Footsteps clacked against the hard floor of the high school hallway, as he chased after her. “Snow!” He called her name, but she pretended to ignore him. Eventually, his long, lanky legs caught up to her small frame. She sighed and turned around. There was no point in running anymore. She stared up at him, with her narrow gray eyes that always looked like they weren’t really awake. The tall, awkward boy stood stiff as a board. “I love you!” he shouted, slightly out of breath.

She looked right into his eyes and said with absolute certainty, “No, you don’t”. The boy became nervous and confused. “My hands,” the girl continued, reaching her hands forward, palms up, “can see through your lies”. Her two hands were glowing brightly like lightbulbs. The boy was confused and mildly frightened. “What is it you really want from me?” she asked, as she glared at him, menacingly.

“Wh-what do you mean?” The poor guy shivered in a nervous sweat, “I just-”

As he spoke, the petite girl lifted her glowing hands, pulling her outstretched palms towards her face. As she did this, she pulled the truth from his mouth.

“I just want to have sex with you!” he yelled emphatically, before quickly coming to his senses and smacking his hands over his mouth.

With a huff, the girl turned around, while glaring back at him over her shoulder. “You liars are all the same. Why don’t you just be honest from the start and save yourself the humiliation?” With that, she walked stoically down the hall.

Ten years later, that same boy, Kunio Usogawa, now twenty-seven, sits in a chair in the hallway of the New York police department, wearing a blue uniform. As he sits there, waiting, he looks down at his hands, folded between his legs. He’s in a daze, thinking of that time, years ago, when he got called out for falsely confessing to a girl with hopes of sleeping with her. That girl, to his surprise, possessed a miraculous power… The power to detect lies with her bare hands, and then pull the truth out of a liar’s mouth. On that day, he really did fall in love with that girl, but to this day, she still has no idea.

As he reminisces, he hears footsteps coming closer down the hall. “Detective Snow!” he calls as he looks up. The small, lithe figure standing before him with snow white shaggy hair and a beige suit is none other than that girl from ten years ago. “How did it go?”

“Oh, you know,” she says, nonchalantly, as she lazily sits in the chair next to him, one arm over the back, and the other holding a Starbucks coffee cup, as she crosses her legs. “I got that filthy liar to confess”, she says as she takes a sip.

“I’m not surprised,” Kunio says, looking over at her, “With a living lie detector like you, criminals are no match for this police department.”

“In my book,” Snow adds, with a snooty expression, “All liars are criminals.”

“Yeesh,” Kunio exclaims, while rubbing his head in mock distress, “Guess that makes me equal to a murderer, huh?”

“Maybe back in high school,” Detective Snow admits, “But now your criminal record has dwindled down to…” She takes a second to think as she looks at her coffee cup, “Petty theft”.

“Thanks,” Kunio replies sarcastically. He catches a whiff of her coffee. “That smells good. Can I have some?”

“Do you even like peppermint mocha?” she inquires sceptically.

“Yeah,” he answers with a shrug.

“Hm…” She takes a moment to contemplate his response, staring intently at her hand, holding her coffee cup, to make sure it doesn’t glow.

“Why would I lie about that?” Kunio asks in slight annoyance.

“Just checking,” She replies, before handing the cup to him. Their hands overlap for a moment.

“You gotta learn to be more trusting of people!” He exclaims before putting his lips to the shared coffee cup. He smiles secretly behind the rim of the cup at the thought of an indirect kiss.

“How can I?” Snow argues, crossing her arms defiantly, “I can see how much people lie to me everyday.”

He looks over at her somewhat pityingly. “That doesn’t necessarily mean they’re bad people,” he explains, “Do you think I’m a bad guy?”

The young woman rests her face on her knuckles and gives the man her characteristic glare. “Considering your ulterior motive for befriending me, yes.”

“Ouch,” he says aloud, feeling like he’d been metaphorically punched in the gut. “Her hands didn’t glow,” he thinks to himself, so she must be telling the truth. “She really doesn’t trust me, after all these years?”

“Officer Usogawa!”

Kunio hears a stern voice calling out his name. He looks up to see a superior officer running towards him.

“You’re needed on market street!” The officer exclaims, “There’s been a robbery!”

“Be right there!” Kunio responds urgently, quickly standing. He turns to his companion and gives her back her coffee cup. “See you tomorrow, right, Snow?”

“Whatever,” She shrugs, taking a sip of her coffee, without looking him in the eye or saying goodbye.

He smiles at her sadly before turning to leave.

She still won’t open up to him, even though they’ve known each other for ten years. They hadn’t always been close. Aside from the occasional awkward encounter in high school, they hadn’t really started talking until police training. After a while, their hang-outs became more frequent. Now that they work closely together on the police force, they see each other every day. They sit and have coffee and donuts, but… There’s always a barrier between them. A wall that Kunio desperately wishes would crumble.

The sun goes down behind the office buildings as Snow walks home from work. “He’s a liar like all the rest,” She muses about Kunio, “Not to mention a pig. So, what… What makes him better than anyone else? Maybe I just let him hang around me because he’s the only one who’ll put up with me. I’ve never really had friends. They either get freaked out by my hands or get annoyed by my moral views. But I don’t want to be friends with liars anyway, so whatever. I can’t stand liars.”

Snow starts to remember an important moment from her childhood, where her life started to shatter. She was four years old when she first noticed that her hands glow. With the usual excitement of any carefree child, she pirouettes over to her mother. “Hey, mommy,” She innocently calls, “Why do my hands glow when you and daddy say you love each other?”

“Oh, how pretty!” Her mother pretends to be oblivious, “It must be powered by love!” She says in a deceptively endearing tone, leaving the young girl amazed.

“My parents figured out the phenomenon was triggered by lies before I did,” Detective snow muses to herself, “But that never stopped them from lying. I was born from their false love… So my existence is a lie. Because of them, I’ve never told a lie, and I never will.”

“Excuse me, young man.” A homeless man sitting against a brick wall breaks her out of her reverie. It takes her a second to realize he mistook her figure for a man’s in the dark. “Could you spare some change?”

“You’ll use it for food, right?” Snow asks, while checking if she has change in her bag.

“Yes,” the old man replies.

Snow’s hands glow brightly in the dark, so she buries them in the pockets of her suit jacket. “He must want money for drugs,” She assumes. “Figures.” She reminds herself not to lie and thinks up what to say to turn down the old man. “I’m not giving you money,” She says bluntly, as is her custom. The old man sulks dejectedly, as Snow turns around and continues on her way… back to her cold, empty apartment.