The sound of seagulls echoed along with the waves of the sea. The turquoise water shone with the golden rays of the sun. The salt water moistened the feet of the little girl, who ran through the wet sand, laughing as her father ran after her. Dark braids swayed as she looked back, and whipped her face when the man picked her up in his lap. She laughed when he tickled her cheeks with his newly-made beard.

“Won't you help me, Mahalina?”

Another little girl, three years younger than her, appeared walking along the sand, the smooth threads — like the grains on which she walked — flew away as she went smiling towards them both. Mahalina's sights became blurred, the blue of the sky and the sea mixed with the sand. The father stopped spinning her in his arms. Rough stone walls surrounded her, as did darkness.

A beam of light shone at the end of the narrow corridor, where the newly arrived blonde girl was standing still. Mahalina stared at her with bulging eyes, her stomach churning.

The dress of the girl, with unicorn prints, was dirty with the sand of the beach, while her blonde hair was sticky by the blood that run over from the hole in her head.

Next to the girl, there was a man screaming with a burning jacket.

✛✛

Amélie sat panting. The smell of rotten flesh and blood were impregnated in her nostrils, superimposing the smell of burnt tissue. Her trembling fingers tightened on strands of hair dampened by the cold sweat that soaked through her flannel pajamas and sheets. Despite the sun rays that waved through the cracks in the curtain, she felt cold.

“Mahalina? Maha?”

A familiar and angry voice sounded amid the tangle of sheets on the mattress. The black-haired woman inhaled heavily, digging between the sheets until she found the cell phone. The image of a woman with bangs and a dark blue hair (with a bun stuck on top of her head), took the screen in a video call.

Amélie eyes lifted in a disgruntled gaze.

“What the hell, Winnie! Didn't I tell you not to call me by that name?”

“You woke me up from my beauty sleep at five in the morning because you couldn't sleep with a guilty conscience, and I still can't believe you dozed off while we were talking!” Winnie, the blue-haired woman, replied, ignoring the lowered eyebrows and the curly lips of the other.

“Sorry, I must have gotten tired.” Amélie apologized, checking the time on the display. 7:00 in the morning. According to her exhausted mind, she should have napped for about thirty minutes.

Winnie squinted her eyes, analyzing her friend. Seeing her take the black case and remove the square frame, exaggeratedly big for the small face, Amélie almost laughed because her best friend had the perfect eyesight, but she thought wearing glasses gave her the most serious look. So in every therapy session with her patients, Winnie Brown wore that ridiculous frame. And putting on the glasses while they were talking meant she was activating the psychologist mode.

“I thought the glasses stayed in your office.” Amélie pointed, arching an eyebrow.

“I never know when you want me as a friend or psychologist. Besides, I don't have patients on Thursdays”. Winnie explained, fluffing her pillow against the bedpost. “Have you had another nightmare?”

“A crazy one. It started with my father and… well…” She bit her lower lip, “you know…, but this time it ended with the guy I told you about.”

“Um… you need to go to therapy.”

“What have we been doing for the past few months, Dr. Brown?”

“You know it's unethical for a psychologist to attend to family or friends, we both could lose our PPC because of that. I'm sure you didn't graduate without studying the Psychologist's Professional Code”.

“No one will know if you don't tell. Besides, I've just taken my license, and I haven't even been able to practice my profession yet. Not away from the teachers and other residents, at least.”

Winnie shook her head, resigned. Amélie knew that her friend was angry because she was stubborn and continued to consult with Dr. Brown, even knowing the risks for both. But she didn't feel comfortable talking about the nightmares that troubled her every night with anyone but her best friend.

“You'd better get ready if you don't want to be late in your first day of work”. Winnie changed the subject by looking at some point above the phone screen. “And… stop thinking about that guy. You'll never see him again anyway.”

Amélie nodded but despite urging her, Winnie ended up giving her a lecture blaming and relating the nightmares she had to the area she had chosen to follow within psychology. Only after what seemed like an eternal sermon, Amélie managed to get into the bathroom.

✛✛

The soft spring breeze blew the woman's wavy strands. Her eyes wandered between the mobile phone she was holding, the paper bag left on the back seat of the car she had just left, and the police department entrance across the street.

Amélie moistened her lips remembering Winnie's advice. Her friend was right, she would never see that guy again, however her conscience weighed. She almost set someone on fire! And as if that weren't enough, she turned the water jug over the man's head after the fire had been extinguished. Terrible timing.

Ugh. It would be easier to blame it on Mayumi, huh? Her dad's girlfriend insisted on shoving her into arranged dates at least once a month. As if a boyfriend would solve every problem between her and Mr. Zhou.

The phone vibrated, scaring her. Amélie almost dropped her phone when she saw Mayumi's name on the screen. That woman…! If she didn't know that her stepmother hated tarot, she'd bet Mayumi was psychic.

“How did you know I was thinking about you?”

“Um… Female gut feeling?” Mayumi laughed. Amélie could practically visualize the woman on the couch with flower flaps, a smile stamped on her face full of Botox. “How was your date, dear? Are you going out again, huh?”

“I almost left the restaurant held up for murder.”

“What? Oh my, that's not why you chose to specialize in forensic psychology, is it?!”

“How did you guess? I chose that area to commit perfect crimes on every arranged encounter you play for me.”

“Amélie, my dearest…”

“Mayumi” she imitated the censorship tone. “Why didn't you warn me that the meeting would be in a blindfolded restaurant?”

“What would that be, my dear?” The woman sounded sincere, which made Amélie conclude that her stepmother didn't intentionally put her in a big trouble. Mayumi wasn’t a bad woman, in fact she worried about Amélie as if she were her daughter, which, in a way, was even annoying. And that was why Mr. Zhou  chose Mayumi to live with him after his daughter distanced herself.

After listening to her stepdaughter give a brief explanation of what a blindfolded restaurant was (something cool for people seeking relationships beyond appearances, and that Amélie couldn’t deny); Mayumi exhaled a deep sigh of horror.

“I didn't know… it was the boy’s mother who picked the restaurant! I didn't tell her that you have claustrophobia, dear. I'm sorry”.

Amélie expelled the air from her lungs by pressing her eyelids. She couldn't blame her stepmom in the end. Mayumi didn't know that her problem wasn't claustrophobia. Nor that blindfolding her would result in pushing her supposed date to the table where a waiter was finishing a flambé dish, in her moment of despair due to her blindfold. Mayumi also wouldn't have imagined that, in addition to setting fire to the guy's jacket, she would try to drown him with the water jug ​​when the burnt cloth was already on the ground.

It was the worst thing Amélie ever paid for in her whole life. The terrified expression on the guy's face, the eyes pulled out so prominent that it seemed impossible to continue in the holes ─ the wrinkled nose and the lips curved into a frown, marking the dimples on his cheek…

He was incredibly tall, but he seemed small in front of that confusion.

“…so handsome.” Mayumi continued to speak, bringing her back to the present. “I thought the two of you would make a great couple as soon as I saw the photo Yvone showed on her mobile phone. Besides, don't tell your father I told you this, but her son has a body that will make you feel good…”

“I barely had time to see if he was all this Mayumi, I was busy throwing him over the fire!”

“Weren't you kidding?”  Amélie remained silent. A hiss sounded across the line. “My God, don't spare me any details!”

“It's a long story, just know that I screwed up the date and I must have traumatized the guy.”

“You're a psychologist, you can treat him…”

“It's a great idea, so we never go out on a date again since it would be unethical. Not that he'll want to go out with me after that, of course.”

“Better send him to Winnie, then!”

“I'll send her contact with the jacket I bought to apologize. And you'll deliver it to me, since you know his mother. You can do that when you share the bad news and tell how your stepdaughter almost killed her son!”

“You could deliver in person, my dear.”

“And then he'll want to set me on fire when he sees me.”

“Dear, his mother raised him to be a gentleman-”

“I'll mail it to you as soon as I've packed” Amélie interrupted her.

“It's not like your father and I live on the other side of the world! Bring it personally, your dad will love to see you… he never knows when he can call you.”

Amélie took a deep breath. I'll call him when I can, she thought, and it's not time to visit him yet. But she didn’t need to express her thoughts. Mayumi knew she wouldn't see Amélie until six months later, on her father's birthday. Although the couple lived on the outskirts of the small town, they only saw her at their house twice a year: on Mayumi's birthday and on Mr. Ahn's birthday. And Amélie was fully aware that her stepmother quietly scolded her for keeping away from her father.

“I'm hanging up, it's almost time for me to report to work.” She said, before the silence stretched even further.

“Good luck on the first day. Call me to tell me how you almost set the boy on fire, and write at least one regrettable note, to send with the gift, ok?”

“Okay. Tell daddy I… love him.”

Amélie ended the call before Mayumi advertised her to call her father and say it herself. She would. Later. She wasn't looking forward to another call with long silences and short strange dialogues, so she slipped the phone in her pocket and crossed the street towards her new place of work.

✛✛

Amélie struggled with the urge to check the time on the watch in her right wrist once again. For an hour she had been sitting in the living room of the chief of the Department of Violent Crimes of Longino, Denyel Lim ─ a middle-aged man with a full mustache and receding hairlines between the short gray wires. She had drunk two cups of coffee, taken to the small room by Gina, the police officer who was at the service counter.

At that time Amélie felt as if she knew each of the employees of the police station as if they had been colleagues of work for a long time. Denyel didn’t stop talking about each of them with appreciation, giving details of each other's routine and how they were teammates, even those from different departments or who worked on the upper floors.

Amélie moved her leg impatiently as her eyes wandered around the room unconsciously once more. She had already studied each corner of the room, the bookshelf organized by size, the pictures hanging on the wall lined up as if they were part of the Equator line. Among them was a portrait of the captain's happy family: his deceased wife, two sons and three granddaughters that both of his sons bore him. Amélie only knew this because the man spoke about his own life story after talking about the police station.

The brown carpet under her feet was perfectly clean, there was a small hand hoover resting next to the bin. All the obvious cleanliness and meticulous organization were indications that Denyel was not just a nice, gentle, and very organized gentleman, he had OCD*. Even the pens on the mahogany table on which he was sitting, facing the blinds open to the street, were perfectly aligned.

As soon as the captain enumerated the qualities of the younger detectives to enter the department ─ future co-workers of Amélie ─, again, the dark and protruding eyes returned to shine. Although he was angry about the delay, the intonation in the man's voice when talking about detectives Brown and Hwang made it clear that he admired them.

The door of the room suddenly opened, and a smile shone on the man's features, a mixture of relief ─ for he had already apologized to her more than necessary ─ and animation danced in the man's features.

“Well, finally the best detectives in this department have given me the honor of their presence!” Denyel stood up, further widening the yellow-toothed smile, “Detective Brown, Detective Hwang, meet Ms. Amélie Zhou.”

Upon hearing her name, Amélie stood up. The sympathetic smile that had been stamped on her face turned into a stunned grin. When her eyes met with Detective Hwang's eyes, it felt like the ground was crumbling beneath her feet.

Once again, the man's elongated and intimidating eyes seemed ready to burst out of his face when he saw her, the cute dimples also became visible in his astonished expression.

“Ms. Zhou  will be working with both of you starting today! But it seems you two already know each other, uh?” Denyel continued, his eyebrows arched while his gaze wandering between her and Na-moo.

Before Amélie could fall into the abyss she felt exist under her own feet, or hide under her future boss's table to avoid the frightened and accusing look of her future work partner, Gina knocked twice on the open door glass, drawing the attention of the detectives inside.

“I just got a report. We have one more murder case. And this time… there's one survivor.”