Dubai, United Arab Emirates, December 16, 2009. 

Nadine rushed back to the airport after getting a phone call from Lena, informing her about the disaster, and waiting for her to solve it. Liam went back to his hotel room to change, then went to his office; he had an important meeting with his partners discussing the recent cases they had.

The day was hectic; Liam didn’t leave his office till midnight. Throughout the day, Liam called his parents to find out when exactly they were coming to Dubai. On the next day, the firm was crowded with clients discussing their cases with each lawyer inside.

The meeting room was the busiest one. It was a glass room with three doors; one led to Liam’s office, others led to one of his partner’s offices, and the last one led to the rest of the enormous firm. The room had a massive, long table with twenty leather chairs occupied by twenty stern-looking lawyers and employees.

While Liam and one of his partners were busy discussing a complicated case, Liam’s assistant joined them for a brief minute, informing him that his father had kept calling for the last half an hour. He excused himself for five minutes and went to his office to call him.

His father answered him with an angry tone and clenched jaw. Liam immediately noticed the clock on his desk and knew the actual reason for his father’s obvious anger. Stricken by remorse, he apologized to his father and promised to be at the airport in no time. His parents were waiting for him to pick them up after he assured them before they took their flight that he wouldn’t be late.

His parents Adaline and Mark were college sweethearts; both were studying abroad in London; Adaline was studying medicine while Mark was studying fine arts. They became close and eventually fell in love.

Liam’s mother was an only child. She lost her parents when she was in middle school and was raised by her aunt, who didn’t get married or have children. His father Mark was an orphan and was adopted by a wealthy family in South Korea.

When they got married, both were obsessed with having a big family; yet Adaline suffered multiple miscarriages. It became difficult for her to get pregnant. When she finally got pregnant with Liam, the doctors told her it would be her last chance of ever getting pregnant again.

11:20 am.

As Mark and Adaline finally rested in their hotel suite, Liam was on the balcony finishing what had left of his meetings. “We have everything to prove to them that they are innocent. You just must take this one,” Liam said firmly, resting his free hand on the balcony railing with the full view of Jumeirah Beach across from him.

Back inside the suite, Adaline unpacked her bag and looked at Mark’s tired face. He was sitting on their king-sized bed, resting from unpacking and the long tiring flight. She looked fondly at him and touched his face with the back of her right hand. “You need to sleep, honey.” Mark always suffered from insomnia, and it was impossible for him to sleep while in transportation.

“I know.” he held her hand and kissed it.

Both had busy lives with Adaline running the neurosurgery department in one of the major hospitals in Sydney and Mark as a fine art professor and famous painter; every year they took the last three months to travel and have a romantic time together before heading back to work. Liam looked at them and admired their strong relationship. “Okay, text me with the updates” — Liam ended the call and looked at his parents — “I’m free now.”

“Good, I’m starving. Let’s go eat,” Adaline said while putting her blonde hair in a ponytail.

“I will stay here,” Mark said, looking at the bed and yawning.

“Okay, Dad, call me if you need anything.” Mark smiled, and Adaline kissed him before they went outside the room. Mark closed the drapes and turned the suite into a block of darkness, then he took the no-disturbance sign on the nightstand beside his bed to put on the outside door handle. He swallowed two sleeping pills and lay on the bed peacefully.

11:45 am.

The sleeping pills took a bit of a long time to dash him into a deep long sleep. His eyes were slowly drifting off. It felt like he was one step away from falling deeply into sleep when a gentle yet loud knock on the suite door disturbed him. It was followed by seconds of silence, then heavy breathing sounds, then another knock came in. This time, it was louder and faster.

“Room service,” a man said with a broken English accent. Mark opened his eyes repeatedly; the bills were fully active in his body, and he couldn’t answer. He felt like he was dreaming. Another loud knock cracked what was left in Mark’s energy. “Room service.” The man sounded like a machine repeating the two words with no feeling.

Somehow, Mark got out of bed. He felt dizziness took over his tired body. He took a sip of water beside his bed and lit up the golden-colored lamp. The light hit his eyes, making him cringe. The man behind the door knocked one more time. “Yes…” Mark answered weakly and walked toward the door.

He opened the door to find a white-collar, tall man with the hotel tag on the front pocket of his blazer; his vision was a brief blur. He couldn’t see the man’s face clearly, yet he saw him smiling and his teeth were bright white.

He closed his eyes one more time to get his vision clearer and looked again at the man. He had an angelic face yet was very masculine with a full black beard and a bald head. Muscled, yet slim. “What?”

“Room service sir.” the man’s reaction didn’t change.

“I put the no-disturbance-sign…” — the man shook his head no — “it’s right here,” Mark said, pointing at the door outside without looking at it.

“Sir, there is no sign,” the man said, confused. “You called room service to change the towels.”

“No… I didn’t.” Mark looked at him, then looked at the door handle and saw that the sign wasn’t there. He looked back at the nightstand to find the sign on it.

“Sir? May I change the towels now or another time?” the man said.

“Yeah… just… change them and leave.” Mark was confused but gave little thought to it. He assumed the bills made him forget. It took him two minutes to finish and before he walked to the door, Mark called him. “Hey… can you put the sign on the handle?” Mark was already back on the bed.

“Sure.” The man took the sign and headed outside the suite.

12:07 am.

Liam and Adaline walked for a while after finishing their heavy lunch, it was their habit whenever they had free time. The weather was extremely hot for a winter day, their walk was cut short, and they stayed at the hotel till the weather got a little cooler. “Do you want to get something to drink?” Liam said as they walked into the hotel lobby.

“Maybe coffee, but I’ve to check my emails for my patients’ updates first,” Adaline said.

“I must call the firm, too. Let’s meet in the cafe then,” Liam said, leading the way to the opened door of the elevator.

When they arrived at their floor, each headed to their suite. Liam booked the suite next to his for them before they arrived in Dubai. “I will take a shower, too. I will call you when I’m done,” Adaline said and opened the door of her suite. Liam was about to put his key into the door when he heard Adaline screaming his name.

Liam pushed her suite door before it almost closed. He froze the moment his eyes lay on his father’s body. Mark was panting and sweating hard. His body trembled and was shaken by the bed underneath him. Adaline shouted he was having an intense seizure and ordered Liam to call an ambulance fast. Liam blinked swiftly, then dialed the emergency number.

8:30 pm.

After five hours, Mark opened his eyes to lie on a hospital bed and his wife and son were standing next to him. “What… happened?” Mark’s voice was hoarse.

“Honey, how do you feel now?” Adaline said, lowering her body to reach Mark’s sight.

“Where am I?”

“In the hospital, you went into a seizure in your sleep,” Adaline said and ran her fingers lightly through Mark’s hair.

“Seizure?” Mark said and tried to sit up.

Liam helped him and said, “Yeah, but don’t worry, everything seems okay.”

Adaline walked to the end of his bed where his charts were on the bed handle. The charts had the results of his blood test and MRI scans. Two nurses and a doctor entered the room and handed Adaline another report. They talked about Mark’s results in the right corner of the room.

After a while, everyone left. Adaline put the papers on a table next to her and went back to Mark and sat on a chair next to his bed and held his hand. “Everything is fine, honey; you’re tired from all the traveling we had” — she kissed his left cheek, he was about to say something, but she stopped him when she tapped on his hand — “Mark, you need to rest.” She stood up and helped him to lay again and kept tapping lightly on his shoulder.

9:00 pm.

They left Mark to rest and went to the cafeteria to get some tea. After Liam put the cups on the table, his phone rang, it was Nadine’s number. “Liam, it’s Camellia,” she said after he accepted the call. “Hey… did you mail me a box from Seoul?”

“What box?” he said, surprised.

“A box sent to me in the mail this morning from Seoul, but with no information about the sender.”

“I haven’t been in Seoul for like six months and I’m positive I didn’t send you anything,” Liam answered, raising his eyebrows. He heard Camellia taking a deep breath. They talked for a bit, and both ended the call with goodbyes after giving each other their phone numbers.

“Something’s wrong?” Adaline asked, noticing Liam’s reaction.

“No, I don’t think so,” he said and held his cup of warm tea to drink. They enjoyed the good taste of their tea before heading back to Mark, who was getting better and back to his old energetic self.

December 18, 2009, 6:30 pm.

They left the hospital after Mark’s results all came back with nothing to be worried about. Liam took the day off to stay with his father. Mark was a healthy athletic man; his age was clear on his face, but he had the body of a thirty-year-old man.

He insisted on leaving the hotel and enjoying the day rather than acting like an old sick man. While they were having dinner celebrating Liam’s birthday, Liam checked his phone after it shut down most of the day.

There were over ten missed calls from Camellia’s number. After they finished dinner, Mark called the waiter and ordered red wine for them. He asked Adaline to get him his pen and sketch note from her bag.

The waiter served the wine and Adaline told Liam about their Europe trip. Mark wasn’t paying attention to their conversation. He was intensely drawing a realistically detailed portrait of a young woman.

7:30 pm.

Liam got a call from his assistant informing him about the updates on the cases. After he finished the call, he called Camellia. “Hey, you called me a lot—”

“Is your father okay?” Camellia said.

“—what?” Liam was shocked by Camellia’s worried voice.

“Is he okay?!” she asked again, louder this time.

“Why are you asking?” Liam said after a couple of seconds. Camellia didn’t reply, her heavy breathing was enough as an answer for him. “He is now, how did you know?” — he left the table and went outside the restaurant — “he had a seizure in his sleep yesterday.”

“At what time?” she shouted suddenly.

“Maybe around… noon, What’s wrong?!” Liam said, shocked by her reaction.

“I have to go… bye,” the call ended, leaving Liam confused. Why did Camellia ask him about his father when he didn’t mention earlier that he was sick, he sighed and went back to the restaurant.

Mark finished his portrait, and Adaline was checking it. “Pretty, but why does she look shocked?” He shrugged his shoulders and told her that the girl’s face suddenly popped into his head.

Adaline handed the sketch to Liam to see, his face turned yellow, and said, “Bloody hell!” — Mark looked surprised at Liam’s reaction — “it’s Camellia!” Liam pointed at the sketch. “It’s identical to my friend Camellia! you have never met her before… how could you draw her that well?”

“Maybe you showed me a picture of her.” Mark rested on his back and took a sip of his wine.

“I never did.”

“What is her name again?” Mark said, narrowing his eyes and resting his elbows on the table. Liam answered him. “It sounds familiar” —Mark looked at the sketch — “I don’t know why I drew this girl… her face is stuck in my head for some reason.”

“What do you mean?”

“Only her face with that scared reaction and the necklace she’s wearing; her image feels like a memory… like a Déjà vu.”

Camellia’s voice was clear in Liam’s ears — Is your father okay? — Liam had an unreasonable feeling that something was not right.

“You’ve always had this kind of inspiration,” Adaline remarked.

“You drew Camellia before!”

“I don’t know if this girl is your friend or not,” Mark replied with a shrug, “but yeah—I tend to draw faces that get stuck in my head. I don’t know, honey, maybe it’s just my creative soul… or maybe it’s a past life haunting me.” He laughed softly, sipping from his glass of water.

Liam sat quietly, still confused, eyes shifting between them.

Mark nudged him gently. “Check the earlier pages,” he said, gesturing to his thick leather-bound /.

Liam flipped through it slowly. The drawings followed a rhythm—a series of ancient, gold-tinged sketches. A girl with dark, halo-like shadows behind her. Flowing black hair. A silk dress that shimmered even in graphite. Page after page devoted to her bright smile and haunting eyes.

No way… Liam froze, heart racing as he finally recognized the mysterious girl.