“August, you idjit.”

He opened his eyes but she wasn’t in front of him, sprawled out lazily on the bed as she was last night. He sat up from the floor and adjusted his suitcase that acted as his pillow the night before.

The soft snoring that he grew accustomed to throughout the entire night was gone, and instead was replaced with a sobbing sound.

Crying, however soft it was, could still be heard from behind the curtain that separates the hotel unit from its balcony.

August decided to stand up but hesitated, stagnating at a half-kneeling position.

He could see the silhouette the curtain hid from him just now.

A crying female, crouched over and hunching rather badly.

She moved and August, too shocked to react properly, fell down with an oof.

The dark figure jerked her head around and he could feel her eyes staring into his.

He inched back but the figure’s hand fell on the curtain and pulled-

And suddenly she wasn’t so dark anymore.

Pale, even colourless, the black haired girl eyed him with her blue eyes.

“August, you idjit.”

And she pouted.

If she had been a little child, August would have picked her up and pinched her cheeks over and over again. Having never been bothered to actually look at her in detail yesterday, August was dumbfounded with this additional touch of cuteness to his saviour.

“What did I do?”

“Nothing, really.”

August eyed her with doubt and heard a faint idjit being mumbled out of Dolores’ mouth.

He raised his hand as if intending to do something, but put it down.

They lay in silence for a long while.

Then Dolores’ mouth perked down slightly, her cheeks puffed slightly, and her fist hammered down on August.

Her tiny hands rained down on August, but he kept quiet.

“Why don’t you remember me?”

Even more rounds of fists that hurt the heart more than the skin.

“I’m your classmate!”

Her voice cracked and tears started forming in her eyes,

“I confessed to you!

Don’t you remember?!??!

You’re telling me after you went off to the capital, you forgot about me?

You forgot about your promise to me?

And now I find you, ten years later,

Taller than ever,

Unrecognisable if not for your name,

You’re telling me to just forget that just like you?!?”

She was about to burst into another round of choleric prose when her frame was assaulted by August’s body, being squeezed into his frame.

The scolding never continued.

Instead, she wept, wept for the lost memories of her childhood love, wept for this man in front of her, wept for her current state. Her hands, initially awkwardly hanging off the sides, gradually inched their way into a hug. The two figures, one too large to properly embrace and the other too small to wrap her arms around the other, hugged together in this awkward way.

They stayed this way before she finally pulled away from him.

“Thank you,”

A breathless comment that contained more gratitude than the hug commanded, and she was off getting ready for the day.

He too, dusted off his clothes and contemplated whether to get a change of clothes.

Noticing Dolores going into the hotel room’s only bathroom, he decided against it and plopped down on the bed.

.

It was when he sat down in one of the seats the waiting room offered when he gripped the futility of the entire case he was presented.

There were, afterall, no more surviving victims nor eyewitnesses left alive after the incident.

Granted, Lindsey had told him the entire story before she was killed, but it helped little but trigger random creative spurts of his.

He touched the left of his chest again. A few days ago, he had dreamt of his heart in pain. Like being ran through with something. It was so vivid, this dream. As if he was there. The scene that Lindsey told me happened.

He buried his head in his hands and sighed.

A slam of the door and he turned towards a breathless Dolores.

“Well, how was the autopsy?”

“Call in Benjamin.”

An officer nearby nodded and went off.

“What happened?”

He continued following Dolores as she walked towards Benjamin himself.

“No, seriously, what happened?”

Her head snapped back and words tumbled out of her mouth:

“Lindsey Totten was killed by strangling.”

“So?”

“And not just any type of strangling, something that would crush her windpipes.

Someone strong must have done this.

A male, probably.”

They continued walking.

“And another thing.”

“Yes?”

“There were absolutely no thumbprints on her neck, even though she was strangled to death.

It was either an invisible force had crushed her throat from the inside or-”

“The killer was wearing gloves.”

August finished her sentence.

“You’re asking Benjamin for the people who own gloves in Kelt?”

“Dead on.”

.

Dolores’ hand trembled as she held the piece of paper.

On it, with Kelt’s first-in-command’s neat handwriting, were two names:

“Howard Kjolsrud

Versas Totten”

With shaky hands, August dug out his trusty notebook and flipped it open:

“List of victims:

Avan Kjolsrud

Eleanor Growther

Alice Zankor

Castasia Yumen”

And in a darker, more sinister shade of blue:

“Lindsey Totten”.