal and ludicrous the situation was. This ridiculous man just seemed to think that because he'd decided he wanted her, he could have her. How was it possible to drill the meaning of no into somebody that densely narrow-minded?

Her shock let him get too close to her, and a stumpy hand caressed her cheek.

"But why make it hard for yourself?" he whispered in her ear. "If you get down off your high horse and stop being coy, why, I might give you gifts. You must know who I am. I'm rich. My father owns a large estate and has the ear of the king, and all the townspeople fear me. You wouldn't have to worry about anything, because the name Hae Insu bears weight—"

The second the name came, everything clicked. This was the disgusting-sounding son of the local lord that the scholar's wife had told her about, which meant that yes, Jinsu was right about everything she was speculating. She lashed out with her foot, the heavy heel of her boot crunching against the man's knee and he collapsed with a howl of pain. Jinsu turned to bolt, but he caught at her clothing.

"You worthless wh*re!" he yelled at her, abruptly done with attempting to be seductive. Jinsu struggled to get out of his reach and felt the thin silk of her hanbok tear. "Don't you dare run!"

He gave an almighty heave, pulling Jinsu onto the ground beside him, and she responded like a trapped cat, clawing at his face and kicking and struggling wildly. He managed to pin her down. Realising that he was much stronger than her, Jinsu ceased her movements, trying to work out the best course of action. But really, what kind of person just saw a girl and immediately thought of perverted stuff? There had to be something wrong with him.

"You'll pay for that," he growled, moving his hand from his wrist to hers. It was the broken one, and Jinsu's eyes watered with pain. She had no intention of paying for whatever he thought she'd done wrong, though, and with a last surge of effort, she twisted and bit hard down on his wrist, accidentally kneeing him in the family jewels with the same movement. Hae Insu let out an enraged howl of pain and let go of her to nurse his wrist. Jinsu was surprised to taste blood in her mouth – had she really bit that hard? – but she lost no time in scrambling away from him, rolling to her feet and then staggering past the treeline and into the forest.

"You won't get away with this, you b*tch!" she heard him yell behind her, followed by heavy footsteps. Jinsu stupidly looked back to see that he was following her, and she nearly tripped. Steadying herself against a tree, she picked up the front of her skirts with her protesting hand and bolted down into the undergrowth. Her top flapped loosely against her as she ran, and she realised that it had come undone, but there was no time to stop and tie it, especially with how long it took to it up with only one properly functioning hand.

Bushes and rocks and dips flashed past as she hurtled down the hill at an almost breakneck speed, Hae Insu crashing through the undergrowth behind her like an angry elephant. Several times, Jinsu tried to catch her breath to scream on the off chance that there was somebody nearby who could help, but she could never seem to fill her lungs enough.

At some point, she tripped outright and landed in a hidden dip overhung by bushes that almost entirely both concealed her view and concealed her from view. Panting, and with an ankle that felt like it was swelling up, Jinsu leant back against the earth wall of the dip and tucked herself into a little ball in an attempt to remain invisible. She could still hear Hae Insu crashing about nearby, but from the way he didn't move on past, he seemed to have realised she'd gone to ground.

"I know you're here!" he yelled, followed by a sharp swish and a crack that sounded like he'd whipped and broken a stick against a tree. Jinsu flinched, squeezing her eyes shut. "It's no use hiding!"

She covered her mouth, almost scared that her breathing was too loud.

The stomping tantrum continued for quite some time. Twice, Hae Insu passed so close to the bushes she was hidden by that the branches rustled against her, and once part of the earthen wall even caved in down the back of her clothing, tickling against her skin uncomfortably.

And then it abruptly all went silent.

Confused, Jinsu opened her eyes and strained her ears to listen. She didn't think she'd heard Insu storming off. Had he given up? Fallen asleep? Left quietly?

Deciding it was better to wait rather than coming out immediately, she remained as still as she could, doing her best to ignore the itch down the back of her clothes.

Five minutes passed. Then ten. Then thirty. Jinsu checked the seconds on her watch. As her legs cramped up, she began to wonder if she was being overly paranoid. He had left. He must have left. She knew that when somebody was terrified, their senses went into overdrive and they processed everything around them much more intensely than normal, so a large threatening animal could seem truly enormous, or something loud would be deafening. Maybe she just hadn't distinguished him walking away because she was so scared that everything sounded loud to her.

There were birds singing. That meant that nothing was disturbing them. Surely it was safe to go out.

As the hour mark passed, Jinsu's muscles began to scream in protest at being cramped up so much, and she was pretty sure that the boys would have left the shaman and be starting to worry. Besides, she had no idea where she was, and she'd have to find civilisation of some kind if she was going to get back to the Attayear before nightfall, and that could be hours away.

Carefully, she straightened up and clambered out of the dip, startling a deer that had been grazing quietly nearby and sending it leaping into the bushes.

See? The wildlife are out. Nothing to worry about.

She relaxed with an audible sigh.

And then somebody spoke just a little way off to the side, sending tension shooting up through her shoulders and neck.

"Well, well, well, patience really pays off, doesn't it?"

Hae Insu was standing against a tree not three feet away, and Jinsu suddenly realised that he and his friends from earlier must have been out hunting, because his clothing camouflaged him against the surroundings.

Jinsu stumbled a couple of steps back and practically sat down when her injured ankle gave out. She immediately started feeling around for anything that could be a weapon. Hae Insu laughed and took a step forward.

"Get away from me!" Jinsu spat at him.

"Oh, honey, you really think that's going to do anything?"

He flinched back when there was a sharp whizz and something thin streaked off through the trees to the side of them. Jinsu blinked, wondering what on earth it had been.

And then there was a crunch of twigs off to her right, and it registered that somebody else was on the scene.

"One wrong move and you get an arrow in the ass," said a furious male voice. "Just so you know."

Jinsu had never been so glad of his existence.

Chapter 28

"Yejun," Jinsu breathed out, her body quivering with relief. She had no idea how he had managed to stumble across them in this neck of the woods, or what he was doing with a bow (because hadn't Jino said it had to be locked away on the Attayear?), but the surety and power in his stance made her infinitely grateful Jimin had had the open-heartedness to befriend somebody so many years his junior. Yejun was just so utterly dependable.

And he also looked terrifying with the anger on his face and a weapon on his hands. Jinsu was glad she wasn't his enemy. Like Hae Insu, Yejun's clothing was in browns and greens, allowing him to blend in with the background, and she could see that some kind of thin arm guard had been laced to the inside of his left arm, presumably to protect it from the bowstring. His arms were completely steady as he held the bow raised, the tension obvious in the curve of the wood, and yet his upper body remained totally immobile. Jinsu was sure that it was supposed to be a real strain to hold that steady if you were an archer, and some part of her brain registered that actually, Yejun did have really well developed biceps, now she thought about it, but despite the fact that he was holding the flight of the arrow in line with his eye, he made it look absolutely effortless.

Alarmingly, Hae Insu didn't consider this to be a threat. He took a step forward.

"What are you going to do?" he laughed. "Shoot me? You can't kill me."

Jinsu stiffened and attempted to scramble back. He was right. Yejun couldn't do anything drastic or it would mess up a grandfather clause.

Hae Insu took another step towards Jinsu. "I'm too important to kill," he said lightly. "And your life will be forfeit if you do."

Yejun didn't seem to care. The bow creaked as he drew it further, the flight now level with his ear.

"Stop. Moving," he grated out.

Insu spread his hands, moving closer to Jinsu again, and smirked. "If you were going to shoot, you would already have shot me."

Jinsu could see Yejun's temper boiling over. She knew he was angry, and that Insu was despicable, but he still couldn't—

"Yejun!" she shrieked, but it was too late: there was a sharp twang, and almost exactly at the same time, a thunk of an arrow burying itself in flesh. Hae Insu howled in pain. Jinsu stared at Yejun in shock.

"I said, don't move," he repeated icily.

There was a second thwack, making Jinsu start, and another yell of pain. Trembling, Jinsu turned back to Hae Insu to see that he was still very much alive and standing – and that Yejun and somebody else had shot him in the feet, pinning him to the ground. She huffed out a little breath of relief, feeling the adrenaline beginning to fade, much as it had done after the tiger attack. Who had shot the second arrow? She looked around, trying to spot somebody.

But Hae Insu seemed possessed of a single-minded determination that was impossible to thwart. He pulled the arrows out of his feet, casting them aside, and Jinsu balked, fear and disgust rising in her throat again as he stomped closer. She attempted to get to her feet and get out of the way, but her legs were shaking too much for her to stand.

"You'll pay for that," he growled, locking eyes with her even though Yejun was the one who'd injured him. His hand dropped to his hip and a heavy rasp of steel rang in Jinsu's ears as he drew a short sword.

There were abruptly hands under Jinsu's armpits and then Yejun was trying to haul her away.

"You b*stard," Hae Insu spat out, raising the blade. Yejun stepped round in front of Jinsu, shielding her with his body. She wanted to scream at him not to, that he was mad to, and that Hae Insu didn't know the meaning of stop, but before she could draw in the breath, something whizzed through the air and collided with Hae Insu's temple, knocking him to the side.

Another object followed, striking true, and the man fell, poleaxed.

Yejun breathed out a sigh of relief and gripped Jinsu under the armpits again, this time managing to haul her upright.

"It's okay," he told her. She shrank against him, nodding.

"You're an idiot," she mumbled tearfully.

"You're welcome."

The space between the trees abruptly filled up with boys from the Attayear. With some surprise, Jinsu saw two of them with a dead deer lashed to a pole they were carrying across their shoulders, and Han was with them, directing a few of them off into the bushes after some other deer that somebody (probably Yejun) had apparently shot. Jinsu didn't really register much of what was going on, though, because her mind had gone oddly blank, and all she could really see was Hae Insu's eyes with their dead gleam and how close he'd got to her. For some reason, she'd broken out in a sweat, and all the voices sounded so very far away, as though they were at the end of a tunnel. Her teeth were chattering and it wasn't even cold. She thought somebody might be calling her name, and then she couldn't feel anything at all, or see anything. Perhaps the world tilted. Maybe Yejun's hands melted away. She didn't know.

"Sh*t, I think she went into shock."

"Byeong joo, did you throw a rock at her as well as at the old pervert?"

"She's just fainted, give me some space. Water, who has water?"

Then, in a much lower voice, "Block out Han's view and give me a plastic water bottle, somebody, for the love of God."

Jinsu's entire body felt so incredibly tired and heavy. Sleep. Sleep was what she needed. And—

Water splashed over her face and she jerked upright, spluttering. Somebody caught her and held her in a sitting position, pressing a water bottle to her lips, and she drank from it gratefully. But as coherence returned, she began to recognise the turbulent feeling in her stomach, and she pushed Yejun's arm and the water bottle away, shaking her head.

"What is it?" Yejun asked her anxiously.

She responded by throwing up.

"Don't worry – that's normal," said Kyuhyun. "My sister throws up every time she faints."

Jinsu gasped for breath, spitting out as much of the bad taste as she could, and then slumped back in Yejun's direction. He offered her the water again. She swilled it around her mouth to rise it and spat it out before returning for more, this time to drink. Her throat felt raw and acidic.

"Han alert," said Minho's voice, and the water bottle vanished.

Han's babyish face appeared in Jinsu's vision. "You okay?" he asked. He continued talking before Jinsu had a chance to reply. "I don't know who's more of an idiot – you for telling Hae Insu to get lost like he should have done or Yejun for shooting the d*ckhead."

"You shot him too," Yejun pointed out.

Han shrugged, smiling down at Jinsu and offering her his arm. "Lady Jinsu, if I may say so, you don't look terribly well. I was going to suggest you join us hunting, but it's probably best if you go back to your camp. One of the boys was planning to head back anyway because he'd had enough; he can walk you. Byeong joo?"

The name forced Jinsu back into full coherence, and she looked around in alarm. Byeong joo wasn't very hard to find since he was hovering towards the back of the group that had surrounded her when she'd fainted. He looked at horrified as she felt at the suggestion.

Jinsu attempted to get back to her feet, ignoring Han's arm. "I'll be okay walking by myself, don't worry," she babbled.

"I'll walk her," Yejun interrupted, looking just as horrified.

"Yejun, if you don't want your group hounded until you're out of the country, you'd better help me take the perverted nuisance back home to his mummy. She's about the only one capable of kicking sense back into him, even if it's only for a short while, but if you don't explain and apologise, there's going to be an awful ruckus. Particularly if Lord Hae in involved."

Yejun looked torn for several moments and then deflated. It was obvious he wanted to explain that they weren't going to be there for much longer than a day, and then Lord Hae would never be able to find them, but he could hardly start talking about the time machine, and there weren't exactly any other plausible or convincing excuses he'd be able to come up with.

On the other side, Byeong joo looked like he wanted to stay with the party rather than going back.

"We should get moving or we'll never catch the stag," Han said. Briefly wishing Jinsu a swift recovery, he was gone before anybody could object and hollering instructions at the boys. He practically dragged Yejun along with him.

Almost as quickly as they had arrived on the scene to begin with, the other boys melted away, leaving Jinsu standing alone with a thoroughly disgruntled Byeong joo. Jinsu tried to stop her teeth from chattering.

"Come on," he grunted, turning on his heel and walking away.

Jinsu hobbled after him, wincing at every other step. Her ankle felt weak – probably not a sprain, she reasoned, but it was definitely twisted. Attempting to ignore it worked as far as the pain went, but not as far as her ligaments went, because before they had been walking for two minutes, she'd almost turned it twice more.

Five minutes later, Byeong joo was almost out of sight between the trees ahead, and Jinsu was feeling clammy and lightheaded again, reminded of the fact that she hadn't had lunch and not that long ago had thrown up breakfast. It was also getting on into the afternoon, meaning that she hadn't eaten for about eight hours, possibly nine. It probably wasn't a surprise she'd fainted after the nastiness with Hae Insu.

Trying to fight off dizziness, Jinsu sat down and massaged her ankle, wondering if Byeong joo would just desert her there and if he even knew his way back to the Attayear from the middle of the woods.

"Keep up, Park," his voice snapped from above her. Reluctantly, Jinsu looked up. "I'll leave you behind if you don't."

"I can't walk," she retaliated with a fair amount of bitterness.

"Get yourself a stick," he said unsympathetically.

"Fine. Just go away." Jinsu buried her head in her knees. "Much better if I don't slow you and the rest of humanity up."

It actually was pretty cold. That or she was still feeling the after-effects of adrenaline in her system because her body wouldn't stop trembling violently. Or maybe it was reacting to the pain in her ankle.

To her surprise, she heard Byeong joo grumbling something about number four and then warm material draped around her shoulders. It was a comforting kind of heavy, and she let out a small noise of contentment. Next thing she knew, something cool and plastic was poking at her chin. She looked up to see a half-full water bottle. Byeong joo looked very conflicted in offering it to her, but he prodded insistently until she took it.

"I have chocolate if you stand up."

The calm tone of his voice really took Jinsu aback. If she hadn't known better, she might even have described it as gentle. Cautiously, she took a few swigs of water and then handed the bottle back. Then she attempted to push herself to her feet.

Byeong joo had to catch her because it was difficult to balance after lurching up with only one functioning arm and leg. The material he'd draped around her slipped off her shoulders, but he caught that too, tugging it up and doing it up with a pretty-looking clasp across the front. Jinsu belatedly realised that it was a cloak – and a really nice one at that.

The civility of the moment was brought to a rude halt when he all but shoved a bar of chocolate in her mouth. Jinsu coughed, turning her head away, and he seemed to get the message, because he held the remainder of the chocolate bar out for her to take herself. He handed her the water bottle again.

For twenty minutes, they walked in the most excruciating silence Jinsu had ever experienced. He kept at her pace, no matter how annoyed he looked, and she tried not to limp along too slowly in case he got more irritated and decided to leave her in the lurch.

The cloak seemed to help. Her tremors eased up, and with the warmth came strength to keep walking just a little further. It probably came from the chocolate as well, if she was fair.

Eventually, when Jinsu stumbled within sight of the main path that led to the villages, Byeong joo's patience seemed to putter out.

"You're going to end up breaking that ankle," he told her, grabbing her wrists and placing her arms around his neck. Before she had time to object, he leant forwards, heaving her up onto his back, and let go of her wrists to grab her knees. Jinsu grabbed at his shoulders in alarm, but as he hefted her body into a more comfortable position and continued walking, she found herself confused more than anything else.

This was unlike Byeong joo. Very unlike him. Completely the opposite to the Byeong joo she knew. Byeong joo couldn't stand contact with her, or even being near her. He remedied the latter when it was unavoidable by snide remarks and insults.

But her frazzled brain didn't have time for more than that and a vague sort of realisation that his back was broad and comfortable before her eyes were drifting shut.

Chapter 29

*Potentially a double update. Make sure you've read chapter 28.*

Bright lights and electric doors hissing open woke Jinsu up, though that could also have been because Byeong joo more or less dropped her and ducked out from the loose hold her arms had around his neck and her ankle protested at the pain.

"You can get to the sickbay by yourself," he told her before walking off. Squinting in the artificial light, Jinsu realised that he'd left her in the atrium of the Attayear. Propping herself up on the wall, she decided that the sickbay was good advice and began making her way towards it. It wasn't far from the atrium and had been purposely put on the ground floor for ease of access, but it still felt like a horrendously long way away when she was completely shattered and barely able to walk.

In the end, she got there. It might have taken two or three minutes or half an hour, but Jinsu was beyond caring by that point. She could hear voices inside the room and all she really wanted was to lie down and put ice on her ankle. If somebody was already in there, so much the better. Help would come sooner.

The already bad day just got worse when she pushed the door open, however. Minhwan and three of his friends were standing inside, rooting through medical supplies.

"This is unbelievable," Jaemin grumbled. "Why the heck wouldn't they have contraceptives? How on earth are we supposed to sleep with people?"

"Reproductive health means medical supplies," agreed Junho.

"We can't take the risk of knocking up anyone at the gisaeng house," Minhwan said, looking through one of the cupboards. "I know it's dumb, but I don't trust the stuff they say they have and I'd really rather not have a kid running around a thousand years in the past because some dopey woman didn't know what was going on in her own body." Failing to find whatever it was he wanted, Minhwan shut the cupboard door and turned. Jinsu was too late to duck out of the room.

"Ah, perfect timing!" He prowled across the room in a manner that made Jinsu's heart begin to race. The expression in his eyes was identical to Hae Insu's. "Jinsu, you must have come prepared, right? The only girl among so many boys... who could resist?"

"No, I—"

The other three followed Minhwan, fanning out to hem her in and force her into the room along the wall.

"Yeah, you could lend us that medication thing all girls have to stop them getting pregnant, right?" piped up Jisung. "Just four. That's all we need."

There was a scoff from the doorway. "Are you actually suggesting Jinsu has enough of a sex life to need the Pill?" Byeong joo demanded. "Or enough of a life to have a sex life? What planet are you from?"

"Byeong joo!" said Noah's voice sharply.

The other four boys shot away from Jinsu, trying to pretend they were innocent, while Jinsu huddled into the cloak she was wearing for comfort. It appeared to be breaking point for Byeong joo, though.

"I've done at least six today, hyung, get off my back!" he spat out before turning on his heel and storming off.

Noah sighed before pointing at the remaining boys. "You four. Grounded for tomorrow. Jino will be along to see you when he gets back in.

"What did we do?" Minhwan protested, eyes wide with fake innocence.

"Intending to go to the gisaeng house," Noah said shortly. "You should be intelligent enough to work out that it's off-limits."

"But we're eighteen and if we use protection—" Jisung tried.

"No. Out."

No room left for argument, the boys filed out. Noah shut the door behind them and quickly went over to Jinsu, helping her up onto the sickbay bed.

"What happened?" he asked.

Jinsu just shook her head. She didn't particularly want to talk about it. Byeong joo must have filled Noah in on her visible injuries, though, because he began to inspect her ankle, and once it was elevated and had an ice pack on it, he moved his attention to her hand.

"You're having a rough time with those fingers," he murmured. "Might be better in a cast or something."

"I keep forgetting I can't use them." It was only a half truth, because most of the time she did remember not to use her right hand, and a fair amount of re-injury was because of other people doing something to that hand, but Noah still looked worried.

"I'm going to splint it up again and put it in a sling," he told her. "That way, you can't make the mistake again."

Jinsu nodded, too tired to argue.

"Can I stay here tomorrow?" she requested. "Not with Minhwan and the rest – I just don't want to go out."

After a moment's thought, Noah said, "Well, I guess I can give you stuff to do and learn with the computers."

Jinsu smiled. "That would be nice."

"Are you sure? It's going to be the last day."

Jinsu didn't even want to contemplate another potential run-in with Hae Insu. She nodded again.

"Okay."

"Is she awake?"

"Do you know what happened?"

"How did she get back?"

"Yejun said—"

"...Chanyeol..."

"I heard..."

Sunlight was streaming in through the porthole in her room when Jinsu woke up the next morning. She didn't remember getting back upstairs and reckoned she must have fallen asleep while Noah was tending to her hand. Someone had to have carried her.

It took several moments for her to realise her room looked fuller than usual, and a few seconds on top of that for her to realise that it was because a large bouquet of flowers had been left on her desk. Chocolates had been scattered around the base of the large glass that the flowers were in, and she saw that a piece of paper had been propped up against the makeshift vase.

Wincing as she tried to put pressure on her foot, only to discover that it didn't hurt anymore, just felt a bit weak, Jinsu got out of bed to take a closer look.

Please tell us when you're up, somebody had written. We were scared sh*tless when we managed to escape the shrine and you were gone. Hope you're okay.

She didn't recognise the writing, but it was obvious that it had to be from Eunho, Kyungsoo or Hamin.

There was a soft knock on the door as she set the paper back down. Jinsu called out to let the person know they could come in.

Chanyeol was there, holding the now-familiar breakfast tray.

"This was outside," he told her. "And you have a note."

Jinsu sat down in the desk chair, motioning for Chanyeol to join her. He slid the tray onto the desk and gave her the piece of paper that had been on it.

You missed dinner yesterday, so I made you extra, the mystery chef had written. That was all, but Jinsu was rather touched.

"Do you want to talk about what happened?" Chanyeol asked her, spearing sausage onto a fork and offering it to her. "Hamin said they got out of the shaman's shrine and you'd just vanished, and Yejun said that a group of them found you miles away with some rich pervert threatening to kill you when they were out hunting with Han."

Jinsu let him feed her, but it took a while to summon up the courage to say anything about the previous day. Chanyeol looked absolutely horrified when she'd finished. He let her finish her mouthful and then wordlessly enveloped her in a hug. Jinsu let the comfort wash over her, figuring it was best to leave out the little encounter with Minhwan. It hadn't been that bad, she told herself – just more unsettling than it should have been because of what had happened earlier that day.

There was another soft knock and the door creaked open.

"Jinsu?"

Jinsu poked her head over Chanyeol's shoulder to see Yejun letting himself into the room.

"Good, Byeong joo didn't murder you on the way back," he said, making her smile weakly. "How are you doing?"

"Byeong joo brought you back?" Chanyeol asked with surprise. Jinsu felt herself flush. She hadn't known how Chanyeol would react, so she'd left out Byeong joo's name and labelled him as one of the boys in the group, also skipping the part where he'd given her a piggyback.

"He didn't want to," she muttered. Yejun settled himself on the spare bed.

"Who are the flowers from?"

Chanyeol picked up the note that had come with them. "I think that's Hamin's writing," he said. "But Kyungsoo and Eunho too, by the looks of it."

"Flowers are a very Eunho kind of thing to do," Yejun mused. "Sweet of them, though. We bumped into them on the way back and they looked absolutely distraught. Took a good while to calm them down even after we said we'd found you because they were so frantic about you just vanishing into thin air."

"That Hae Insu person chased her through the forest."

"A long way through the forest," Yejun agreed. He glanced back over at Jinsu. "You're looking better than you did yesterday."

Jinsu hummed in agreement and accepted a bite of a chocolate brownie that the mystery chef had made for her off Chanyeol. The mystery chef's way of expanding the meal was apparently by various cakes and sweet things – comfort food, really, and Jinsu had to admit that it was indeed comforting.

"Noah said you're staying here today," Yejun went on. "Is there anything I can get for you in town? It's the last day, after all."

Jinsu thought for a moment and then shook her head. "You can take my money sack. Go wild. I need to make sure I bring back lots of souvenirs to present to my dad and the archaeology and history people, but I've got several already. If you want to add, feel free."

Yejun said he would. She called him back just as he was about to leave the room.

"Thank you," she told him. "You saved my life."

Yejun waved an airy hand as though it was nothing, but his ears turned a little pink.

"And you also look hella sexy in your archer get-up, but Jimin will probably skin you if he finds out I said that."

Despite the flowers and the note, Jinsu was not expecting to be mobbed by her fellow explorers the second she set foot outside her door with the intention of returning Byeong joo his cloak. Hamin was sitting with his back against the railings in a pair of shorts and a t-shirt, his injured leg wrapped up in bandages, but Eunho more or less jumped on her and squeezed the breath out of her lungs. Kyungsoo had to pull him away so that Jinsu could breathe.

"What happened?" he asked curiously. "We got out and you'd just gone."

Jinsu leant against the wall, trying to ignore the way Eunho was insisting on fussing over her like some mother hen. He was actually worse than Yejun when he got going, somehow finding parts of her hair or clothes that weren't quite lying or hanging properly and straightening them up.

After trying to work out the right way to phrase things, Jinsu told them a few sparse details about her encounter with Hae Insu. As with Chanyeol, she left out the stuff with Minhwan and with Byeong joo taking her back. All three of the boys looked guilty, but even when Jinsu tried to tell them that it wasn't their fault, Hamin still mumbled that they all ought to have left the shrine together rather than letting the shaman kick her out, or that at least one of them ought to have offered to stay with her. Jinsu leapt on the opportunity to change the subject.

"Did he heal your leg?"

Kyungsoo snorted. Eunho tucked a strand of Jinsu's hair behind her ear. She couldn't raise her arm to slap his hand away because of the sling, but she had half a mind to strangle him with the material because he was beginning to get annoying.

"Sweet F A," Hamin sighed from the railings.

"The shaman got him to chew something that definitely made him high," Kyungsoo explained, "which was admittedly hilarious and he couldn't feel a thing for hours, but it got a bit worrying when he finally clued in that you were missing and he went storming through the forest like some kind of iron man."

Hamin grinned sheepishly. "It made it worse."

"On the bright side, Hamin does now have a collection of the herbs he was interested in studying from the shaman and first hand knows some of their side effects."

Eunho snickered. "He's staying here today because he's finding it tough to walk."

"It's fine. I'll get it checked out at hospital when we get back."

"Minju will be so impressed," Eunho said sarcastically. "'A tiger mauled me, but I was fine until I went to see a shaman about it and he gave me some crazy sh*t that turned me into Mo Farah and I nearly bust a ligament.'"

After establishing that they were going to get Jinsu stuff from the nearby town whether she liked it or not, since it was their last day and they were getting Hamin stuff anyway, Kyungsoo and Eunho declared that they were talking "the mauled idiot" downstairs and promised to call on her later. The corridor felt bare and too big once they had clattered away, and Jinsu made a beeline for Byeong joo's room before somebody else could ambush her – especially since almost all the nice people had already spoken to her.

A large part of Jinsu hoped that Byeong joo wouldn't be there and that the room would be unlocked when she knocked on the door, so she could just slip in and leave the cloak folded on Byeong joo's bed, but luck was not on her side and she heard him calling out to allow entry. Grimacing, Jinsu opened the door a tad so that she could step into the room.

Byeong joo was sprawled out on his bed, stomach down, reading through something on his phone. He glanced up to see who it was.

"You," he grumbled and returned to what he was doing.

Jinsu swallowed. Be the bigger person, she told herself, and don't antagonise him or get angry. He's not worth it.

"Thanks for yesterday." She almost had to choke the words out because they didn't want to come.

Byeong joo didn't bother to acknowledge whether he'd heard her. Jinsu decided to pretend he had – she didn't want the humiliation of thanking him again – and forged on, holding up the cloak.

"I came to give this back."

A part of her hoped that it would force Byeong joo to look up and pay attention, because he wouldn't know what "this" was, but no such luck.

"And why would I want it back?" he asked, tone flat and still looking at the screen.

Jinsu looked down at the material in her hand. She knew that it was expensive – thick, soft wool like that was never cheap, and the clasp was almost definitely made of precious metal, so it was likely that Byeong joo had saved parts of the daily allowance that the boys were given in order to get it. Refusing to have it back was just a generally dumb and wasteful idea.

"I forgot," she said, a touch bitter. "Of course you wouldn't. I contaminated it." So why did you use it on me in the first place?

He did glance up at her at that point and raise an eyebrow, just briefly, before ignoring her again. Jinsu retreated back to the comfort of her room.

Jinsu and Hamin were the only two teenagers left on the Attayear by mid-morning, and she was surprised to find herself completely unflustered by it. He followed her around a little like a lost puppy, wary of getting in the way of the half dozen or so technicians, who were preparing to fire up the systems that evening so that the Attayear could travel back to the present.

That wariness meant that he plied Jinsu with questions instead. Jinsu had to wrack her brains for answers, also secretly wondering about the different power settings, although she knew that they existed because Noah had told her that the one they'd been using for remaining in the forest was just for necessary electronics in the time machine, and about the engines and various other things to do with time travel.

By the time Jinsu managed to sweet talk one of the technicians into allowing her access to one of the computers in the main computer room, she realised with a start that while she really enjoyed Hamin's company, it didn't make her incredibly self-conscious anymore, or send her heart and mind into a tizzy. She poked fun at him for injuring his leg and he poked at her arm, making her sling rock, and in many ways, it was like goofing around with Yejun or her brother, or even Chanyeol. As disastrous as some of her experiences had so far been, she knew – or, at least, hoped, because she had no idea what would happen when they were no longer in an isolated environment – that she would be bringing back something invaluable from the past, and that was friendship.

"How do you even understand that?" Hamin gawked at the screen. "It's gibberish."

"It's just computer coding." Jinsu tried to remember the Cyrillic alphabet that Noah had written out for her, and then resorted to fishing the paper out of her pocket. "I'm still learning this one, though. They made it specially for the Attayear."

Hamin pulled his chair closer to hers and peered over her shoulder.

"Tardis?" he queried, reading the word off the top of the paper. "As in the Tardis?"

"Noah thought it would be fun to call the coding language that."

Hamin thought about that for a few moments. "Figures. So what kind of cool things can you do with the Tardis coding?"

"I don't know yet. Noah said I could experiment provided I stuck to only changing settings on the various rooms."

"Our rooms have settings?"

"It's only simple stuff. Blacking out the portholes, locking the doors shut with airtight seals, that kind of thing."

Hamin appeared not to hear her. "So does that mean you could create a time vacuum around each individual room and, like, transport it to a different part of the past?"

"Probably not."

"Shame."

Hamin had lots of other questions Jinsu couldn't answer, such as what would happen if somebody managed to open a door while they were time travelling, and whether as a time machine it was possible for the Attayear to age. The one that really brought Jinsu up short, though, was probably his most absent-minded one.

"So now your dad knows he has a working time machine," he said as they both stood in the kitchen trying to work out between them how to cook a massive dish of food for supper (only to discover they both had cooks at home and had consequently never had to think about anything more than shoving food in a microwave), "what's he going to do with it? Use it for tourism? There's bound to be some nutter somewhere in the world who'll want to hijack it for their own nefarious gain." He squinted at the sesame oil and the virgin olive oil bottles he was holding up. "Is there any difference between these?"

"I have no idea," Jinsu admitted. "To both questions, by the way."

Hamin shrugged and poured a good quarter of the olive oil into the vat they were planning to cook in. "Noah should not have asked us to do this before he went out to explore," he muttered.

"He's been stuck on the ship all week. Gotta give him a break. The other technicians too."

"Yeah, well, if I was your dad, I wouldn't be too happy knowing that something as priceless as the Attayear was guarded by a pair of invalids for the best part of five hours, even if the locals' most fearsome weapon is large knives."

Jinsu had to agree. The Attayear's security system was good, but leaving two teenagers in charge wasn't necessarily a safe idea.

"Is the oil supposed to catch fire?" Hamin asked, peering into the vat. "Jinsu, I don't think this is right."

Especially if they cooked like Hamin.

Chapter 30

Jino was the first to return with the four grounded boys in his wake and Hamin and Jinsu were quick to get out of their way. Yixing had rather sensibly pointed out to Noah that leaving Jinsu and Minhwan alone on the Attayear would have been a terrible idea, and since Jinsu had wanted to stay aboard, Minhwan and his friends had been kicked off with Jino to supervise them. Yejun and several others came back with a large haul of meat that they'd hunted – Han having seasoned some of them the previous night and shown them how to hang them properly for the best taste. Kyuhyun and Minho took over cooking the evening meal for everybody and there was a generally festive atmosphere as they all sat down to eat. Jinsu found herself sandwiched between Hamin and her cousin with Yejun diagonally opposite as Kyungsoo served them all bulgogi from the plate in the middle of the table. Eunho was chatting to Byeong joo and Taemin, only vaguely aware of the fact that there was food on his plate, and Jinsu smiled to herself over her glass of pineapple juice as the lanky boy accidentally put his hand straight into his food and withdrew it with a yelp, burnt.

Content to let the boys do the talking, Jinsu basked in the pleasant feeling of being welcome at a table full of people. With any luck, it would continue once they were all back home, and she was excited at the prospect of telling Jimin about it. And about telling Girlfriend-Jimin that she'd made friends with Hamin. She could invite Chanyeol over for movies. Maybe study-dates with Kyungsoo to jack up their English grade even better than it currently was would be a possibility. She might even be able to watch Hamin play in school basketball matches and cheer him on from the sidelines.

With the end of dinner came a flurry of announcements. The Dive was planned for after they'd all gone to bed, since they'd already experienced it one way and they'd be able to sleep away a fair bit of the journey. Briefings for things like talking to journalists and what they could and couldn't say about the machine would come once they were nearing present time, and Jino would be coming round to inspect their souvenirs, more or less like a customs official, to say whether they could keep them or would have to turn them over to the authorities as cultural heritage. Jinsu discovered that Yejun's friend Lee Soohyun had been the official record of their stay and that he was willing to take any contributions that anybody might have so that he could write up the report before they got off the Attayear. There was also going to be a prize for the best photograph from Balhae, which she was pretty sure Kyungsoo would have won, and when they were all awake, there was going to be a general discussion forum about their experience on the Attayear and anything they thought could be changed or improved.

Noah took Jinsu aside as everybody filed out of the kitchen-cum-dining-room area.

"I don't know if your father will give you another chance to come on board the Attayear," he said, "and since this is your family's machine and you put a lot of effort into making the communal spaces look so good, do you want to come down to the bridge and see how all the technology works with the Dive?"

Jinsu agreed with excitement, and he told her to meet him in the main computer room in an hour's time.

The hour passed in giddy bursts of happiness. Jinsu spent some of it rolling around on her bed and giggling to herself, looking forward to something none of the others were going to be privy to and to telling her big brother all about it. Some of it was spent beginning to pack, which was difficult to do neatly with her arm in a sling, but Jinsu was in a good mood and determined, and even if she had to stop to straighten clothes out so they wouldn't get crumpled every eight or nine seconds, she still made progress.

The final thing she did before going downstairs again was to write a note to the mystery chef. Unlike before, this note was easy to write and didn't require redrafting.

Thank you for all the delicious food! It would be nice to know who you are so I can thank you in person, but if you don't want me to know, I respect that. I read once that the finest of pleasures are always the unexpected ones, and this has certainly been true of your beautiful breakfasts. If there's anything I can do for you or any way I can repay you, please know that you are always welcome at the Park household for any reason.

Signing it, Jinsu slipped the piece of paper onto the door half-behind the rota as she had done on previous occasions when she left the room and headed downstairs. The lights of the Attayear were dimmed, much as in a plane during a long haul flight for the sleeping period, lending a soft ambience to the interior, and she hurried down the stairs to the flight deck.

Noah was waiting for her but already busy with preparations for setting off. The thrum of the engines was much stronger in the main computer room than elsewhere, most likely because the walls had semi-soundproof padding for all the other rooms, and Jinsu had been able to feel the power of those engines vibrating through the stairs as she walked down them. Noah patted a chair, inviting her to sit next to him in front of the main computer.

"The power up process is almost complete," he told her. "We should be all set to launch in about five minutes."

Jinsu leant forward in her chair, looking with interest at the rows and rows of code that were flashing across the main computer screen. It was too quick for the eye to read as the various coding instructions flitted in and out according to when they were done, but she caught the odd word or instruction she recognised here or there, and regardless of whether she could read the full thing, it sang to her and it looked beautiful.

"How long will it take us to get back?" she asked, mentally wondering how long she'd have with the computers.

"Not as long as it took us to get here. It's a bit like going upstream or downstream, or into a slipstream – getting back into the past is much more difficult than going forward to the future. It'll be about nineteen-and-three-quarter hours, and we'll be going at a rate of a year every sixty seconds rather than the seventy-two we were on the way out, because the timestream wants us to move this way."

Jinsu nodded, still fascinated by the codes.

She didn't realise they had company beyond the technicians until Noah abruptly turned, frowning, and distracted her attention from the screens. Byeong joo was picking his way across to them, folding up a piece of paper in his hands. He was quite obviously in pyjamas, with a red tartan pattern on the trousers, but wearing a navy hoodie over the top that gave him sleeve paws.

"Hyung, I wanted to talk to you about something before—" he began, only to see Jinsu and fall silent.

"Can it wait until after this is all set and ready to go?" Noah asked him. "It shouldn't take too long."

For answer, Byeong joo sat in the nearest chair and pulled it over between Noah and Jinsu. As far as Jinsu could make out, he was pretending she didn't exist.

The next couple of minutes were spent in silence as Noah and Jinsu watched the codes and Byeong joo twiddled his thumbs, but then the engines reached fever pitch with a keening whine and the technicians were suddenly in a flurry of action. Noah switched from the screen to the motherboard, sliding and turning various dials and shifting levers. The engines whined further and he returned to the keyboard to start typing out more commands.

"Okay, Jinsu, if you could press the green launch button by your right elbow, we'll be good to go with the Dive," he said, utterly focussed on what he was doing.

A sense of excited importance washed over Jinsu, and she pulled back to search for the button. It wasn't quite where her elbow had been, but she found it nevertheless and reached out to press it.

There was no discernable difference. The technicians were still busy doing whatever part of the launch they needed to do, and Noah was still typing with one hand and moving dials about with the other.

"Jinsu?" he prompted.

She pressed it again, also with no discernable change. The engines were practically screaming.

"Jinsu, the engines are going to overheat, come on—"

Impatiently, Byeong joo reached out and slapped his hand down on the green button. There was a sound as if a gigantic car had changed gear, followed by a tremendous roar, and then the machine started shuddering.

"Cheers," said Noah, scooting closer to the screen. "Now if you could just push the yellow knob up to one hundred percent on the slider—" He looked around to point in its general direction in time to see Byeong joo removing his hand from the launch button. "Byeong joo, could you not touch unless I give you instructions to, please?"

"But—"

Jinsu reached for the indicated slider as Noah turned back to the codes.

Then the computer engineer did a doubletake and swivelled his chair around to face Byeong joo.

"Did you just launch that?" he asked suspiciously.

"Yeah," said Byeong joo. "Why?"

"That button's fingerprint sensitive to Jinsu's family and me," Noah explained. "It shouldn't be possible."

Jinsu paused with her finger on the slider, looking over at Noah. The man said no more, his face giving nothing away. Byeong joo was chewing on his lip as though he wanted to say something, but before he could, the engines sputtered and the entire Attayear lurched, sending all three of them shooting forward into the motherboard, and Jinsu knocked the slider up without intending to. The temporal boom reverberated around them as everything went blindingly white.

"Sorry," she apologised into the whiteness, unsure if any of them would be able to hear her over the engines. She wasn't sure how long it was before normal vision returned, but Noah and Byeong joo were both squinting when it did.

"Ow, my eyes," Noah grumbled while Byeong joo pawed at his own, but it didn't seem to prevent Noah from returning to the screens immediately. There were apparently commands that still needed to be given manually – from the glimpse Jinsu got, she thought it might be something to do with the date and time they were going to – or at the very least, the year.

That was when the ERROR code flashed up. Noah didn't notice it at first as he was typing so quickly and his attention had already dropped from the screen to the motherboard again, but he froze when he glanced back up.

"This can't be right," he muttered to himself, scrolling back through what he'd already put in. "I input all that correctly."

"What's wrong?" asked Jinsu as he tried the commands again, only to get another flashing ERROR code.

"I don't know. There shouldn't be anything wrong. Hang on."

Tabs and windows were suddenly flying across the screen as he tried to find another area to bypass whatever problem was rearing its ugly head.

But this still received the ERROR message. He went for a third method, typing rapidly, and this time appeared to get through. Shaking his head at the machine, Noah went to alter motherboard settings to fit the new method.

It lasted about thirty seconds before the screen suddenly went completely black, the ERROR message flashing on it in red.

"You've got to be f*cking kidding me," Noah grunted, scooting away to talk to one of the other technicians. Jinsu stared after him, but it wasn't long before Noah was back, this time with a headset.

"Yixing, we've got a problem on the main deck: the Doctor's down and the other computers are starting to spasm – looks like it might be malware. Can you contain the engines on Temp 1 or something slow that still gives us enough power so we don't drift so that we can try to sort the computers out before they're desperately needed again? Otherwise our only option is to reboot the entire system including the engines and I don't think that's safe while we're actually on the timestream."

Yixing's voice was just about audible enough for Jinsu to make out that he was asking how on earth any malware could have got into the Tardis system.

"Your guess is as good as mine," Noah told him, his brow pinching. "This room's been securely locked down whenever it hasn't been in use, and whenever it has, nobody's been in here unsupervised. I don't think that any of the students are sufficiently capable to build something that nukes the system like this, so—" He suddenly stiffened, the light bulb going on, and turned to start at Byeong joo in horror. "Oh my God, the saboteurs. It's the oldest trick in the book – they were leaving the Attayear when they were caught by security, but turned around to make it look like they were going to it instead so we wouldn't suspect anything!"

Byeong joo's face had gone extremely pale. He opened his mouth as though about to say something, but scooted back at the expression on Noah face, shaking his head. Jinsu stared between the two of them, trying to comprehend exactly what was going on.

Noah removed the headset, turning to look at the computer again.

"H-hyung—" Byeong joo croaked out. Jinsu just about managed to register that he looked frightened.

Noah just looked tired.

"Byeong joo," he said softly, his gaze somewhere beyond the motherboard, "what has your family done?"

Chapter 31

"I-I have nothing to do with this." Byeong joo's voice was barely above an anxious whisper, and Jinsu noticed that his hands were trembling. "Genuinely, hyung, I had no idea. I didn't know anything had been planned until after it had happened and even then I believed the police statements – even Dad said my cousins were idiots and that it was a good thing it hadn't gone any further. The reason I didn't want to be here at the beginning wasn't because I knew this would happen, because I didn't – it was because this... this..." He gestured futilely, fingers splayed, and it looked like there were tears in his eyes. "This machine is literally the embodiment of what happened to my family and it felt like mockery just to be offered a place on it – I swear I had absolutely no knowledge—"

Noah placed a hand on his shoulder. "Calm down," he said gently. "I believe you."

Byeong joo's entire body quivered as he took a deep breath and let his shoulders drop. Jinsu felt an unbidden twinge of sympathy. She understood that feeling of frantic helplessness, not least because he'd put her through it so many times. Noah being so calm about it made her feel a little bitter.

Noah rubbed his eyes with the heel of his palms. "It's not the end of the world. There'll be some way of fixing this and getting back in and destroying the malware. It's just a matter of finding that as soon as possible."

Both teenagers were silent for a few moments. Byeong joo was the one to speak first.

"But if my finger print's just needed as a rubber stamp, can't you just do things normally and then get me to approve them where needed?"

Noah slid his chair back and got to his feet. "Byeong joo, the virus isn't letting me give or process vital commands to the Attayear. Your fingerprint isn't going to do anything on that."

"Y-you mean it's swallowing some of the Attayear's basic functions?" Jinsu squeaked. "But if that gets destroyed—"

"We're screwed," Noah agreed. "There are inbuilt firewalls and checks that will self-activate in the face of malware, so parts of the base code will be protected, but there's no knowing how long for. The one thing we've got going for us is that it's a general virus because they didn't know exactly what they were targeting. Unfortunately it means we're facing the equivalent of a tank rather than a sniper, but it means there will be a weak spot and we hopefully will have time to find it because it's so broad and general." He cast a worried glance at the computer screen.

"That doesn't sound like it's not the end of the world," Byeong joo said weakly.

"Well, I'm going out on a limb here, but my guess – my hope – is that this was intended as some kind of hijacking, because I can't think of another reason why you or anybody else in your family would have fingerprint access to it. If I'm right on that front, it means there will be a way to reverse everything, but we're probably going to have to build it, because it won't be inbuilt or it wouldn't be too hard for us to find it. It's probably on a memory stick somewhere in present time that would require inserting and fingerprint approval."

"Can we get back to present time?" Byeong joo asked hopefully.

"Not if I can't input coordinates and times to land, no. We'll just keep going down the time stream with no way to alter the vacuum to get us out." Noah heaved a long sigh and rubbed at his eyes again. "I need my laptop. It's got a list of all the various parts of coding that ring-fence and lock down automatically in the face of malware and should give us a map of how the virus is spreading as well as where, and where from. And then I need to get to work building something to counteract. I can do the basics without needing to know specific details about the virus, so Jinsu, you can see what information you can gather on it to tell me later so I can focus and specialise my one."

Jinsu looked at the screen and gulped. Noah made it sound so simple and routine, but it was a daunting task he'd given her, and she didn't understand how he could remain so collected about the situation when almost nothing about it seemed good. In fact, if they didn't find a solution, they would either be trapped forever in the timestream and eventually starve to death when they ran out of food – or, more likely, died of dehydration when they ran out of water. Seventy-two hours without water would be enough to put all of them out of commission to work properly on a solution, and then it would only be a matter of time before they were doomed.

"Oh, and Byeong joo," Noah added, looking back over his shoulder as he started away, "you need to stay with Jinsu in case she finds somewhere useful where she can override the system, since you're probably the only one in the Attayear with the power to do that."

Byeong joo looked scandalised. "Can't one of the other technicians do the coding stuff?" he asked. "Or you?" Then, as an afterthought, he tacked on, "I mean, she's only got one useful hand—"

"No. I'm the only one with a reasonable chance of building an effective counter-virus, and the others are all already busy just trying to keep the machine balanced and in control when we have no control. Suck it up."

Jinsu's heart and stomach both sank.

"Hyung!" Byeong joo protested, but Noah was unyielding.

"Be nice," he ordered, a flinty glint to his eye, and amazingly, it shut Byeong joo up.

Without Noah's calming presence, tension descended on the room like a stifling blanket. Silence was the order of the day, even when shudders and jolts wracked the Attayear, on many occasions almost knocking everybody out of their seats. Byeong joo stayed as far away from Jinsu as possible as she stared at the screen, trying to navigate her way through the coding and the virus that was writing new code almost faster than she could keep up, but after a particularly vicious lurch that almost spilt Jinsu from her seat onto the motherboard, knocking several dials because she couldn't use her injured hand to protect herself and semi-face-planted on the keyboard, giving another ERROR screen, he moved back to within arms' reach.

Two hours in, Noah returned with his laptop under one arm and a walkie-talkie under the other to ask for any updates. Jinsu was unable to tell him anything beyond the fact that the virus had an algorithm that enabled it to imitate some of the original coding, making it very hard to trace, but that in two of the five areas she'd managed to reach before it and manually shut down, she'd noticed that the ratio of letters from different alphabets in the Tardis and the imitation from the virus was different. The imitation had the exact same ratio that it had done in all other areas, and was slowly beginning to adapt to fit the ratio of the coding area it was currently in.

As far as Jinsu was concerned, it wasn't nearly enough because she should have been able to provide Noah with enough information for him to immediately solve the problem – what use was only a tiny nugget of information anyway? – but he looked delighted, telling her to see if she could trace the virus back based on alphabet ratios and try to narrow down the point at which it had entered the system. Byeong joo, bored and having only been needed once to override something as yet uncorrupted to give Jinsu access to more of the Tardis coding, was slumped against the motherboard, yawning and completely unfocussed on the task at hand.

Another jolt made Noah stagger, and as Jinsu tiredly turned back to the host of computer screens in front of her, since the main one wasn't nearly enough to show all the information she needed (and even then, she still had very little idea what half of the information was or what she actually did need, because she only had passing knowledge of the Tardis system), she heard Noah murmuring into the walkie-talkie, apparently to Yixing.

"Jinsu," he said quickly as he shut the walkie-talkie off. "Can you get into the room systems and put them all on earthquake mode? We don't want anybody waking up and panicking because of turbulence."

Jinsu just nodded faintly, feeling a little better since the coding for the rooms was code she was actually familiar with. Disgruntled, Byeong joo reached out a hand to override system controls to let her implement new commands for the rooms when she asked him to, and Noah hurried over to two of the technicians once he was sure it was done. After a quick conversation with the two men, they got up and left the room with him. Byeong joo lifted his head to watch them go, his expression bordering on envy.

The screens and the symbols on them, and even the Attayear's flails, became a monotonous haze for Jinsu and her brain shifted into autopilot. The fingers of her right hand were beginning to ache, and gradually everything began to blur into one. She felt so small and frustrated and lost. The fact that their lives could depend on what she was and wasn't able to discover weighed on her shoulders like a tonne of bricks. She had to do this well – no, perfectly, because "well" wasn't good enough and meant room for error. But it was overwhelming. She didn't have nearly Noah's level of expertise, even if she was several years ahead of her age when it came to computer science. And even then, she wasn't like Junmyeon, who according to Yejun spent hours every week reading around his subjects to broaden his knowledge, even though she knew much more than Junmyeon did about the Tardis system. She hadn't had the benefit some of the technicians had had of working on the Tardis coding or operating the machine before, which would have been a help whether or not she understood much of what was going on with the codes.

Somewhere in the background of her mind, she was aware of the high keening of the engines starting up again and everything going a brilliant white as another temporal boom shot through the time machine. She only realised she'd gone into a stupor – how long for was anybody's guess – and was dreaming she was solving the problem when she was actually wilting over the screen when Byeong joo delivered a series of hard flicks to her jaw, and then to the back of her neck when she didn't respond. Whining, Jinsu raised her hand to protect from further attack.

"Stay with it," he snapped at her, squinting in the harsh glare of light that the heat-protected walls were throwing off at them. Jinsu shot him a resentful look. She hadn't flicked him awake when he'd been on the brink of dozing off, and Byeong joo's fingernails were much sharper than hers. He had it easy, in any case: all he had to do was press a button once in a blue moon, which she could actually use his hand to do while he was asleep, if he drifted off, and it was down to his family's selfishness that they were in such a dire predicament in the first place. With much more simmering animosity than she'd known she possessed, Jinsu returned to the computers. It had to be well into the small hours of the morning, and all she wanted to do was sleep.

She was still struggling to retain coherent sense when another round of shocks reverberated through the time machine, and Noah was hurtling back into the room, calling for the technicians to go down and help Yixing in the engine rooms. The walls were still maintaining a glow that they definitely shouldn't be, and from the way Noah staggered to maintain his balance, something about the speed the machine was travelling at was probably off. Jinsu cursed her tiredness for not allowing her to realise that earlier.

"You two stay here!" he ordered Jinsu and Byeong joo when the latter made to get up and join the other men. "I need you two to stabilise the electronic commands as much as you can and find some way of slowing the time machine down! I'm going to wake up some of the other boys—"

"What's happened?" Byeong joo asked with worry, still half out of his seat.

Noah skidded to a breathless halt. "You need to be prepared to testify in court against your cousins if we make it out of here alive," he said. "It looks like they've downsized all the screws in the bolts in the engine room and we need people down there to hold the equipment together while we put ones of the right size in. We've broken well past Temp 3 and everything's overheating."

"But that could kill us," Jinsu said blankly.

"Exactly."

"How was it not noticed before?" demanded Byeong joo, alarm in his tone.

"Because half a millimetre isn't a problem until metal expands due to heat, and different metal expands at different rates," Noah snapped. "Please, find some way of slowing the godd*mn machine. I need to get the electric circuits in the engine room back up and running." He was gone again.

Looking very pale, though that could just have been the lighting, Byeong joo turned back to Jinsu. She wanted to slap the expectant look off his face.

"I don't know," she bit out at him instead, answering the why haven't you solved this? that hovered between them. "I don't even know what controls I'm looking for."

"Your family made this machine."

Jinsu turned her back on him. "And what makes you think I was privy to any of it beyond the decoration?"

A large shudder rattled everything in sight. Jinsu took a deep breath to calm herself. She almost missed Byeong joo muttering, "well, you're sitting here, aren't you?"

Ignore, ignore, ignore, she told herself, trying to remember the details for speed she'd seen Noah typing in earlier and what the formula for that was. Byeong joo seemed less than impressed at the way she was sitting there wracking her memory.

"Oh, great, do nothing," he said sarcastically. Temporarily losing it, Jinsu reached out and kicked his chair.

It took several tries, but eventually Jinsu had the formula right and plugged it into a search system to run through the code and establish what speed they were going at so that she could manually override it with a new one. The downside was that there was so much information for the search function to sift through that even finding one instance of the formula took a good ten minutes, the symbols flashing down the screen so quickly as it scanned through that the monitor the search was running on turned grey instead of the white-on-black it had previously been.

The search was still going when the engines stuttered, first once, then three times, and the unhealthy glow of the room began to dim.

"Engine braking," Byeong joo said with relief, starting Jinsu out of her doze. "That'll cut the speed."

Jinsu assumed it meant that Noah had managed to get whatever circuits were being short-circuited going properly again, and sat up with renewed drive to solve the problem. On cue, the screen flashed at her with the message that the target match for the search function had been found. The speed numbers were dancing all over the screen, and she squinted at it, trying to work out the best course of action. Stabilise, decelerate (and by how much?) or stop outright? Or all three, in that order? Or was it safer just to stabilise or just to decelerate? Or to decelerate so she could be sure of stabilising? Her level of physics couldn't tell her the answer to that.

Hesitantly, she decided on deceleration with a view to stabilising and reached out to type an alteration to the speed function. A message immediately came back with various sliders and dials that needed changing for the order to carry through. Without being asked, Byeong joo leant across to do them, biting his lip as his eyes darted between the screens and the motherboard to ensure that he had the right ones.

Before Jinsu could try the command again, there was a distant crash and the machine lurched.

"What was that?" she asked, wide-eyed as she looked around for the source, even though she could tell it wasn't in the room. Byeong joo's eyes were just as wide and scared as her own.

Another crash had them both ducking with a flinch. Yells of fright sounded and the gallery above them was suddenly full of slamming doors as the boys who had either not been woken up by or had ignored Noah asking them to come and help spilt out onto the balcony, clearly alarmed. In and amongst the confusion, Jinsu heard something that sounded like a garbled "holy sh*t, the light!" before a flurry of sparks rained down and a lurch from the machine, accompanied by the hideous screech of breaking metal, sent her careening onto the motherboard. Before she knew where she was, a pair of hands had wrestled her out away and she was falling with somebody else and rolled underneath the worktops.

It all happened so quickly that she didn't register the pain in her slung-up arm and hand until a large portion of a light fitting crushed the chair she'd been sitting on, the burnt-out wire still emitting sparks. It actually looked like there was a small flame there.

"F*ck me," Byeong joo whispered in a tremulous voice, letting go of her, only to grab her again and duck her head when the rest of the light fitting came down.

Heart in her mouth, Jinsu shoved him away and peered out from under the worktop. The metal and plastic covering of the light fitting were both melted and horribly twisted, and she looked up to see the jagged malformations high up in the dome where it had fallen from. Patches of ceiling tiles all over the dome were glowing a dangerous-looking red.

"The heat protection wards must be malfunctioning," she mumbled to herself. "That's going to screw up the solar panelling." Knocking her chair out of the way, she grabbed Byeong joo's and dragged herself over to the screens again. By some miracle, the light fitting hadn't even glanced off the electronic equipment.

Byeong joo popped up beside her as she hovered over the keyboard, wondering whether it was best to go ahead with the deceleration commands first or to see if she could find a way to remotely repair the heat wards.

"Give me something to override the system and slow this thing down," he begged.

Speed it was, then.

"It's not that simple." Jinsu input the speeds she remember that corresponded to Temp 1, though she knew that long-term they wanted to be down well below – though she suspected that was only really safe if they were out of the timestream.

Something looked off, though. She squinted at the code, altering a couple of cyrillic letters, and then decided that it wasn't what she wanted and changed it back. Was she just being paranoid or—?

Byeong joo reached past her and rested his finger on the launch button, which for all intents and purposes was the system administrator permission recognition.

"Do you need this?" He sounded antsy, desperate to do something.

"Ye-no – no!" Jinsu batted his hand away, suddenly realising what was wrong. "Oh, skinny komodo dragons, the virus got in—"

Byeong joo gave her an odd expression at her ridiculous turn of phrase. "Isolate it."

"But that'll lock us into the speed we're going at now and the machine might disintegrate!"

"Isolate it and find us another f*cking way in to take care of the speed!"

"I can't! I don't know how it works!"

"What kind of useless computer scientist are you?" Byeong joo complained, making an executive decision and pressing the button anyway.

"KIM BYEONG JOO, I SAID DON'T PRESS THE F*CKING BUTTON, D*MN YOU!"

Out of sheer dumb luck, there appeared to be no side effect. Jinsu held up her hand, heart still in her mouth.

"Why does your family want to kill us?" she choked out. Byeong joo was right, though. If they didn't have a way to override the virus, it had to be contained. But at the speed they were doing, with broken heat panels connected to the solar panel system that could short-circuit the entire Attayear if they were unlucky?

"We have to power down," she realised. "Everything."

Chapter 32

*Double update so make sure you've read chapter 31*

Byeong joo seemed to trust Jinsu more when she was asking him to press the green button. There was a lot to go through when it came to powering down the entire time machine, and they fell in sync in a way Jinsu would never have believed possible. She found the area that needed locking off, checked to see how secure the automatic ring-fencing mechanism was, shored it up with a chain of commands that Byeong joo had to ratify, and then locked it down.

"Ready?" Byeong joo would check before consigning the coding to temporary cyber oblivion.

Jinsu would nod because she had no desire to speak to him, and he would press the button and somewhere on one of the motherboards, lights would go out and something somewhere in the Attayear would power down.

They had just done the twenty-third one when Noah reappeared, blood streaked down the side of his head.

"What are you doing? Powering down?" he asked.

Jinsu nodded. "The virus got into the speed coding before I could alter it and there's significant heat damage to some of the solar panel circuits, and if they go they could jeopardise the whole machine. And the virus gets to parts of the code we have open and are viewing more quickly than parts which are droning along in the background."

"One of the engines has gone completely and we're on a backup generator to fossil-fuel a small backup engine," Noah told her. "If we outright stop in the middle of the timestream, we'll never be able to leave. We won't have enough energy reserves to."

Jinsu hesitated, her hand hovering above the keys, as Byeong joo swallowed and looked up at Noah.

"But doesn't that mean the only way to stop is to...?" Jinsu also swallowed. "Is to... lower the wards putting us into a vacuum that allowed the time travel, and crash-landing in whichever time period we get ejected into?"

"Yes."

"But that's really dangerous," Jinsu said in a small voice.

"Gotta take risks in life," Byeong joo interjected suddenly. "Let's do this."

"Keep powering down," Noah told Jinsu. "Leave the wards and the actual engines as long as you can. I just need to warn people it's going to be a bumpy ride."

Worrying her bottom lip, Jinsu nodded and resumed what she'd been doing. Byeong joo looked happily fired up, even rolling up his hoodie sleeves in readiness to override more system commands. They made steady progress before Noah returned. He waved off Byeong joo's question of "hyung, why is your head bleeding?" and leant over Jinsu's shoulder, squinting at the screen. He directed her to shut down several more things before placing a hand on her upper arm.

"Okay, now I want you to shut down the vacuum wards on one side of the Attayear. It should send us into a spin, and as soon as you begin to feel that, shut down the other side and then power down completely. We should be ejected from the timestream, but I can't say what happens beyond that. We'll just have to pray."

Jinsu squeezed her eyes shut as she finished off the manual command and waited for Byeong joo to sanction it. The effect was instantaneous: like a car that had lost a wheel, the entire time machine started spinning around, and Noah had to cling to the motherboard for stability as he reached across Jinsu to shut down the other set of wards with Byeong joo's help. There was a brief moment where the spinning seemed to stop, and then Byeong joo tapped down on the button again and the Attayear shot forward as though launched from a spring, sending all three of them tumbling on the floor.

It felt like being inside a large animal going through its death throes as they were tossed about. Jinsu's head cracked against Noah's and then against the chair wheels before a wild swing of the machine flung her under the motherboard again, where she collided with Byeong joo. He immediately grabbed her around the middle and clung onto her (his eyes were tightly closed, so she reckoned he thought she was Noah), and as they were thrown together again by the machine continuing to buck, she noticed that he'd latched his bare ankles around the thin metal table legs that were supporting the motherboard, and that the skin had broken on one of them so his foot was bleeding. His grip on her was stronger with one hand than with the other, which actually made her more uncomfortable than the fact that he was holding her. She was also pretty certain that she could hear him muttering "we'regonnadiedon'twannadieohmygodohmygodohmygod" under his breath, over and over and over.

The roughhousing seemed endless. Jinsu tried counting to one hundred to stay calm, and then as high as she could in prime numbers because it was more satisfying, but she only managed 3449 before a particularly vicious jerk distracted her. If not for Byeong joo clinging to her, she was convinced it would have been like being in a washing machine. Finally, the tossing and turning slowed. Byeong joo relaxed too early, though, and one last jolt sent him and Jinsu rolling back out towards the chairs. Noah was already pushing himself to his feet when Byeong joo let go of Jinsu with a groan, eyes still firmly shut. Jinsu slid off him, but she was too rattled to stand up immediately.

"We had casualties in the boiler room before I left," Noah said groggily. "I ought to go see how people are."

Byeong joo gave a breathy chuckle that bordered on hysteric. "Well, not bad."

Jinsu and Noah both looked to see that he was pointing at the Lintel. They were under a hundred years out from the present. Considering the loss of control, it was very impressive, but they'd barely hit the twelve-hour mark for travelling, which meant the speed they'd been going at was truly frightening. They were very lucky the Attayear hadn't disintegrated around them.

"I feel like I'm going to throw up," Jinsu announced.

"We're in Japanese colonial times," Byeong joo added, as though that was the reason for Jinsu's nausea. He sat up, wincing.

"You two should get some rest," Noah told them. "You've worked hard."

Jinsu wanted to snort at the idea of Byeong joo working hard, because most of what he'd been doing was lifting a finger, but she kept that to herself. Rest – sleep – it sounded like a very good idea.

With the chaos of the travel during the night, Jinsu was genuinely surprised to find herself with breakfast on a chair beside her bed when she woke up. It was based around fruit and cold pastries this time, but she saw no reason to object to that. She'd completely forgotten about the mystery chef in the turmoil and when she saw the food, she wondered how this person had had the care to continue making food for her when there were probably a million and one other things that everybody needed to be doing.

There was also a note, but it wasn't a response to Jinsu's one and left her with mixed feelings as a result.

No electricity, so just cold today. What happened to your arm? Did you break it?

Jinsu looked at the sling, which she'd fallen asleep in. She'd have to make a mental note to reply to the question before she went to sleep the next time.

The Attayear was a hive of activity when she left her room. Lots of the boys were sporting cuts and bruises of various kinds – one or two had bandages showing – and there was a general air of productivity. She stood on the balcony for several long moments, trying to work out where she would be best off. Some of the boys going past her were carrying things and disappearing through the service door to get up out onto the roofing, presumably to repair the broken solar panels, and another four or five were right up in the dome on a manoeuvrable service walkway, replacing the light fitting that had nearly killed her.

Which Byeong joo had saved her from. That was a weird thought.

"Overseeing your domain?" asked a voice she really could have done without. Grimacing, she tried to work out if it was better for her to ignore Minhwan or to turn and face him. When she went for the former, he grabbed her by the shoulders to forcibly spin her around and pin her against the balcony. She winced as the metal dug into her back. "Should have known this was a death trap, coming from your family."

Jinsu took a deep breath. "We were sabotaged—"

"Excuses." He sneered. "Your family should have made sure this junkbox as travel worthy before shoving us all onto it. What were you doing while we were nearly suffocating in the engine rooms, huh? When we nearly got killed by falling machinery? Sleeping it all off?"

Jinsu opened her mouth to respond, but he got there first, cutting her off.

"Oh, of course, toying with the controls in the control room where nobody is allowed to go, because you're so special and just couldn't help yourself. Everything was working fine when we went to sleep, and then we see you unsupervised in the main control room while all hell is breaking loose—"

"I was trying to fix it!" Jinsu shouted at him. "There is a virus shutting down the entire system—"

"Don't yell at me!" he shouted back, shaking her vigorously. "You're half the reason there's a problem anyway! You even went and crashed the f*cking machine in Japanese colonial rule, for f*cks sake—"

"Because we would have died!" Jinsu shrieked. "Would you rather that?"

Blinding pain coursed through the left side of her face, temporarily blinding her, as her head whipped around to the right. Realisation only came after Minhwan dropped her on the walkway that he'd punched her just below the eye, his fist mashing into the side of her nose, and that her nose was starting to bleed. She whimpered, curling up in fear of another attack, but footsteps stormed off. It still took a little while for her to summon up the courage to move, and she slipped back into her room to check the damage in the bathroom mirror.

It had been a cracking punch. The left side of Jinsu's face was already swelling up and turning a nasty black, making her eye look puffy and closed. Spots of purple bruising were also forming on her eyelid, which explained why her eye had felt such shock, because his fist must have caught that too. And Jinsu wasn't sure if it was just the mirror and her awfully mismatched eyes and paranoia that she'd heard something crack, but it looked like her nose wasn't perfectly straight anymore, and if Minhwan had broken her nose or something, because he'd definitely hit it and it was bleeding and beginning to bruise, she wouldn't ever be able to look at herself in a mirror again because her nose and face would be all messed up, and ugh, dirty, asymmetrical, imperfect, ugly, ugly, ugly—

She didn't hear the knocks on the door, but Kyungsoo's voice cut across her sobs as she scooped water from the cold tap onto her face, because it was the closest she'd get to ice, and attempted to wipe away the blood from her nose.

"Hey, Jinsu, are you up? Noah needs your help—"

The bathroom door creaked open. Jinsu ignored it, though, because everything was horrible and awful and didn't look right, and how could she possibly face anybody like that?

"Okay, whoa, this is not okay."

A blurred hand entered Jinsu's vision and shut off the tap before wrapping around her wrist and pulling her arm down to her side.

"What's up?" Kyungsoo asked her, tugging gently to get her to turn around. Somebody else cleared their throat from the bathroom doorway.

Jinsu squeezed her eyes shut, unwilling to see Kyungsoo's expression when he realised how horrible and disordered her face was.

His response was an explosive "which f*cker did this to you?" It sounded like he was ripping off some loo roll. "Here. Stick this up your nose to stop the bleeding."

The bathroom door shut again. For a moment, Jinsu thought that Kyungsoo had just left, but it must have been the other person, since she felt warm fingers brushing away her tears. They prodded at her nose.

"I don't think this is broken," Kyungsoo said.

"I look u-u-ugly," Jinsu sobbed out.

"Everybody looks ugly when they cry," replied Kyungsoo dispassionately. "So smile or grimace and then you won't."

It was so typically Kyungsoo that Jinsu couldn't help a little laugh. "Ow. That hurts."

"You have a b*tch of a bruise on your cheek – I'd say that was predictable. Do you want to come with me to the sickbay and get an icepack?"

By lunchtime, Jinsu had calmed considerably. Kyungsoo had had to leave to help with the repairs as soon as he was sure she was okay, but had dropped her off with Noah in the main control room. A surprisingly subdued Byeong joo was with him, one hand bandaged up. Jinsu wondered if he hadn't slept when she had and instead had gone to help out.

Noah explained that they were geographically a few kilometres away from where they had been in Balhae, and that repairs to the solar panel and to the broken engine were going well, but that a lot of the equipment was currently in slings and braces as none of the right sized screws could be found.

"It's dangerous," he said, "but if we don't travel too fast, it's doable to get back."

In terms of energy and generating electricity, they were in with a stroke of luck. They'd ground to a halt on Mount Byeong joodu, a matter of metres from Heaven Lake, which meant that they had both a large fresh water supply and a large hydraulic energy supply, since the Attayear had been engineered to work with all manners of renewable energy sources.

The only problem was that Heaven Lake and Mount Byeong joodu in general was considered a sacred site, and that that would anger locals wanting to go there, and the Japanese colonialists because such a large group of them were up there. They didn't have much in the way of cover from anyone who got up towards the top of the volcano, either, which made them vulnerable both to discovery and attack.

Noah wanted to make the repairs necessary to travel back to the present and find a temporary way of overriding the virus's grip on the Attayear's speed and manoeuvrability. They only had eighty-six years left to go, and with the automatic lockdowns and Jinsu's added ringfencing, he was confident that they would make it without the virus causing more problems as long as there weren't any other issues. He was already most of the way through a focussed code to bring location and movement back under their control, but wanted input from Jinsu to make it as powerful as possible, and then he needed her help and knowledge about what the virus was doing to build one that would give them back control over speed. At the beginning, Jinsu thought he sounded way too optimistic about it, but by the time he was done outlining everything, she was feeling much more confident.

And Byeong joo's lip was bleeding, for some reason. It was hard to drag her gaze away from it because the deep red line towards the side of his lip ought really to have had a matching one below, or on the other side or something, and he kept licking the blood away (which was gross, as far as Jinsu was concerned).

Jinsu found out over lunch that the bandage and the split lip were because Byeong joo had got into a fight with Minhwan and delivered a solid uppercut to the boy's nose, and whether or not Jinsu's had any proper damage, Minhwan's definitely looked broken. He sat fuming at his table in high dudgeon while Byeong joo skulked behind Chanyeol and Hamin, as if using their height for protection, and a number of people shot glances at him and talked about the fight behind their hands. If it had been anybody other than Byeong joo who had smashed Minhwan in the face, Jinsu would have been vindictively pleased, but she didn't really like the idea of finding anything about Byeong joo pleasing.

Byeong joo was very defensive when Yejun demanded to know exactly how it had all gone down, because, in Yejun's words, "I think you've done something more stupid than Eunho throwing a stick at a tiger."

"He said my family and her family shouldn't be pulling innocent people into the crossfire of a family feud and that it was my fault the Attayear had been sabotaged, so I punched him in the face," he said hotly, waving his bandaged hand in Jinsu's direction. "Seemed to think I was meddling with the Attayear's electronics and that was why we crashed."

"Junmyeon said he saw you punch Minhwan before you had the argument," Yejun argued back.

"Then Junmyeon's blind," Byeong joo snapped. He was silent for the rest of the meal.

The solar panels were all fixed by two in the afternoon, and Noah and Yixing were quick to capitalise on this, switching on the base electrics so that lights and water were running again but without powering up anything that could be damaged by the virus. Yixing was still worried about the engines, but he seemed to think that Noah's plan was viable.

By the evening, Noah was almost done with the first counter-virus and raring to go on the second.

"We could be out of here in two days," he told Jinsu happily as she sat in his room, ostensibly to help but in reality just watching in fascination and trying to learn from him as he meticulously trawled through his coding and corrected and tweaked it for maximum effect. "Provided we get the energy, that is. But we have the lake. It's doable."

And at that moment, with his bright smile, it really felt like it.

Chapter 33

This is the REAL Attayear chapter 33.

Most of the boys on the Attayear initially seemed to want to make the best of a bad situation. Some requested to go out and explore, which Noah and Jino advised against because of the colonialists, and the rest were happy to take the opportunity to learn more about the machine that they were in and help with repairs, especially those who were also doing engineering. After the fight between Minhwan and Byeong joo, a lot was made of the fact that they would have to put aside differences and work together if they wanted to survive and get anything done, but it was clear by mid-afternoon that the students had already begun to take sides and that it wasn't going anywhere soon.

The rotas had been replaced by a rolling list of shifts that people needed to manage around the clock so that the Attayear would be in the best shape possible as soon as possible and so that there was always an active team doing something. Breaks altered between a fifteen-minute one every two hours and a four-hour one every six hours, and by the time the third of these short breaks had rolled around, Jino had already had to separate five small scuffles because tensions were so high and everybody was looking for somebody to blame about their situation.

Jinsu was joined in the injured brigade by two technicians and five boys who'd all been hurt down in the engine rooms when the Attayear had been completely out of control. Several were sporting broken limbs of some kind and all were covered in cuts and bruises, and Eunho's friend Taehyun, who was with them, had nasty burns on his hands and arms. He offered to let Jinsu see under the bandages with a detached sort of joviality, and Jinsu refused.

Several others who were still fit for manual work also had burns, but from the conversation of the others as they did less strenuous stuff like check all the joints, screws and equipment generally in the Attayear for any defects and finding ones that needed resecuring for the more able-bodied to deal with, Jinsu discovered that one technician and one of the boys from the school that had won fifth place had burns so bad from the overheating equipment that they were going to need hospitalisation the instant they were back in the present. The oldest technician, who was also qualified as a nurse, had managed to scrape around in the sickbay to treat them as best he could, but it wasn't certain whether their lives were out of danger. It was a sobering shock to Jinsu, but, selfishly, information she hoped wouldn't get out, because Minhwan was bound to make a meal of it.

Make a meal of it Minhwan did at the end of the third long break after Jino had lost his cool with seven boys who'd thought it was a good idea to go out exploring beyond the crater at the top of Mount Byeong joodu, but not in the way that Jinsu had thought. It was one of the occasions when about half of them had a break at the same time. Jinsu had managed to hunt Chanyeol down after a three-hour nap and had proceeded to spend some time sitting in the kitchen with him, since he was starving after all the manual labour (not that either of them were particularly competent cooks) and wanted to forage. She reckoned her cousin had eaten his way through almost an entire box of fruit by the time he was done, but that wasn't as important as having company and somebody who was actually family to talk to about her worries and insecurities about being given the mammoth task of trying to combat the coding. Yejun was probably the only other person she could have confided in like that, but when she'd initially gone to look for him, it was to find him passed out on his bed with his head over the edge, snoring away as though he hadn't slept for days.

"This is so dumb," Chanyeol said, absently biting into the rind. Jinsu normally would have taken it off him, if not for overhearing Junmyeon telling somebody during the previous break that watermelon rind was both edible and healthy, even if it tasted awful. "I had no idea you were so good at coding. Byeong joo told us you were the one who shut down most of the machine by yourself, though it looked like he'd much rather go through a round of thumb screws than admit that. Hamin wouldn't stop asking him how both of you had managed to come out of the computer deck alive after being left there with no supervision and Byeong joo mentioned some rubbish about making sure you didn't screw up and get us all killed because Noah had asked him to, but Byeong joo is not a computer scientist."

Jinsu was not in the least bit surprised that Byeong joo had tried to downplay her role.

"Why didn't I know my cousin was so intelligent?" Chanyeol lamented to himself. Jinsu tried to think of something witty to respond with rather than the truth of because you never got to know me, but before she could, both of them jumped at loud shouts breaking out not that far away from the kitchen. Heart skipping a beat, Jinsu grabbed at Chanyeol's shoulder (she was sitting in his lap), and turned to face him, almost whacking her head against his.

Chanyeol groaned. "Is that Minhwan again? Can we just kick him off and leave him here when we move on?"

Jinsu had to admit that the idea was beyond appealing. In fact, she'd wondered back in Balhae whether or not that might be possible, because Minhwan probably would have been best buddies with Hae Insu, but there were two problems with that – the first being that it seemed unfair to unleash somebody like Minhwan on people who already had one massive tool like Hae Insu to deal with, and the second being the havoc that could be caused by deserting anybody in a different timeframe.

"Grandfather clauses," she pointed out, not bothering to hide her disappointment. "Unless he has the self-restraint and sense of duty to become a hermit, no. Just imagine what his kids will be like. He's enough of an aspiring megalomaniac and we live in a century where it's sometimes possible to constrain that."

They both flinched as somebody else shouted back. Then Chanyeol sat up with a start, almost ejecting Jinsu from her human seat.

"F*ck, I think he's fighting with Byeong joo again. I need to go break this up before somebody gets murdered."

He was right, and it took all of about ten seconds to find the fight, which had already attracted quite a crowd. Fortunately, it looked like it hadn't got physical, but it also looked like it wasn't far off.

"You could have got us killed because of some dumb family feud!" Minhwan was bellowing. "Have you seen the burns Juyoung has because of the stunt you pulled while we were trying to contain the boilers? You've placed all our lives in danger—"

"I haven't done anything—" Byeong joo spat back, his hands balling into fists at his sides. His body was quivering with tension and Jinsu wouldn't have put it past him to go in for the attack at any moment. Minhwan looked just as wound up.

"True, you've done f*ck all to help us with the mess you've created."

"I didn't create any of it—"

"And it's your fault—"

"NONE OF THIS IS MY GODD*MN FAULT!" Byeong joo roared. "Stop pinning the blame on me because you want a scapegoat! I did not sabotage this stupid time machine and even an absolute moron could tell you that I am not my cousins and that I had absolutely nothing to do with this!"

"What, like the way I have nothing to do with my father crippling your father financially?"

The words left Jinsu's mouth before she could stop them, and much louder than intended, too. Dead silence fell, and she felt Chanyeol freeze beside her, horrified.

"That's completely irrelevant!" Byeong joo snapped, glaring daggers at her, before turning back to Minhwan.

"How?" Jinsu demanded coldly. "You've treated me like sh*t since we first met for something my father did legally which your father brought on himself when I was six years old. Minhwan's being a b*stard to you for something your cousins did illegally which we only have your word for that you weren't involved in it."

"Who are you calling a b*stard?" Minhwan demanded.

"You shut your mouth," Byeong joo said, his voice shaking with anger. His eyes were practically shooting lasers. It was one of those moments where Jinsu knew she'd already gone way too far, and she decided that s*d it, she might as well go the whole hog.

"You two are both as bad as each other. But what can I say? A hypocrite is a hypocrite and karma is a b*tch."

For a moment, she regretted it, and she would have backed up if Chanyeol hadn't been in the way. Byeong joo looked like he wanted to break Jinsu's nose as well as Minhwan's, and he took a threatening step towards her.

Alarmed, Chanyeol pulled Jinsu back. Byeong joo stopped and took a deep breath, closing his eyes. When he opened them again, he didn't look any less infuriated, but he did appear to have a better hold over himself.

"Karma is a b*tch," he agreed. "And because karma's a b*tch, sometimes it hits the people closest to you instead of you yourself to make you suffer more."

Jinsu almost scoffed at the notion that her suffering would impact her father in any way. He probably wouldn't notice if she died, and if he did, it would only be because the accompanying media storm would be something he could use to advertise the company. Minhwan seemed to think Byeong joo was being similarly ridiculous, because he piped up.

"Can this masochistic lover's squabble go somewhere else, please? Park Jinsu's just as much—"

Byeong joo was already moving before Minhwan had finished the first sentence, taking a couple of swift steps backwards before whipping around on the balls of his feet and leaping up. Before anybody could quite react, he flipped, one of his feet catching Minhwan's face and knocking him down. Minhwan grabbed the foot and wrenched Byeong joo off balance as he landed, causing a nasty blow to the latter's back that made everybody in the vicinity wince.

"Don't associate me with that family of scumbags!"

It got brutal fast. Jinsu was reminded of a pair of wild dogs tearing at each other, and she half expected chunks of flesh to start flying out of the brawl. Several people hovered on the verge of either joining in or trying to break it up. Reminded that that was the reason Chanyeol had shown up in the first place, Jinsu glanced up at her cousin, but he seemed frozen in horror and like the last thing he wanted to do was get involved, because it looked vicious.

Jino was the one to intervene half a minute later, coming in with a flying tackle that looked just as nasty as Byeong joo's opening flying kick and Minhwan yanking Byeong joo off his feet. Everybody flinched again as they saw and heard the impact, but in a matter of seconds, the man was sitting on Byeong joo and had a firm grip pinning Minhwan face down with his hands behind his back.

"Final warning or you're both getting assault charges when we're back home," he snarled. "You're wood cutting for fuel with me until the next big break."

After another exhausting six hours of attempting to help Noah finetune coding (which Jinsu was sure he was doing more to teach her about it than because he needed help, because he really didn't), scouting around the immediate area the Attayear had landed in for anything edible, and then attempting to help Kyungsoo and Changmin cook in the kitchen (after a mammoth three minutes, Kyungsoo suggested she sit on the side and be the official food taster), Jinsu stumbled back up to her room in a state of exhaustion. It was still going to be a day or two before the Attayear would be fit to go anywhere again, and she wasn't sure if she could keep up with the punishing pace that Noah, Yixing and Jino were demanding of everyone.

She had a delayed reaction to the whisk of movement on the other side of the door as she opened it, several steps into the room before it processed that somebody had moved, and she turned, frowning. If Yejun was playing a prank on her, she wasn't really in the mood.

"Oh good, it's only you." Byeong joo slid a few centimetres down the wall in relief, hand dropping from his mouth as if he'd been covering it to muffle his breathing.

It was another few seconds before it processed that it was Byeong joo in the room and Jinsu let out a shriek of horror, scrambling back and almost tripping over her own feet. Byeong joo almost jumped on her, clamping his hand over her mouth.

"Jesus, girl, calm down! Do you want Minhwan and his goons coming in here?"

Jinsu beat frantically at his wrist and then resorted to licking his hand, internally grimacing because germs, to make him let go.

"Get out of my room!"

"You're gross," he responded, staring at his hand for a moment or two and then wiping it vigorously on his trousers. "Licking somebody? How old are you?"

"What are you doing in my room?"

It looked as though the fact that explanation was needed had only just dawned on Byeong joo.

"Minhwan's out for blood again and this is probably the only place he won't look for me," he summarised.

"So you think it's acceptable to break into my room and that I'm just going to be happy with that and let you?"

Byeong joo looked affronted that she might think otherwise. "You were fine working with me yesterday."

Tears of frustration springing to her eyes, Jinsu backed off. "What possesses you to think you've done a single thing that would convince me to do something for you in return?"

"I've done loads of things for you—"

"Name one."

"I carried you back here after—"

Jinsu scoffed. "One you've done of your own free will, not one with some kind of outside influence like somebody making you do it or a life-threatening situation."

"I gave you my cloak."

"Or one where you made me feel like sh*t about it afterwards."

That got him, she could see. His confidence faltered and his gaze dropped, eyes darting to random corners of the room as though they were infinitely more interesting than anything he'd ever seen, and he swallowed thickly. Then a hand came up, sleeve slightly too long for his arm and covering the heel of his palm, and he scratched the back of his ear.

Outside in the corridor, a rumble of voices halted near Jinsu's room, and she thought she could pick out Minhwan's baritone among them. Byeong joo clearly thought so too, because he jumped, a look of panic on his face, and eyed the bathroom door as the easiest escape route, even though it was a dead end.

"You can't seriously believe I'm the same as Minhwan," he said, desperation apparent in his tone.

Jinsu could feel her patience wearing thin.

"Kim," she snapped. He stopped, and Jinsu was unable to prevent a tinge of morbid curiosity that she told herself couldn't possibly be worry. Was it just a continuation of the fight that Minhwan was looking for, even though Jino had said that they were both on their last warning? Or was it something worse? After all, Byeong joo was resorting to hiding in her room, of all places, and he was either naive enough to think that her being friends with his friends made them friends by association no matter how he treated her, or he was actually properly scared of Minhwan and his cronies.

But that didn't stop the anger and the frustration that she'd bottled up for so long, and it was difficult to keep the resentment back.

"You're a bully and an egocentric b*stard," she told him. A muscle in his jaw twitched, as though he wanted to dispute her words but was wary about angering her too much. But the anger was still there, and itching to make itself known. She wanted to slap the rebellion off his face – and heck, it was a perfect opportunity. She had the upper hand for once, and he was hardly going to go and tell anyone on her, and he always seemed to laugh at her trying to stick up for herself, and she was honestly fed up with it.

She raised her hand. "You can stay," she said bitterly, Minhwan's voice outside now definitely identifiable as him and Byeong joo's name definitely identifiable in the few words that were comprehensible. Byeong joo lifted his head, his expression guarded.

"On one condition," Jinsu added.

He nodded quickly. Apparently Minhwan was that much of a threat. Jinsu beckoned him closer. Warily, he obeyed, and she slapped him hard across the cheek. He took it silently with no more than a flinch and a grimace, almost as if he'd been expecting it, and Jinsu shook her hand out.

"You have no idea how long I've wanted to do that," she told him, making Byeong joo frown, but he had no time to respond because the door handle rattled. Jinsu realised that she had been too tired to think about locking the door before Byeong joo had distracted her, and she shoved him in the direction of the bathroom. His fingertips caught hers just before he stumbled through the door and just as Jinsu's own bedroom door opened, and there was a light tug before he snatched his hand away. From anybody else, Jinsu would have considered it some kind of squeeze of gratitude.

Byeong joo didn't do gratitude, though, but he was right that he wasn't quite as bad as Minhwan.

Maybe.

Chapter 34

It actually wasn't that hard to get rid of Minhwan's goons, though it probably helped that the one who barged into Jinsu's room was Seungho rather than Minhwan himself. Not keen on anybody gatecrashing, Jinsu did the first thing that came to mind and pulled the hem of her top up as she turned around.

Seungho backed off, flinging his arm up over his eyes. "Oh God, don't take your clothes off here!"

Jinsu fixed him with her best icy glare. "Why not? It's my room."

He lowered his arm a bit and Jinsu raised hers, pulling her top up further. Seungho immediately covered his eyes again.

"I swear to God I thought you weren't in here!"

"And that and not knocking make it acceptable to barge into somebody else's room because...?"

He held up his hands, eyes squeezed shut. "Looking for Kim. He might have thought hiding somewhere we'd be unlikely to look would be a good way to go."

Jinsu wondered exactly why Byeong joo was so keen to avoid them and they were so keen to find him. "Fat chance of me ever letting that git anywhere near me. Now get out or I'm calling Jino on grounds of harassment."

Seungho nodded and backed out of the room, still with his eyes closed. As the door shut, she thought she heard Minhwan's voice saying "yeah, not likely he'd be in there if she is. I thought she was still doing other stuff so he might have used it as a getaway."

Letting her top drop back again, Jinsu glanced towards the bathroom. It was silent on the other side of the door. Jinsu wondered which would be worse for Byeong joo: remaining trapped in the bathroom of somebody he knew really didn't like him for four hours, or being ejected and potentially running into Minhwan. She decided she didn't care and flopped down on her bed, intending to relax by reading a book, but the next thing she knew, she was asleep.

Jinsu still felt shattered when she woke up, but the smell of food was utterly irresistible and pulled her out of sleep. She rolled over to find that one of her desk chairs had been pulled up beside her bed and the mystery chef had left a large tray of food there. A small note was propped up against the plate.

Electricity to cook! was right in her face, and Jinsu couldn't help smiling a little. Her mystery chef seemed excited. Is your arm broken too or is it just your hand? I've made everything single-hand-eatable for you. Washing hands with one hand is hard and finger food is greasy.

Propping herself up a little more, Jinsu saw that everything was in bite-sized chunks and that he'd left her a small thing of cocktail sticks. She couldn't help wondering who it was again, though, especially from the cheerful, friendly tone of the note. She doubted that Chanyeol and Yejun would lie to her, and she'd also seen firsthand that Chanyeol and Hamin were atrocious cooks, so they were out. The impression she got from Eunho was that he'd accidentally blurt it out or wouldn't deny it if asked, and he'd come in to nick the food on occasion and she just didn't think he'd do that without giving the game away. Junmyeon was a hardcore vegetarian, and the only other person Jinsu was friends with was Kyungsoo. She had to admit that he probably was the type to keep something like being the mystery chef under wraps if he didn't want to reveal himself, but having seen him cook, he was either deliberately making it out not to be him (he wasn't a bad cook at all, but the mystery chef had a way with presentation that Kyungsoo didn't, but then the mystery chef was cooking for one and Kyungsoo had done dinner for thirty, so it could well just have been practicality), and she didn't know why he'd do that (unless he was harbouring a massive crush), or it was somebody else.

A soft knock at the door announced the presence of Noah.

"Breakfast in bed?" he commented when Jinsu told him to come in. "You're being spoilt."

"I know," Jinsu mumbled around a mushroom. "You have no idea how lovely it is."

"Well, when you're done, I won't need you on the computers for a bit. I'd like it if you could go outside and see if you can find trees to help brace parts of the Attayear's machinery in the engine rooms, so we can chop them down. Ideally we'd have time to dry them out first because freshly dead wood is springy, but we don't have that luxury."

Jinsu held up her broken hand. "I don't think I can chop anything."

"Just look and mark the trees. It's good for you all to get outside and all the more active boys without significant injuries have already done stints in fresh air."

They had landed in winter, and that day, unlike the previous day, it happened to be snowing. Jinsu tucked her camera into her pocket, intent on taking photos if the opportunity arose, and picked a cloak off the shelf. It was only when she went into the bathroom to check that her fluffy hat was on dead centre that she realised it was Byeong joo's cloak.

Which reminded her that she'd totally forgotten about hiding him in her bathroom. Heart racing, she looked around, half expecting him to be on the toilet seat or sleeping in the shower, but he'd evidently upped and left as soon as he could. But, apparently, not without going through all her stuff first.

It wasn't like he'd left the place untidy, but everything had been moved. The neatly lined-up shower gels and shampoos were in the shower rack rather than on the shelf beside the shower (had he used them?). The toothpaste had been placed the wrong way up in its cupholder. Everything from her medical bag had been laid out on the shelf her toiletries were supposed to be on with a space of exactly two millimetres between them (Jinsu wondered if he was mocking her) and a length of bandage that he'd obviously cut off himself in a moment of boredom draped over the edge of the shelf, held in place by a roll of medical tape resting on top of it. Her bathroom flipflops had migrated from the door to in front of the toilet, making it look as though a ghost was sitting there (they were even placed at a forty-five degree angle). Looking around, Jinsu wondered if he'd have changed the hot and cold taps around or if he'd have swapped the shower and the toilet over if he'd had the tools or the time. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, telling herself it was a good idea to remain calm. It could have been worse. He could have done a Minhwan and actually messed the place up. This wasn't messy; it just looked lived in, and lived in wasn't something Jinsu was used to her personal spaces looking like. They had to be perfect, not lived in. The kind of perfect you saw on a property brochure when you were looking to buy a new house.

Still, the piece of bandage was long enough to wrap around her hand and her forearm as a makeshift glove, since she didn't actually have any of her own, and she fumbled with the jade-and-silver clasp of the cloak for several long moments before it finally caught. Jinsu gave a little victory pump, idly registering at the back of her mind that her jade pendant would actually go pretty well with the cloak clasp, and decided to head downstairs. She could tidy the bathroom later.

Five of them had been detailed to go out in the snow, and two of them were Byeong joo and Yejun. Byeong joo conspicuously avoided her eye as she joined them, but then he looked up and seemed to recognise the cloak, and a funny expression crossed his face. Yejun was wearing a cashmere and wool coat that Jinsu was familiar with as her brother had the same one, and the other two were wearing thick hoodies. Byeong joo himself seemed to be in much thinner layers, though his sleeves were down over his hands, and Jinsu frowned to herself, trying to suppress a niggling feeling of guilt at sort of stealing his cloak, even though he hadn't wanted it back.

None of them had proper boots for the snow and the other two boys were soon complaining that it was cold and their feet were soaked. Yejun hovered at Jinsu's elbow, chatting quietly to her about the time period they were in, while Byeong joo forged ahead into the woods.

After being cooped up with strange sleeping hours and computers for a couple of days, Jinsu found herself revelling in the crisp, fresh air of the winter day. The snow drifted lazily around them, not too much of it to really inhibit visibility, though it did muffle sound quite a lot, and she and Yejun both were reluctant to speak above a whisper as a result. They marked out four or five trees they thought were suitable, from different parts of the wood so as to make their being taken much less noticeable, and started to head back.

They were most of the way back through the wood when a group of Japanese soldiers appeared out of nowhere, surrounding them and blocking their way forward. Byeong joo, who had stayed closer to the others this time round, came to such an abrupt halt that Jinsu walked into him, and he immediately snatched her wrist.

"Stay back," he growled in a low warning. "We don't want them to know there's a girl with us."

Jinsu would have been offended, but she could see the threat with her own eyes and shrank back against Yejun as the soldiers closed in, barking out orders in Japanese.

Byeong joo and Yejun looked to be the only ones who understood, both raising their hands and standing still. The other two boys swiftly followed suit. Jinsu hastily raised the one hand she could as well.

It was quite scary not to understand what was being said. Jinsu wasn't sure if it was because it was a language she didn't know, but the words sounded harsh and abrasive as the soldiers patted them all down (she saw Yejun's jaw twitch angrily when the soldier who'd searched him for weapons moved onto her), and she wanted to get away.

Once they were done with them, the soldiers shoved them all back together. Jinsu found herself in the middle of the four boys, Yejun standing protectively in front of her. Another soldier who, from his medals, was higher ranked, stepped forward and barked out a question.

Byeong joo glanced at Yejun, who snapped back a monosyllabic answer. Byeong joo added to the reply.

The medalled soldier circled slowly around them, asking more questions. Byeong joo took over the responses, either more confident or more fluent than Yejun. Jinsu hadn't been aware that either of them even spoke the language.

It was clear, though, from Yejun's body language and the rising tension in Byeong joo's voice that the interrogation wasn't going well. Yejun reached a hand back for her, squeezing her fingertips gently, and Byeong joo started shifting so that he was more or less always facing the commander. The other two boys remained with their backs pressed against Jinsu's, sounding like they were barely breathing.

The snow abruptly began to fall thicker and faster, and the soldiers tightened the ring again so that they were standing shoulder to shoulder. Saying something that sounded like an order, the commander pointed, and Byeong joo bit back a response that was echoed by Yejun. The next thing Jinsu knew, both boys had been grabbed and were struggling against strong arms, and then she and the other two were also being held captive.

The four boys went still when they realised there were also weapons about, but all that was really going through Jinsu's mind was yet another b*stard is crushing my stupid broken hand as the man got a tight grip around her torso, trapping the arm in its sling too tightly against her body, and also that she didn't want to go wherever the Japanese soldiers seemed to think it was a good idea to take them. She squirmed uncomfortably in the man's grip before catching Yejun's eye. He shook his head minutely at her. She pulled a face, but got no further with her struggles because the man holding her whacked her on the head, stunning her. Yejun looked less than happy as they were pushed along, starting down through the woods as the snowfall started to get heavier and heavier.

It was when visibility was down to about a hundred yards that Byeong joo suddenly made his move, twisting in his captor's grip and hooking his ankle around his captor's to knock him sharply off balance. As the man slipped, Byeong joo brought his elbow up into his face and floored him.

Yejun's reaction was immediate: he took a sudden step back into the man who was holding his wrists from behind, broke out of his grip, and then seized the man's hands and threw him over his shoulder in a rough imitation of a judo move. Jinsu just had time to see him reaching for the man's gun before her own captor twigged what was happening and pulled out a pistol. He jabbed it under her jaw, screeching something that even Jinsu could tell was a threat to shoot her if they didn't stop, but she saw an opening and dipped her head to bite at his arm. The barrell slipped away from her and he let out a yell of pain, the gun going off as he fired it unintentionally. Jinsu was surprised that his uniform was flimsy enough for her teeth to hurt him, but that wasn't as important as trying to get away, which was harder than intended as his reflex had been to tighten his grip with his other hand.

There were three more gunshots and Yejun called out something in Japanese. Jinsu struggled against the man holding her, and he responded by putting her in a headlock. She managed to force her hand up between her neck and his arm, but it meant that she had no hand free to claw at him with.

Breathing was more important, though.

She thought.

"Run! Run!" she heard Byeong joo yelling, followed by the sound of the others taking off briefly before the snow muffled their footsteps. A few of the soldiers broke away to give chase.

Momentary panic struck at the realisation that she'd been left alone, but part of Jinsu understood why. They were in danger, and it was every man for himself, and she hadn't been able to get free when the others had. It was like the tiger, except this was what ought to have happened rather than what had happened. Luck didn't last.

There was a dull thunk and the man's hold suddenly went limp, only to make her gurgle with alarm when his weight dragged her backwards as he fell. Then hands were extricating her from the limpet grip and someone was tugging her away into the snow, faster than she was capable of running, but she didn't dare complain, not when she could hear people running after them. Her adrenaline levels were too high as they dashed through the snow for her to feel relieved – of course they wouldn't have outright deserted her, not with Yejun in the group – but relief could come later when they were actually safe.

Her rescuer slowed, looking around, and almost released Jinsu's wrist before deciding against it and upping his pace to a run again.

"Sh*t, I've lost the others," he gasped out. "Do you know which way's back?"

Jinsu tripped at the sound of his voice. Of all the people, Byeong joo...

Another muted gunshot sounded and he yanked her upright, almost wrenching her arm, as he halted, looking around again.

"Stay on your feet, Park. If I have to carry you, we'll both get caught." He glanced behind, and then in the direction of the gunshot. Jinsu was pretty sure she was thinking the same as him: how far behind were their pursuers, and was the shooter Yejun or one of the soldiers?

Byeong joo concluded it was safest to stay away from the shooter, breaking into a jog and pulling her along. The snow was getting thicker and thicker, the air melting into it so that it was almost impossible to make out the trees, and even their footfalls in the snow seemed not to be as loud as they should. Jinsu recognised the weather pattern from her skiing trips. She tried to pull Byeong joo to a halt.

"Stop. Byeong joo, stop!"

"We need to get back."

"We're heading into a whiteout – it's not safe!"

He whirled on her. "I'm not an idiot! I know what a f*cking whiteout is and I also know we could die if we stay out in one!"

He was shaking, Jinsu noticed. Was that from anger or because he was cold? Speaking of cold, the cloak was really incredibly warm. She decided to ignore his outburst and shrugged the cloak more comfortably around her. Byeong joo decided to ignore her protests too and marched on, pulling her along with him. The air around them grew whiter and whiter until it was almost impossible to make out the snow falling, other than when it landed on them.

It was several minutes of silence before Byeong joo faltered to a halt again, this time looking much less sure of himself. He let go of Jinsu's arm and tucked his hands under his armpits.

"How far away were we?" he asked grudgingly. Jinsu shrugged, retreating her hand under her cloak. It was only when the warm material fell across it in a manner that felt abrasive and burn-like that she realised just how frozen it was.

There was another awkward silence. Byeong joo stepped away, but seemed to realise at the same time as Jinsu that the fog really was that thick, because just half a metre and he was almost invisible, and he quickly came back.

Jinsu's curiosity got the better of her. "Where were they taking us?"

For a moment, Byeong joo hesitated to reply. Jinsu didn't know whether it was because he didn't want to talk or because he thought the answer wasn't a pleasant one.

"From what I understood, there's a military base at the bottom of the mountain. So, there."

Jinsu frowned. Had it been normal for soldiers to just arrest Korean civilians on sight during the occupation?

"Wait," she said slowly, "what time are we in? Year?"

"1930. I think. Might be 1929. Winter of."

"Oh. Oh."

Byeong joo shot her a suspicious look. "What happened in the winter of 1929?"

"The Gwangju Student Independence Movement." It made sense. There had been various retaliations, arrests and whatnot, and it was only a month or two after it had happened. They were up at the other end of the country, but it wouldn't be surprising if the reprisals had happened across the country as a whole, especially against those obviously of student age.

"This isn't Gwangju," Byeong joo pointed out in withering tones. "This is practically China."

"The Japanese are hardly known to have been nice to the independence movements."

Byeong joo scrunched up his face, as if reluctant to admit she'd scored a point on that one, however much he agreed with her. They lapsed back into silence. For a few moments, they were both still, but then the cold began to bite. Hands went back under armpits and Jinsu stamped a little in an attempt to get circulation going to her feet again. Byeong joo's cheeks turned purple and then blue.

Three electronic bleeps had them both jolting properly back into awareness.

"What was that?" Byeong joo demanded, eyes wide as he looked around. Jinsu had been about to ask him the same question: it wasn't a sound she'd expected to hear that far back in the past.

It came again, and as Byeong joo raised a hand to cup against his ear and listen more intently, Jinsu spotted a red light flashing from the inside of his sleeve.

"Is that your watch?" she asked, pointing.

He gave her a funny look, but then pointed back. "Your wrist is flashing."

Jinsu looked down. He was right: in sync with the light on his own wrist, a red light in Jinsu's sleeve was also flashing. Byeong joo took another glance at her wrist and then pulled his sleeve back to check his watch. Jinsu thought about pulling hers back, but she didn't have a hand to do it with and she didn't fancy doing it with her teeth.

It was their watches. A red LED light had lit up on the side of one of the dial's on Byeong joo's, facing up his forearm towards his shoulder as he held it out, and another green one had lit up on the left, almost at the edge of the three dials. Yellow LEDs rand from the red to the green light.

Incredulous, Byeong joo let out a little laugh. "Is this GPS?" He turned to his right, holding his arm out. Immediately, the lights switched, the red one now on the right side of the watch faces with the yellow ones tracing around the metal rims between the faces, curling around to the left at the top of the leftmost one to stop on the green. The watch bleeped again.

Byeong joo started off in the indicated direction. He didn't need to turn or call back for Jinsu to follow him.

Chapter 35

*Potentially a double update. Make sure you've read chapter 34!*

Byeong joo was full on shivering by the time they got back to the Attayear. Jinsu had thought about giving him back his cloak or at least suggesting sharing it several times along the way, but he'd shot down her one attempt to talk the second she'd said his name and she got the feeling that he was stubborn enough to refuse, even if he was at risk of getting hypothermia.

It was about a half hour walk back with nothing to direct them but faith in the watches, and just as they were stepping back inside, they saw the other three splayed out on the floor of the atrium. The technician who was medically qualified was adjusting blankets around one of the boys and Yejun was talking to Jino from his position lying on the floor, eyes closed and his voice barely above a murmur. Yixing was with them, focussing on a screen in a panel in the wall.

Unbearable warmth swept over Jinsu as the Attayear doors hissed shut behind her and Yixing turned the screen off.

"Thank God you were close enough for that to work," he said. "We weren't sure if the snowstorm would completely block the signal."

"I thought GPS wasn't possible until the late 1970s," Byeong joo replied. "That was when the first GPS satellite was launched into space."

"We have a minor signal we can erect on the Attayear for emergencies like this." Yixing patted the screen. "It only has a radius of seven miles, though, so it's quite limited. Post 1978 we can connect the watches to the Attayear via proper GPS, but before that, we have to make do with what we have."

Byeong joo grunted, chafing his hands. It looked like his fingers had lost circulation, and his teeth were beginning to chatter. The technician threw a blanket to him and he draped it around his shoulders, looking grateful. Jinsu hovered awkwardly by the doors, wondering if she was needed for anything. She probably owed Byeong joo a thank you of some kind, not for bringing her back because she could have done that herself with the GPS, but because he'd got her away from the Japanese soldiers in the first place. The only trouble was that she had no inclination to talk to him (especially since she'd hidden him from Minhwan and he'd messed up her bathroom), and she also had no idea how he'd react to it, since he'd been less than thrilled by her trying to give back the cloak.

Then again, she reasoned, she had hidden him from Minhwan, so Byeong joo rescuing her from the soldier could count as him thanking her for that, which meant they were even. She nodded to herself. That worked. Time to focus on something else.

Mercifully, the other three weren't in bad condition. One of them had a bruise and was bleeding a bit from one of the Japanese soldiers trying to catch him, and Jino was turning over a gun Yejun had just given him, asking something about grandfather clauses and injuring people.

"I kind of wasn't focussing my aim," he admitted. "Not that there was enough visibility to do it – I don't think I actually killed anyone, but if I injured somebody to the extent they couldn't move and got stuck out in the whiteout, would that be my fault?"

Jino glanced down at him. "Difficult to say. There's a high chance if the whiteout's a bad one that they'd die whether or not they were injured. Not like you could change what's just happened, in any case."

Yejun nodded. He still looked unsure of himself, but apparently it was a good enough answer. Looking around, he spotted Jinsu and sat up, holding his arms out towards her.

Without a second thought, Jinsu sat beside him and allowed him to crush her into a hug.

"We were worried when you got separated in the whiteout," he told her. "You look like you came out the best of us, though. Where in the world did you get that cloak?"

Jinsu hesitated, and then jerked her head in Byeong joo's direction. "He gave it me because I was cold after the Hae Insu thingy and refused to have it back because I contaminated it with my germs."

Yejun nuzzled his head against the cloak's soft material. "He's mad," he declared. "This is toasty warm and it's almost minus twenty outside now."

"Well." Jinsu shifted awkwardly. "Can't complain."

A soft, throaty chuckle escaped Yejun. "I'm so tired. We could have died twice over. This is, what, the third or fourth near-death experience for you?"

Jinsu made a non-committal sound, but he was right.

"You're such a trouble magnet." He yawned, draping an arm around her and snuggling up comfortably. "Mm. I could go to sleep right here."

He honestly looked like a little kid, and Jinsu had to resist the temptation to run her hands through his hair as he shifted once more to get properly comfortable, his hair all messed up and his eyes closed, his resting smile tilting his lips peacefully up.

It only took seconds for that image to be dramatically shattered, though, by Byeong joo plopping down beside them in a puddle of melting snow. His cheeks were still blue and he looked frozen, but still managed to maintain a poker expression.

"So, how long have you two been dating?"

Jinsu and Yejun both choked so hard she was worried they were going to suffocate.

The snowstorm naturally meant that they were able to gather the final lot of materials that they needed to ensure the Attayear was safe to go, and so Noah and Yixing decided it was best to wait it out, not least because they weren't sure how bad weather would affect the Attayear's ability to travel. However, there was also the problem of Japanese soldiers in the area. Everybody agreed that the five of them had done the right thing in escaping before they could be taken too far away, but at least one of the Japanese soldiers had to have made it back down the mountain, because one boy who went out for an illicit smoke in the woods (apparently a snowstorm wasn't enough of a deterrent) came back in hurry with news that the place was crawling with soldiers. Yixing locked everybody into the Attayear after that for safety reasons.

Tensions heightened considerably when they were all cooped up with the bad weather and potential threat. The only two people who didn't get remotely snappish were Noah and Kyungsoo, Noah because he just seemed to have this amazing gift for being unruffled and Kyungsoo because he seemed to enjoy being unflappable in a manner that wound everybody else up.

Halfway through the second day of being trapped in the Attayear, they ran out of manual things to correct around the time machine that didn't require extra resources from somewhere. The only other thing that could be worked on at all was the coding. Noah had left the main computers switched off to prevent the virus from spreading, which meant that they were only able to work with the information they currently had. It was an awful lot of information, though, and actually having the time to sift through some of it felt like a bit of a luxury. Noah was patient with Jinsu as she learnt more about the Tardis code and had her construct minor parts of the counter-virus for him under his supervision.

"At some point, we're going to have to fire the engines up again, because we're going to need to find and target the bit of code that locks all administration commands to ratification only by Byeong joo's fingerprint," Noah told her as he stretched, signalling that it was time to take a break. "And given the way they managed to keep this virus hiding in the background until we were about to return from Balhae, you can bet it'll be the most protected part of it."

"I don't get what their thought behind the virus was." Jinsu turned away from the screen, rubbing her eyes. "Either they were intending the people travelling on the machine to get trapped in the past, which has to be some form of attempted... I don't know, proscription or something, or they were confident there was going to be a Kim on it to take over, and they couldn't have known Byeong joo was on the prize list, and even if they had known, there was no guarantee he'd be able or allowed to touch the controls, or know what to do—"

"Byeong joo had nothing to do with it," Noah said, a little sharp. "I hope you understand that."

"I do, but I have zero sympathy for him."

"You wanna watch that train of thought," Noah said in a tone that sounded very much like he was ticking her off. "The worst possible thing you can do to somebody you feel has treated you badly is to turn into them when you see a chance for revenge. I am more than aware that there's a bad history between the two of you, but if your version of making things right is going to be turning into what you decried in the other person, that makes you just as bad – well, actually, worse, because you know what you're doing and all the vindictiveness is intended."

"So I should just let everything he's done wash over me and not have it out with him?"

Noah sighed. "Have it out with him. Upbraid him. Make it clear to him where he's gone wrong and where he needs to fix up sharpish. Give him a good kick up the rear so he gets a good move on apologising, if he hasn't already, but respect him as a person as you do it. Byeong joo is not a bad kid. He's a hurt one. There's a very big difference."

Jinsu was not in the mood to nod and agree. "He's a hurt kid who's practically ruined my life with no valid reason."

"And you have no right to humiliate him because of that," Noah shot back just as quickly. "I'm not saying you are doing right now, but I've seen how things have changed while you've been here. You're much more confident than you were even a fortnight ago, and you have a wicked bite to your tongue when you want to stand up for yourself. There's nothing wrong with that, but just make sure you don't go over the other edge, because from what I'm seeing at the moment, you're balanced at the top of the hill."

Jinsu wanted to retort, but Noah was faster.

"Let me just make something clear," he said. "Making things right, from either side of the scale, so whether you're the perpetrator or the victim, is about treating the other person graciously and with humanity. A lot of people mistake revenge for that. Revenge is purely about selfishness. It's about finding a way to humiliate or bring down the other person in a manner that turns you into something less than human. And at the risk of sounding like Changmin, post-modernist philosophy is the worst philosophy that's hit the world to date, because it strips the notion of there being something right and something wrong, and turns it all into subjective opinion of 'I personally think this is right' and 'I personally think this is wrong' – situation and society dependent, often, too – meaning that morality is a social construct and fluid rather than there being moral standards to live up to, and that makes humans cruel to each other. There is no value in post-modernism of 'being the better person' because that 'betterness' is subjective and therefore not necessarily better."

"I don't want a philosophy lecture, or to talk about Byeong joo," Jinsu growled, getting to her feet in preparation to stalk off.

"Just remember that if your opinion, or subjective opinion, is what you base your morals and actions on, you become inward looking and egocentric," he called after her. "That's where your father went wrong."

Jinsu pretended not to hear him and left.

The snow storm continued for another couple of days, during which tensions heightened yet again at being cooped up, but it was mid-morning of the first clear day that disaster struck. Visibility was still pretty poor, but in the interests of moving off again as soon as possible, Jino had elected to take a couple of the stronger boys out with him to find trees to cut down to use as braces (the ones Jinsu and the others had marked probably wouldn't be possible to find again, given the weather). They had barely got a hundred metres away from the Attayear when shouts broke out and they were suddenly sprinting back, much to the confusion of everybody who was in or near the atrium area.

"Shut the doors! Shut the doors!" Jino was yelling as he pushed the two boys back inside. Jinsu recognised the stockier of the two as one of Minhwan's friends – possibly Jaemin – but didn't have time to process much beyond that before Eunho pushed past her and mashed his finger on the screen that constituted a single-circuit control panel for the doors. Jino just slid inside as the doors hissed shut, but then there was a clunk and a wrong-sounding screech, and everybody stopped what they were doing to see what had happened.

Something about the size of a fist had wedged itself between the two doors, holding them open. It was smoking, and looked like a—

"Grenade – move!" bellowed Jino as they all stood around, frozen. Jino scrambled to his feet, shoving one of the boys further back before hurling himself at the door, fist raised to punch the grenade back out.

There was a blinding flash of light and an explosion, accompanied by a wave of heat, and Jinsu staggered back several paces. Somebody grabbed hold of her and steadied her.

"Holy sh*t," said Eunho's voice. "I think I'm gonna throw up."

As the smoke cleared, Jinsu could see why he'd said that. Jaemin and two other boys were crumpled against the atrium walls with expressions of agony on their faces, covered in blood, and the walls themselves appeared to have buckled. An unmoving body lay by the doors that had been blasted open, blood pooling rapidly around it, and it looked like the arm...

"Soldiers!" somebody else yelled, and Jinsu saw with horror that it was true: through the tail ends of the smoke, she was able to make out Japanese soldiers approaching the Attayear.

Shoving Eunho aside, she pressed her finger against the touchscreen. It took a couple of taps for it to blink back into life, and she attempted to activate the emergency procedure to close the door. The doors whined at her and an error message flashed up, telling her that she didn't have the authority to do it.

She swallowed, and then turned and sprinted towards the main desk, passing Noah and Yixing coming out of the kitchen to see what the explosion was all about.

"Japanese soldiers at the doors!" she garbled at them. "Need to leave!"

Not looking where she was going as Noah and Yixing bolted in the direction of the atrium, she ploughed headlong into somebody else and they both went sprawling on the floor.

"Ow, what—?"

Recognising Byeong joo's voice, Jinsu scrambled back to her feet and pulled him up.

"I need a system override or we're all gonna die!"

"What?" he queried, baffled. "Wait, what's going on?"

"The doors!"

Clearly still confused, Byeong joo seemed to register that he wasn't going to get a coherent answer out of her and just followed along, though he did nurse his hand with a disgruntled expression when Jinsu let go of him and threw herself into a seat in front of the main motherboard. She was instantly met with the problem of starting the whole machine up and eventually decided to just go for it. All she needed was access to the computer to shut down the doors centrally rather than from their own little circuit.

Seeing her hesitate, Byeong joo reached out and flicked a few switches to power on. Then he cast her an equally hesitant glance.

"Are you sure you know what you're doing?" His tone was equal parts aggressive and dubious. Jinsu ignored him, though, skipping through regular boot-up into emergency, which was (according to Noah) a process of twenty seconds compared to one and a half minutes. Rather than the usual desktop and windows appearing on the screen, it stayed black, already in the Tardis programme.

"Doors, doors, doors," Jinsu mumbled to herself, launching the search feature. "Access, please."

Wordlessly, Byeong joo authorised it. Seconds later, Jinsu was scanning the opening of the coding for the doors. She hesitated once again, trying to draft up the best formula for it, and then opened a new command box to type it in.

"Override," she told Byeong joo when the message requiring authorisation appeared. He did so without question, and then gave her an expectant look, clearly wanting her to spill the beans.

"Well?" he prompted when she got up and made to leave, anxious to check that it had worked. She was blocked by Noah coming in.

"Main doors are shut. We have five Japanese soldiers on board and we need to contain them. I need you to shut down all the compartments in the Attayear so we can trap them and deal with them individually, and then we need to get the hell out of here before they show up with tanks or use mortars to start destroying our machine."

"Is the code ready?" Jinsu asked him.

"No," he replied. "We'll just have to risk it. I think we've got enough to give us reasonable control provided nothing else goes wrong, but we have three people dead already and a lot of injuries aren't looking good. We need to get out of here ASAP because that's the only way to save lives."

Heavily, he sat down in the chair that Jinsu had just vacated and plugged a memory stick into the main computer. Jinsu noticed him crossing his fingers as he waited for the software to register.

A few clicks later and he sat back.

"Fire her up, Byeong joo," he said in a low voice. "Let's try to make it home."

Chapter 36

*Update 1/4*

(Warning: angst incoming)

Emergency power-up was scheduled at just over half an hour rather than almost half a day, but as far as Jinsu was concerned, that still felt far too short. As the doors all over the Attayear came hissing down and locked in place, Noah dispatched Jinsu with a walkie-talkie so she could report on the situation. Byeong joo probably would have been a better choice for the job, since he was actually capable of fighting off any attackers and there were five potential ones on the Attayear, but he was needed in case there were any electronic commands that needed his fingerprint.

Each of the compartments had a length of between four to six metres, depending on the size of the room that was being broken down, and on the wall of each was a tiny peep-hole so that Jinsu could check what was going on on the other side. For the ones that were free, Noah pulled the compartments up as Jinsu passed through. The first few she came to were empty, but in the ninth, she found Hamin and Yejun sitting on a still-struggling Japanese soldier, Yejun with a kitchen knife at the man's throat that he looked like he might use if he absolutely had to. She relayed the situation to Noah, who passed on the order to knock the soldier out and for Hamin to keep watch while she and Yejun went to find the other ones. They came across a number of injured and unconscious boys on the way, and Yejun decided he was more useful getting as many of them as possible to the infirmary once the passage for that was opened up.

Minhwan and three friends had taken out two between them in adjacent compartments, thought Jinsu didn't stop long to talk to him because he was glaring at her like everything was her fault, and nearly ten minutes later, she found Kyungsoo sitting beside a very dazed-looking soldier and posing for selfies. He told Jinsu proudly that he'd taken him down all by himself by dropping on him from behind from the stairs, and his smug expression was so endearing that Jinsu had a hard time not laughing.

The fifth one took much longer to track down, mostly because he'd managed to escape somewhere into the bowels of the time machine and nobody had come across him. After a lengthy search, during which time she could feel the Attayear's engines revving around her, Jinsu was joined by Yixing and Yejun, who was now equipped with his bow and arrow, and Yixing took them down to the engine and store rooms, as they'd been sectioned off and the only places that were as yet unsearched. Other boys came down after them (Chanyeol hovered protectively at Jinsu's elbow), and he was eventually cornered by Minhwan as he hid behind a stack of crates containing lithium and tellurium. Yejun trained his weapons on him, ready to fire if he tried any funny stuff, but Minhwan managed to wrestle the soldier into submission and then knocked him out with a meaty blow from his fist. Jinsu reported back to Noah, who requested the unconscious body to be brought up to the main level.

"Tell somebody to find a porthole not too high up," he said, "and to chuck the soldiers out of it. That way they'll still be in their time period and we won't be breaking any grandfather clauses or endangering ourselves by having them on board, but we want to get going as soon as possible. The virus is stronger than I thought and I've only managed to deadlock parts of it, not counteract them, which will make life tricky."

Minhwan and Yejun between them hauled the soldier off and several others went back up to dispose of the other Japanese invaders. Jinsu was given the all clear a few minutes later and turned to Yixing to tell him that it was time to put the engines on full throttle manually, since it couldn't be done from the control room.

Yixing immediately began directing the boys down there with them to help lock the parts of the engine into place in the dominant engine room and brace them as best they could with the poles and slings that they had. Chanyeol reluctantly left Jinsu's side to go and help in the twin engine room that they were in, since Yixing needed to be over on the other side and was dragging Jinsy along with him..

"When Noah said full throttle," Yixing checked quickly with her, "did he mean full throttle or full throttle?"

"Everything's on the emergency system right now. He wants to get the injured boys in the sickbay treated back in the present."

Yixing grimaced. "The engine won't cope with that for more than a few minutes – not in this condition. We won't max out before we need to leave the time stream, though, so we probably can make it. And we also need time to drift or else we're going to land in the middle of North Korea and I do not advise that."

Clattering down the ladder, he called for the boys to tighten everything up as much as was humanly possible.

"How long will it take, then?" Jinsu asked, descending the ladder at a much safer pace.

"To get back to present time? Ten minutes, assuming nothing goes wrong. We can get out of here as soon as we hit Temp 1, but most of the time's going to be spent in drift, and that's quite dangerous at speed if we don't have the controls to stop us in the right place." He sighed. "Oh well. We'll just all have to trust Noah. Stand back, everybody!"

Yixing went over to a panel in the wall and opened it up. Jinsu caught a glimpse of levers before he was pulling various of them down to different heights. The engines and machinery in the room all around responded with varying degrees of activity, the buzzy hum livening up to something near a roar.

Kyungsoo joined Jinsu by the ladder up out of the engine room as everybody blocked their ears against the thundering vibrations. The entire room began to reverberate so violently that Jinsu's vision became blurred.

"Get down before Dive!" Yixing bellowed at everybody present, and they all flattened themselves against the floor. The temporal boom was deafening so close to the engines, and familiar blinding light flared against Jinsu's eyelids.

Just as the light was fading and Jinsu was blinking her vision back, there was a second boom and the entire Attayear tilted sideways. Jinsu didn't realise that her walkie-talkie was screaming at her until Kyungsoo thrust it at the side of her head.

"We're getting a massive error message from the secondary engine and everything's listing," Noah was saying worriedly. "Are you down there? What's going on?"

"Was that the second engine?" Yixing asked at the same time. "That did not sound good."

Jinsu was already scrambling up the ladder as best she could with only one arm. She didn't get very far before Kyungsoo popped up between her and the frame. "Hold on," he said. "I'll give you a ride up."

Yixing followed them, quickly overtaking when they emerged onto the emergency walkway and sprinting into the flashing red warning lights. Kyungsoo and Jinsu ran after him, Jinsu wondering what on earth was going on. Had that been a second temporal boom? Because it shouldn't have harmed the Attayear—

They were literally feet from the ladder down towards the engine room and storage rooms when the third explosion of the day hit, blasting them both into the air and flinging them back down the passage. Completely deafened, Jinsu felt rather than heard something cracking behind her, and a remarkably soft landing for something largely made of metal, and then she passed out.

She came to in a room that she didn't recognise. Blearily, Jinsu tried to sit up, but a familiar hand pushed her back down again.

"Easy. Don't push yourself."

Jinsu obeyed, blinking slowly as her eyes began to process the people there with her. Eunho was hovering over a prone form that looked to be Kyungsoo, doing what she couldn't quite make out. Byeong joo was sitting on a desk with his feet on the back of the office chair. Hamin was rooting through a medical pack at the other end of the bed that Kyungsoo was prone on. The one hovering over her was Yejun, his hands hovering just above her shoulders to push her down again if necessary.

"Yejun," she mumbled. "Wha' happened?"

Yejun's face was ashen. He opened his mouth, but no sound came out.

"Explosives," Byeong joo supplied in a dull voice. "We think the last soldier might have left some. The first explosion down by the engines unbalanced everything and crushed the engine boiler, so all the water went pouring out into the storeroom below, which had the lithium in it."

Apparently that was supposed to mean something to Jinsu, but her brain was feeling very slow. She looked around again. Somebody was missing.

"Chanyeol," she said thickly. "Where's Chanyeol?"

Yejun managed to answer this time. "He didn't make it," he said in little more than a whisper.

Apparently that was supposed to mean something too.

"Oh." Jinsu looked around again. Chanyeol should be there. This was... Well, it looked like she was on the floor mattress in his room, so he ought to be there.

Eunho and Hamin appeared to be bickering over something. Momentarily distracted, Jinsu attempted to follow their conversation as Eunho collapsed on the floor.

"You need to get that treated," Hamin was insisting. "Noah's trying to negotiate getting everybody injured to the nearest hospital, Eunho, you could die if you don't go."

"I'm fine!"

"You're practically passing out on the floor!"

Chanyeol. That was right.

"Where's Chanyeol?" she asked again.

This time, Yejun bit his lip and merely shook his head. It looked like he was going to cry.

Before Jinsu could ask why, or Yejun could say anything, Byeong joo slid down from his desk.

"Hamin, help me take this idiot to the atrium," he said, grasping Eunho under the armpits. Eunho's head lolled to the side: he was apparently now unconscious. Hamin grabbed his feet and the three of them were quickly out of site. Jinsu didn't drop her gaze from Yejun's.

"I'm sorry," he whispered.

Even in her concussed state of mind, she was eventually able to work out that her cousin was dead.

The explosions had brought the Attayear to a crashing halt in Pyongyang, 1950. When a very dazed Jinsu managed to get Yejun to leave her alone because she wanted to find Chanyeol and at least say goodbye, she stumbled across Noah in the atrium, who told her something she didn't quite understand about things being off kilter because the drift had moved much faster than it should have done – in fact, their drift had outstripped their time-speed. Jinsu got enough to be able to attribute it to the virus.

Noah was more worried, though, about the fact that it was some time in October and he didn't know exactly what date.

"I don't know if the UN forces are here or coming," he said, stressed, as he helped put somebody on a gurney that looked like it had been nicked from hospital. "I do know that they won't do anything to the wounded, but I just want to get everybody to hospital fast."

Out of the thirty or so of them who'd been on the Attayear, the death toll now stood at nine, including three technicians, and at least another ten were injured badly enough to need attention in hospital. One room had been entirely sealed off and temperatures lowered to more or less freezing, because Noah thought it was better to take the bodies home for a proper burial or cremation with their families. Jinsu wandered off to it as soon as she discovered where it was. She wanted some time alone with Chanyeol.

Blood aside, her cousin looked peaceful until the point that Jinsu couldn't contain her tears anymore, and she broke down sobbing over his cold body. Two weeks ago she wouldn't have been that affected because she barely knew him, but their time on the Attayear had allowed them to catch up all those missing years of cousinhood, and it felt like her heart had been wrenched open. This couldn't be real. There had to be something – something – to bring him back. They were in a time machine, after all. But the time machine only travelled backwards and forwards in time. It didn't reverse or accelerate time for the people in it.

Either she was so out of it still or she was so exhausted she fell asleep, because Jinsu thought she remembered phantom arms creeping around her as she cried, pressing her against a comforting chest as a hand stroked her hair, but when she became coherent, there was nobody with her.

There was a blanket, though, which she couldn't tell whether or not it had been there before, and a while lily on Chanyeol's chest that definitely hadn't been.

Chapter 37

*Update 2/4– please make sure you start from chapter 36!*

They found out pretty quickly the next morning that the UN forces were in the process of securing Pyongyang when Noah managed to convince Yixing and Taemin that they needed to check in at a hospital and get their injuries looked at (the mystery chef asked about Jinsu's arm again and whether or not it might be wise to go to hospital – Jinsu wrote back a simple no). Yixing had horrendous burns from the lithium explosion and Taemin had narrowly missed being killed by the part of the engine that had taken Chanyeol out as it was dislodged by the first blast, but his legs had been crushed and he couldn't walk. Between the deaths and the injuries, there were no able-bodied adults on board except for Noah, and Jinsu could see his cool and capable façade beginning to crack. The responsibility was weighing heavily on him.

The Attayear's remaining engine had been left on, because otherwise they wouldn't have the power necessary to start everything up again, and Noah thought it was more practical for the hospital to get everybody in a stable enough condition for them to last the short amount of time home it would take to get there – only, regardless of whether or not the Attayear could move (which it could, but only at half power with only one engine), there was still the matter of sorting out the Tardis coding so that landing back in present time was actually possible. He wasn't sure how long that would take, but reckoned to Jinsu that since he'd been able to achieve a near deadlock with that part of the code, given a few hours, he should be able to find some way to strengthen it, meaning that by the time the injured people were in a condition to leave hospital temporarily, he'd probably have it cracked.

"I'm just going to drop these two off at the hospital," he said, Taemin draped over his back like a ragdoll. "Look after the place, would you?"

That was code for you and Byeong joo stay in the control room, okay?, which Jinsu wasn't particularly keen on doing unless absolutely necessary, so she went to find Yejun. He seemed to sense she was still a bit out of things and gave her an earbud to his iPod, allowing her to burrow into his side as she listened to music and attempted not to cry.

Before long, Byeong joo came looking for her.

"You're supposed to be with me in the control room," he griped, barging unceremoniously into the room.

"Leave her alone," Yejun snapped. "She's going through a rough time."

"Chanyeol was my best friend, but even I recognise that times are bad and we all have to pull our weight. Grieving needs to come later."

"Jinsu and Chanyeol are related. Re-la-ted. Give her some time, you inconsiderate jerk."

Jinsu rested her head gratefully in Yejun's lap, no longer interested in the music. Byeong joo hesitated and swallowed.

"Park," he said in a much quieter voice. "It often helps to be busy when you're grieving. It takes the edge off things."

"Leave me alone," she mumbled, echoing Yejun's earlier sentiment. Byeong joo left.

It appeared that all true disasters came in threes. First the virus, then the explosives, and this time, it was the UN troops. When the Attayear was hidden by the early morning mist and then the torrential rain that lasted until well past noon, it didn't particularly matter that there was a massive two-storey monstrosity that had appeared just a couple of streets away from the town hall. However, when that two-storey monstrosity was in the way when soldiers wanted to get through in the afternoon in better weather, and when those soldiers assumed that the shiny exterior panels were armoured (which they more or less were) and that this thing blocking their way had to be some kind of war weapon the communists had cooked up, it did. The gunfire was what alerted the Attayear's remaining occupants to it. Running on autopilot, Jinsu went down to the main deck to see if Noah was back and knew what was going on.

What she found was a frantic Byeong joo backed up against the main motherboard and hemmed in by Minhwan, Seungho and Jisung, Junho hovering just behind. Minhwan's fists were in Byeong joo's collar, and Byeong joo looked distinctly uncomfortable.

"They have tanks facing us and think we're some kind of Soviet war weapon!" Minhwan snarled just as Jinsu entered. "Get us out of here!"

Byeong joo shook his head frantically. "We're all going back together. Noah hyung will sort it out when he gets back."

"He might not get back," Junho said bitterly. "Have you seen how many soldiers there are in this street alone, Kim?

"We can't all go back together if we're dead," Jisung added.

"Nobody here knows how to fly this d*mn machine!" Byeong joo cried. "We're missing our chief engineer and our chief computer technician – we can't go anywhere without them anyway!"

"And whose fault is that?" Minhwan retorted at once. "Your family caused this mess, Kim, so you'd better sort it out. Isn't nine lives on your hands enough without adding to that?"

Byeong joo gave him a hate-filled glare, and Jinsu could have sworn his eyes were filled with tears.

"F*cking useless," Minhwan scoffed, shoving him back into the motherboard and stalking off, the other three trailing after him. Byeong joo threw out his hands to catch himself, staggering as he tried to regain his balance. The single remaining engine responded to whichever buttons and dials Byeong joo accidentally moved, sounding lonely and forlorn.

It was Byeong joo's sudden look of horror that stopped her from crossing the room and made the lightbulb go on as to what was happening. As bright light grew around them and they headed into the Dive, the only thing running through Jinsu's mind was but how is this possible when Yixing was having to manually set the engines going?

Byeong joo pretty much had a mini-meltdown, and if the situation hadn't been dire, Jinsu thought some part of her would have happily watched him with vindictive pleasure.

But she had to agree with him that this was bad.

"You're not supposed to do this!" he admonished the machine for the seventh time, practically in tears as he attempted to rectify the situation yet again by moving sliders and dials, but to no avail. Then came the moment that he broke. "What have you got against me? Where's the abort button— God, where's Park Jinsu when you need her? Go back. Go back! Back." His voice cracked.

He hovered for a few more moments, hands shaking as though he didn't know what to touch, and then collapsed against the motherboard and burst into tears.

Jinsu was so taken aback that she wasn't sure of the best way to respond. Byeong joo's shoulders were quivering as he sobbed, and he looked so forlorn that Jinsu automatically acted on the wave of pity that swept through her and went over to sit in the chair in front of the screens to see what she could sort out.

"Buck up," she said, nudging him in the ribs. Anything nicer than that would... well, he hadn't exactly set a great example when he'd gone to find her earlier.

It took a few moments, but once he seemed to register who it was, he sat up.

"Are you going to help?" he asked dully.

"You? No. But I don't fancy being on an out-of-control time machine just as much as any other normal person wouldn't."

He perked up just a little bit. "But you can get it to stop and go back?"

Jinsu bit her lip. She didn't want to get her own hopes up, let alone his. "It shouldn't have been able to move just with you pressing the authorisation button. Yixing had to set everything going manually last time. And it was faster than usual as well."

Byeong joo still gave her an expectant look, as though she was the last ray of hope shining down the the bottom of an abyss.

With that look came a crushing sense of responsibility and pressure. With Noah gone and all the other technicians either dead or still in hospital in 1950 Pyongyang, she was the only person on board the Attayear with the potential to do anything about their situation. She gulped, feeling tension rising in her shoulders. That knowledge was actually scarier than Hae Insu and the Japanese soldiers combined. She tried to swallow back the fear, but a lump was rising in her throat, making the simple action much harder and more painful than it should have been.

Not just that, but the pressure made her feel lonely, so, so lonely. Without Noah there as a safety net, the fount of all knowledge about the Attayear; without her cousin to listen to her lamenting about how much she didn't know and still tell her with an awed look that he wished he'd known she was a genius much sooner – with everything concrete crumbling around them, including the prospect of going home, the physical Attayear machine, the group that they were supposed to be travelling in – at a loss as to what she was supposed to do, and yet the only one with a chance of doing anything; Jinsu felt like the world was falling apart around her. She stared blankly at the computer screen, not seeing it, but only barely seeing glimpses of the lovely times she'd had in Balhae, from the sleek machine they'd arrived in to Noah enthusiastically teaching her about the Tardis coding to Chanyeol giving her a massive stack of chocolate. It all felt like a dream she'd cooked up that had never possibly happened.

"I'm getting water," Byeong joo's voice murmured, barely rousing her from her stupor. Jinsu tasted blood in her mouth and realised that her vision was blurred, but she had no will to do anything about it.

Next thing she knew, Byeong joo was nudging tentatively at her hand, trying to get her attention. She blinked, several tears spilling out, to see that he was holding a glass of water out to her, looking a little lost. Jinsu accepted it mutely, but choked as soon as she tried to take a sip: her anxiety was still sky high and the lump in her throat was just too big.

"You know..." Byeong joo began, then broke off, pursing his lips. He appeared to be searching for the right words to say, but then gave up. Jinsu was glad he left it at that, because she got the feeling that him trying to say anything to comfort her would only have the opposite effect. For want of something to do, Jinsu attempted to drink the water again and forced herself to swallow. She wasn't really in the mood to see what was wrong with the Attayear anymore and attempt to fix it, but she was going to have to suck it up for the sake of everyone. Even Byeong joo. Even Minhwan. She shuddered.

Trying to ignore Byeong joo fidgeting next to her, Jinsu reluctantly focussed her attention on the screen. It was just a mass of messages in the coding, one after another after another all the way down the screen. Resigned and unsurprised, Jinsu wearily put her hand to the keyboard, scrolling up to see if she could find any information.

The saboteurs' virus and Noah's counter-virus were still in the throes of battle. He'd modelled his more or less on the invading one, so that provided it had the time, it could adapt itself to what was needed. The only problem was that the original virus was then adapting itself to combat the new force and his counter-virus was then doing the same, resulting in a never-ending jagged spiral of overwhelming each other and being forced back into deadlock. Byeong joo appeared to have been unlucky enough to accidentally hit the green authorisation button just as the virus broke free for a matter of a few seconds, momentarily taking remote control of engines, and they had been sent into the timestream. Noah's counter-virus had counteracted, dropping the speed to well below Temp 1 (Jinsu wasn't sure if that was safe – it definitely wasn't to Dive, but it might be okay since they were already in the timestream and were just gently moving... somewhere) and they had settled somewhere in the timestream, the two viruses currently at deadlock when it came to movement, position and potential landing places and so on. It was like watching a pair of large cats fight in text. There was a lot of prowling about and thinking, and every so often one of the codes would make a lunge for it, only to be batted back.

Her mind wouldn't focus as she tried to trawl through the coding for clues, still too distraught by the events of the past couple of days. Parts of the coding in Hangul were being overwritten by roman letters, and in her disoriented state, she could barely make sense of them, let alone cyrillic. Numbers were skipping out of the binary sequence, too, making it harder for her to keep track of what was supposedly going on.

"Do you need a break?" Byeong joo ask. He almost sounded concerned.

Do you need a break from Dad? Jimin's voice asked. Do you need a break from the nitwits at your school? Geez, Jin, don't you need a break from being so ridiculously tidy? Live a little!

It made her feel terribly homesick – would she ever be able to see Jimin again?

"I don't know what I'm doing," she confessed in a near whisper to the figment of her brother's voice.

"Then we're all doomed," he replied despondently in Byeong joo's voice.

"Don't give me that," she grumbled. "I feel bad enough about the whole situation without the pressure to make me feel like it's all my fault too."

In a normal world, Jimin would have responded with a laugh of "this is obviously not your fault, numskull", but she was greeted with silence. Reality slowly returned. The screen was still filling up with sparring virus and counter virus auto-manipulating codes, and Byeong joo was still sitting beside her with an almost desperate gaze that seemed to say that if he wished hard enough, the solution to the problem would suddenly appear.

"Stop staring at me."

He cleared his throat. "How can I help?"

He sounded like a sales assistant or... a waiter. Waiter Kim Byeong joo would have made Jinsu very happy in that moment, because it would have meant that she was back in the timeline she was supposed to be in.

Then again, the memory of that whole scene at the restaurant between her father and Byeong joo was enough to make bile rise in the back of her throat. They were both just so utterly despicable human beings.

"With your absence," she told him, suddenly getting snappish.

The last thing she needed was her family enemy breathing down the back of her neck while she tried to make head or tale of a problem she had no hope trying to solve.

Chapter 38

*Update 3/4– please make sure you start from chapter 36!*

Contrary to her gloomy predictions, Jinsu had actually made a small but important step forwards by the time Yejun came in search of her to make sure she ate dinner. After Byeong joo had silently but reluctantly followed his dismissal earlier in the day, Jinsu had remained in a grieving, homesick funk of despair for a good few hours before natural human resilience began to return and her brain drifted over to school autopilot. After that, it had still taken her a few hours to get into a proper analytic mode as she scanned through the text, but once she switched, some part of her brain began making connections she hadn't seen before, and Yejun had practically had to drag her away from the computers.

"I must have spent at least fifteen minutes staring at it all like, we're going nowhere with this," she said brightly between slurping up noodles. Her right arm twitched in its sling, muscle memory unable to break the habit of gesturing when she spoke with animation. "And then it suddenly hit me that that was exactly what was in the code: we're going nowhere."

Yejun stole a piece of beef from her plate. She jabbed a chopstick at him which he avoided.

"But we're in the timestream."

"I know." Jinsu looked for an opening to purloin something, anything, from Yejun's plate to get him back. His hand was hovering over it, either unconsciously or protectively, which didn't give her many options. "Well, actually, we're not. There was only an opening of about two and a half seconds when Byeong joo launched us before Noah's code bit back, which upset the launching so we only made the Dive just grazing Temp one when the virus got back in control, and then Noah's code bit again, so we're actually hovering in a limbo halfway between the two. Or rather, a time vacuum. Every single watch or clock in this place has stopped."

Yejun just looked very confused. "But my phone clock is working perfectly fine. Says it's ten to eleven."

"Yes, but it's not one of the Attayear watches. The one in the middle has stopped dead, and so have all the other middle ones. Look at mine."

Yejun was effectively distracted from his food as Jinsu reached her left arm towards him so that he could pull her sleeve back for her. She took advantage of the moment to pinch an entire rice cake off his plate.

"Hey!" he protested, catching her arm as she chewed on her plunder, but he seemed to get over it pretty quickly once he'd taken a good look at her watch and then at his own.

"How do you know this isn't all one massive coincidence?" he asked. "They could just be broken or something."

"I actually got off my butt and tried to fix the Lintel clock because initially I thought it was just broken. Every time I tried to set it, it refused to budge. I can't do it with my own watch either."

Yejun looked a bit sceptical. "So you're basically just really bad with watches."

"No, Yejun, look—" Impatiently, Jinsu placed her chopsticks end to end, then grabbed his to put parallel. "This is the timestream," she said. "Think of it like, I dunno, an actual river or something. And then we're sitting here on the bank." She grabbed a bottle of soy sauce. "That's whichever time we come from. And this..." She grimaced, picking up a handful of noodles. The sliminess made her skin crawl. As quickly as she could, she dumped the noodles between the soysauce and the nearest chopstick. "This is the vacuum we have to pass through to get from the time we live in into the timestream. That's why we have two temporal booms whenever there's a Dive. Noah explained all this when we started the trip to Balhae. The first boom puts us into a time stasis, and the second kicks us out of it into the timestream. But you have to be going at a certain speed to keep up with the timestream, and we slipped below it because of the viruses fighting each other and the engine being on its last legs, so we were knocked out of it into the time stasis, or time vacuum, that acts as the buffer zone between our contemporary time in the normal world and being in the timestream. If it wasn't there, then anybody would be able to step into the time stream whenever they wanted. I just initially thought that the time stasis was a state for the machine that it had to pass through, not a... place. Though I don't know if it's a place or a space or anything because time doesn't exist in it.

"But it exists on my phone."

"Your phone is not with the times, Yejun, don't pin all your hopes on it. It's an electronic device with no location or time awareness without GPS and satellites so will trudge on regardless."

Yejun squinted at her. "Was that pun intentional?"

"Who cares about puns—?"

"But they're punny."

"Oh my God, Yejun, you're just as bad as Jimin." Jinsu groaned loudly. "I've literally just had a brainwave about the fabric of time in the universe and all you're interested in is whether or not I unintentionally made a bad joke."

He chuckled.

"Well, I guess it wasn't that much of a brainwave," Jinsu corrected herself in a mumble. "But at least I know where we are. As much as anyone can know where they are when they're in a vacuum when you have no way of pinpointing location of any kind."

Yejun took his chopsticks back and completely unscrupulously scooped the noodles off the table to plop them in his mouth. Jinsu crinkled her nose at him in disgust, but before she could point out quite how many germs he might just have put himself in danger of ingesting, he spoke.

"So, now that you know that, how much longer will it be before you'll be able to navigate us home?"

"I dunno." Jinsu deflated like a balloon losing its air. "I still don't know if I'm capable of doing it, Yejun. My knowledge of the code is like a baby's knowledge of Korean compared to how much there is and a good chunk of the most important stuff is still being swallowed up by a virus I can barely understand, and if I can't understand the virus then I can't counteract it, and I can't counteract viruses anyway."

Yejun took a moment or two to think about it. "I think Junmyeon might have done a class or two in malware protection. See if he can help you."

Right on cue, the devil himself plonked himself down in the chair next to Yejun. "I heard somebody taking my name in vain. How can I help? No, Yejun, do not feed me pork."

The knowledge that Junmyeon could take over for a while so that Jinsu could catch a break was welcome. He also told her that Kyuhyun was decent with computers and might be able to lend a hand, so Jinsu went to find Hamin and Kyungsoo to talk to as she didn't want to be on her own.

They were both in their room, Kyungsoo looking like he hadn't moved since Jinsu had left it hours and hours before, though that might have been her brain making things up, and Hamin reading what looked like a Medical Emergency Response 101 book that he'd probably stolen from the infirmary. Byeong joo, thankfully, was nowhere to be seen.

"Are you sure you can move your leg?" Hamin asked as Jinsu walked in. Kyungsoo rolled his eyes with an air of long-suffering patience.

"Yes. I can even move both and look like I'm pretending to be a fish," Kyungsoo replied. "Hi, Jinsu."

"No, don't do that." Hamin turned the page, frowning at it. "Does it hurt if I do this?" He reached out with one hand.

"If you pinch my leg to check if I still have active nerve endings, I will not be responsible for kicking you in the face."

Jinsu looked from Kyungsoo to Hamin. "What's going on?"

"Kyungsoo's broken his back," said Hamin.

"Hamin is making a hash of trying to diagnose me," Kyungsoo said at the same time. Jinsu looked from one to the other again.

"Oh, whoops," said Hamin. "It said here that on no account should we move anybody we suspect to have a spinal injury and to wait until trained professionals arrive – oh, wait, it makes allowances for emergencies like getting people out of burning cars. Did getting you off the walkway count as an emergency?"

"You should have left me down there for a trained medical professional. I hear they're a dime a dozen in these parts."

"What's going on?" Jinsu repeated. "What happened to your back?"

"I went back first into a metal support structure when that explosion knocked us both out," Kyungsoo said. "Hamin's convinced I've paralysed myself and I'll never walk again. It's probably not that bad."

Hamin whacked Kyungsoo lightly on the head with the book. "It is that bad. It looks like there's not been much in the way of damage to his spinal cord, but I'm pretty sure he's broken some ribs and it also looks like he's done some injury to his spine, though it could have been a heck of a lot worse."

"Well, could have been two broken backs rather than one." Kyungsoo winked at Jinsu, and she abruptly found herself recalling the softer-than-expected landing she'd had during the explosion. She covered her mouth. Had that been Kyungsoo?

"I'm so sorry," she mumbled around her fingers.

He waved an airy hand. "Don't be. Gotta look after the Attayear's princess, right? Friends do this kind of sh*t for each other."

Jinsu could feel her eyes watering.

"Don't give me that," Kyungsoo admonished her. "Girl, give yourself some credit. You don't understand the unbearable beauty of being you. Things are pretty sh*t at the moment, but smiling through the bad times makes them bearable, and besides, it's not your f*cking fault. You can do this."

Kyungsoo's brusqueness was somehow what Jinsu needed to hear. She grimaced, attempting to smile, and then managed a real one.

"I think you're my soul animal," she told him.

"Roar," Hamin deadpanned, making the other two laugh. Kyungsoo pulled a face at the pain.

"Moratorium on jokes, Oh. They hurt."

It was Hamin's turn to roll his eyes. Gingerly, Jinsu sat down on the bed. Kyungsoo patted her thigh.

"By the way, you know you can talk to friends. Friendship is kind of reciprocal like that."

"I do talk to you," Jinsu said, a bit bemused. Kyungsoo and Hamin both didn't reply, glancing at each other instead, and the penny dropped. Chanyeol. "Thanks, though. I think I'm pulling through. Or will do, at any rate."

"He's our friend too," Hamin said in a gentle voice, an undercurrent of understanding that really touched Jinsu present.

"And really," said Kyungsoo, raising a hand, "if you want somebody to rant to, I'm not going anywhere anytime soon."

Jinsu looked at both of their smiles, which bordered on the cheerfulness they usually bore, but something there was lacking. They were being hit hard by Chanyeol's absence too, even if they were trying to hide it, but their desire to plough on and help others around them regardless was admirable, Kyungsoo tolerating a potentially appalling back injury in such a manner even more so. It was as though they felt that nothing was impossible, and Jinsu had never in her life felt that way. She envied their positivity. Maybe it would help alleviate some of the overwhelming despair at the tasks that faced her.

It must have been the stress draining away, but Jinsu had a much better night's sleep than she'd expected to after the events of the previous day. The mystery chef had once again left breakfast for her, and it might just have been her imagination, but it looked to Jinsu as though he'd deliberately cut and arranged the toast so that it looked like a crown. She shook herself. Kyungsoo calling her the Attayear Princess had to be getting to her head.

When she got down to the main deck, it was to find Junmyeon and Kyuhyun in full throw explaining what they could make of the situation to Minhwan and Junho. She immediately doubled back out and had to duck to avoid walking straight into Byeong joo. He hastily raised an arm to let her past and then turned, belatedly realising who it was.

"Where are you going?" he asked.

"Away from Minhwan," she shot back, barely catching the frown he threw her. Moments later, he caught up with her, hand grabbing her forearm.

"You've got to get them out of there. We need to be in there and I'm not doing anything with Minhwan breaking down my neck."

"What we, Byeong joo?" Jinsu practically spat at him, yanking her arm out of his grip. If her other hand hadn't been in a sling, she would have dusted it off to be rid of his germs.

"You're the only one with a reasonable understanding of Tardis," he said as though it was obvious, "and I'm the only one who can order commands to be processed. We have to work together on this."

"We don't. I'm not the only person on this machine who's a competent coder, and in any case, time would be better spent fixing the engines or we're never going to make it out of the time stasis vacuum thingy we're currently in."

Trying to calm the irrational surge of anger at having to speak to Byeong joo, Jinsu stalked off. He didn't follow.

Chapter 39

*Update 4/4 – please make sure you start from chapter 36!*

(Warning: more angst incoming)

The memory stick was still in use combating what it could with the virus, so Jinsu found and broke into Noah's laptop and spent several hours combing through the counter-virus and various documents he had on the Tardis coding. It was such a big project and so much of it appeared to be retained in his head that there wasn't actually that much new that she learnt from his notes, but it did make her even more aware of the mindset with which the Tardis coding had been created. It was a thing of supreme coding, the pinnacle of anything that she'd ever seen in the computer technology world, and it had clearly been created with a view to excellence and finesse. The only thing that Jinsu really felt she could compare the situation of the viruses to was the Tardis coding being a beautiful flower, a flower of utter mathematical perfection, that was stomped on by a horse or some clumsy person in heavy boots. Noah's counter-virus was similar heavy stomping and meshed with the original Tardis coding, but it didn't feel completely right with it. Not in Jinsu's eyes, anyway.

Still, there was enough of it and she had enough of her own knowledge to have a good look at it and see where she thought Noah's counter-virus could be improved. He'd been working quickly, which was probably why it wasn't as refined as everything from Tardis, but with some painstakingly close analysis, she finally figured out one area to tighten up that would overpower the virus when it came to controlling the engines remotely. If they didn't need to worry about that, it would be a relief, especially since they didn't have Yixing with them.

Ignoring her growling stomach, she set to work, flicking back and forth between the various windows she had up on Noah's laptop every few letters she chose to put in. It was slow work, made slower still when she remembered that both viruses had the potential to evolve and that she would need something of much higher power, and even higher staying power. Time slipped by – as much as it could do in a vacuum – and Jinsu was so absorbed that she had no idea how late it was getting until the door opened.

"Finally," said a familiar and unwelcome voice. "What are you doing rooting through Noah hyung's stuff?"

Annoyed, Jinsu looked up. "Why are you here?"

Byeong joo pushed one of his sleeve paws up over his wrist. Why, Jinsu griped to herself, did he always have to wear jumpers with sleeves too long for him? Didn't he understand how scruffy it made him look?

"I couldn't find you in any of the other obvious places, so it seemed a good guess."

Jinsu gave him the stinkeye and returned to the coding, only to realise she had another problem. Tardis used binary whereas the virus didn't. Which was more potent? Did it matter? Was she going to have to change everything to a normal zero-to-nine system?

"Yejun and I have fixed the engines," Byeong joo said loudly. Apparently he had no intention to get lost. Jinsu almost fixed him with another glare, but then did a double-take and looked up, wide-eyed instead.

"What?"

"The engines," Byeong joo clarified, scrubbing a hand through his hair. "You said earlier that time would be better spent fixing the engines so we could leave the time stasis we were in, and Yejun said you'd told him about the time stasis last night, so we've done all we can to shore up the remaining engine and transfer as much power from what's left of the secondary engine to it so that with any luck it should get up to Temp 1 and be able to stay there. We can activate it anytime at the flick of a level down in the engine room. That would get us back into the timestream, surely?"

Jinsu didn't know if she was more surprised that Byeong joo had actually taken the scathing suggestion seriously that morning or upset that Yejun had been so happy to work with him. She grunted and returned to the computer.

"Well, I clearly wasted my time," Byeong joo said, a touch bitter.

Jinsu decided that there would be no difference between binary or any other number system and went back to correct the ones she'd changed earlier.

"Rude," muttered Byeong joo before turning. The door shut unnecessarily loudly behind him, but Jinsu barely noticed him go. The code had to be perfect – flawless – before she tried it out. And then she had to tackle the location code that the virus had destroyed as well so that they'd be able to get out of the timestream again smoothly rather than the previous couple of crash-landings. Of course, if one engine was now working above usual capacity and the other was out of action, she was going to have to factor that into all her calculations, and she didn't know what the new horsepower was. She looked up to ask, but there was nobody there, so she shrugged and returned to other parts of it.

Before too long, a familiar vibrating hum spread throughout the machine as the lone engine started up. Jinsu paused to listen to it, comforted by just how normal it felt and sounded. It wasn't quite the loud thrum that came from both engines, but it was something, at least, and if Byeong joo and Yejun had somehow managed to fix the engine, it was well above better than nothing.

They still had to go into Dive when the temporal boom approached, but it wasn't until a good twenty minutes or so afterwards that it occurred to Jinsu that somebody had actually started the Attayear's engines up, which meant they could be moving quite a distance in the vacuum without even realising it, and also that chances were extremely high of it being somebody who didn't really know what they were doing – and given that she barely knew what she was doing and she was the only one with Tardis knowledge, everybody else was naturally in at least the bracket below her.

Frustrated and worried, Jinsu stowed Noah's laptop away and stepped out onto the balcony, intent on going down to the control room and perhaps even the engine room to see what people were playing at. There was just such high potential for everything going wrong. She wouldn't have thought about switching the engine on until after she felt she'd combated enough of the virus to take back control of the Attayear.

A violent lurch knocked her into the railings, almost spilling her over them, but the machine refused to right itself. Jinsu clung to the balcony railings for several long moments, waiting for the Attayear to tilt back up again.

And then it began to spin, slow and wobbly at first, but then fast and faster as it gathered momentum, and a huge rush of air suddenly swept around the dome, ripping Jinsu off the railings. Almost as if the Attayear was playing whack-a-mole, it abruptly sprang back to normal and then flattened itself in the other direction, launching Jinsu into the wall.

Something was wrong. Something was very wrong, and there most definitely ought not to be air in the Attayear. Not like that. She staggered along the balcony, looking for answers.

It was surprising both how quickly and how slowly the answer came. The wind was so strong that it stung Jinsu's eyes and she could barely see, and the sheer force of it made it difficult to even move, but as Jinsu neared her room, she saw what the problem was.

A porthole was open. Specifically, the porthole nearest Jinsu's door. Yejun had his hand gripping tightly to the door handle while his other hand was holding onto a wrist attached to a body that was outside in empty nothingness.

"Pull us in!" Hamin's voice called. "Yejun, I can feel him slipping, help!"

Yejun could clearly feel himself slipping – and Jinsu could see it – as he plastered himself against the wall. His fingers were losing purchase on the door handle. The porthole door flapped in the rush of air at the speed they were doing, knocking into the clasped wrists of the two boys, and Jinsu heard Hamin cry out in pain.

Then Yejun lost his grip altogether and stumbled, and in the blink of an eye, he was swept towards the large porthole too. With a cry of alarm, Jinsu also started forward, hand outstretched to grab him, but two step in and the air whipped her up as well, practically lifting her off her feet. Next thing she knew, there was a blinding wrench of pain shooting through both her shoulders and she faceplanted into the wall between her door and the porthole, her sling trapped around the door's handle with the material so taught it was actually painful for her arm.

Her other hand, by some miracle, had grabbed Yejun's. She met his frightened gaze as she turned her head along the curve of the wall, wondering how the porthole had opened.

"What's going on?" she demanded fearfully, her voice nearly at a yell in order to be heard. She tried to pull her arm back to haul Yejun in, but he was too heavy – that or the air pressure was too strong for it to happen.

"Some idiot thought he'd take photos of us going through the Dive and into the timestream!" Yejun called back. "And he got sucked out when he opened the porthole, and luckily Hamin was able to grab him, but then he was swept out too and I got them. Aah!" His voice cracked with pain as his body suddenly whipped around, almost tearing him from Jinsu's grasp. She put her shoulder against the door and braced her legs, trying to pull Yejun back in again. Her arms both screamed in protest.

The moment of calamity was when the Attayear pitched and rolled again, half-flinging Jinsu back down the passage, and Yejun's hand slipped through hers.

"Yejun!" Her fingers scrabbled desperately at thin air, the sling material no longer able to take the weight and abruptly tearing as his clutched onto the porthole's rim for just the briefest of seconds. The suction brought Jinsu slamming forward into the wall and tipped her into the porthole, only for somebody to grab her by the scruff of the neck and attempt to haul her back. Her fingertips just barely grazed Yejun's before he was gone. "YEJUN!"

Whoever had grabbed her pulled hard, yanking her away from the porthole and flattening her between the wall and their body. Jinsu pushed frantically at him – she had to— Yejun—

But whoever it was clung tight, ignoring her trying to push him away and apparently oblivious to her distress. It was suffocating, both the feeling of being trapped and the feeling of helplessness, because even if he let her go, part of her mind was aware that there was absolutely nothing she could do.

Chanyeol, Noah and Eunho, then Hamin and Yejun. Absolutely distraught, Jinsu broke down in tears, but she couldn't even cry properly when she was being squished like that.

Something snapped shut, and the crushing air pressure and suction was abruptly gone. Several sets of gasping breaths were distinguishable.

"Crikey," Kyuhyun's voice said shakily. "What was the porthole even doing open?"

"Junmyeon said our speed and coordinates were going all over the place. What the hell happened?"

There was silence for a few moments, broken only by Jinsu's sobs, and then receding footsteps. The boy holding Jinsu slowly stepped away from the wall, catching her when she crumpled and lowering her to the ground, where he sat and half-pulled her into his lap, wrapping his arms around her. Jinsu thrashed about, trying to escape, and her efforts only grew more vehement when she caught sight of a hand covered almost up to its fingertips in sleeve.

"I hate you!" she choked out. "Why didn't you pull Yejun back?"

"I couldn't reach—"

"Don't!" Jinsu screeched. "We've lost them! How are we ever going to find them when they just disappeared into the timestream like that? God only knows where they'll get ejected too!" She burst into a fresh bout of sobs. This was worse than Chanyeol. Was it because she knew they were still alive, or because she'd known Yejun that much better?

"We haven't," Byeong joo said. "Jinsu—"

An ugly hiccup escape Jinsu in her hysterics. "You could have caught them," she sobbed. "If you'd been a bit quicker, we could have pulled them back in."

"Jinsu." He grabbed her face in both hands, forcing her to look at him. "I know the time and coordinates. I've got them. When the Attayear is under control and fixed, we can go back and find them. But please, calm yourself—"

"You're lying." She hiccuped again.

He held her gaze. "I broke my watch, so I have the time and coordinates. They aren't dead. We can come back and find them, I promise. Just please... please calm down. You're not helping anything by being like this."

Jinsu was too distraught to care. Everything was just too much at that moment. Even though it felt wrong to just curl up there on the balcony floor beside Kim Byeong joo, of all people, that was exactly what she did, and she bawled her eyes out.

Chapter 40

There was no happy moment on awakening when the world felt right, even just for a few seconds. Jinsu's body ached all over and her eyes stung, and worst of all was the hollow feeling of emptiness. She wasn't sure if the pain in her chest was heartache or actually a physical problem, and she didn't remember getting back to her room – she didn't even remember feeling tired – but from her stuffy nose and horribly sticky cheeks, she knew she must have cried herself to sleep.

Wishing herself out of existence, Jinsu rolled over and stared at the wall on the opposite side of the room. Its lifeless blank white felt almost appropriate for her mood. Grey probably would have done a little better, but not too much grey, or that would have had too much character, not the empty numbness she was feeling.

It was eventually the dull growl of her stomach and the muted smell of food that injected a little life into her. Sniffing a little in an attempt to clear her blocked nose, Jinsu propped herself up on her good arm and looked around.

The mystery chef had snuck in yet again, this time with three smaller plates rather than the usual large one with a couple of side plates. One had slices and chunks of fruit arranged on it, completely symmetrical from shape to size to colour. The second had mini-pastries – small croissants the length of her middle finger, a small bagel no bigger than the palm of her hand and a couple of madeleines and tiny pain au chocolats – and the third had the cooked English breakfast, again set in smaller sizes, but with not even a baked bean out of place. Come to that, it looked like even the baked beans had been laid out specifically in an aesthetically pleasing pattern.

Jinsu swallowed. It was slightly smaller than amounts she'd previously been given (though still much too large to eat by herself), and even though her body was hungry, she was too down in the dumps to want to eat. On top of that, it felt wrong to waste something that was prepared for her, but it was obvious that a much higher level of effort had gone into this breakfast to make it look absolutely perfect than previous ones, and she didn't want to ruin it.

She toyed with one of the cocktail sticks for a few moments, unable to muster up the desire to eat, and then put it down again, nudging the fruit plate away.

A small, folded piece of paper lay underneath. At first she thought it was just a scrap, but then she recognised the mystery chef's writing. She frowned. It was unlike him to hide the paper. Had he forgotten about it, or not wanted her to see it? Jinsu held it up to the light.

I'm sorry, was all he had written, but Jinsu felt like she'd been socked in the gut. She sat bolt upright, staring at the paper and amazed at how she'd been so blind as not to see it before. And Noah – Noah must have known, or he wouldn't have had those conversations with her—

Fingers trembling, Jinsu got out of bed and fumbled to get her feet into a pair of shoes. She was still in her clothes from the previous day – meaning that somebody had probably been kind enough to put her to bed – but she did no more than scrape her hand through her hair to smarten her appearance up just a tad from horrendous, the paper unfolding itself as she did so, because she was still reeling from the discovery and needed to verify it as soon as possible.

As she tumbled out of the door, she caught sight of the paper again and realised that he'd written more that had been hidden by the fold.

Many people are quick to judge and slow to correct themselves. Unfortunately, I'm one of them, and I've treated you abysmally. I'm sorry.

Jinsu paused for a moment, scanning the message for a second time. From the way it had been hidden... from the way it had been folded and hidden, and from what she knew of his stubbornness, an apology was a big blow to his pride. The longer message was the one he felt he should say, but he'd chickened out and left it to chance, hoping she'd understand with just the shorter one.

Carefully folding the note up again, Jinsu slipped it into her pocket and continued along the balcony corridor. It wasn't until she was knocking on Kyungsoo's door that she realised she had no plan of action. What was she going to say? Ask him outright? Demand an explanation?

The door opened and messy bedhair appeared as Byeong joo blinked at her, wincing in the bright light from the passage. He scanned her up and down.

"Kyungsoo's sleeping," he told her in a low voice before turning away and making to shut the door. Jinsu hastily stuck her foot in the opening.

"I wanted to talk to you, actually."

He looked back, and then turned back, his expression wary. Jinsu's train of thought died and she panicked.

"I wanted you to come eat breakfast with me," was the first thing that blurted out of her mouth.

Momentary surprise flickered across Byeong joo's face, and then it went blank.

"Why?"

Jinsu stood there and gulped. She couldn't exactly disinvite him, but asking to eat with him somehow felt a whole lot better than any of the questions she could have asked, especially why have you been cooking for me every day?, which sounded like an ungrateful accusation whichever way she tried to frame it in her head.

The answer came much more easily than she had expected, though, and, thankfully, was much less aggressive.

"You always make me too much to eat by myself."

For a very long moment, Byeong joo just gazed at her with that blank look, and the silence stretched out between them for so long that Jinsu began to doubt herself. But the only other person who had conceivably treated her "abysmally" was Minhwan, and Jinsu refused to believe that Minhwan would have gone out of his way to cook for her. Or to steal her gold only to replace it again. It being Byeong joo made sense, but why Byeong joo had been doing it didn't so much.

Eventually, Byeong joo stepped forward, his eyes now on the floor, and the door shut softly behind him.

The only word to describe the meal was awkward. Jinsu actually would have rated it among the top three most awkward meals she'd ever endured, and considering her father often insisted on family meals over the weekend, that was saying something. There was a good metre between their chairs, as if they were both trying to sit at either end of the tray when the only decent access to it was from the side, since Jinsu had moved it to her desk to allow them more room.

Jinsu shifted the food about on the cooked plate. Byeong joo appeared reluctant to eat if she wasn't eating anything, fiddling with his chopsticks and with his gaze on the ground. The silence was becoming so tense that Jinsu knew she'd have to break it or there would be no hope.

"You know," she said, wondering if humour was the right way to go, "I actually told Yejun I wanted to marry whoever had been cooking for me because the food was so good."

The corner of Byeong joo's mouth twitched very briefly up. It was hard to tell whether it was a smile or a grimace. "Well, I'm guessing you've changed your mind on that one," he said, his voice so quiet he was almost inaudible. Jinsu tried not to wince. Apparently humour was out, and it would probably be a bit too offensive to shamelessly agree with what Byeong joo had just said. Feeling a little embarrassed, she picked up a sausage for want of something to do and popped it into her mouth. Byeong joo sighed and put his chopsticks down altogether.

"I should leave," he mumbled.

Jinsu jerked her head up as he stood, unsure what to say or do. Was it better to let him go or to ask him to stay?

"But you haven't eaten," she blurted out dumbly.

For a moment, it looked like he was going to reply, possibly with something like "I'm not hungry" or "I've already eaten", but then he slowly sank back down into the chair and took a good long look at the plates before picking up the chopsticks again and reaching out for a sausage towards the side of the plate, carefully easing it away from the rest of the food.

Jinsu blinked. Whether or not that had been deliberate, he'd just evened out the pattern of food on her plate, even though she'd been messing it around. Byeong joo sat back, chewing thoughtfully, with his gaze somewhere beyond the desk.

It gave Jinsu a good view of his profile, which was pleasingly defined until—

"Did somebody punch you in the face?" she asked.

"Minhwan yesterday." As if only just realising it was there, Byeong joo prodded at the bruise between his right eye and ear. "Seungho being a dumb idiot and taking photos out of the porthole is apparently to blame on my cousins and therefore my fault."

As he mentioned the porthole, he eyed her cautiously out of the corner of his eye. It was easy to figure out the reason, and Jinsu decided it was a good idea to divert the topic.

Then she chickened out and opted for more food so that things wouldn't get more awkward, spearing a chunk of watermelon from the fruit plate. She had literally no idea how to talk to Byeong joo because they'd been at odds for so long. Byeong joo seemed similarly stumped. Jinsu didn't think she'd seen him struggling to talk ever before in her life.

Byeong joo reached out, chopsticks hovering for a moment or two, before he selected a piece of watermelon that would divide the plate symmetrically.

Jinsu looked at him in surprise. He was being deliberate about where he was taking his food from.

"What are you going to do if I eat the bagel?" she asked, pointing to it. It was the only one on the pastry plate and there wasn't a corresponding one for him to eat.

"Be happy you have an appetite," he replied without missing a beat. "It's been a rough few days and everybody needs to keep their strength up, especially you."

It was... weird. Weird was the only word that could adequately describe being treated without animosity by Kim Byeong joo, and him cooking breakfast for her every day, and him apologising.

"Look," said Byeong joo, fidgeting with his chopsticks again. "I know we've had our... differences and I haven't exactly been nice to you, but lives are on the line. Even if it's just temporarily, we need to put the past behind us and work together. Noah hyung said we needed to talk out our issues with each other, but I think that comes after. We need to fix the machine and get home, and we need to pick up everybody we lost along the way. So... truce?"

He even remembered to stick out his left hand for Jinsu to shake, since her right was still out of commission.

He had exceptionally beautiful hands, Jinsu thought to herself. Mathematically stunning. She had to tear her eyes away, or else he was going to think she was creepy for staring.

"Oh," he said, rooting around in his pockets as he got to his feet. "Noah hyung said I had to give you this if you caught me."

He handed her an envelope and left, but not without looking back over his shoulder to check on her.

Inside the envelope were three slips of paper.

Congratulations! read the first, set out like a game message. Your sleuthing skills have earnt you Grumpy Slave-for-a-Day Byeong joo! To equip, show him this command. Special abilities: King of the Kitchen; KO Kicker. Comes equipped with bacon and a frying pan.

The second two looked like tickets – train tickets, on closer inspection, to Daegu. Noah had written on one of them as well.

This family feud is tragic, and it is eating at and destroying your youth for both of you. Go somewhere quiet together; talk out your individual problems with each other; and stop projecting your fathers' mutual hatred onto each other or blaming each other for things that happened years ago that weren't your fault. I don't care if you become best friends or never speak to each other again: I just don't want to see two brilliant young people I'm very fond of destroying themselves with bitterness and each other with a never-ending spiral of revenge for something that has nothing to do with them.

It knocked clarity back into Jinsu's thoughts. He was right. He had been right to caution Jinsu about the way she treated Byeong joo, too, because now that she thought about it, her own behaviour towards him had not been pleasant.

She owed him an apology in return. It would be a bitter pill to swallow.

Chapter 41

Maybe it was the realisation that Byeong joo had been cooking for her for the past few days, or because she was feeling a bit guilty after what Noah had said struck home, part of Jinsu reluctantly had to agree with Noah that Byeong joo wasn't exactly a bad person after spending half an hour in his presence.

Well, comparatively. If that half hour had been two weeks ago and had been at school, Jinsu was well aware that it would have been hell on earth. But when it was somewhere lost on the timestream with Minhwan incrementally becoming something of a megalomaniac and Byeong joo liked the guy about as much as Jinsu did, it was very easy to agree with the notion that the enemy of my enemy is my friend.

There were no snide comments, no aggressive movements – nothing that made Jinsu feel afraid or powerless or belittled, and something from the awkward air of breakfast remained.

But even though Byeong joo met her down in front of the main deck and suggested they go up to Noah's room because Minhwan and Junmyeon and one or two others were still hanging around the main controls and computers, and even though he was patient in waiting for her to take the lead and appeared to be listening carefully to everything she said, it still took Jinsu some time to twig that he was really making an effort to be civil. They'd barely spoken a word between them beyond Jinsu asking for one or two things, like a computer mouse or a memory stick, for that entire half hour, and Byeong joo definitely didn't have anything to do, but he didn't nag or complain or attempt to lean over Jinsu's shoulder to see what she was doing, or pester her with questions about it, or query when she decided to take a break. He sat there attentively rather than impatiently, occasionally disappearing into the en suite bathroom to refill Jinsu's glass of water, and otherwise passing her things she asked for when she needed them. Jinsu wondered if this was because of Noah's slave-for-the-day coupon, but that was only supposed to start when she showed it to Byeong joo, not when he decided it.

After an hour and a half of staring at coding on the screen and tweaking it in various places, Jinsu sat back, rubbing tiredly at her eyes with her left hand. She heard rather than saw Byeong joo closing the computer lid, but didn't complain. She needed a break or she was going to get a headache.

"More water?" Byeong joo asked, speaking for the first time. Jinsu nodded, in part because she was thirsty and in part because his momentary absence might give her a chance to sort out her thoughts for how she was going to cope with... this. Taking a break meant not really doing anything for a short while, and unless Byeong joo left the room, that was going to mean a very awkward silence while they both just stared at the walls and twiddled their thumbs. Unless she left the room, of course, but she got the impression Byeong joo might follow her if she did that. And in any case... there probably were things she ought to talk to him about and straighten out with him, and now was as good a time as any. They'd both got over the shock of Byeong joo being discovered as the mystery chef and that had had time to settle, and the longer they left things like being able to communicate on a basic level, the more awkward that was going to get. Byeong joo had taken the initiative in making sure they would work together, Jinsu decided, so she was going to take the initiative to ensure that they could. And that required communication skills – which she wasn't totally sure she had.

Still, she ought to try. Even if she felt completely out of her depth, she ought to try. And for some reason, that made her pulse race and her palms sweat. She wasn't good at this kind of stuff. It had taken her long enough to get comfortable with Eunho and Kyungsoo and the others, and they'd been the instigators rather than her.

Maybe it was better if they just didn't talk, she tried to convince herself as Byeong joo returned. Byeong joo would probably be more comfortable with that anyway.

He handed her the water in silence and then looked around as if for somewhere to sit down, clearing his throat.

Jinsu was not a dunce to social cues, and she knew that meant that Byeong joo was finding the situation awkward too. That just made her anxious, and there was a drip of water running down the outside of the glass, and Byeong joo was fiddling with his sleeves so one was shorter than the other, and—

She squeezed her eyes shut against all the things that were possibly wrong and disordered in the room and swallowed, the sound loud and squelchy in her ears. Taking a deep breath, she inched her eyes open again.

"Thanks!" she squeaked out, her fingers clenching a little too tightly around the glass and her knuckles going white. Her pulse was still racing. Why did it have to be so hard to just... talk? But then again, the only people she'd ever really "just talked" to without them making the effort first were her big brother, Mrs Kwon and Sungwoo. Possibly Saeeun, but she thought that Saeeun was the most talkative out of the two of them there and had probably been the one who really got conversation going. She couldn't even talk to her own parents that much. In light of that, perhaps it wasn't surprising that she was more reactive than proactive when it came to interacting with other people.

Byeong joo, though, looked very surprised at being thanked, and even more surprised at Jinsu's obvious anxiety. He almost jumped out of his skin, and then looked around the room as if convinced that somebody else was talking with Jinsu's voice. Discovering that this was not the case, he held up his hands and took a step backwards.

"I'm not going to attack you," he said in a calm voice. "Take a deep breath and let go of the tension."

"I'm f-fine," Jinsu insisted.

"You're holding that glass like it's a weapon."

"O-oh." Jinsu wasn't sure if it was her nerves or not taking in what he had said properly, but she let go of the glass. It shattered on the floor and water went everywhere. She cringed.

Byeong joo sucked his lips in between his teeth and looked down. Jinsu sighed inwardly. This wasn't going as planned.

The tense silence was broken when Byeong joo lifted his head, tossing his hair out of his eyes, and stopped chewing on the inside of his cheek.

"I'll go get you another," he said.

"I-it's fine—"

"I'll go get you another, and I'll get something to clear the glass up with," he repeated in a mild tone that somehow brooked no argument. Jinsu nodded and shrank in a little on herself, pulling her feet up onto her chair and hugging her knees to her chest. She wondered how often Byeong joo used that voice in the restaurant with customers after similar things happened, and then decided it didn't matter. He left the room hiding what Jinsu swore was some kind of smile.

By the time that Byeong joo returned with another glass of water and a dustpan and brush, Jinsu had calmed down and figured out what she was going to say.

"Did you see what Noah put in the envelope you gave me?" she asked, trying to hide her nerves as she sipped at the water and Byeong joo crouched, sweeping up the shattered glass. Byeong joo took a moment or two to answer, the expression on his face neutral, but Jinsu reckoned it was either because he did know and didn't want to talk about it, or he didn't and was worried it was something bad.

"No," he said eventually, his tone flat. Jinsu's nerve almost failed her and she was considering the merits of Abort Operation Speak To Kim when he sat back on his heels and looked up at her, giving voice to a much more curious "why?"

Well, she had his attention at least. Jinsu tried not to fumble too much as she pulled out the Slave-for-a-Day note.

"He gave me a coupon guaranteeing you as a grumpy personal slave to me for the day."

Setting aside the dustpan and brush, Byeong joo straightened up and plucked the note out of her hand. For a couple of seconds his expression was completely inscrutable; then he collapsed onto the bed beside Jinsu with a loud groan.

"Oh my God. He's so weird sometimes."

"I'm not going to use it," Jinsu said, fiddling with the fingers of her broken hand, even though she was unsure whether or not Byeong joo would actually consent to something like Noah's coupon, even if it was just for a day.

Apparently Noah's word was law, though, because Byeong joo lifted his head with a frown.

"Why not?" His tone sounded almost accusatory, and Jinsu winced. "I would have thought you'd actually like the idea of that."

The idea of getting her own back on Byeong joo would have appealed much more if she hadn't just found out that he'd been looking after her on the Attayear for however long it had now been.

"Well, I... I think I've been a bit of a brat," she mumbled awkwardly. "Sorry."

"We've both been brats." Byeong joo handed the coupon back. "If you're not going to use that, might as well rip it up."

Jinsu blinked at him. "Huh?"

"Rip it up, Park," he grumbled. "If you keep it, that means you want to use it. If you're not going to use it, it's best to bin it, right?"

"R-right." She swallowed, fingers trembling, and then tore it in half.

"I can't believe he had the audacity to do that." Byeong joo groaned again. "I mean, he told me I had to do a minimum of three nice things for you every day we were on this machine, so why is the slave-for-a-day thing even necessary?"

The admission irritated Jinsu because everything Byeong joo had done for her suddenly seemed much less nice. Did it have any actual value if it was all part of some quote he had to fulfil? Had he actually meant any of it? Heck, had he actually meant his apology, or was that one of the three for the day too?

"I'm sellotaping this back together," she announced snappily, getting up to look for sellotape on Noah's desk.

The little chuckle Byeong joo let out made her stop and look back, narrowing her eyes. He saw and sat up.

"Loosen up, Park," he said with a grin. "You always take everything so seriously."

Jinsu bit her lip, hurt and confused. How was she supposed to know what to take seriously and what not to when she barely even knew Byeong joo? Was she not supposed to have taken everything he'd said to her in the past seriously? It made her feel like a fool, and factoring in that he was the mystery chef, it made her feel even more like a fool since she'd been so trusting and open (by her standards at least) in the notes she'd exchanged with him, and knowing that that was all done because he'd been told to felt like he was throwing that back in her face. It felt humiliating, and in a skewed sense, she realised what Noah had meant about not humiliating Byeong joo if he was sincere in his apology – but knowing that Noah had said that knowing that he'd told Byeong joo to cook for her, it felt like that was a mockery too, as if he was trying to cut corners or something, or to get her to trust Byeong joo or to leave everything that had happened between her as water under the bridge – and that was a lot of water to put under the bridge. She didn't know if she could do it.

"Jinsu," Byeong joo said, still smiling, and she suppressed a shiver at his warm tone. He was trying to fool her again. He wanted her to relax, and then he'd make his move. Whatever his move was. "You're overthinking things."

"Am I?" she demanded bitterly.

"Yeah." His smile faded a little. "You just had a very Kyungsoo reaction. I thought it was funny."

For some reason, it made Jinsu feel even worse. Either Byeong joo sensed this or he'd been planning to explain himself, because he continued speaking.

"Noah hyung challenged me to do three nice things for you every day," he clarified. "I wouldn't still be doing it if on some level I didn't want to. I've gone way over the three things on some days." He paused. "And I socked Minhwan in the face because he punched you. He's just such an obnoxious pain in the arse I couldn't help myself."

The tension drained out of Jinsu. She couldn't quite bring herself to laugh, but now he brought that episode up again, it reminded her of something she'd pushed to the back of her mind.

"There was someone who came into the bathroom with Kyungsoo after that," she said. "And then left—"

Byeong joo made a finger pistol and pretended to fire it, clicking his tongue loudly. "Busted." He looked so proud of himself that Jinsu couldn't help a little smile. She almost wanted to get him to repeat that he'd broken Minhwan's nose because Minhwan had hurt her, but Byeong joo abruptly turned serious again and changed the subject.

"What exactly is wrong with your arm?" he asked her. "You never said why it was in a sling. It's not broken, is it?"

Jinsu unconsciously swung her arm from side to side in the sling. "No. It's to stop me injuring it so my fingers get a chance to heal."

For some reason, it made Byeong joo quiet. All traces of humour died completely, and there was a moment or two of silence before he cleared his throat and reached into his pocket.

"Chocolate?" he offered, extending a bar towards her. Jinsu shook her head.

"I think I need to get back to this code again."

He unwrapped the bar and popped it into his mouth. "Can I help?"

Jinsu winced at him speaking with his mouth full. "Can you code?"

"No, but I can learn."

"I can't waste time on teaching you."

Byeong joo snorted unattractively. "Bullsh*t. Everybody knows that the best way to learn is to teach to others. It'll help you order your thoughts and you might spot something new if you try to teach me."

Jinsu grimaced. Byeong joo was already getting talkative, and she had a niggling suspicion that the more comfortable he got, the more talkative he'd get, and then she'd end up completely distracted. Besides, she wasn't sure how much Byeong joo in one day she could handle. It was better than she'd thought it would be, but then she'd set her expectations very low. But the elephant in the room was that despite his apology, there was a packed history between them, and that wasn't something she could forget all that easily, even if she was trying to forgive him.

Chapter 42

Despite knowing that Byeong joo was the top scholar in her year and one of the top scholars in her school, and that he was at least ten percent above her grade in every class they had together except physics, Jinsu was not prepared for quite how intelligent he actually was. She'd never been forced to work with him before (only Kyungsoo, and she was beginning to regret not taking the opportunity to get to know him better during those paired projects, because she found him hilarious), and from what she'd seen, group projects had been the time where Byeong joo kicked his heels back and let other people do the majority of the work anyway.

Not this time. The glasses and his own computer appeared shortly after lunch, and by the time they were heading down to the kitchen for dinner, Byeong joo could understand rudimentary features of the Tardis coding without any of Jinsu's help. Given that his knowledge of coding language had extended as far as italicising text on various websites using html when they'd started, Jinsu was dumbstruck by his progress.

"I've just had an epiphany," he announced to Jinsu as they clattered down the stairs. Jinsu made a noncommittal noise to show that she was listening. That was the other thing: Byeong joo did not shut up. It made her regret attempting to talk to him earlier in the day, because he'd obviously taken that as some kind of sign that they were now apparently best friends, and Byeong joo could honestly have talked the hind legs off a donkey. The front legs too, given the opportunity. Eunho had been talkative too, but Jinsu hadn't minded that so much because he had been nice to her from the get-go, and she'd had him in much smaller doses. And there had been other people around, so most of the time she hadn't been required to respond or show that she was listening, because other people did that for her.

"All the rooms have their own separate algorithms and code section!" Byeong joo jumped down the last three steps for emphasis. Jinsu came up short, dumbfounded and a little put out. She'd been coding for years and it had still taken her a while to get her head around enough of the Tardis to be able to tell that.

"Oh."

"But doesn't that mean I've improved?" he pressed as they walked along the passage towards the kitchen.

"Yes," said Jinsu, "but you didn't even know what html was this morning, so technically anything's an improvement."

It knocked the wind out of his sails. "Harsh," he grumbled, pouting. Jinsu decided that maybe when he'd stopped being an exuberant little puppy and became more serious again, she'd tell him that he had a natural gift for coding.

Actually, that could wait until he'd done other stuff that was more impressive.

"It was the thermostats, you know," Byeong joo said, perking up again. "Literally the only thing I can concretely identify is the coding and equations for the thermostats—" (Jinsu resisted the urge to tell him not to downplay himself; he didn't need a bigger ego) "—and it looked like there was too much going on around them, so I eventually figured out that it was the space surrounding the thermostats, and then the rooms. I'm going to make Minhwan's arctic when I get a go on the main computers." He paused. "Is that possible?"

Jinsu sighed. "You literally have control of the entire machine at your fingertips. If you have the right code, you could do literally anything with the Attayear."

Byeong joo actually winked at her. "Oh, I already have the code sorted out. All in my head, don't worry."

Jinsu wanted to ask why he'd bothered asking, but they were interrupted by Minhwan leaving the common room they were passing and brushing between them, knocking Byeong joo into the wall. Byeong joo looked after him with narrowed eyes.

"Think he heard me?" he asked.

Jinsu shrugged. Byeong joo's chattiness was beginning to make her feel a little uncomfortable.

It didn't stop when they reached the kitchen, either. In retrospect, Jinsu probably ought to have made some excuse about going to see how Kyungsoo was or not being hungry so she wasn't subjected to a twenty-minute conversation (that was more of a monoversation from Byeong joo, really) while Byeong joo put together a stir-fry.

"Pork or beef?" he interrupted himself, holding up packages of both meats.

"I honestly don't care," Jinsu said tiredly.

"Show some enthusiasm here. I'm cooking you national food instead of dodgy foreign stuff."

Jinsu contemplated retorting that she liked the dodgy foreign stuff, but figured he'd take that as a compliment, and compliments, she'd learnt the hard way earlier in the afternoon, made him happy, and making Byeong joo happy also made him more talkative.

He tutted at her lack of response. "Chicken it is, then."

Jinsu frowned, pretty sure that chicken hadn't been on offer just a few seconds before, but Byeong joo had already opened a packet of chicken strips and was emptying it into the wok.

"Can you get me the soy sauce?" he asked, lifting the wok to toss its contents. Jinsu stopped to watch, her OCD cringing in anticipation of something flying out and falling on the floor like it did with most amateurs – especially if they tried to toss at the speed Byeong joo was doing – but the contents of the wok seemed perfectly happy to flip in a neat little circle back into the pan. When Jinsu managed to tear her eyes away, it took several seconds for her to remember what she was looking for.

Byeong joo continued to ask her to get cutlery and crockery as the food finished cooking, punctuated by little observations about the food or the state of the kitchen.

"We should take this upstairs to Kyungsoo and eat with him," he said as he plated the food up. As he balanced the first couple of plates on one arm and reached for the third, Jinsu looked around for a tray to make things easier, and spotted one behind the sink taps.

"Ah – nah!" Byeong joo protested when he saw she was making a beeline for it. "The breakfast tray is sacred! Don't even think about contaminating it with dinner."

Jinsu turned to throw him an odd look. "Why?"

"Because then you won't feel special," he said as though it was the most obvious thing in the world before letting out a blinding grin. "Kyungsoo will protest about me turning into his mother and he's been going on and on about popping by the restaurant when I'm on shift so he can request me as the waiter, so I'm fulfilling that fantasy now so he'll never actually do that."

"But a tray—"

"He has this weird obsession with seeing me carry three plates."

Maybe Kyungsoo was even odder than Jinsu had already been convinced he was.

"Oh my God, you two are actually on speaking terms?" Kyungsoo struggled to sit up in order to properly convey his incredulity, but he was barely able to lift his head off the pillow.

"I'm on speaking terms; she kind of doesn't say much," Byeong joo explained, balancing Kyungsoo's plate on the male's chest. "Stop trying to move or this is going to go all over your face."

Kyungsoo lifted a hand to give him the finger. "Word of warning, Byeong joo, until Jinsu likes you, she takes all your jokes literally and then you end up on her bad side and condemned to the fiery pits of hell."

Jinsu snorted loudly.

"Ah, my soul sees its equal in you," Kyungsoo said with satisfaction, extending a hand to wave in Jinsu's direction.

Byeong joo pouted, sitting down on his bed with his own plate of food, Jinsu having already taken her own. "Gang up on me, why don't you?"

"Shouldn't have deserted me all day. Karma's a b*tch. I have nothing better to do – I can't even shrug to show you how much I don't care."

Just Kyungsoo's presence was making Jinsu feel a whole lot better. She smiled to herself and dug into the stirfry.

It tasted every bit as good as the breakfasts had done. It was only a simple meal, but Byeong joo just seemed to have that magic touch with food that made the simplest things taste sublime. She closed her eyes, chewing slowly to savour the taste. Byeong joo and Kyungsoo were exchanging friendly jibes as they also ate. Jinsu heard Byeong joo trying to explain parts of the Tardis to Kyungsoo, who remained resolutely convinced that it was all beyond him (and that Byeong joo was a bad teacher), and Byeong joo, eventually frustrated, demanded to know if Kyungsoo was actually capable of being useful. Kyungsoo's deadpan no had both boys laughing.

"Kyungsoo," Jinsu asked as she came to the end of her plate, "how come you didn't get taken to the hospital?"

"Are you saying you don't want me here?" He sounded offended.

Unsure whether he was joking, Jinsu raised an eyebrow at him. It was the most neutral response she could think of.

"You could kill an elephant with that disapproval," Kyungsoo told her. "You tried that on Minhwan yet?"

"His ego is the size of a blue whale; it wouldn't work," Byeong joo quipped, making Kyungsoo grin.

"My back is messed up, and you don't move people whose backs are messed up unless you absolutely have to," Kyungsoo said. "And I didn't want to go because it didn't sound safe, so I just pretended I was fine when people came round knocking to see who wanted to go. I'd be safest airlifted rather than on roads in an ambulance, so I think I'll just wait until we're back home and the top of the Attayear can be sawn off so I can be put straight into a helicopter."

"My dad will love that."

"Is there anything your dad actually likes? Serious question here."

"No," said Jinsu. "Except fame, power and money, except I'd say that's more because he's a control freak who feels entitled to them rather than having any particular emotions towards them."

Byeong joo made a noise as though he was going to say something, but when the other two looked over at him, he was staring down at his plate, still shovelling food into his mouth.

"I know you're not going to take offence at this, so I won't say no offence," Kyungsoo said after a moment or two, "but your dad sounds like a psychopath."

"He is," Byeong joo cut in before Jinsu could.

"I didn't know you two were secretly twin siblings, but okay. It would explain the rivalry, I guess."

Jinsu and Byeong joo both choked.

"Rivalry?" Byeong joo spluttered, clapping a hand over his mouth when a bit of food sprayed out. Jinsu cringed with distaste.

"See?" Kyungsoo was grinning wickedly. "You've even got the telepathy thing going on."

"You're so full of sh*t," Byeong joo complained.

"Well, you know what they say. When life gets you down and you can't move, your only option is to sh*tstir."

Byeong joo scoffed. "They don't say that at all, Kyungsoo—"

"They do now, because I said it." As if declaring the case closed, Kyungsoo picked up a beansprout and slurped it loudly into his mouth. Jinsu was too amused to be disgusted by him, and a little chuckle escaped her.

Of course, that turned Kyungsoo's attention back to her. "Ah, laughter in the presence of the enemy. That's the moment you know you're truly relaxed."

That got Byeong joo's goat. "I'm not an enemy!" he fumed, chucking bits of vegetable at Kyungsoo, who laughed as he raised his head and managed to catch one in his mouth.

"Never said you were. Something on your mind, or was that a freudian slip?"

Byeong joo looked torn between giving a loud groan and resigning himself to his fate or retorting to maintain what was left of his pride. After a moment, he fixed Kyungsoo with a gimlet eye.

"You got me," he said, completely straight-faced. "I'll just go commit the murder I was imprisoned for. I killed the one you all think I killed too. And three—"

Kyungsoo slumped back on his pillow, shaking with laughter. Byeong joo didn't last much longer. Jinsu looked between the two of them, baffled.

It took some time for them both to calm down.

"In-joke," Kyungsoo responded to Jinsu's continued confusion. "We had a live version of Cluedo at Hamin's last birthday party—"

"It was loosely based on Cluedo," Byeong joo cut in, serious again.

"But we actually got to arrest and imprison the suspects," Kyungsoo ploughed on regardless. "And when we were on our second round, Colonel Mustard here got really into his role as the murderer—"

"I thought it would shake things up a bit," Byeong joo defended himself. "And I was right."

"He convinced a room of grown businessmen it had been hard enough to get to play in the first place pretending to die all over the venue. It caused havoc."

Byeong joo turned to Jinsu, making her involuntarily flinch back and start fidgeting. "Kyungsoo's mum thought it was real and called the police."

"He nearly had to spend the night in a holding cell."

Jinsu couldn't imagine anything of the kind happening at anything her father was involved in. It was the kind of thing Jimin would probably do with a party if he was sure his parents weren't invited. Jinsu had never really had enough friends to throw a proper party and her father tended not to splash out for her birthday beyond terribly expensive gifts, as though the latest tablet would make up for the fact that he was a horrible parent.

Before she could begin ruminating properly, there was a knock on the door.

"Kyungsoo, do you know where Byeong joo or Jinsu might— oh, you're all in here, great." Junmyeon let himself in. Byeong joo looked disgruntled at the uninvited intrusion.

"Have a beansprout," Kyungsoo offered, pointing to his nearly empty plate. Holding up a hand, Junmyeon shook his head.

"Jinsu, Kyuhyun and I are getting a bit worried because we've been wandering aimlessly all over the timestream with that virus going, and we're going to run out of fuel, energy and food if we do it for much longer, but we can't find any way of bringing the Attayear in to land in a concrete timezone where we can remedy that. And when I say we're nearly out of food, I mean there are only around a dozen of us and there's about enough food to last us all nine more meals absolute tops, twelve if we ration ourselves. We keep hitting things which need authorisation if we want to do them and we don't have the authorisation, but the digital footprint shows that there have been a number of authorised overruling-the-system commands since we left the 1950s and Minhwan said he overheard you and Byeong joo talking about a code that gives you control of anything on the machine. Can you bring us in to land?"

Chapter 43

After a tiring day of coding and teaching Byeong joo coding and then putting up with Byeong joo's inability to shut up, the last thing Jinsu really wanted to do was go back to the computers. It was hard to refuse Junmyeon and he didn't leave until Jinsu had agreed that she would. Besides, if the situation with food was as bad as he said, they probably did need to stop and take stock of things rather than just letting the time machine continue to move around the timestream while they drained their supplies and resources.

Still, she didn't want anybody breathing down her neck while she tried to figure out the best way to instruct the Attayear to land – if she was capable of doing it. While Byeong joo and Kyungsoo were still busy poking fun at each other, she slipped away to go down to the main deck and kicked Kyuhyun and Junmyeon out so that she could work by herself. She was going to need Byeong joo to finalise the command if she could actually figure out the right ones, but having just a little time without him (or anybody else) would be nice. Very nice. Necessary for her sanity. Much nicer if it was prolonged for several hours, or even a couple of days. More than anything else, she needed a decent amount of time to get her head around the fact that he wasn't being horrible to her. It wasn't that that wasn't welcome – far from it – but even with the apology and his subsequent over-friendliness, it was very difficult to forget how he'd treated her for so long at school. She needed space, and she needed Byeong joo not to treat her like she was suddenly his best friend because it felt like he was overstepping a social boundary, like somebody who assumed they knew everything about you after spending ten minutes in your presence, or a person who assumed they could be familiar with you and use a nickname when you hadn't told them it was okay. It wasn't that she didn't want him to be nice, because heaven only knew how long she'd been yearning for him to drop the hatred he had towards her, but she needed it to be done at her pace, when she was ready to accept it, and without seemingly blocking the past out.

It was a complicated mess, basically. With a sigh, she dragged her chair closer to the monitors and swallowed down a yawn. This could take a while.

And of course, she wasn't even twenty minutes in, and so square-eyed from a day in front of computers that she was almost falling asleep, before somebody plopping into a chair and drawing it up beside her started her fully back into consciousness.

"Are you sure landing's a good idea?" Byeong joo asked. "Will we have enough fuel to get going again? We could be stuck for weeks." He squinted at the code Jinsu had been attempting to modify and deleted a row of zzzzs for her.

"Go away," she mumbled at him, trying to pick the keyboard up and drag it closer towards her.

She was just about awake enough to be able to process the look on Byeong joo's face as bordering on concern.

"I think you need help," he told her. "Not that kind of help, but just... well, look at you. You're almost asleep, Park. If you tell me what needs doing, I'll try to do it."

Jinsu tried to blink herself awake and let out a massive yawn. "I don't know what needs doing yet so I can't tell you. Just go away. Please."

"You're going to need me to authorise—"

Jinsu dropped her head back onto the keyboard. "God, I'll call you when I need you, Byeong joo, just p*ss off!"

She knew that he hesitated before leaving because it was at least four seconds before a soft rustle of clothing and footsteps receded. For good measure, Jinsu kept her head down for almost half a minute before she heard the door click shut. A couple of tears leaked out of the corners of her eyes as she sat up, unsure whether she was crying from tiredness or because she was upset. With great reluctance, she dragged herself back to the task at hand.

It was not remotely hard to understand why Kyuhyun and Junmyeon had given up. From what Jinsu had so far seen, getting the Attayear to land was the area of Tardis coding that the virus was most determined to destroy. When she and Noah had been working on it together, it had actually been possible – just about – to try to analyse what was going on, which was how Noah had managed to formulate large parts of his counter-virus. Now, the coding from both the virus and the antivirus was evolving and mutating so quickly that it was all just a blur on the screen and Jinsu wasted a large amount of time trying to slow it down or getting it to just pause for long enough to read what was going on before her tired brain managed to inform her that it was genuinely futile. She was going to have to find a way around it. But... how?

The general hum of electronics was still present when she woke up, still feeling shattered and her body a little stiff. She was warm, though, much warmer than she would have expected. Groggily trying to figure out where she was, Jinsu lifted her head and squinted around. The room was dark, but the multiple LED lights informed her that she was still with the central computer bank. She must have drifted off.

A blanket that somebody had tucked around her slipped down from her shoulders as she sat up properly, her hair falling in her face. Her sling had been removed as well, the material lying over a shallow cushion on the keyboard where she had... been resting her head. Jinsu frowned, disorientated. Why was she— right, getting the Attayear to land. Which she'd promised Junmyeon she'd do before the next morning.

Yawning some oxygen into her system, Jinsu rubbed her face as vigorously as she could with both hands without hurting her injured fingers, and attempted to recall exactly what she'd been working on while she'd drifted off to sleep. She only really got as far as telling Byeong joo to get lost when she winced with the realisation that she was going to have to find him, probably turf him out of bed (he wasn't going to like that and she was already dreading it) and convince him to come and help her on that front when he was probably not going to be interested in doing so since she'd been rude to him. Sighing, Jinsu picked up the sling and attempted to put her arm back into it. It took several tries, and it was only when her hand was finally settled that she realised a piece of paper was in it.

Disgruntled, and almost worried she'd given herself a papercut from the sharp prick against her skin that had alerted her to the paper's presence, Jinsu fiddled around until she got it out. She had to narrow her eyes at it in the near darkness to make out what was written on it.

After the notes from the mystery chef, it wasn't hard to recognise Byeong joo's handwriting.

I'm not sure what I did wrong and I didn't want to make you more angry or upset/disturb you or anything, so rather than bringing you to bed, I brought bed to you.

With the landing, I think I understood what you were trying to do with lowering the Attayear's timestream vacuum barriers. I haven't authorised anything, but I've tried to put in all the correct settings for you and left it so all it should need is the authorisation. It might be wrong, but I wanted to help. Please go to bed.

Jinsu smiled wanly. It wasn't long before the smile turned into a tired but full-blown one. She felt warmed. And she probably wasn't going to have to face Grouchy Byeong joo after all. Stifling another yawn and attempting to ignore the protesting pit in her stomach that insisted she needed a mountain of food before she did anything, she went to check the Attayear settings that she'd been working on as she drifted off to sleep.

Byeong joo had indeed made alterations for her, and the majority of them were correct – or as correct as Jinsu could verify them to be, which wasn't necessarily saying much. There were a few errors in the coding he'd attempted to finish off for her and some areas where some settings or parts of the code he'd modified were too simplistic for the task at hand and needed something much more sophisticated, but a job she thought she'd only got about thirty percent done was now sitting at ninety-five, and Jinsu couldn't bring herself to summon up the bitterness she was having trouble to let go of. Byeong joo was a charmer. If he continued to charm from a distance and their only communication was via notes like this one and the ones he'd left on the breakfast tray, Jinsu knew she was in danger of becoming a fuzzy puddle of goo in a very short amount of time.

It took almost twenty minutes to correct everything. Feeling distinctly better about life in general, Jinsu stretched, let out another yawn, and decided to follow Byeong joo's advice and find herself a proper bed. Maybe after a snack first. There had to be something in the kitchen that it would be acceptable for her to take, like a rice cake or a slice of bread, that she wouldn't eat later so that she wouldn't be depriving anybody of rations.

The kitchen lights were on, and that almost turned Jinsu away from it as she wasn't particularly keen to talk to anybody while her brain was still waking up, but the mouthwatering smells issuing from it were too good to be missed.

A frying pan was hissing and spitting merrily away as Jinsu walked in, and she promptly stopped. Byeong joo whirled away from the hob to see who it was and gave her a sheepish smile. Torn between the prospect of nearly cooked bacon and really not wanting to see or speak to Byeong joo, Jinsu dithered for a few moments.

It was long enough for him to settle things for her.

"Too hungry to wait?" he asked, and Jinsu's stomach growled in response. "It's all done apart from the bacon – it'll only be a couple of minutes."

"What time is it?" Jinsu croaked out as she found herself a chair and slumped down in it, almost sinking under the table.

"Maybe half five, six?" Byeong joo yawned massively as he tossed the bacon in the pan as easily as if it was stirfry in a wok. Jinsu caught the yawn and slid another couple of centimetres down in the chair.

"Why are you even up?" The words came out as a mumble, but they were loud enough for Byeong joo to hear. He definitely did, too, because he paused, but a few moments later, he continued as though he hadn't, scooping the bacon out of the pan and onto a plate before grabbing scissors to cut it up, and then grabbing a fistful of cocktail sticks from the counter. Half a minute later, he was casually tossing mushrooms from a packet into the frying pan as he approached Jinsu with a plate of food. Up close, he looked even tireder than she felt, his skin very pale and with dark shadows under his eyes. It was only when the plate landed on the table in front of her that Jinsu realised he'd probably been making himself something to eat and had changed plans last minute with her appearance, because he was now throwing more food into the pan. A loud sizzle cut through the room as the bacon went in.

Jinsu chewed guiltily on the large cumberland sausage she'd speared. Over by the hobs, Byeong joo was gazing unseeingly at the tiles on the wall behind the cooker, stifling another yawn every now and again or running a hand through his hair and messing it up in a manner that made her want to take a brush or a comb to it for a good half hour or so. The silence between them got more and more pregnant as the sizzling in the pan became more insistent.

Eventually, Jinsu couldn't take it anymore. Sensing a minute shift as Byeong joo moved to start flipping everything in the pan over, she swallowed her mouthful and spoke up.

"Where did you get all this imported food from?"

Byeong joo finished turning everything over before he replied. "Work. They told me to drop by on the Saturday morning before we left for Balhae because they wanted to give me a congratulatory gift. Turned out to be several boxes worth of 'home comforts'."

Jinsu searched for an appropriate reply. "They seem like nice people."

"They are." Byeong joo suddenly sounded a little more animated, and warm affection was evident in his voice. "They've been so kind to me. The previous chef trained me up as a sous so that I had more to do during the holidays when I was working for them and my manager's been trying to persuade me to take up this world-class chef qualification where you get trained half in Paris and half in various areas of Italy and work offered to pay for it, but I just don't see myself as a chef for the rest of my life. I'd find it a bit stifling, I think."

Interested, Jinsu attempted to prop herself up a little. Byeong joo having – or not having – ambitions beyond school wasn't something that had really occurred to her. Then again, neither had the existence of Byeong joo outside school until that occasion at the restaurant, other than in the context of being the Kim's son.

"What do you want to do, then?" she asked, trying not to sound too curious.

Byeong joo seemed a little surprised by the question, either because it was something he hadn't considered before or because he hadn't expected Jinsu to ask it.

"Aerospace engineering." He started offloading the food in the pan onto a plate. "I came to terms a while back with the fact that I'm never going to be able to afford that kind of a degree at a decent university, but then Noah hyung pointed out that if I'm capable of winning a science competition when your dad's involved in the prizegiving, I'm probably capable of getting myself a couple of scholarships and getting into SNU, possibly somewhere in the UK or the States if I really work on my English too." He hesitated in front of the table with his full plate in his hand and pointed to the seat opposite Jinsu. "Can I join?"

She nodded and he sat down.

"It's what I've wanted to do more or less all my life," he added. "Probably astronautical over aeronautical at the moment, but that might change." Byeong joo stuffed a couple of mushrooms into his mouth. "You?"

Jinsu cringed at the mouthful of food he was showing and popped a potato into her own to get her mind off it. She hadn't expected him to fire the question back.

"I want to go into research." And then something she'd been reluctant to admit even in her own thoughts came spilling out. "I was really bitter when Dad struck me off the prizewinning list. I don't think I would have got first, but CERN is somewhere I've been wanting to go for years and I'm probably never going to have another shot at it."

"When you leave home?"

Jinsu bit her lip. "He's trying to marry me off," she admitted. "And I think there's a part of him that doesn't even want me to go to university because women should know their place."

Byeong joo looked absolutely appalled.

"Hyung said—" He hastily swallowed the tomato that he was eating. "Noah hyung said I hadn't seen— there are rumours, but..." He appeared unable to finish his train of thought.

"Rumours?" repeated Jinsu, completely forgetting about her food.

Byeong joo gulped, prodding at the food on his plate with his fork. "I know I said a lot of sh*t to you at school," he said, "and if there's one thing I wish I could take back, it was telling you that you deserved the way you were being treated."

Jinsu could feel herself clamming up again. It was okay talking about this to Chanyeol or Yejun, but confronting it head on with the perpetrator was too much, too soon.

"I don't see what this has to do with the rumours," she choked out.

It was obvious from Byeong joo's face that he felt very uncomfortable. He clearly knew that he'd overstepped some kind of boundary, and his expression also said that he'd either said something he hadn't meant to say, or that the connection between what he had said and what Jinsu thought they were talking about wasn't there when he originally thought it had been. Or he was just too uncomfortable about it to fully explain himself.

"It's not... normal," he said with some difficulty, "to have a meltdown contemplating a parent's reaction to something that's not your fault." He took a deep breath and stuck his fork upright in a second tomato. "I should have realised a lot earlier that I was bitter towards something I was imagining and that... what I'm trying to say is, the signs were there for anybody who looked closely, but nobody bothered to. I thought you had everything I should have had – the perfect family, the house, the money, the prestige – and your dad's actually as bad to you as he was to my family. But there's still the veneer of the perfect family, you know?"

That one socked Jinsu straight in the gut. It was like Byeong joo had turned a tap on and her eyes immediately started brimming with tears. She bit hard on her bottom lip, trying to hold them back, but it was too late: Byeong joo had already seen. A flurry of apologies left his mouth as he hurtled around the side of the table and then hovered awkwardly at her side, unsure of the best way to proceed.

"I'm okay," Jinsu managed, sniffling and trying to wave him away. She rubbed the tears away from her eyes. "It's true, though. He just has this thing about having to look perfect the entire time for the media and the public eye and everything revolves around that and his business and it's like I'm not even his daughter."

Byeong joo ignored her because it was blatant she needed a hug, and he gingerly put his arms around her.

For a few seconds, it was the most awkward hug Jinsu had ever experienced. She was completely stiff, the prospect of a hug from Byeong joo as unwelcome as the prospect of one from her father, and Byeong joo was clearly worried about upsetting her further (or possibly getting his elbow in her food), but then the dam broke again in a fresh wave. Somehow, the acknowledgement of her father's emotional detachment towards his family never failed to hurt. The odd moments – including the one or two ones recently when he'd ruffled her hair or teased her – were what Jinsu never really knew she was craving until after they'd happened, but they were so rare it always felt like she'd imagined them afterwards. After a brief hesitation and a flinch at the renewed tears, Byeong joo tightened his arms around her in a proper embrace.

The only word for it was weird. It was like it had been when Yejun and Hamin had been lost out of the porthole and Byeong joo had stayed with her. The humiliation of crying in front of Byeong joo then had been just as strong as it was now, but it still wasn't stronger than the pain of what she was crying about. And Jinsu felt rotten for crying yet again. It seemed like that was all she did these days. She tried to calm herself, to calm her mind, and think about happier things. Like puppies. A cute, chocolate-brown labrador, playful and happy, chasing its own tail, or maybe running after a stick. With bright eyes. Precisely the kind she'd never be allowed to have, but if it existed in her mind, nobody would ever be able to take it away from her.

"My leg is going dead," Byeong joo announced abruptly, jolting Jinsu out of a much happier place with a puppy pawing at her knee. She started back into a more sober frame of mind and Byeong joo let go of her as if he'd been electrocuted, coughing awkwardly and scratching at the back of his neck. "Sorry. You looked like you needed it and... Er, my food's getting cold, so I'll just..."

It was enough to lift Jinsu's spirits as he limped off, stamping his foot a few times and complaining about pins and needles.

"I wasn't angry," she blurted out, causing him to halt and throw a quizzical glance over his shoulder. Seeing his blank look, Jinsu realised she'd have to clarify.

"It wasn't really something you did yesterday," she said. "I just needed space and time."

"I'm pretty sh*t at giving that," he acknowledged.

The admission was blunt enough to almost put a smile on Jinsu's face. "And you got a lot of the tech stuff right."

He beamed at her, his ears going pink. "So your plan was to lower the time vacuum wards to expel us from the timestream?"

Jinsu nodded.

"Isn't that dangerous?"

"Yeah." Fidgeting, Jinsu glanced down at her plate. There was still rather a lot of food on it. "But it's the only way for us to stop somewhere and get resources. The virus is too entrenched right now."

"Where are we going to end up?"

Jinsu shrugged. That was the bit that had been bugging her. "We're just going to have to find out when we finish breakfast."

Chapter 44

Jinsu felt a lot better once she'd eaten, but Byeong joo appeared to be wilting. Full of yawns, he trailed back to the main deck after her and, at Jinsu's request, set about putting all the rooms onto earthquake mode like a zombie. Jinsu couldn't bring herself not to keep a careful eye on the simple pieces of coding he was changing in case he accidentally slipped up. It was just as well she did because he did make one error and she had to change it for him. Once that was done, she started cutting the speed and then got Byeong joo to authorise the lowering of the temporal wards.

The impact was immediate. As though they were in an aeroplane in the middle of a very bad storm, the Attayear started shuddering violently and Jinsu was flung off her seat. Byeong joo caught her hand before she could full on plough into the floor, but another jolt dislodged him and he went sprawling after her.

It wasn't, however, as bad as the time it had felt like being in a washing machine, and it also wasn't anything like as long. With a loud bang!, they were expelled from the main timestream, the Attayear shuddering in response, and then there was another bang and a flair of light as they entered the time and location they were going to land in. Jinsu hauled herself up off the floor, aware that she needed to cut speed completely to bring them to a halt. Byeong joo took several attempts to scramble to his feet as Jinsu found her way into the remote engine controls. He was so out of it that she actually had to grab his hand and make him press on the button to authorise the new commands she was putting in.

All around them, the Attayear began to power down. Byeong joo sat heavily on the floor and tilted his head back against Jinsu's seat, eyes closed. She narrowed her eyes at him, a suspicion growing that he hadn't slept at all that night. After a moment or two, she nudged him with her toe, but he didn't respond beyond a faint moan of protest.

"You need to take your own advice," she told him.

"Mm?"

Jinsu poked at him again. "Go to bed."

Byeong joo struggled to open his eyes. "But you might need me."

Perhaps it was better to take the lead on this one. "Not if I'm asleep too. We've stopped, Kim."

He looked totally confused, almost as if he couldn't understand basic Korean. Disorientated, he glanced around him and straightened up a little before yawning and pawing at his eyes, his hands half-hidden by his sleeves. Now that she thought about it, Jinsu reckoned the only time she'd seen him with his sleeves properly rolled up was when he'd been cooking in the kitchen not long before.

"Sorry," he mumbled. "I'm kind of falling asleep."

"Which is why I said to go to bed."

"Oh." It still took a while for that to process and he let out a yawn worthy of a lion. "Yeah. You did."

It was astonishing how only a few moments before he'd been awake enough to hold a proper conversation and cook and eat, and now he looked like he didn't know which way was up. It took Byeong joo a good few moments to push himself to his feet when Jinsu got up, and Jinsu hovered, unsure whether he'd need help and whether to offer it to him if it transpired he did.

Byeong joo did stumbled a couple of times on the way over to the door, most likely because his eyes were barely open, but once he was actually out in the passageway, he looked a little more awake due to the fact that he was moving around. Letting out another humongous yawn, he gave Jinsu an absent smile.

Walking up the stairs as far as Jinsu's room was the first non-awkward silence between the two of them where they hadn't been working on the computers or something similarly demanding, and Jinsu didn't really know what to make of it. She'd tried to hang back a little, but Byeong joo was walking so slowly that the only way to be slower without it being obvious was to stop and let him go on ahead, and that... well, would have been obvious. At times, he was so close that the cuffs of his sleeves would brush against her hands, and as they reached the top of the stairs, Jinsu caught herself thinking that Byeong joo's sleeve paws had their benefits after all, because constantly brushing against Byeong joo's actual hand, even unintentionally, could have got weird. Or given off the wrong signals. Or given off signals that weren't there to be given.

Byeong joo seemed intent on giving off those signals anyway, because as Jinsu tried to slip surreptitiously into her room before he could realise she was gone, his fingers caught at her hand just before she could get it on the door handle.

"I nearly forgot to ask." He stifled another yawn. "Is it okay with you if I add the breakfast food to the communal pantry?"

Jinsu wasn't capable of giving him anything beyond an utterly blank look. "Why are you asking me? It's your food."

"It's your breakfast."

For the first time, Jinsu really understood why everybody she knew kept insisting that Byeong joo was "not normally like this" and was actually really nice. She wondered how different school might have been if she was his friend rather than his arch enemy.

"I will miss the breakfasts," she said, "but I'd be more upset if we were hoarding food while everybody else starved, even if it's only enough to give everybody one extra meal."

Byeong joo nodded sleepily and let go of her hand. Jinsu ended up watching him wander down the corridor to his own room rather than scarpering to hide in hers. If they made it back to their proper time, it would probably be a good idea to take him out for a meal as a thank you.

Would a meal be a good idea, though? Byeong joo had told her not that long before that he had training as a chef. He also worked at one of the best restaurants in Seoul. It would be very hard to find a better one that would be suited to his tastes – was it the done thing to invite a chef out for a meal? – and—

Jinsu shook herself. Inviting Byeong joo out for a meal was a singularly bad idea because a one-on-one meal like that was going to look very like a date. It would be much better to think of something else. Except any one-on-one activity was probably going to look like a date. Maybe she could lend him stationery at school if he forgot his.

Jinsu had barely been in the common room since she'd boarded the Attayear, and she felt out of place.

It wasn't just that it was one of the communal spaces she usually avoided. The other ten or so people in the room were all male (which was normal in the Attayear, but a little intimidating in this situation) and they were all Minhwan's friends or cronies. Kyungsoo couldn't move around enough to get downstairs and Byeong joo was apparently still conked out. It left Jinsu feeling rather vulnerable.

Minhwan had called the meeting as the oldest person still aboard the Attayear to discuss a plan of action.

"As far as I can make out," said Junmyeon, "we're in Siberia. We've drifted a heck of a long way."

"Scythia, really," Kyuhyun added. "About 150BC."

Minhwan frowned, shooting an accusatory glare at Jinsu that made her shrink back into the sofa. It wasn't as if there was much she could have done to prevent them from landing in that specific place and time period. "What's everybody's Russian history like? Are there any crazies or any marauding armies we have to watch out for?"

"I know the Mongols took over Siberia," Youngdo said.

"The Mongols are at least a millenium and a half on," scoffed one of the other boys. "This is, like, the Romans."

"I think they came through here later," said Junmyeon, "but don't quote me on that."

Jinsu almost wished she had the answer, but it wasn't an area or time period she'd studied in history. Come to that, she didn't think it was on the curriculum at all.

"And does anybody know what the people who live around here are supposed to be like?" Minhwan added. "Or if civilisation exists out here?"

"It'll either be nomadic or static," said Kyuhyun. "And whichever it is, I hope they're nearby because we need a lot more food."

"We can hunt," Junho piped up. "Water's more important. Water and making sure we have enough fuel of whatever kind to travel back to the time we're supposed to be in."

"We'll organise exploration parties after lunch," Minhwan decided, crossing his arms as he leant against the back of the sofa that Kyuhyun and Junmyeon were sitting against. "But we're going to need to pool resources. If anybody has any gold or anything that could feasibly be money, they need to share it with all of us so that we can be sure we'll be able to afford everything we need."

He only gave a slight glance in Jinsu's direction, but it was pretty clear that the bit about money was almost entirely directed at her because she was the only known person on the Attayear to actually have a proper amount of money with her.

"Jun, Kyu, how long are you going to need working on that code?" Minhwan went on when Jinsu shrank uncomfortably into her seat.

Both Junmyeon and Kyuhyun grimaced.

"Months," Kyuhyun said tartly. "I don't know. It depends when we have the lightbulb moment. We're going to need Jinsu to authorise everything for us, too, which just makes the process slower."

"You'll have to stay with Jun and Kyu then," Minhwan told Jinsu, his disdain just about audible in his voice.

It irked Jinsu enough for her to retort: "I can't actually authorise anything. Byeong joo's the one who can."

She thought she heard Minhwan mutter something like "back in the useless pot, then", but figured it wasn't worth making a massive meal out of.

"So food we need to scavenge for, the coding we need time for, water we need to find," Minhwan checked off out loud on his fingers, "and we need to do a proper job on the engines so it's actually possible to get back."

"Fuel," said Youngdo. Minhwan added a fifth finger.

"Yeah, fuel too." Minhwan looked up. "We just need to get these sorted. Much easier said than done."

"Somehow, I am not surprised," announced Kyungsoo when Jinsu dropped by and disconsolately told him who had declared himself commander of the Attayear. "But I am surprised that Minhwan is currently being responsible and almost civil. Long may it last."

Jinsu propped her chin up on Kyungsoo's leg. To his earlier protests, she'd curled up on his bed quite some time before so that she could launch all her objections to Minhwan. Byeong joo was still sound asleep in his bed, blissfully unaware of the complaints on the other side of the room, though to be fair, he would almost definitely have joined in if he'd been conscious.

"I'm a bit worried, though," she said. "Minhwan and all the rest keep talking about going back to the present, like the people we lost along the way all don't exist anymore. If we fix enough of the coding and the engines are in a good enough condition, I think we want to see if we can pick up everybody we set down along the way, like Noah and the rest at the hospital, and Yejun. We're some way into the past now, so it shouldn't be hard to detour to the 1950s and rescue everyone. It would be much better than getting back to the present and then having to go back for them. We don't know how the public and law enforcement are going to react if we turn up with a broken machine on its last legs and about three-quarters of the people who left on it either dead or lost. And then there's my dad to content with—"

Kyungsoo held up a hand. "Worry about that when the time comes. For now, worry about the fact that Minhwan has turned himself into a dictator."

That brought a smile to Jinsu's face.

"Kyungsoo," she began, feeling that they were probably on good enough terms for her to ask him this. "I want to do something as a thank you for Byeong joo if we ever make it back—"

Frowning, Kyungsoo attempted to sit up. "Why the hell do you want to thank Byeong joo?"

"For the food," Jinsu said without thinking. "And for everything else he's done for me. But I get the feeling that me taking him to a restaurant—"

"Would basically be a date, yeah," said Kyungsoo before she could finish with wouldn't be that exciting for him since he's a chef. "Wait, what food are we talking about here?"

"Well... the breakfasts?"

Kyungsoo's jaw dropped. "The breakfasts?"

Jinsu nodded. Perhaps it hadn't been a good idea to tell him.

"The f*cking traitor!" Kyungsoo fumed. "We're his friends and he didn't cook for us once and you get about three trays worth of food on one plate every morning! Blasphemy!"

The outburst continued on for a good few minutes while Byeong joo snored lightly, oblivious to the one-sided argument. Jinsu bit on her bottom lip, trying hard not to laugh.

"He is so going to cook for me to make up for this," Kyungsoo finally finished off at the end of his mini-tirade. "Is he giving you the special treatment because he likes you or something?"

"Ew, no. Noah made him."

"Well, I don't know what he did to Byeong joo, but he needs to do it again so that Byeong joo pledges his cooking services to me. Even just a day would do."

Glancing quickly over at Byeong joo, Jinsu wondered if the slave-for-a-day coupon could be transferred – assuming she could reassemble it all.

She got the feeling, though, that it would make Byeong joo a very unhappy bunny indeed if Kyungsoo was in charge for the day.

Chapter 45

"You want to know something funny?" Jinsu overheard Youngdo saying when Jisung dropped a bowl of boiling beansprout soup and blasphemed loudly when it splashed all over him. "Saying Jesus Christ is currently a massive anachronism. The timeframe we're currently in lacks the light of the world and is cold and unforgiving with no chance of redemption. Charming, isn't it? We could go out there and be prophets or something."

Jinsu wasn't sure whether Youngdo or Jisung was the Christian or whether Youngdo was being serious or poking fun, but on a more literal level, it was a fairly accurate description of Ancient Scythia. Before sneaking into the kitchen to load up the tray with food to take up to Kyungsoo (she might just have put enough on it for three people so that she could eat as well; she wasn't quite at the stage of admitting that some thought had gone into the fact that Byeong joo might be awake and hungry too), she'd poked her nose out of a porthole. The place they'd landed in was indeed bleak and forbidding. She could just about make out tundra extending to what had looked like the borders of a forest, but there was no life to be seen for miles. It also appeared that they'd managed to land in the middle of winter: just standing outside the Attayear for two minutes had been enough for her nose and cheeks to turn blue with cold and for her to completely lose feeling in her hands.

Once the tray was loaded up, Jinsu was faced with the issue of balancing it on one hand so that she could carry it up with her. It was okay when it was just going a few steps across her room, but she had stairs to navigate with this.

Flexing her arm carefully, Jinsu took her time to balance the tray and made her way carefully out of the kitchen. She was almost at the stairs when Minhwan appeared out of one of the rooms along the passage, followed by Kyuhyun. Kyuhyun continued on, but Minhwan stopped, frowning at the tray balancing on Jinsu's hand.

"Where do you think you're going with that much food?" he demanded. "We're short on supplies and you landed us in the middle of a Siberian winter; it's not like we're getting more food easily. You can't have that much."

Jinsu bristled at his pugnacious tone. "I'm not an idiot," she seethed. "As a girl and somebody currently not able to do much in the way of manual labour to help out on the Attayear, my necessary daily calorie intake is much lower than yours will be. I spent a year counting calories when I was thirteen and I know just how much I need to eat, thanks. The rest is for friends who do need a higher calorific intake."

Minhwan snorted and began to make his way around her. "Your cousin's dead and Loverboy Yejun went sailing out of the window; you don't have Noah to cry to anymore. What friends?"

If they genuinely hadn't been short on food, Jinsu would have introduced the large bowl of scalding soup to Minhwan's face.

"Your mum, a*hole," she retorted before her brain had a chance to tell her that it really wasn't a good idea. Resisting the urge to retrospectively cringe, she decided it was best to pretend dignity and stalk off. Minhwan, however, was offended enough to whirl around and block her.

"You—" he began, but Jinsu wasn't in the mood to protract the argument.

"Look," she said flatly. "We're short on food at the moment, but if you don't get out of of my way, I'm going to walk into you and three people's portions will end up on the floor, and the first thing I'll do is go back to the kitchen and get three more, which'll mean we're six down because you're being a knucklehead again. Just go away."

He was too surprised to stop her as she brushed past him again. Jinsu's attitude fled the second she was on the stairs. One nil to her, but she was probably going to pay for that later.

Kyungsoo's face lit up like an LED torchbeam when Jinsu walked into the room.

"Is that bulgogi I smell?" he asked excitedly. "And beansprout soup?"

At some point during the day, he'd painstakingly managed to get himself to shift ends of the bed so that he was now next to the desk and able to see who was coming in and out of the room. Considering he'd told Jinsu earlier that he had now power in his legs and it was excrutiatingly painful for him to even twitch his toes, it set a lot about his determination and willpower, and also about his arm strength. Now that she thought about it, Kyungsoo was a bit bulkier than he appeared at first glance. She wondered if his biceps could compete with Yejun's and then shook herself, disturbed at where her thoughts were wandering.

Kyungsoo attempted to prop himself up a little as Jinsu placed the tray on the desk beside him, and feeling like a mother hen, Jinsu carefully slipped her hand between his shoulderblades and helped him to sit up. Much happier now that he was in a position to help himself, Kyungsoo reached for the food and dug in, giving Jinsu a quick thumbs up and a torrent of words of gratitude that were swallowed the second he had food in his mouth. Amused, Jinsu dithered for a few moments over where to sit and eventually perched herself on the mattress beside him so that she could access the food too.

There was no awkwardness with Kyungsoo anymore. Jinsu felt she'd more or less got his measure and Kyungsoo had definitely got hers, because before long she was almost in hysterics at the outrageous things he was saying.

Her chuckles must have woken Byeong joo up, because before long, there came the sounds of somebody surfacing on the other side of the room, and then Byeong joo sat up groggily and stretched, yawning loudly. The t-shirt that he was wearing rode up a little, revealing a flat expanse of stomach. Jinsu hastily averted her gaze, but she thought she caught a hint of muscle there.

"I forgot to ask," Kyungsoo said, "did you bring some of this up for Byeong joo as well?"

Jinsu nodded as Byeong joo turned in their direction and swung his legs out of bed.

"D*mn shame." Kyungsoo pinched another piece of meat between his chopsticks. Footsteps padded across the room as Byeong joo followed his nose and sank down into the office chair, picking up the third pair of chopsticks Jinsu had brought with her.

"You angel," he murmured gratefully to Jinsu before tucking in, still barely awake and with his sleeve paws almost covering his chopsticks.

"Whoa now." Kyungsoo held his chopsticks up. "What funky stuff have you been dreaming about, Byeong joo?"

Byeong joo looked up at him with a still-out-of-it "hm?", a beansprout drooping out of his mouth. Jinsu wanted to snatch it out, or shove it back in, or just anything that made him look less scruffy without liquid from the soup dribbling down his chin. How it didn't bother him was something she failed to understand.

"You just called Jinsu an angel," Kyungsoo stressed with the same degree of incredulity somebody might use on a person who was rabidly convinced that the pyramids were really built by aliens. "You. Jinsu. Angel." He waved his arms about. Jinsu wasn't sure if they were supposed to be wings or if he was just flailing in the hopes that Byeong joo would magically understand.

Byeong joo didn't magically understand. "And?" he demanded, sitting up a little straighter and with his eyes now fully open. "What's wrong with that? She didn't have to bring me food and I wouldn't have blamed her if she didn't."

"Yes, but you called Jinsu an angel," Kyungsoo said, as though altering the stress in the concept of "you called Jinsu an angel" would make Byeong joo click. "Jinsu."

Jinsu felt herself turning beetroot.

"Are you saying she isn't?" Byeong joo demanded, getting a touch defensive. Then his eyes narrowed. "Wait, are you jealous she isn't just paying attention to you? Have you got a crush or something?"

It was the first time Jinsu had seen Kyungsoo genuinely flummoxed. She'd managed to confuse him into silence before, but never shut him down the way that Byeong joo had done.

"You know," Byeong joo continued, clearly trying to press a definite answer out of him, but for what purpose Jinsu couldn't say, "once upon a time, an angel and a demon fell in love—"

Kyungsoo held up a hand. "Oh, come on now. Jinsu is my soul animal, not my soul mate. Which means I'm an angel too and you can no longer call me Satansoo for swapping the salt and sugar around in your house five years ago when Eunho and I were round for dinner."

"Me and Kyungsoo dating would not end well," Jinsu piped up. "We're too similar."

"Exactly," said Kyungsoo, sounding vindicated. "And besides, this is embarrassing as hell to admit, especially in Jinsu's presence since she's such a babe, but I'm pretty sure you must have noticed me trying and failing dismally to hit on your big sister every time we run into each other, Byeong joo. I'm a faithful man and I don't give up easily."

Byeong joo spluttered and then choked on his mouthful, his face quickly turning red. Tables turned, Kyungsoo settled himself comfortably back in his pillows, shooting a grin and a wicked wink in Jinsu's direction. Suppressing a laugh, she nudged the bottle of water she'd brought up in Byeong joo's direction.

"It could have been worse," she said as Byeong joo hit his chest a couple of times and tipped his head back to swallow the water. "He could have been eyeing up your mum instead."

Byeong joo spat the water out, choking again. Kyungsoo dissolved into a fit of giggles. Jinsu winced to herself, her own smile fading. Apparently her encounter with Minhwan had unearthed the lurking your mum jokes that every person had suppressed as a bad comeback.

"I like you," Kyungsoo declared. "Not in the way Byeong joo thinks, because his mind lives in the gutter, but in a very friendly way."

"Oh my God." Byeong joo reached for the water again. "Now you've just given me images of you and my sister and I really did not need that at all. My mind needs bleach."

"Gutterbrain," Kyungsoo snickered. Glaring at him, Byeong joo coughed out the last of his chokes and started eating again.

As silence descended and she contemplated the odd dynamic that Kyungsoo had with his friends (which mostly consisted of him teasing them mercilessly and made her wonder how they put up with him, unless the answer was that they found him teasing everybody except them hilarious), Jinsu reached for the water bottle. It had been impractical to pour out three glasses of water and hope to balance them all the way up the stairs, but she probably ought to have put glasses out nevertheless, or done a second run for them, because now the bottle had germs. She'd always managed to avoid drinking from somebody else's water bottle before and scooping water into her hand from the tap would just make it taste salty, which she didn't want either.

She tried wiping the rim of the bottle against her top, as she'd seen many people do before, but just as she was raising it to her mouth, a sudden thought struck her. Had she gone all the way around? (Did jumpers even wipe germs off?) She went for another wipe.

And then another, just to make sure.

And another, because she'd probably missed a bit, and that would mean that she hadn't gone the full way around three times, which would mean that one part of the rim had more germs than the other.

And another one, to compensate, but then had she gone too far around, meaning that part of the rim still had more germs? How was she supposed to—

"Hey, stop that."

Slim, pale fingers plucked the bottle out of her grip.

Disorientated, Jinsu looked up. She could feel that colour had drained out of her face, and she didn't need a mirror to be able to tell that she was breaking out in a cold sweat, either. Tears were already prickling at the corners of her eyes, and she swallowed, trying to get rid of the huge lump that had suddenly appeared in her throat.

Byeong joo was looking pensively between her and the waterbottle now in his hands.

"Is this a... cleanliness thing or are you thirsty?" he asked. Kyungsoo had gone quiet and serious and was watching their exchange with interest.

"Th-thirsty," Jinsu stuttered, unsure why she was suddenly so embarrassed. Byeong joo and Kyungsoo both knew about her OCD – heck, Byeong joo had even been kind enough to tidy up her room because he knew what it could do to her – not to mention that the truth on this occasion looked much better than saying it was cleanliness would.

A look of relief flickered briefly over Byeong joo's features.

"We can get round this," he said. "Here." Shuffling closer, he put his free hand near Jinsu's chin, so close it was almost brushing it, and rested the water bottle on it so that he'd be able to tip the water straight into her mouth.

It took Jinsu a moment or two to react, and just before he could actually tuo the bottle, Jinsu pushed his hands away, unable to quite pinpoint why it made her so uneasy.

"Too close," she mumbled. "I appreciate the thought, but it's patronising."

Byeong joo bit his lip and set the water bottle down. "Sorry."

Jinsu took a covert peek at the waterbottle, wondering if it would increase the sudden awkwardness if she picked it up and did exactly what he'd just been trying to do for her.

Kyungsoo evidently think that the abrupt build in tension was more than enough, because he chose that moment to speak up again.

"I was going to say this earlier," he said, "and what I was going to say earlier was that I was going to say you two are obviously going to get married because you're like a married couple with the food and everything, but I think it's more accurate to say you're long past that stage and you're like a couple of grandparents with the way you look out for each other—" He flinched, laughing, as Byeong joo lobbed his spoon at him and it bounced off his head. Jinsu was more amused than annoyed: she could tell that Kyungsoo was directing this much more at Byeong joo.

Still laughing, Kyungsoo flicked the spoon back at him. "You know they say that guys do ridiculous things for love, right? I can't think of another reason why you'd keep your gigantic stash of western food secret from all your friends to cook anonymously for the one girl on the Attayear every morning, but if that's not romantic, I don't know what is."

Jinsu could see from Byeong joo's face that it was a KO. He completely froze up, apparently conflicted as to whether he should be angry or embarrassed or just laugh it off. Piling all the dirty dishes onto the tray, he stood up.

"I am not in love, and I am not doing stupid things," he declared before stalking over to the door, tray in hand, in an attempt to retain some dignity. Kyungsoo cracked up as the door slammed shut.

"You're evil," Jinsu remarked, but it didn't seem to bother him at all.

"It's so fun winding him up," he chuckled, actually wiping a tear away from his eye. "None of us actually have a crush on his sister, even though she's a total babe, but it gets a reaction out of him every time and it's brilliant."

Jinsu was about to point out that most of that conversation had been about her rather than Byeong joo's sister but Kyungsoo cut in and changed the subject.

"Have you been outside yet? Any Siberian tigers?"

A mortified Byeong joo or an angry Minhwan was better than another tiger any day.

Chapter 46

Jinsu spent the next day trying to avoid Byeong joo and Minhwan – the latter because of potential repercussions from the previous day and the former because she needed a break from him to sort out what was going on in her mind.

She really didn't know what to do about Byeong joo. He was treating her the same way that Yejun and Jimin did – protective, familiar... possibly even with affection. And while it was fine coming from her brother and Yejun, it really did feel a bit too close for comfort coming from Byeong joo.

The problem was that fate had ironically left him as her main pillar of support. There was a selfish part of her that wished Kyungsoo hadn't been so badly injured so he and Jinsu could find places to hang out and relax or talk without Byeong joo either being there or constantly walking in on them. The question, then, was how to get Byeong joo to give her a bit of space without him feeling as though all his efforts were for nothing, which they most definitely weren't.

In the end, Jinsu resorted to enlisting Kyungsoo as a wingman when Byeong joo was downstairs to grab them all a bit of dinner. It had been a long day ducking into corners and snatching moments at the control desk when Minhwan wasn't there (and also a stint locked in her bathroom using the toilet as a seat in an attempt to escape Byeong joo for half an hour while she worked on some coding – he'd stopped knocking on the door and asking her if she was okay, but when Jinsu emerged again with Noah's laptop, it was to find him sitting on the floor in her bedroom leafing through a book. She'd nearly thrown the laptop at him when she saw that he'd crinkled a couple of page edges), and she had already decided that she didn't want another round of it.

"I-I'm not sure about the best way to ask this," she began, wringing her hands nervously, "but you know him much better than I do, so can you ask Byeong joo to... well, tone it down?"

Kyungsoo looked at her incredulously. "You want him to tone it down? What happened to taking him on a restaurant date?"

If she hadn't been so anxiously preoccupied, Jinsu might have blushed. "I know he means well and he's trying to make it up to me, but he's being a bit too close and I don't know how to tell him that without offending him. When I told him I needed more space, he said he was bad at giving that and he's right."

A little chuckle escaped Kyungsoo. "He has a pretty thick skin for insults – I wouldn't worry too much. But sure, I can tell him to take a step back with the flirting."

"He's flirting?"

"No," said Kyungsoo with amusement. "But this is a prime opportunity to tease the absolute sh*t out of him by pretending to think he is."

"You're awful," Jinsu sighed.

"But it's fun. And you know it." He smirked at her. "Better than that, you enjoy it."

Jinsu smacked him on the shoulder and he snickered.

Whatever Kyungsoo said or did, it worked. Jinsu found herself blissfully Byeong joo free the following day: he didn't follow her around or constantly check up on her other than at mealtimes, when he appeared out of the blue and asked her to help him take stuff up for Kyungsoo. Jinsu had no objection to that as they needed to take care of Kyungsoo and it was unfair on him to make him choose between them when it came to who kept him company.

Boisterous Byeong joo was gone, though, which was the most disconcerting thing about it. It wasn't a bother when he wasn't there, but he was more or less silent when he was, not even reacting to Kyungsoo's ribbing and barely even looking up and meeting their eyes. After breakfast the next morning, when Byeong joo's silence definitely wasn't due to tiredness because he looked absolutely fine and didn't even catch Kyungsoo's yawns, Jinsu began to wonder if Kyungsoo had sucked Byeong joo's soul out or something.

When it continued at lunchtime, Jinsu began to feel a bit miffed. It wasn't at all what she'd intended, but it somehow felt unfair that Byeong joo listening to Kyungsoo and acted on it while he'd barely listened to Jinsu and acted on that – well, he'd listened and then more or less said no can do. Rather than dwell on it, though, she distracted herself by joining Junmyeon and Youngdo going out to see if they could find food, or a town, or wood or anything they could use to replenish their supplies. Byeong joo's donation to the communal fridge had given them an extra couple of days of food, but it was nothing like enough.

It was well below freezing outside, and Jinsu didn't think twice before taking Byeong joo's cloak off her shelf for warmth. Junmyeon and Youngdo had both opted for cloaks over hoodies as well, reasoning that it was more likely to be similar to what people of the time wore as cloaks seemed to be pretty universal. Both were wearing brownish-coloured hanboks underneath as a precaution.

For the most part, they walked in silence. Jinsu initially wasn't bothered by that, but the longer it went on, the more awkward it got. Perhaps it was because she was now used to being around people who spoke to her. Perhaps it was because of the sideways glances that Junmyeon would shoot at her and Youngdo from his position between them every few minutes. Perhaps it was because everything about Youngdo's body language, from the disdainful glances he shot her to the way he angled his body away from her or grunted the few times Junmyeon spoke up, asking them both a question. She wasn't sure what kind of problem Youngdo had with her other than he was Minhwan's friend, but Junmyeon was Minhwan's friend too and didn't seem to have a problem talking to her. Well, less of a problem. He was definitely much less talkative than he had been in the past, and appeared much less comfortable to say much to Jinsu beyond asking her about a couple of things related to the computers.

When they had been walking for just over an hour, it began to snow. At first, it was just a heavy, grey sky with small white flecks descending from it, but in a matter of minutes, the flurry of thick, fat snowflakes was so furious that Jinsu's cheeks were stinging and they could barely see ahead of them. Pulling her hood up, Jinsu took the opportunity to shake back her sleeve to look at her watch and drew to a halt.

Junmyeon noticed almost immediately and called Youngdo to a stop before he could forge too far ahead.

"Is something wrong?" he asked as Youngdo scowled over his shoulder.

"I just don't think it's very wise to continue," Jinsu said, nodding vaguely at the snow. "If we go further than six miles from the Attayear we might lose our way and not be able to get back."

Youngdo scoffed. "Don't be such a wimp. This isn't a whiteout. It's just some snow."

"It's sub-zero and we could die," Jinsu retorted.

"We could die without food and firewood," Youngdo snapped back, "no thanks to you."

Jinsu glared at him. "It is not my fault—"

"Who navigated us into this mess in this timeframe?" Youngdo spat. "You completely messed up Junmyeon and Kyuhyun's work trying to set us on the right track by putting us down in Siberia—"

"Whoa, whoa, guys!" Junmyeon inserted himself between the two. "Can we not fight?"

"If we hadn't stopped, we could have got home without landing ourselves in the ridiculous situation of not having enough fuel to take off again and running out of food while we try to get enough fuel to keep going!"

"What, by travelling even further back in time?" Jinsu demanded, ignoring Junmyeon trying to push them apart and get them to shut up.

"If you're really that good with the Attayear computers, why didn't you take us forward in time?" Youngdo snarled.

Jinsu threw up her good hand. "Because it was impossible—!"

"Then don't stick your nose in where it's not wanted." Youngdo turned and continued walking away.

"Youngdo!" Junmyeon called after him before turning back to Jinsu. "Sorry about that – I do think we should go back, though. Youngdo!" He jogged after the dark figure that was being swallowed up by the snow. With huge misgivings, Jinsu followed after him, sneaking a look at her watch before she shook her sleeve back over it and tucked her arm back under her cloak. There was no sign of anybody turning on the satellites to guide them back to the Attayear, but there was a high chance that Byeong joo was the only one other than her who really knew of their existence, and there was an even higher chance that he wouldn't think to switch them on, especially if the snowstorm hadn't reached the Attayear, and a higher chance still that he wouldn't know how to turn them on even if he did have reason to think it was necessary. Jinsu didn't think she'd spotted that part in the code yet, but admittedly she hadn't been looking for the satellites, and it was also possible that the virus had overwritten them.

By the time the snowstorm cleared up, or they walked out of it, Jinsu was prepared to admit they were lost, but she didn't dare say anything out of fear that Youngdo might snap. Junmyeon was tight-lipped and completely silent compared to mostly silent before, and Jinsu wondered if he was thinking what she was thinking. If he was, then it just went to show how different he was to his step-brother, because Yejun would have voiced it out without any misgivings. Jinsu missed him. She chewed hard on her tongue in an attempt to keep herself in the here and now, but that only made her wonder how Junmyeon was coping with his brother's loss. Did he – possibly – blame Jinsu for it as she'd been unable to pull him back in? Was that why he wasn't so keen to talk to her anymore?

"Okay, smartass, you were right," Youngdo announced abruptly.

Jinsu looked up, offended, when she realised he was referring to her, and then confused about what he was conceding defeat on.

He huffed. "We're lost. You can say I told you so and take us home before you start feeling more complacent about it."

Jinsu eyed him for a couple of moments. "I thought we were looking for food and firewood."

"Well, do you see any?" Youngdo gestured around him. "No. And it's f*cking freezing, so take us back."

"There are trees," Junmyeon pointed out, "but we don't have anything to chop them down with and we're much better off seeing if we can buy stocks of dried wood if it's at all possible."

"But we haven't found anywhere to buy," Youngdo pointed out. "It's getting late and it'll be getting dark too. This place probably has wild animals. So take us home." He jerked his head in Jinsu's direction.

Jinsu was very tempted to ask him if he was possessed by Minhwan's soul, because he was being just as unpleasant as the other boy.

"I can't," she said simply. "I have no idea and I'm completely disorientated after that snowstorm. It's not like we were walking in a completely straight line from A to B."

Junmyeon held up his hands placatingly. "Let's not fight," he said. "It's a thoroughly bad—" He broke off with a little yelp as something that looked like a pinecone bounced off the back of his head. Youngdo stooped to pick it up and looked around, confused. They were in an open space between trees, and there was no wind to carry something like a pinecone with that much force into somebody.

"Where did this—?"

A high-pitched laugh came from behind one of the trees and a couple of small children capered into view, the smaller on throwing more pinecones at the taller one. The three of them stared: for somebody so tiny, the little girl had quite a terrifying arm on her.

The boy, who looked about a year older but no more than six or seven, had an equally terrifying arm, it transpired when he caught one and hurled it away, sending it much farther than Jinsu knew she'd be able to throw anything herself. Still laughing as they played, the boy had backed into Junmyeon before the two children really took notice of the strangers.

It was possible they thought that they thought that the young Koreans were adults that they knew, because when the boy turned to Junmyeon with what was probably an apology spilling from his mouth, he was all smiles until his eyes travelled up to Junmyeon's face, at which point his expression froze. For a second, he stood stock still, before abruptly grabbing the little girl's hand before she could go any further forward and taking several steps back, dragging her with him.

The girl turned to him with a question. Jinsu reckoned it was probably about who the strangers were and whether they were dangerous, but she didn't understand a single word from either child. It was only to be expected, really, with how far west and how far back they'd gone.

After what appeared to be a solemn discussion of the best course of action, the two children bowed in perfect unison and the boy said something with a bright smile that lit up his entire face. The girl nodded, an adorably serious expression on her face. Now that Jinsu thought about it, their features were fairly similar – they were probably related.

When they received no reply, the children looked a little lost. The boy repeated whatever he'd said, a little louder and a little slower, and Jinsu looked at Junmyeon in bewilderment. Junmyeon exchanged looks with her and then Youngdo. She thought she heard Youngdo mutter something that sounded like the kid's really cute, but I have no idea what he's saying. Reluctant as she was to agree with Youngdo on anything after his outbursts earlier, Jinsu had to admit he was right.

Whatever they had said, the children were apparently not taking no for an answer, because the girl stomped forwards and grabbed Junmyeon's hand, tugging him obstinately after her as she set off back into the trees. Amused at Junmyeon being kidnapped by somebody well under half his height, Jinsu followed before the boy could lay hands on her, and was treated to Youngdo's yelp of alarm instead.

It was only a couple of minutes before they emerged into what looked like a large tribal winter camp of some kind. A small wooden palisade wall had been built around it, most likely as a small deterrent for wild animals, and huts and tents made of animal skins had been erected in an orderly formation. People were busy scurrying to and fro with all kinds of things while young children scampered between their feet, playing with dogs running through the camp or games that they'd thought up. A muscular man wearing armour who had to be some kind of guard accosted them before they were even a few feet down the main pathway through the camp, but the children managed to fob him off without too much problem and continued to drag their foreign friends with them to what looked like the grandest tent of the lot. It was about half as high again as the ones around it and daubed in paints and dyes with ornate patterns and what Jinsu could have sworn were stickmen engaging in battle. It also had a pole that extended well above the top of the tent. A pennant flew from it, and just under the pennant was a string of half a dozen human skills. Jinsu gulped, wishing she knew more about the history of the place. If it turned out that these people were cannibals and they had no way of understanding what was going on, the situation was going to be dire, especially if the children were stronger than they were.

Jinsu was not totally surprised to see that they'd been taken to the tribe chieftain. The boy almost danced up to the man, interrupting him from his conversation with a couple of other people who both had prominent weapons and jabbering away with lots of gestures back towards her and the two boys. The girl had retreated from Junmyeon to hide in the skirts of a woman who was sitting off to the side nursing a tiny baby. What did take her by surprise, though, was the striking resemblance between the boy and the chieftain as he turned to face them. The boy skittered behind the man, standing straight with his hands clasped neatly behind his back and rocking up onto the balls of his heels. He had to be the man's son – which also explained why he'd been able to interrupt him so easily.

He'd apparently also told his father that the newcomers didn't speak their language, because the man harrumphed and another boy appeared, looking probably around the same age as Jinsu, with a knife. After a quick exchange of words with the chief, he crouched in front of the three Koreans and cleared a patch of dirt, laying the knife down beside it.

The chieftain gestured magnanimously.

Junmyeon was the first to catch on, picking the knife up and glancing in the chieftain's direction to check that he wasn't being considered as a threat before squatting in front of the dirt.

"I think he's asking us what we're doing here?" he said quietly to Youngdo and Jinsu. Gingerly, he grasped the knife hilt and used the point to draw in the dirt. Youngdo and Jinsu watched him for a few moments as he finished off the image of the tree, logs and fire that he was drawing.

"Is he going to know that we need it?" Youngdo asked suddenly. "And food – what about food?"

Junmyeon hesitated, biting his lower lip, before rubbing more dirt clear to draw on. It took a good few minutes, but by the time he was finished, he'd drawn out a storyboard describing their situation (leaving out the Attayear – he drew that as another camp with half a dozen cross-eyed and clearly ill people in it) of needing fuel and food and struggling through the snowstorm to the camp – which he'd deliberately drawn as stocked high with firewood and the tribe feasting merrily away. He'd drawn arrows from the firewood and food back to their own 'camp' with a question mark next to them.

"He's not going to understand what a question mark is," Youngdo said, dropping from his crouched position to his knees, and tapping the arrows before clasping his hands together. Junmyeon quickly followed suit. Jinsu would have done, but it was impossible to clasp her hands together with her arm in a sling.

The message did seem to get across, though, because the chieftain took a good look at it and then conferred with the other three men he'd been talking to when they'd come in. After several moments, he came down to scuff more dirt clear with his sandal and bent down to scratch out a picture with his own knife.

The three of them waited patiently as he did this. He was quick about it, not going to nearly the same depths as Junmyeon, but the meaning at the end was clear: the individual people he'd drawn out had enough food and wood for them to last until spring, but virtually nothing in the way of surplus. The chieftain shrugged, looking solemn and sorry, but then the woman spoke up quietly from the corner.

A few scratches later and the message had changed: they could scrape together something in return for some kind of payment, but they had a better chance—

"There are more tribes in the area," Junmyeon said, amazed. "If we can strike a deal here, we could go round as many tribes as we can find exchanging something for wood and food and we could build up quite a stock that way."

"Yeah, but what are we going to exchange?" Youngdo asked. "I think this is something we should talk to Minhwan and the others about before we go making decisions."

"We'd have to anyway; we currently have nothing to exchange."

Jinsu had been quite happy being left out of the conversation until Youngdo looked up at that point. "Jinsu's cloak clasp is fancy. They'll probably exchange for precious metals and jewels. They're basically currency, even if they aren't wholly practical. It's not like we can give them a cow or something they'll actually find useful."

Defensive, Jinsu covered the cloak clasp with her hand. Quite apart from thinking it was incredibly pretty and the cloak would be ruined without it, she felt like selling it would be like spitting in Byeong joo's face. However much ill will he'd actually given her the cloak with, he had bought it and it had been extremely expensive. And taking the clasp off the cloak, no matter how good the cause, would make it look and feel incomplete, and then she'd never be able to wear it again because just how awful would she look in clothing that was actually missing something?

She was so caught up in worrying about the cloak potentially losing its clasp that she almost missed the gesture that the chieftain made.

"So gold, silver – whoa, no, Jinsu is not for sale!" Junmyeon objected abruptly as the chieftain gestured to the gold and silver jewellery he was wearing, and then, as an afterthought, pointed at Jinsu. Jinsu blinked in shock, but quickly recovered. She held up her hand and sternly shook her head. The chieftain looked a little taken aback that she was personally responding to it and crouched down to add a large pile of logs and food in the pictogram part that contained the three Koreans.

"They must be short on women or something," Youngdo observed. "He's prepared to offer quite a lot for you."

"You're not selling me," Jinsu said crossly, shutting him up. "I'm not chattel and I'm not a breeding machine for kids." He backed off with his hands raised.

Junmyeon turned back to the dirt and carefully scrubbed Jinsu out of the equation, pointing to her and holding his hands up in a very clear X, before returning to the picture and drawing what looked like a stack of gold coins. Then he hastily drew an arrow from the stickmen versions of himself and Youngdo going back to their 'camp', where he drew another stick person who he made up to look as similar to the chieftain sitting in front of them as much as possible, and mimed speaking with his hands.

It took a little negotiation before the chieftain was finally happy to let them go back to the Attayear. Jinsu couldn't quite work out if this was because he was trying to be hospitable in the cold weather or because he wanted to hold at least one of them hostage (he seemed particularly adamant that she, at the very least, ought to stay), and when he did grudgingly agree to let them go home, he appeared to want to give them an escort. These followed them a good way out of the camp before Youngdo managed to get rid of them, though he did grumble about safety in numbers when it came to wild animals.

The sun began to descend as they trudged back, and by the time it had fully gone down and darkness was fast spreading, all three of them were noticeably tenser and the snow from before had resumed, but much more softly.

"Do we even know we're going the right way?" Youngdo grumbled, shooting a resentful look at Jinsu as though it was all her fault. She rolled her eyes and edged away so that Junmyeon blocked Youngdo's view of her. Some people were beyond help.

It was well and truly dark, their footsteps muffled by the snow and the cold beginning to creep into their bones (and Youngdo still shooting glares at Jinsu) when their watches bleeped. Recognising the sound, Jinsu shook her sleeve back immediately, relieved that Byeong joo had noticed they were missing and had managed to find a way to switch on the satellites, and even more relieved to see that they couldn't be too far from the Attayear.

What made her day, though, was the cup of hot chocolate made by the person she'd spent the day trying to avoid. He'd left a note with it, too: If you haven't eaten, knock on my door and I'll cook something to bring up to you.

Trials of the day forgotten, Jinsu draped the cloak over the back of a chair to let it dry off and snuggled up in bed with the hot chocolate, wondering whether she had the heart to disturb Byeong joo so late or the willpower to leave the warmth to do so.

It was not hard, though, to conclude that she could do an awful lot more to try to meet him halfway.

Chapter 47

Jinsu was bad at meeting people halfway, she discovered. Byeong joo was still taking whatever Kyungsoo had said to him terribly seriously, and after being a social outcast for so long, Jinsu was not at all sure how to take charge of the situation. Sure, if he'd been like Minhwan and incapable of not insulting her every second breath, everything would have been dandy: she'd been getting better at the ripostes and more confident in delivering them, even if they did descend into your mum reparties. But dealing with somebody so silent he was practically a ghost or not there the majority of the time when they had almost nothing in common? Forget it. It was much easier to laugh along with Kyungsoo and be oblivious to Byeong joo sitting on Kyungsoo's other side on the bed, legs stretched out as he stared at the ceiling and chewed absently, lost in thought. It spared her the awkwardness, at any rate.

At least, until after breakfast. Byeong joo had left first with the trays, leaving Kyungsoo and Jinsu to chat – Kyungsoo wanted to know everything about the tribe that they'd met, and was suitably horrified at the suggestion she be sold to them ("reckon they'd be satisfied with Minhwan instead?") – but after Jinsu had helped Kyungsoo taking his painkillers (he really could have done them himself, but instead he insisted on opening his mouth and chirping like a baby bird while she tipped the pills and water into it and nearly chooked himself to death for being such an idiot), she decided that she really ought to get on with some work and see what she could do about the Attayear's virus situation while the time machine was not in transit. Or how to maximise the energy and fuel efficiency, or cut fuel consumption without lowering efficiency, or anything of the sort. Whatever she did, she didn't fancy going back out into the snow and potentially being eyed up against a bride price of logs to burn. Quite apart from anything else, there was no guarantee she'd be able to get back to the Attayear before it left if she was, well, sold, even temporarily to a local tribe. She refused to sacrifice herself for something like that. She knew that some people would consider that selfish, but Jinsu believed in the integrity of a person as a person, not as a thing, and the idea of having a price put on her felt more humiliating than being publicly egged and floured at school.

She was so absorbed in her thoughts that she didn't notice the door opening just as she leant against it and reached for the handle, and she toppled out into the passage, completely off balance, and straight into somebody's arms. Her face collided with the boy's torso, her nose squished against his chest, and she squeaked.

Hands grabbed at her shoulders immediately to steady her and he pushed her out to arm's length. Jinsu looked up, ready to thank him unless it was Minhwan or Youngdo, to find Byeong joo looking down at her, and the words died in her throat.

He let go of her like he'd been electrocuted, and a split second later was backed up so hard against the railings Jinsu worried he might fall. They stared at each other.

Byeong joo's adam's apple bobbed in his throat.

Jinsu swallowed uncomfortably.

He shuffled his feet a little. She attempted to twiddle her thumbs, only to realise it was a bit too awkward with one arm in a sling. Byeong joo looked like he might say something, but then he turned his head away, raising one arm to scratch at the back of his head, and peeked cautiously at her out of the corner of his eye.

Jinsu swallowed again. Now would be a very good moment to thank him for launching the mini-satellites for them the previous night, and also for the hot chocolate. All she needed to do was get the words out and try to sound sincere and—

"Your sleeve paws are different lengths," she blurted out, her voice several octaves higher than her usual range. Byeong joo jumped, hastily pulling his sleeves down over his hands. Face flaming, Jinsu fled.

Beyond that incident, the morning was quiet. Jinsu had heard some of the boys – Kyuhyun and Youngdo among them – discussing trying to find the tribe again when she snuck down to the main control room, and she suspected that almost all of them must have gone out, because nobody attempted to oust her from her position at the computer.

The virus progressed at a slower rate when not all the engines were running and the Attayear was not moving. It was a pretty satisfying discovery, and Jinsu planned to put it to use where she could. The knowledge that they had to stay put for the time being and the break out in the cold the previous day, not to mention no Byeong joo hovering at her shoulder, had given her mind time to calm and reset and think about other ways to look at what the virus was doing. She'd been too preoccupied with the time running short and problems with controlling the Attayear to really take a step back before, to get out of the code and see what the virus was affecting on the surface.

Safe in the knowledge that the Attayear wasn't going anywhere without Byeong joo pressing any buttons, and also that Byeong joo wasn't anywhere around to press any buttons, Jinsu found her way into a test-run of the controls and instruments that she vaguely remembered Noah having mentioned both before and after the virus had hit, and putting it through its paces as best she could to see how the Attayear had been affected for herself.

She discovered little things, like the fact that the fuel tanks were both verging on empty. The explosions had damaged the Attayear enough for it to be listing, but somebody – it probably wasn't Byeong joo because she suspected he would have told her, expecting some kind of praise in return, so maybe Kyuhyun or Junmyeon? – had managed to adapt the individual rooms so that the floors tilted to make up for the machine leaning just a few degrees in the wrong direction. Some of the solar panels had blown out and needed repairs – not that solar panels would be able to get them an awful lot of energy in the current weather conditions. Somebody had also shut down functions requiring energy for all the rooms that were currently not in use. What really stood out, though, even though she'd known it before, was that the area the virus had messed up the most was navigation. It was something they were going to have to contend with when the Attayear was travel-worthy again, but until that point, Jinsu was happy to stare in fascination at the 3D models on the screen detailing things like how much fuel they needed injecting from each engine at a minimum to get the Attayear travelling, which fuel combinations were best, how to balance the engines perfectly when the Attayear was unbalanced... given the troubles they had had and were probably going to continue to have trying to get the Attayear to obey instructions, Jinsu thought there was a possibility that they'd actually be able to navigate the Attayear solely by controlling the fuel and engines rather than using the computers. It might actually require computers to work out the equations and amounts and timings, and work would have to be done to the engines to ensure they were in fit condition to be relied upon with such delicate controls and the precision would have to be absolutely perfect, but Jinsu couldn't help laughing to herself with glee at coming up with a potential way to get around the virus's control. It would need running by Kyungsoo as the next best thing they had to a mechanic on the Attayear to see if it was feasible. Still, Jinsu was delighted with herself. She didn't know how she hadn't thought of it before – or how nobody else hadn't thought of it before.

The boys – which was almost all of them – who'd left in the morning tipped up for a late lunch looking cold and disheartened. Jinsu was already sitting at the kitchen table finishing off a sandwich she'd made for herself (she was too elated by her potential discovery to want to spend a long time over a meal eating with other people – she'd tell Kyungsoo over dinner) when a bunch of them piled into the room, Jisung hurrying to the fridge to rustle up some food as another went straight for the kettle to make coffee.

"Hey, Jinsu," Junmyeon said, spotting her as he chafed his hands together. "Think you could take us back to where that tribe was? We tried to find it again but we got lost."

Jinsu blinked at him, trying to finish her mouthful so that she could point out that she was hardly likely to have any idea if they didn't.

"If Minhwan and Youngdo found the other tribe the people yesterday mentioned then we don't need to worry about going back to these guys," Jisung reasoned. "There'll be loads of them around. We just need to get as many resources as possible off as many as possible and we're all set to go."

"I honestly have no idea where to start with that," Jinsu admitted.

"You took us back after the snowstorm. You must do."

"Yes, but that..." Jinsu hesitated. They'd been guided in by the satellites and as far as she knew, the satellites hadn't been used since. If she could figure out how to get into them, then she might be able to trace what path they'd taken. "Possibly."

He and the other boys weren't happy that she couldn't give them a definite answer, but it was clearly better than nothing.

The codes behind the satellites had been corrupted by the virus. Not everything, since Byeong joo had managed to raise them successfully and the actual signals hadn't been interfered with when it came to getting them back in, and the coding wasn't nearly as badly affected as many other areas of Attayear code that she'd so far seen, but it was bad enough for her to need the rest of the day to unravel, counter-hack, and then restored what she could of the needed data. For the last part, she returned to her room and sat with Noah's laptop on her knees, sifting through what she needed. Gradually, the points highlighted by the satellites and the distances travelled beween them and timings all began to map up and produce a picture of the path that they'd taken. Jinsu traced it out as best she could from the figures and then took half an hour to build a very rudimentary platform so that she could check out her accuracy on the computer. Satisfied, she closed the laptop lid and made to set the computer aside.

She nearly dropped it in shock when her bedroom door burst open and Youngdo appeared with two other boys.

"Where is it?" he snapped.

Jinsu looked at him in utter confusion as he and the two boys stomped further in and started rifling through her stuff, checking in the drawers and under her bed covers.

"What are you doing?" Jinsu demanded, hastily setting the laptop down on the desk and trying to move in front of Youngdo to get him to stop and pay attention.

"The gold. Where is it?" He didn't wait for an answer, brushing past Jinsu as he went to the cupboard. "Minhwan and I need to be back with the tribe we met today at sunrise with payment in exchange for food and fuel."

"That doesn't mean you can barge in and go through my stuff!" Jinsu exclaimed, trying to block him from opening the cupboard. The other two boys were already causing absolute carnage and the sight of the mess in her room was making her head spin. It had been so tidy – why couldn't people just respect—

Youngdo pushed her out of the way. "Don't try to obstruct this. We all need to pull together and you have gold."

"It's not mine!" Jinsu protested as her head cracked against the wall. "Hey, you can't just take it!"

Ignoring her, Youngdo found and grabbed the sack of gold, swinging it around and up onto his shoulder. The base of the sack collided painfully with Jinsu's injured hand and she yelped in disbelief.

"We'll need anything else you have that could be sold," Youngdo told her. "Anything precious. Like that cloak clasp."

"No!" Jinsu insisted, managing to get fully in front of the cupboard this time and blocking him from turning and trying to get back into it. "You are not taking the cloak clasp!"

He tried to wrench her away from the door, but Jinsu resisted, digging her heels in and clutching at the hinges, and then at the frame on the side that the cupboard door opened with with her other hand, slipping it out of its sling. Since that hand was weaker, Youngdo managed to pull it away a little and the door open a little with it, the other two boys still going through her stuff in the background, but then Jinsu lost her patience and went to knee Youngdo in the nuts. He leapt out of her way with a glare and a curse, and the cupboard door sprang shut again, catching Jinsu's fingers before she overbalanced and went sprawling.

Mercifully, Youngdo gave up on the cloak and the potential find of jewellery and the jade pendant that was also in the cupboard, neatly wrapped up and away from prying eyes.

"Fine, you can keep it for now. Let's go, guys."

They left, leaving the place such a tip that Jinsu's mind felt like it was going to break. She sat on the floor, barely aware that her eyes were watering from the pain blooming in her hand as she tried to take in the mess. She needed to tidy it up. But her hand hurt too much for her to do that.

It took a good long time for Jinsu to calm down, and once she was coherent again, she closed her eyes to the mess and tried to put it out of her mind. She needed to get out, get her mind off it, and then come back when she was in a better state to tidy it. And to do something about her hand.

With reluctance, she got to her feet and picked her way across the room – which was almost impossible because there was barely any visible carpet, and the last thing she wanted to do was actually step on something. It was stupid how something being out of order could make her hands so incredibly clammy, or cause her to break out into a cold sweat, or send her into a trembling fit, and Jinsu hated it. Somehow, she stumbled out into the passage and down the stairs, heading for the sickbay.

It was the freezing cold handle that almost took the skin off her fingers that made Jinsu pause for thought. She'd forgotten that the bodies had been moved down to the sickbay because one of the boys had been complaining that it was disturbing to walk past them upstairs and sleep in the same area. Jinsu retreated her hand and stood there, torn. Chanyeol was on the other side of the door.

With that, her mind went blank. She wasn't sure how long she remained there, staring blankly at the door, but it was probably a good long while. Was she ready to see Chanyeol again? But she just needed to get something to treat her hand...

Somebody cleared their throat next to her. It started Jinsu out of her trance, but she didn't turn.

"Park, are you...?" Byeong joo's voice trailed off. There was a very awkward silence, and a good half a minute later – too late for it just to be a "delayed reaction", Jinsu turned towards him. He scanned over her, looking worried, and then his face brightened. "Oh hey, your hand—"

Apparently on instinct, he reached for it, and Jinsu jerked her hand away. It naturally focussed his attention on it. Something must have looked off about it, because the brightness faded into worry.

"Who did that?" he asked quietly. Jinsu just let out a long sigh. The last thing she wanted to do was explain.

Byeong joo had enough tact to realise that. "Let's go fix it up," he murmured, gesturing for her to come with him. "You can't do it by yourself. And besides, I have something to show you."

Chapter 48

At first, Jinsu thought Byeong joo was taking her back to his room to tell Kyungsoo what had happened, or because whatever he'd said he wanted to show her (which was a weird thought, she had to admit, because why did he wanted to do anything for her?) was in his room, but at the top of the stairs and just beside Jinsu's bedroom door, he halted and slid aside a panel to reveal a screen. A few taps on that and a very large porthole opened up to darkness beyond. He stooped to pick up some blankets Jinsu hadn't noticed on the ground underneath the porthole and gestured for her to go through.

Jinsu hesitated, barely snapping back into reality at the blast of cold air that hit her face, and gave him an uncertain look. She wanted to ask why they were going outside, but Byeong joo climbed through and held out a hand to her.

"You won't slip," he promised. Too exhausted to try to protest, Jinsu placed her good hand in his and let him pull her through and out onto the narrow metal service walk. He shut the porthole behind them, placing his hand over the tempered glass. An amber light lit up as it scanned his fingerprints, then flashed green. He removed his hand again. Jinsu continued to look at the porthole with interest as Byeong joo turned away. Noah had told her that secure lockdown meant nobody who wasn't registered on the Attayear's systems could get in, and that presumably included the portholes, which were obviously fingerprint sensitive. In the wake of the virus, she wondered if they were all specifically locked unless you were Byeong joo, or if anybody on the Attayear still had access to get in and out.

"Come on!" Byeong joo called, already several feet away at the base of some narrow metal stairs. With reluctance, Jinsu turned.

There was a faint swoosh and something wet and absolutely freezing landed on her shoulder. Yelping, Jinsu jumped in alarm, spinning around to see what it was.

"It's just snow." Byeong joo had come back for her, and he reached for her hand again, the right side of his face lit up by moonlight. "Come on."

Jinsu eased her hand out of his grip, but she did this time follow him. The steps went diagonally up the side of the Attayear for a little distance, and then diminished into metal rungs as wide as a person's shoulders, taking a sharp turn and leading directly up to the top of the machine. The slope of the Attayear was much less vertical here – Jinsu would have said it was actually tending towards horizontal – and a layer of maiden snow covered it, tapering off where the top edge of the steps met with the base of the line of rungs. Squinting, Jinsu was pretty sure she could see the snow getting thicker further up the Attayear, but somehow the rungs remained clear. Clear of snow, at any rate, because on closer inspection, a thin layer of frost covered the rungs closest to her, and probably the ones further up, too. She turned to Byeong joo, who was looking up towards the top of the machine as he wound the blankets together. It was obvious he wanted to continue on up.

"I can't climb that," she pointed out, raising her right hand limply for proof. "Maybe if it was dry, but I'll slip."

"I know," he said, taking advantage of the moment to drape the blankets around her neck. "I'm carrying you."

"But I don't want to—"

"It's worth it at the top." He smiled at her. Without leaving her the chance to object again, he turned and hauled her up onto his back, tucking her legs over his hips. Taken by surprise, Jinsu wrapped her arm around his neck. He choked.

"I know you hate me, but this is really not a good place to strangle me because you can't get back in without my fingerprints," he said weakly. Embarrassed, Jinsu eased up, tucking her chin over his shoulder instead in an attempt to convince herself that she had no chance of falling.

The climb was a pretty short one, but Jinsu spent most of it with her eyes closed and mulling over Byeong joo's latest words to her. Did he actually think she still hated him, or was he exaggerating to make a little joke? If it had been Kyungsoo, she would have known he was joking no matter how serious his delivery – it was also a very Kyungsoo type of joke to pull. Surely Byeong joo knew that she wouldn't actually kill him? He was more than capable of beating her to a pulp if she tried, anyway.

Byeong joo straightened up and came to a halt. "Can I have those blankets?" he asked. Jinsu listened carefully for any hints of animosity in his voice, but detected none. She wasn't sure whether to be relieved or worried that he might be hiding it, but handed the blankets over anyway. Before she knew where she was, Byeong joo was lowering her gently onto the blankets, which had been spread out on the near-flat crown of the Attayear and he was sitting down himself with a contented sigh. The ease with which he made himself comfortable – and the blankets, and suggesting it as a place to go – made it obvious that it wasn't his first time there, as did the fact that he was busier searching in his pockets than he was looking out at the truly stunning view.

Siberia was cold, silent, and ethereally beautiful. Tall pines extended, sometimes in small clumps and other times in much larger groups, as far as the eye could see into the darkness, fading into the shadows further back or the snow on the boughs seeming to take on a pale lilac hue closer to. They were just above the top of the trees, which gave off the bizarre impression of being on an island in a lake composed of evergreens. The dark underside of the branches and pine needles only highlighted the snow as the moon bathed everything in a gentle light. It honestly felt, in such serene peace and silence, that something as small ascoughing would shatter something and start an avalanche.

Jinsu looked around, feeling the chill now that she didn't have Byeong joo's body heat and trying to suppress a shiver, and attempted to stick her hands under her armpits.

"There we go," said Byeong joo, grabbing hold of her right wrist before she could manage it. "This'll sting."

It did. Jinsu almost shrieked: he'd pressed something wet to the tips of her fingers, carefully wiping down as far as the second knuckle on each. She tried to tug her hand away, but he was having none of it.

"Let me disinfect the cuts," he told her firmly. His grip on her wrist was slightly stronger than before, so she resigned herself to her fate and watched him ministering to her hand.

"Why did you bring me all the way up here to do this?" she asked as he swapped the bloody disinfectant wipe for a soft tissue to dry her hand off.

"Why do you think?" He turned her hand this way and that, inspecting it. Jinsu was stumped for an answer and merely watched as he reached over to the edge of the blanket and got a handful of snow, squeezing and compacting it and adding more. When he was done, he started wrapping one of the blankets up around their legs and laps, reserving one corner which he tucked the compacted snow into. Without asking for Jinsu's consent, he placed her hand in her lap and the blanket-covered snow on top of it as a makeshift icepack.

Jinsu gazed at it for several long moments. Job done, Byeong joo lay back and tucked his hands behind his head.

"I like it here," he said. "Kyungsoo and I used to sneak out here when we were in Balhae, so I've been coming up here and taking photos to show him. We don't get to see the stars like this in Seoul."

Hesitantly, Jinsu copied him, making sure to keep her hand in her lap. "It's pretty." She rectified that on her first proper glimpse of the winter night sky. She'd never seen anything quite like it.

For a start, it was dark. The deep darkness that had surrounded them in Balhae was there, but with a crisp freshness and openness that she'd never felt anywhere else. And in spite of the darkness, the moon was large and bright, and everything about it just felt so healthy. Seoul at night didn't even get close to dark: the sky merely went from a polluted, smoggy blue-grey to a polluted, smoggy orange. And the stars – oh, the stars were breathtaking. Constellations she'd seen in science textbooks were visible for the first time in her life (she really ought to have looked at Balhae) and they were so bright. So bright that Jinsu was pretty certain they'd be bright enough to allow some light even if the moon wasn't there. They shone like diamond pinpricks on a swathe of deep black satin, and even though Jinsu itched to take a picture, she knew it would never do reality justice.

It was perfect.

It was complete and utter perfection.

It was... there was just no way that trying to create a night sky on her ceiling with glow in the dark stars could even come close to rivalling this. No wonder she hadn't been able to choose between a pattern and attempting to imitate constellations, because the masterpiece was so supremely superior and ordered and perfect that any imitation was a mockery.

"It's gorgeous."

"I thought you'd like it." Byeong joo sounded pleased with himself. "Hamin reckoned you were more of a Golden Ratio girl."

She tilted her head to look at him. Byeong joo was smiling, his hair falling lazily almost in his eyes. It looked almost blond in the moonlight.

"Come again?"

"You like the beauty of natural order. It's only when things aren't natural that you go into the full-on regimented patterns and stuff. Kyungsoo says you hate decimals and you kept trying to write everything in fractions during your shared statistics project."

Jinsu frowned. "Where the heck is all this coming from?"

"We were matching everybody up to mathematical symbols and equations and functions on our last night in Balhae and got stuck on you. Kyungsoo said you were binary because coding and your OCD, but Hamin said you weren't as straightforward as that and the perfect way of explaining life through numbers and maths is the Golden Ratio." He glanced sideways at her and the smile curved up into a light smirk. "Kyungsoo was outvoted: apparently binary's your boyfriend."

Jinsu was almost amused enough to chuckle. "So who's binary?"

"We don't know yet."

That sounded like dangerous territory, so Jinsu hastily steered away from it. "What's Kyungsoo, then?"

"Pythagoras. Straightforward and to the point – sometimes a sharp one."

"And Hamin?"

"The Dirac delta function."

Jinsu snorted. "Infinitely high spike?"

Byeong joo clicked his tongue. "D*mn, how'd you guess?"

"What are you then? And what's Eunho?" She couldn't quite bring herself to ask about Chanyeol.

"I'm the delta of astronomical units because I'm out of this world, and Eunho's imaginary numbers because he's such a weirdo and has his head in the clouds half the time."

Jinsu laughed softly. "Did you give one to everybody?"

"You bet. As far as I remember, Noah was the quaternion formula. I think Jino was arithmetic progression because he was such a predictable stick-in-the-mud."

Jinsu could feel her smile growing because it was beginning to hurt her cheeks. "Any interesting ones for Minhwan?"

"Fermat's Last Theorem, because you have to be a masochist to go near either of them."

There was no way not to laugh at that. Jinsu directed her gaze back up at the night sky, trying not to be too aware of Byeong joo turning fully onto his side to look at her.

His smile was picturesque. And since they were talking about mathematical expression, she decided she might as well admit that the Golden Ratio was what described natural beauty and that humans were a part of that. And faces. And smiles.

She sighed, closing her eyes for a few moments, and then opened them again, focussing on the stars. There was a particularly bright one that looked bigger than the others, which drew her gaze, but Hamin had been right: she did like the beauty of natural order. If they'd been marbles scattered on the floor, the slightly bigger one would have really annoyed her. Stars in the sky, however, appeared perfectly entitled to be whatever size they wanted without setting off her OCD.

"How good are your planets?" Byeong joo asked her suddenly, making her jump.

"Huh?"

"You see that big star up there?" Byeong joo pointed – to her surprise – at the very one she'd just been contemplating.

"What about it?"

"I'm pretty sure that's a planet. I'd need a telescope to be sure, but it looks too big to be a star and the light's steadier."

"Are you sure you can see planets with the naked eye?"

"Oh yeah. Mercury, Mars, Venus, Jupiter and Saturn are all visible without telescopes if the conditions are right. Why do you think they have Roman names?"

Jinsu thought about it for several long moments. "Mars would be red. And it's kind of big, so Jupiter?"

"Maybe." Byeong joo's tone was thoughtful, but he didn't add to Jinsu's guess. It was silent for a few moments. "Do you know where the term planet comes from?"

"No." Byeong joo sounded musing enough for Jinsu to initially mistake this for a question he wanted an answer to rather than a rhetorical one.

"The Ancient Greeks used to call them wandering stars. Planet comes from the word that meant wanderer."

"That's kind of romantic."

For a long time, Byeong joo didn't respond, and Jinsu wondered if she'd said the wrong thing.

"Yeah," he murmured eventually. "It kind of is."

They stayed up there for several hours, each lost in their own thoughts as it grew colder and colder. Eventually, when they were both wrapped up in blankets and practically sitting on top of each other, and Jinsu was almost drifting off to sleep, Byeong joo spoke up again.

"How's your hand?"

Jinsu yawned. "Numb."

"Feel like talking about it?" He unwrapped his own blankets to reach for hers, pulling away the soaking cold corner that had been the makeshift icepack and prodding at Jinsu's wrist until she tucked her hand away in her cocoon of warmth.

"Youngdo's a d*ck."

"Did he come barging into your room demanding gold too?"

"He stormed in and requisitioned it," Jinsu mumbled, her eyelids drooping shut. "Would've given it if he asked nicely. I know I was at the initial negotiations with the tribe, but I was focussing on other things and completely forgot they were going to need gold, or that I had some."

"We didn't have any left over," Byeong joo explained. "So he just cursed at us and left."

"Lucky." Jinsu yawned again.

"I guess."

The silence that followed wasn't awkward, but it was charged, pregnant – expecting.

"Hey, Jinsu?"

"Hm?"

"Will you come and get me next time somebody tries something like that? Your hand's never going to heal if you keep hurting it."

Jinsu mumbled out something that might have been a why? Possibly a why you or a why would you care?

"I..." Jinsu could hear Byeong joo shifting around, almost as though he was nervous or uncomfortable. "Look, this is probably going to sound really cheesy, and I know you're not comfortable around me or anything, but you do know I'm on your side, right? No matter what Minhwan or the time stream or the Attayear throw at us. I've got your back."

It was a little cheesy, but it sounded nice. Jinsu smiled to herself.

She wasn't sure if she ever responded, though. Sleep surrounded her like an extra blanket, and she slipped into a comforting darkness that didn't have any wandering stars.

Chapter 49

There was noise when Jinsu began to surface, but she felt so incredibly tired that she couldn't bring herself to move.

Five more minutes, she thought to herself. Just five more minutes.

"Where the heck have you been? I freaked out when I woke up and thought you had turned into a female."

"Keep it down, Kyungsoo, she's still asleep," Byeong joo's voice murmured.

"Still," Kyungsoo continued much more quietly. "Did you even come back in here last night?"

"Where else would I have slept?" Byeong joo sounded a little put out.

"Then care to explain why there is a girl in your bed?" Kyungsoo demanded in an acid whisper. "I told you to do things at her pace!"

"It is not what it looks like!" Byeong joo insisted defensively. "Youngdo and the Goon Squad messed up Jinsu's room last night and she was in a state! She fell asleep out on the roof with me and I was too tired to tidy up her room for her last night, so I brought her in here and slept on the spare bed so she could have the one that was already made up—"

Kyungsoo groaned softly. "Byeong joo, honest to God, I am not joking when I say it looks like you're hitting on her, and I'm also not joking when I say that it's freaking her out."

"I'm not hitting on her."

"I know that, but Byeong joo, stargazing? Cooking for her every day? Letting her sleep in your bed? This is exactly why she's uncomfortable around you."

Jinsu's brain was now alert enough for her to process that it was best for her not to move or alert them to the fact that she was awake. She had a feeling that both of them would be thoroughly embarrassed if they knew she was eavesdropping.

Of course, rolling over or yawning and stretching as though she was just waking up would shut them up, but a very selfish part of her wanted to listen to them. She suspected that it was like the gossip reflex that a lot of people she knew had.

"You guys didn't seem to have that much of a problem making friends with her, though," Byeong joo said abruptly after a moment or two.

"I was just in the right place at the right time. She had a massive crush on Hamin and it's impossible not to befriend Eunho because he behaves like a kicked puppy if you don't."

Jinsu choked, cutting off Kyungsoo's "you don't have any of those advantages". Both boys shut up and it went very silent, other than Jinsu's continued coughs as she rolled over and sat up.

Both of them were staring at her.

"What an entrance into consciousness," Kyungsoo said dryly. "Would you like some water?"

Coughing again, Jinsu nodded. She could feel her face going red. Kyungsoo appeared to be sharing an expectant look with Byeong joo; the latter then vanished through the bedroom door, shutting it a little more harshly than necessary. Kyungsoo glanced quickly between the door and Jinsu before attempting to sit up and flopping back on the pillows.

"How long have you been awake?" he asked suspiciously.

"Not long," Jinsu admitted, and then decided that a small falsehood might save face for them all as he suddenly went a bit pink, his gaze faltering. "I just wasn't expecting the first words I heard to be, well, me having a crush on Hamin, and I breathed in my saliva, which is gross." She caught herself fidgeting with the duvet that was draped over her and made herself stop. "Was I really that obvious about it?"

"No," said Kyungsoo in an unconvincing tone. "Well, maybe. You used to stare at him all the time when we were doing our statistics module project and I initially thought it was because you were trying to look anywhere that didn't make eye contact with me—"

Jinsu grimaced, giving out one last cough, as Kyungsoo bulled on.

"—And then when we were doing the explorations in Balhae, you were happy to be stuck with Hamin but Eunho and I thought you were plotting the best way to murder us in our sleep every time we tried to speak to you, so the obvious conclusion was a closet friendship Hamin had managed to hide, which he'd suck at, in fairness, or a crush. But I wouldn't worry: Hamin's so dense to stuff like that that he probably didn't have a clue. Everybody except me and Chanyeol seemed to think you were about to elope with Yejun."

The door opened again and Kyungsoo shut up as Byeong joo reappeared with a glass of water. The boy handed it to Jinsu and nervously wiped his hands on the side of his trousers before shooting Kyungsoo a glance that seemed to say don't you even think about starting and clearing his throat.

"Thanks," said Jinsu quietly. He jumped.

"Oh, er... Kyuhyun says a couple of people want to have a meeting in half an hour about supplies and what we do next and... stuff."

Jinsu nodded. She wasn't entirely surprised: such a discussion was definitely needed.

"Well, give me the rundown later, peeps." Kyungsoo let out a huge yawn. "Could one of you pass me my laptop? I want to see how much of the royal scribe's records I can understand."

Even though Byeong joo had hinted at tidying up her room, Jinsu was still surprised to return to it to get changed and find it completely spotless. Feeling profoundly grateful, the first thing she did was go and hide the cloak, as flat as possible, under her duvet, along with the various things that she'd bought back in Balhae that didn't leave the bed looking rumpled and messy. It made her skin crawl to know that there were things hidden there, but it was better than Youngdo barging back in when she wasn't there and taking them away.

Resisting the urge to go back over to her bed and make it properly, putting everything under the duvet in the place it was supposed to be, Jinsu left the room and headed down the stairs in search of breakfast. The kitchen was deserted and there wasn't very much food left in general, but she found a quarter slice of melon and munched her way happily through it, wondering when a good moment to approach Kyungsoo to ask him about her idea to manoeuvre the Attayear solely by controlling its fuel consumption.

Not long after she'd finished, Junmyeon wandered in with an empty teacup.

"Morning," he greeted her. "Are you going to join us? We're going to one of the communal rooms to have a discussion about the best way to proceed."

Jinsu nodded, getting to her feet and tossing her melon rind away. Junmyeon deposited the cup in the sink.

"Nice to see your arm out of its sling," he said conversationally as they both left the kitchen.

"It was starting to feel uncomfortable," Jinsu mumbled.

"Sign it's healing," Junmyeon said airily. Jinsu glanced down at her hand. There were some new bruises below her knuckles on the back of her hand, and the cuts from the previous day still looked pretty raw, but the ugly black bruising that had covered most of her hand when she'd broken it had faded to a deep purple, yellowing around the edges.

Everybody remaining on the Attayear except Kyungsoo was there when Junmyeon and Jinsu walked in. It was sobering to realise just how few of them were left, and a little daunting. Minhwan was talking quietly to Kyuhyun, whose laptop was out on the coffee table that the sofas were gathered around. Youngdo and Jisung were surrounded by stacks of gold and precious items, Junho helping them to categorise and sort them while a guy Jinsu thought was called Hyunwoo (it was hard to be sure when she'd never spoken to him and everybody had dropped the name tags since Jino and Noah were no longer around to insist on them) noted everything down in what was clearly a temporary inventory. Byeong joo was loitering in a corner nearest the sofa that was farthest from Youngdo and Jisung, but when he saw Junmyeon and Jinsu entering, he straightened up and slid quietly over to it to sit down.

A month ago, Jinsu would have been horrified at the prospect of it being a no-brainer to sit down next to him, but she did, perching awkwardly on the sofa seat and leaving a gap of several centimetres. Byeong joo glanced sideways at her, and for a moment it looked like he was going to say something, but Junmyeon cut him off.

"I think that's everyone," he said, pointing at them individually as he did a headcount. "Kyungsoo still can't move—"

"Useless," muttered somebody, and Byeong joo immediately bristled. Jinsu couldn't help a wave of anger surge over her too.

"Language," said Junmyeon mildly.

"He's got one of the best brains on here for all of the technical stuff," Byeong joo added, defensive.

"Okay, no arguing!" Minhwan snapped, getting to his feet. "There are few enough of us as it is."

Jinsu heard Byeong joo cough something that sounded very much like rich, and even if that wasn't what it was, she agreed with the sentiment. Minhwan telling people not to argue was definitely a pot calling a kettle black.

Everybody listened to him, though, whether it was because they all knew that the situation was bad, or because they respected him or because they were scared of him. Kyuhyun slipped his computer from the table onto his lap as Minhwan massaged his temples.

"Everybody's seen the fridge, right?" he said. "And the pantry?"

"Half a cucumber and some peppers," Junmyeon piped up. "And seven sausages. There's enough in the way of rice and burgers for everybody to have lunch, but dinner's out of the question."

"We've got thirty-six kilo ingots of gold," Youngdo announced suddenly, "with almost a thousand gold coins, and then a few hundred other coins which are probably precious metal or at least semi precious and therefore tradeable. I can't say anything on precious stones and jewellery and stuff because I'm not an expert and don't know how much it would fetch, but I think we have enough to try trading with."

Minhwan nodded, and murmurings arose briefly from the other boys. Jinsu noticed Byeong joo sneaking a sideways glance at her and turned to meet his gaze. He froze when she did, and then tilted his head quizzically to one side.

"How much of that gold is yours?" he mouthed at her.

Jinsu shrugged. She honestly couldn't remember, but "about fifteen, twenty ingots? I think." The rest had probably come from the rooms of the other adults on the Attayear, because she knew that the boys had only been given gold coins. Byeong joo's jaw dropped. Jinsu internally panicked. Had it looked snobby to shrug at what was clearly a vast amount of wealth?

"That's good," Minhwan said, still in response to Youngdo's interjection. He dropped his hands to his sides. "Well, I have news, I guess."

Everybody perked up, except Byeong joo, who slouched further down in his seat with a slightly raised eyebrow. Jinsu couldn't help peeking at his face in fascination every few seconds: despite his expression not being symmetrical, it actually didn't bother her. At all. And one raised eyebrow rather than both raised eyebrows, or a lopsided smile or smirk, just looked a bit out of place, most of the time. Here, it was an expression she thoroughly approved of.

Maybe Byeong joo's face just suited it.

But no, that was like saying that Byeong joo ought to look disbelieving and condescending the entire time, and his visage was so much nicer when he smiled.

Maybe Byeong joo was just that much better at pulling it off than everybody else.

Just as she was about to settle with that, another, more alarming thought came to her.

Why am I so bothered about Byeong joo's face?

Horrified with herself, Jinsu whipped her head away and focussed on Minhwan instead. Minhwan was a good distraction. She didn't like Minhwan. It was easy not to think about Byeong joo's face when she was looking at Minhwan's instead, especially when Minhwan's was different and more angular and narrower and not as good—

Jinsu groaned silently. This wasn't working. Kyungsoo would have a field day if he could read my mind, she thought miserably, and just like that, Kyungsoo's wicked smirk and cackle of laughter filled her imagination. Byeong joo was banished with immense ease as one of Kyungsoo's eyebrows twitched mischievously. This was much better.

"—We're a bit to the east of the Urals, and Mediterranean trade doesn't come this far inland, but we've arranged, on commission of a fair amount of gold, with the local tribe here to get a large caravan of oil that we could use for fuel, because coal and wood alone won't be enough," Minhwan was explaining. "The caravan comes up more or less to the lower edge of Siberia, which is between twenty and fifty miles away from us and there are a lot of tribes that go to it – they're happy to send a horseman for us and escort the, er, well, enormous jars, over to their camp for us so we can collect it. They've said it'll take a few days."

"Olive oil?" Junho asked in surprise. "Can that actually be used for fuel? I thought it was just for cooking."

"It's the main oil of the time and the closest we'll get to petrol of any kind without digging a well or setting a rig up ourselves," Minhwan said, a touch impatient. "They said it was used in lamps or something; I don't know. We have to take advantage of the available resources."

"So that's fuel," Kyuhyun summarised, typing away at his keyboard. "Oil's sorted once we show up with gold; everybody's going to take it in turns to get out there with the axes on those trees; negotiations with various tribes for firewood, coal and charcoal will be carried out with all the tribes we can get to in the area, which we've been provided a rough outline map for by the tribe on our doorstep."

Hyunwoo raised his hand. "I'd just like to point out that we might be better off not chopping down trees in this weather. The wood will be damp both from the snow and from them being alive and then we'll have to do what we did in the 1920s: set a roaring blaze going in the combustion room to fast-dry the wood, therefore burning through more fuel and giving ourselves the problems of what to do with smoke. It's only worth it if we have a lot of wood that'll dry out quickly. We chose dead trees in the 1920s so it was much quicker, but from going outside here I haven't seen a single one."

"Noted," said Minhwan. "So, food."

Youngdo cleared his throat. "Well, if I could borrow that map and make the suggestion we don't cut down trees and instead go off in pairs as trading parties to as many local tribes as possible, and negotiate for something like a sheep and a good bunch of root vegetables each, we should have more than enough food to see us all through certainly until the oil arrives and most likely a good deal longer."

"Good idea," said Minhwan as several of the others nodded in agreement. "And even if not everybody—"

"It's not just the resources," Kyuhyun butted in, still typing. "We've still got that virus to deal with or we can't go anywhere anyway. Headway's..." He grimaced.

Minhwan seemed to think about it. "You and Junmyeon ought to stay and deal with that, then."

"Jinsu can too," Byeong joo butted in. "She knows a lot about the coding."

"And why should we trust her on any of it when she's the reason we're here anyway?" Minhwan demanded.

"She stopped us from going any further back because Kyuhyun and Junmyeon couldn't figure anything out!"

"She does seem to know more than us," Junmyeon piped up, only to wilt a little when Minhwan shot him a glare.

"She could have stopped us a hell of a lot sooner and she didn't. We were under a century out when we left the 1950s and now look where we are."

"We have no chance of eliminating the virus altogether," Kyuhyun interrupted as though things hadn't just got more heated than necessary. "We'd need another supercomputer to do that, and we only have laptops at our disposal and basically none of them have the required software to build something that could clear it out. If we can isolate the part of the virus that we really need gone, so that we have access to things like in-flight control and inputting destination coordinates and suchlike, and can build a firewall that will last for forty-four hours while we travel back—"

Thirty-seven, Jinsu wanted to correct him. It doesn't take as much time to go forward as it does back. But Minhwan was glaring at her again as if daring her to say something, and she didn't. He'd probably accuse her of withholding vital information and say she was untrustworthy or something. Besides, when they did travel back, she could just make sure that she was awake at the right time and go down and stop them in the right place. Hopefully. It would be no harm done.

Byeong joo interrupted, sounding very terse. "Are you guys just forgetting the number of our comrades who are alive who we need to pick up on the way? The trip back is not going to be as simple as just a door-to-door trip."

Jinsu expected there to be silence as everybody factored in this new information. Surprisingly, Minhwan was slick off the bat.

"Of course not," he said. "The journey will probably be nearer forty-three hours, but we're going to have to slow things considerably in the very last stage because we need to get back before we actually set off, so we can stop ourselves from getting on the Attayear in the first place, which will also mean that everybody who's been killed or is missing will still be there and they won't die or get lost in time."

That did cause silence. Jinsu felt like she'd been smacked in the face.

"Why didn't we think of that earlier?" Jisung exclaimed, shattering the glass. "Minhwan, that's genius!"

"Jaemin and Seungho and all the rest—"

"—Won't have to go back to the War—"

"Jino—"

"Junmyeon, your brother—"

"It won't work."

The words escaped Jinsu before she could properly think them through. Everybody turned to stare at her.

"How?" Youngdo demanded. "Don't be such a stick-in-the-mud. We know your cousin's dead, but there's no need to be such a misery about it. It's not long until you'll see him alive again."

"It won't work," Jinsu repeated, swallowing back the lump in her throat. She could feel Byeong joo's – everybody's – gazes on her, and she absolutely did not want to cry. "When—"

"Why wouldn't it?" Minhwan demanded. "We'll be going back into the timeline, but before we set off. That means we'll all still be around. It'll probably mess with some grandfather clauses or something, but that's better than half a dozen dead and the rest missing in time."

"It doesn't work like that!" Jinsu's voice rose, shocking everybody there.

"Every freaking timeline works like that—"

"In parallel universes and sci-fi novels!" Jinsu shrieked. It completely shut him up. Everybody looked stunned.

Jinsu took a deep breath and forced herself to calm down. "In case you've forgotten, I'm the daughter of the person who invented the Attayear."

Byeong joo tensed up beside her at the same time that Minhwan rolled his eyes. Jinsu ignored them both. The last thing she wanted was the two of them trying to beat each other up again.

"So I know what happened on the test jump," Jinsu said.

"Did they do it properly?" demanded Jisung. "Because the number of problems—"

"All our problems can be traced back to an act of sabotage," Jinsu snapped, "which came after the test jump." She turned away from him before he could continue arguing. "Noah jumped back ten minutes in the Attayear for about a minute or two and he didn't see himself anywhere when he went back, which suggests that the Noah-of-ten-minutes-before was removed from the timestream and replaced by him when he was there."

"He probably didn't stay long enough to find out," piped up Junho.

"He might just have been transported into his previous body or something because that was the most convenient way to do things," mumbled Kyuhyun without taking his eyes off his laptop. "Or they were close enough in time for only one entity to exist, which simply means we need to land much earlier than we set off. Possibly a couple of days or a week."

"That's not going to guarantee anything—" Jinsu tried to protest.

"Even if it is true, it's probably only going to affect the ten of us on the Attayear, logically speaking," said Youngdo. "We're the only ones who'll be coming back and clashing with ourselves of the time, and if it's having two versions of the same person in the same timeframe that the cosmic order doesn't like, it's not going to affect all the dead and missing, ergo they'll be alive and fine when we go back."

Kyuhyun finally looked up just as Jinsu tried to object again. "This machine is broken," he said, very bluntly, "and you and Byeong joo, and people related to you, are the root causes, so I see no reason why we should trust either of you on this when you've both done near nothing to solve the situation. I say this in the nicest possible way, but you're both young and inexperienced – everybody else here is eighteen and legally an adult, plus we have an extra couple of years' worth of training in computing and engineering, and since we're the brightest and best in the country, a lot of us are also well above the standard that we ought to be for our age. Given the complications of the Attayear, and how it's impossible for us to navigate it with complete accuracy at present, how battered it is and likely to continue breaking apart, and how complicated it is in terms of engineering, fuel and coding to get us to set off and stop, the only viable solution, really, is for us to go back to the present. What you're claiming is something that's unknown in time-travel theory and philosophy, and what Youngdo and Minhwan says is commonly held in both and much more likely, and in both cases and even in the case you're putting forward, the most sensible option is to go back to the present and reevaluate from there. If the worst comes to the worst and what you say is true, the best thing to do then is to fix up the Attayear properly, get rid of the virus, and go back into the past on a rescue mission."

"My dad'll never allow that."

"Why wouldn't he? He'd want to save face after such a catastrophic trip, surely?"

It was a good point. The problem was, they didn't know her father. He'd just cast the Attayear aside as a failed model. "It'll take weeks, possibly months, to fix the Attayear with the chief engineer and crew missing. And after such a catastrophic trip, it's unlikely for the government to authorise time travel again."

"The Attayear's privately owned, and if a second trip is really necessary, which seems unlikely, nobody'll know provided it's conducted successfully until all the missing people show up," Minhwan pointed out. "That'll probably be enough to mitigate any punishment set in place for time travel if it's really an issue. Besides, you're Park Jiwoon's daughter, and the national youth ambassador for science. If you were unable to convince him that doing that was worth it, you'd be a failure at both."

Jinsu got to her feet, ignoring Byeong joo's hand on her thigh as he murmured something in an attempt to calm her down.

"You are the biggest ars*hole I've ever met," she told Minhwan, "and that's including my dad."

She stormed out of the room, but wasn't quite quick enough to escape hearing Youngdo's parting comment.

"Ignore her, she's hormonal and still getting to grips with her cousin's death."

Jinsu slammed the door so hard the handle fell off.

Chapter 50

Jinsu wanted to bury her head in her pillow and scream in frustration. Or let her anger out by messing up her room. Or anything, frankly. A dart board with the faces of the various people still on the Attayear on it would have been exceptionally nice. Paper, though, would have to make do as she paced her fury out.

Minhwan. Rip. New piece of paper.

Kyuhyun. Rip. New piece of paper.

Youngdo. Suddenly furious again, Jinsu crumpled the paper viciously and tore it apart. Even when compared to Minhwan, Youngdo was an absolute git. Jinsu was seriously regretting not punching him in the face.

On second thoughts, the fourth piece of paper could be another Youngdo one. She ripped it briskly into little strips and cast it aside.

The door opened and somebody knocked on it – Jinsu didn't see who because she had no inclination whatsoever to look over at them.

"You need to calm down," Byeong joo murmured, trying to tug the sheaf of paper out of her hand.

Jinsu rounded on him. "What, you think I'm hormonal as well?"

He backed off with his hands up. "No! Of course not—" His bottom lip tucked under his teeth.

"What, Byeong joo?" Jinsu demanded.

He looked torn for a second, but then his face became resolute. "You're not exactly helping your case," he got out in a rush before his shoulders slumped. "There, I said it. Stop trying to make it snow indoors."

Jinsu glared at him. He stared back.

"Fighting like this isn't going to help," he admonished her in a gentle tone. "We need to work together. Everybody's stressed and tensions are very high – and simply put, the reason nobody wants to listen to you telling them the truth is because they don't want to believe it. It's not convenient for them. We all just want to get back home before this machine falls apart with us inside and leaves us stuck forever. You have to understand that. They don't want to know that their theory of time travel isn't going to work because they're so desperate for it to work, and even the ones who do believe you aren't going to find it easy – people like Junmyeon aren't necessarily looking for a fight, for example. They're looking to fit in."

"So you want me to kiss and make up," Jinsu deadpanned, crossing her arms across her chest, "with Minhwan and Youngdo and Kyuhyun and the rest."

Byeong joo opened his mouth to reply, but Jinsu beat him to it.

"I'm not angry because they disagree with me." She spread her arms. "They can think whatever the bloody hell they like because I know I'm still going to have to pull everything through and get us back home eventually, but they are literally ignoring and dismissing me and putting me down like my father has done my whole life because I'm young and because I'm a girl. I refuse to take that sh*t anymore. I'm just as capable as the rest of you, so if you're going to defend them again, you can f*ck off."

After a good long moment of contemplation, Byeong joo sat down on the spare bed.

"I stand by what I told you last night." He looked calmly up at her. "It might feel like we have to outlaw the rules of heaven because Minhwan and Youngdo are enormous ars*holes, but I'm on your side. I'm not going to drop you, so I'd appreciate it if you don't lump me in with the rest of them."

Jinsu raised an incredulous eyebrow. "How on earth am I supposed to trust you?"

His shoulders slumped and he looked a little dispirited. "I thought we were past this."

Jinsu tried to retort, but he continued before she could.

"Why are we even arguing about this like an immature pair of brats, anyway? There are way more important things we need to discuss."

Jinsu almost snapped at him to get out, that she was done being treated like she was juvenile and petty, but that would be behaving like an immature brat, so at the last moment she bit her tongue so that she wouldn't speak. Byeong joo motioned for her to sit down, and she reluctantly did.

"We're both in similar situations here," he told her. "We're both being unfairly maligned because of our families connections to the Attayear and its current state, which the Minhwan Mob Squad like to pin equally on both of us because your father should have checked its safely properly and because I should take responsibility for what my cousins did and stopped them. Obviously, we have nothing to do with either situation and they're outsourcing scapegoats onto us, but don't forget they can't actually do anything with the Attayear without us."

"Without you, you mean." Jinsu crossed her arms again.

A light flicker of annoyance passed through Byeong joo's eyes. "Us. I would have to be exceptionally stupid to think that I know enough about this machine to assume complete command over it."

Jinsu quietened down. Sensing this, Byeong joo cleared his throat. The tip of his tongue swept briefly over his lips.

"From what you were saying..." He hesitated. "Before we go back to our time, we'll have to find Yejun and Hamin and then pick up Noah and the rest."

Nodding, Jinsu looked down at her fingers, attempting not to fidget. Instead, her eyes were drawn to the still-ugly bruises on the digits.

"How?" Byeong joo asked in a defeated tone. "We don't have the software or the expertise to get rid of that virus and that means that we can't input exact times and coordinates to get to."

Jinsu bit her lip. "I know."

"Kyuhyun's idea just makes so much sense in this context." Byeong joo rubbed his face in frustration.

"Not really. We can't guarantee we'll stop at the right time or in the right coordinates there either."

Byeong joo conceded the point with a raised eyebrow and a nod.

"And I know that my dad genuinely wouldn't let us go back."

"But that would salvage his reputation, surely?"

Jinsu looked up. "You don't know my dad. He hates losing, but if he has to lose, he'd much rather lose than be beaten by somebody. And if those somebodies are a girl and somebody from the Kim family, hell would have to freeze over and become a ski resort before he'd ever allow that."

"So we're stuck."

Jinsu shrugged helplessly. "I think I have a way that might work, but I'm not an engineer so I want to run it by Kyungsoo first."

"What is it?"

Jinsu shook her head. She didn't want to get his hopes up. Byeong joo waited for a moment, as if that would get her to speak, but she didn't. He gave in.

"And what you were saying about the, er, different forms of people not existing within time hops, how sure are you of that?" he asked.

With a sigh, Jinsu looked down at her fingers again. "In all honesty, I only have Noah's word for it, but I trust him and I don't think it's a risk worth taking. I asked him if he'd seen himself working at the machine, and he said no, but the theories he and the chief scientist had were that it was related either to molecular regeneration or to do with personhood, but there's no way of telling which. So he was given a chance to rewrite the past fifteen minutes without running into himself, but we don't know how much that would be affected by time and age difference."

Byeong joo's expression turned distressed. "But what about Chanyeol?"

A lump stuck in Jinsu's throat.

"I want Kyuhyun and Minhwan to be right," she said pitifully, "but I know Noah would have paid attention and wouldn't have lied."

Byeong joo looked like he was trying to swallow down a lump in his throat too.

"Absolutely f*cking nuts!" Kyungsoo exclaimed, mildly horrified. "Your idea is so insane I don't even know where to start."

Byeong joo had wanted to know what it was that Jinsu was thinking of doing to circumnavigate the problems that the virus had kicked up, so had insisted they both went to Kyungsoo together so that she could talk about it.

"But it could work?" Byeong joo pressed cautiously, apparently taking the absence of a flat-out no as a yes.

Kyungsoo turned his incredulous look from Jinsu to Byeong joo. "This is like trying to drive a car purely via controlling the fuel injection, or like asking a blind person to point out landmarks to you as you walk down the street. You have to be out of your mind to think it's a viable idea."

"But it could work," Byeong joo repeated, apparently still encouraged by the lack of an outright no.

"Maybe, but you'd need a supercomputer to figure out amounts of fuel and speed and where to stop and changing absolutely everything manually and to utter perfection. It will honestly feel like doing an obstacle course blindfolded and with your hands tied behind your back. Technically, there's a possibility that it's possible, but in reality a lot of things will probably go very wrong. I don't recommend it."

"It's likely we might have to do it," Jinsu mumbled.

Kyungsoo squinted at her. "I thought that there was some level of control left even with that virus?"

"Just having the computers on gives it room to spread, and we're going to need them on for a long time to travel back home," Jinsu pointed out. "And that will require firewalls I don't think I'm capable of building just to keep the virus at bay. I know that Junmyeon and Kyuhyun have done a lot in terms of firewalls and managing to push the virus out of areas it has much less of a grip on, but the main area that's a problem is the part of the system that controls destination coordinates, which naturally makes everything very difficult. We actually can't input them at all."

Kyungsoo pursed his lips.

"I still don't recommend it," he muttered after a moment or two of silence.

Byeong joo and Jinsu completely ignored his warning.

"Great!" said the latter. "Can you help us with the equations and formulae so we know what we're going to need to do when?"

The discussion with Byeong joo had once again hit home to Jinsu that she'd lost her cousin, but for the first time, she felt hollow and numb about it rather than bursting into tears. Once they parted ways outside Kyungsoo's room, she'd sat outside for a little (most of the other boys had already headed off, one of them leaving a note saying they expected Jinsu and Byeong joo to look after the Attayear for them just in case (the note had to be from Junmyeon, really) and that they weren't to leave the machine for any reason until at least one of the other able-bodied boys had returned), but it got too cold to stay out there, so she went back inside.

Ironically, the sickbay room was almost as cold as outside, but there was no wind to accompany the chill, so Jinsu stealed herself and went in.

It was honestly difficult to describe the feeling of being in a room with dead bodies. They'd all been packed around with ice flakes and covered in now-frozen blankets so that only their faces were showing, which made it seem like they were all snoozing, except for the lack of colour. The ice had at least preserved them from starting to decay.

To Jinsu's surprise, Byeong joo was sitting on the ground near one such body. She hoped it wasn't Chanyeol's because she'd had about enough Byeong joo for the day, but as she scanned the faces of the others there, she concluded it had to be. Reluctantly, she went and sat down across from him, ignoring the fact that he was there, and reached out as if to brush Chanyeol's hair back off his face.

Then she noticed that it was covered in a light layer of frost and restrained herself.

For several long moments, they both sat there in silence. Jinsu's gaze gradually shifted from the dead to the living, whose unfrozen hair was flopping down over his eyes. He seemed to sense his gaze on her, because he eventually stirred, but without taking his eyes off Chanyeol's face.

"I can barely even see his smile anymore," he murmured.

It was a poignant moment. Jinsu had absolutely no idea if she was even meant to reply to it, but what really got to her was the fact that although she and Chanyeol were cousins of the same age and had known each other their entire lives, they hadn't really known each other. Byeong joo had known Chanyeol, only for a few years, and it made her envious.

Byeong joo lifted his head at that moment, eyes watering a little and skin just under his lips pinched as if he was biting it hard, trying not to cry.

"I don't want to say goodbye," he admitted weakly. "I want there to be some way to bring him back. He's not supposed to be here, so he's not supposed to be like this. He can't just not exist back home. Will they even remember he was there? Will I even remember him?"

His uncertainty and upset were disorientating to Jinsu. She was the one who'd been breaking down and needing reassurance and somebody to lean on, and Byeong joo had been offering a lot of that – to the extent that she'd begun to wonder if his emotional strength had no limits. Apparently it had after all. It made her really want to give him a hug, and that idea terrified her.

"You won't forget him," she said in halting tones, choosing her words carefully. "You might forget his face, his expressions, what he looks like, but I don't think it's ever possible to forget the bond a friend carves into our hearts and souls."

"Sorry." With a loud sniff, Byeong joo wiped his eyes and nodded. "I didn't mean to break down, I just...but you're right." He gave her a wan smile. "I needed to hear that."

His eyes still looked terribly watery.

Jinsu squinted at him. "You know," she said, "if you need to cry, it's okay. My brother told me when my grandma died that crying showed that I cared, not that I was weak. No one's going to judge you if you do. I'm certainly not – I've cried enough to produce enough water to power the Attayear."

With some effort, Byeong joo managed to smile a little more. "I like to believe there's a place where all the people you miss are together," he said, "so maybe Chanyeol's with her. He talked about her from time to time."

Jinsu found herself nodding. That was a nice notion too. Byeong joo reached across and took Jinsu's hand, squeezing it briefly.

"Chanyeol wouldn't have wanted us to mope," he said. "He would have wanted us to sort out this situation and grieve peacefully. Let's see what we can do in his honour."

He got to his feet, adjusting the collar of his t-shirt so that it wasn't caught in his jumper collar. Jinsu looked down at Chanyeol's peaceful face and then back up at Byeong joo, who'd come round to her side and was extending an arm to help her to her feet.

She had no idea where the words came from, but Jinsu equally had no time to regret them.

"Chanyeol was right, you know – Noah too. You're actually a really nice kid."

And as if to prove Chanyeol right beyond all doubt, rather than preening at the compliment, Byeong joo blushed to the roots of his hair.

Chapter 51