After the tearful reunion, Jia felt a little bit out of place among the An family. The sun had long since set, and the trays of refreshments emptied. After a while, things had settled down again, and a somewhat awkward silence descended on the gathering. Eui’s parents were still wary and suspicious of Jia—with Chunhei in particular barely hiding her disdain. Nevertheless, they were clearly willing to accept her presence for Eui’s sake, and that was good enough for Jia—she would just have to work on building up a better relationship with them.

Jia was just starting to wonder whether they should leave and come back another time, when—as if reading her mind—Eui’s mother broke the silence.

“It’s getting quite late—you two should stay the night. I’d hate for you to leave so soon after we finally got to see you again, Eui.”

Eui hesitated, but Jia wasn’t about to let such an opportunity go.

“We’d love to! Actually, I was wondering if you’d be alright with us staying here as long as we’re still in the city.”

Eui’s parents exchanged a look, before Minjun answered for them.

“Well, I don’t see why not. Although—you’re planning on leaving again? When?”

“Uh...yeah, eventually. We’ve got some obligations that are likely to take us elsewhere. We’re not entirely sure how long we’ll be here.”

“I see. Well, you’re welcome to stay as long as you like, of course—provided that our mysterious landlord doesn’t find out and object.”

Chunhei frowned suddenly, as if recalling something that had been bothering her.

“Actually, Miss Lee, I’ve been meaning to ask—you knew that young man who represented our creditors, and your letter claimed you were representing our landlord. Was that just a pretense, or do you actually know who our benefactors are? It’s been killing us to know.”

Jia grimaced, not entirely sure how to address that particular landmine.

“Uh, well I don’t know about any creditors, but the owner of the house is, um...me.”

Neither of the An couple seemed particularly surprised by that revelation, and Minjun simply leaned forward, a serious expression on his face.

“Which leads to the question then—who exactly are you, Miss Lee? Aside from your relationship to our daughter, we know precious little about you.”

Eui flushed bright red.

“Mom! Dad! Please don’t interrogate my girlfriend—this is so embarrassing!”

Jia chuckled and gave Eui’s waist a loving squeeze.

“It’s fine—they deserve to know. You can probably guess by the name, but I’m not exactly some hidden noble girl or something. Before the academy, I was nobody at all, and I still kinda struggle with the idea that I matter. We made a number of connections during our time at the academy, and as a result I am currently an ambassador between the states of Yamato and Goryeo.”

The An couple’s eyes practically bulged out of their heads at the revelation. Minjun was the first to regain his composure, coughing once before continuing.

“I-I see. Then this house is...”

Jia shrugged.

“A gift, I think? I haven’t had a chance to ask yet, but by the time we made it back to Goryeo, our friends had already prepared this place for us—and moved you into it.”

“Right—and I hate to be a pest, but—those friends would be...?”

Jia scratched her cheek, not certain whether she should answer—if Eunae had kept her identity secret, then it would be foolish to reveal it without asking her.

“I don’t think we should say, sorry. It’s not our place to reveal their secrets.”

Minjun sighed and sat back, deflated.

“Fair enough, I suppose. I was really hoping to find out who our creditor is.”

Jia frowned uncertainly—pretty sure she was about to make herself look like an idiot.

“Uh, you keep saying that, but—what do you mean by ‘creditor’?”

Eui buried her face in her palms, radiating embarrassment while her parents looked at Jia strangely.

“Our house is in considerable debt, Miss Lee. The creditor is the party to whom we owe that debt. Our previous creditors had been harassing us with loan sharks from that loathsome Lee Gang—er, no relation, I suppose—until your mystery friend purchased the debt from them.”

Jia sucked a breath in through her teeth.

“Uh...well, in the interest of being perfectly honest with you, I actually am related to that gang. Or was. They raised me as a child, and it’s where I got my name.”

As if Chunhei’s hostility hadn’t already been enough, the baleful glare she received now left Jia with no question where Eui had learned it from. She rushed to explain more.

“I ran away from them! Just recently I actually rescued my own family from their clutches and dismantled the gang’s leadership. I’m not going to pretend that they’re gone, but...well, they got what was coming to them.”

“I see...”

Eui’s parents relaxed a bit, reassured that they hadn’t invited a gangster into their home. That left Jia to wonder why Eunae hadn’t just forgiven their debts. Oh well, that hardly seemed like a significant issue to resolve.

“How much do you owe, anyway? Maybe we can help.”

Minjun raised a skeptical eyebrow before telling her just how large their debt was. This time it was Jia’s turn to be flabbergasted, though Eui didn’t seem particularly shocked at the amount. Jia still had what she considered to be a vast fortune of gold stashed away in her ring—most of which was ‘borrowed’ from Yan Yue—but the An’s debt dwarfed it by orders of magnitude.

“That’s—that’s—how?!”

Minjun shrugged helplessly.

“We spent most of the savings from our business on Eui’s tuition, and we were met by some rather hard times shortly after—not that we blame you, Eui.”

Jia was left completely speechless. No wonder Eunae hadn’t just forgiven the debt outright. It was amazing that Eunae, with her limited influence in the palace, had even managed to purchase it at all. Not for the first time, Jia felt conscious of the speaking stone that she kept with her—the one that Eunae had given her on the day of their separation. The urge to call her old friend was strong, but surely they’d be meeting in person soon enough. Jia could maintain her discretion a little longer. She sighed and shook her head.

“Well, that’s...more than I expected. Never mind, I don’t think we can help with that.”

Minjun laughed—a proper, solid belly laugh.

“Hahaha! Miss Lee, you needn’t worry about us. We’re doing just fine—as you pointed out earlier, our business is booming recently. Half the reason I’d like to know the identity of our creditor is so that we can start paying off that debt!”

Jia blinked, nonplussed. She didn’t get it. All her life she’d grown up having nothing, scraping and scrounging every little bit she needed just to survive. And here was a rich merchant couple who had less than nothing. Who had a negative sum of money greater than she had even thought to conceptualize before today—living comfortably and happily as they simply worked their way back up to fixing the source of their income. It felt hypocritical of her to be annoyed, since she was, herself, a recipient of such nepotism—but it rankled Jia to see the class disparity right before her eyes.

She kept her reservations to herself. The An family wasn’t to blame for the world they’d been born into, nor did Jia blame them for making the best of their lives given the resources available to them. Perhaps, at the rate she was going, Jia would one day have the influence to change things, but she doubted it.

“Will your family be staying here as well, Miss Lee?”

Chunhei’s question broke Jia from her distractions, and she blinked for a moment, processing the question before nodding.

“If that’s alright with you, yes.”

Eui’s mother chuckled.

“It’s your house, isn’t it? You hardly need to ask us. Besides, this place is big enough for three families—I’m sure things will be more lively with a few less empty rooms.”

“Thank you. Although—I should mention that while we’re here, we might end up entertaining a few important guests. That won’t be a problem will it?”

An Minjun sat forward, an excited glint in his eyes as he adopted that salesman demeanor that he’d initially introduced himself with.

“What kind of important guests?”

Jia hesitated—that wasn’t the reaction she was expecting. Eui snickered, but opted to answer the question herself.

“Lady Hayakawa Kaede will probably come by—that’s a foreign princess from Yamato, by the way—and our friend Takeda Rika, her trusted aide. Plus, if he’s in town, I bet we’ll get a visit from High Magus Hwang Sung at some point...”

Eui’s father regarded her with a sharp gaze.

“And can you introduce us?”

Eui rolled her eyes and sighed with exasperation.

“Yes, dad, you’ll get your chance to network with foreign nobles and high class mages. I’m sure you can get some good business deals out of it.”

An Minjun turned to Jia with a wide, predatory grin.

“Miss Lee, you can have as many guests over as you like. The more the merrier!”

That night, Jia lay awake, snuggled up with Eui in a luxuriously soft bed—a formidable match even for their sleeping arrangements back in Lord Noguchi’s castle. She hadn’t really been planning on sleeping, but she didn’t feel like explaining to the An family that she mostly didn’t need to. Besides that, she owed Eui a lot after the stunt she’d pulled earlier.

“That was really cruel, Jia.”

Jia winced as Eui muttered into her shoulder, hugging her girlfriend closer as she responded carefully.

“I know. I didn’t really plan on doing it, but things were kinda not going the way we’d planned, and I had to improvise.”

Jia felt Eui scowling.

“Improvise? Jia, I was panicking so hard I thought I was going to have an essence deviation. If you hadn’t been right there with me—or if my mom hadn’t—it could have gone really badly.”

A pang of regret went through Jia as a few teardrops soaked into her nightclothes.

“I’m sorry. It was really stupid of me. I thought I was helping—”

Eui shook her head, interrupting Jia.

“You were. It’s what I needed, even if I didn’t realize it. That doesn’t make it hurt any less.”

Jia sighed, feeling awful now that she had time to consider the gravity of her actions. Eui had once given her a similar hard lesson without her consent, by dressing her up and locking her into an impromptu date with Dae. Jia had needed that lesson to begin figuring out her own feelings, but she hadn’t appreciated it at the time—she’d slapped Eui in the face when she returned home afterwards.

“You can slap me, if it will make you feel better.”

Eui snorted in amusement, shaking her head.

“Somehow, I just knew you were going to bring that up. No, Jia, I’m not going to slap you. I don’t want to hurt you—also it would hurt me just as much.”

That was true. Jia had almost forgotten that they shared senses—it had become such a normal part of their everyday life that she rarely thought about it. Speaking of their shared senses, Jia felt a hot tingling in Eui’s face as a blush crept its way onto her features.

“There is something else you could do to make it up to me...”

Jia’s own blush matched Eui’s as she realized what her partner was implying. She swallowed her nerves, and played along.

“A-and what would that be?”

Eui responded by rolling on top of Jia, straddling her hips and pinning her arms to the bed above her head. She leaned down and whispered in Jia’s ears, her voice low and husky.

“Cast a privacy spell.”

Jia didn’t end up getting much sleep that night after all—but what little she did was, for the first time in months, restful and free of nightmares.