„It's you.

You called to ask how I was doing… I was cleaning up the surrounding areas.

You know… I cannot forget the times I spent with you.

All the times I spent with you… were so precious. I even questioned whether it's alright for me to be that happy.

For some reason my eyes keep watering…

Funny… I'm really happy right now…

I'm so happy to listen to your voice… but why?

Did you know that you have an unique habit when you talk?

Looks like you didn't know.

Um… I won't tell you. If I tell you… I feel like your habit only I knew about… will disappear.

I'll keep this my secret forever, this habit even you didn't know.

Anyway, I'm… I really liked it… Talking with you and learning about you one by one.

Whenever I learned more about you… No, whenever you talked to me, my heart raced.

At first, I didn't know what was happening to me because this never happened before. My heart raced, and I was so happy I thought I could die… You taught me what this all means, what it means to feel the flutter inside.

And as I got to know you day by day…

I… I think I've come to treasure you in my heart.

You know, I really like you. I really really like you a lot…

You showed a whole new world to me.

My world has infinitely widened from the small attic-like world I lived in by meeting you.

Thank you. Thank you…

You're such a warm person… I really wanted to be happy with you…

I didn't have the courage till the last minute… I was really glad when you called. Thank you.

I wanted to tell you that.

Thank you… I love you."

The night was cold back then. You were shivering, the silence disturbed by soft noise the machines next to you made, the ones that were supposed to make sure the person laying in the bed was stable.

V was safe, that you were sure of. He was peaceful, laying here, not bothered by anything. The whole world seemed so far away from him. All that happened all along. He looked as if he forgot about it already, drowned in the world of his own.

Your hands trembled when you dialed the same number for the second time. Then the third, the fourth.

Nothing.

The bad feeling never left you, not even for a while.

And it was only worse when, in the morning, Seven's words confirmed your worst predictions.

„So… everything ended well, right?" Zen smiled softly, glancing at the ceiling. After all the stress he went through, RFA could finally see him at ease.

"Guess so…" Yoosung mumbled, staring down at the beer Zen bought to cheer everyone up.

V had been released from the hospital fairly quickly and everyone decided to chill out together, now that everything seemed fine.

You, V, Zen, Yoosung, Jumin and Jaehee.

Zen was the most relieved about all the things. V didn't speak much, he was obviously still tired and no one let him even stand up on his own yet. Yoosung was a bit quiet, but tried to joke along. Jumin and Jaehee were exhausted, but both of them seemed the most like usual. The special unit didn't need all the attention anymore. Everyone deserved some rest and they finally got it.

Only your thoughts were clouded, as you sat in the middle of the room, staring at the TV as if the movie actually absorbed you.

It didn't and you didn't even try to lie to yourself.

"Ah, we should have more meetings like this… Even trust fund kid isn't as annoying as usual when he's tired" Zen smirked. His attitude was starting to get on your nerves, but you knew he wasn't doing it on purpose. It was only natural though… to be annoyed by people who didn't understand you, right?

"You talk a lot as for someone who didn't even move a finger to guarantee the RFA's safety" Jumin answered, crossing his arms, but not sparing him even a single glance, his eyes fixated on the screen.

"Hey, I took care of Yoosung…! You can't imagine how bothersome he was…" he sighed tiredly.

"Zen…! I'm not a kid, you know…" Yoosung whined quietly. "You say it as if you were babysitting me!"

"Come on, it was almost like babysitting… You looked as if you were about to do something incredibly stupid, so I had to watch over you all the time~"

"If you're so exhausted by a mere few days of babysitting, I'm not surprised you chose a career that doesn't require you to get married" Jumin said with a soft smirk that made Jaehee get amazingly pale in less than a second.

"Taking care of a baby is not an easy duty, Mr. Han…"

"Guys, but I'm not a baby, stop it already!"

Everyone laughed, except for Yoosung, who pouted and turned away from them. It seemed as if they just needed it. To laugh a bit, to chill out, to forget about what just happened.

Even V seemed as if he already didn't think about it anymore. About Ray, about Rika, about the Mint Eye. How come it was so easy for him to just throw it aside?

You tried to be mad. Your thoughts were clear: he was the only person that could be blamed for what happened now, ever since Rika ended in the mental hospital as she clearly wasn't in her right mind anymore. And still, V seemed to… get out of it the most comfortable way possible, well, aside from his physical injuries.

You desperately felt as if you needed someone to blame.

And yet… no matter how much you thought about it, you could only blame yourself.

For not being there. For not realizing earlier.

You couldn't be cheerful, careless, act as if nothing happened. Not after what you heard. The last words still echoed in your head.

I love you.

The overwhelming tension you felt ever since you escaped with V, all of it suddenly wrapped around you tightly, making you feel as if you were about to suffocate.

The high walls of sorrow, trapping you inside, crushing you more and more with every passing second.

Everyone could see you getting worse. No one knew how to help you. Because no one, except for V, knew what was the reason of your state. Others probably thought you just needed to somehow relieve all the stress, everyone would be overwhelmed after what you came through in such a short amount of time, right?

But it was not the case. V knew only part of the truth. All he knew was that someone died, and that you were somehow attached to that person.

He wasn't there when you heard that voice: the voice filled with sorrow, overwhelming sadness. Voice of the person who was completely broken, the person who's been left by everyone else. V was sleeping, not even thinking about it, not realizing the pain you were going through, the pain way worse than the physical one he had to experience.

And you also weren't where you were supposed to be. Not there, in the Mint Eye, where your heart stayed even after you ran away. Maybe if you didn't leave, or maybe if you came back, or even just tried to come back, telling him to go and take you away… Maybe it'd be different. Maybe he wouldn't…

Or would it be the end of the both of you?

Was it… what should have happened?

You couldn't know it.

Overwhelming helplessness made a single tear escape the corner of your eye, your head hurting from all the crying you went through so far. It's been only three days and you couldn't stop grieving.

You felt as if you'd never be able to.

His eyes were focused on the screen. Nothing could disturb him as his fingers tapped the keyboard in a regular, almost boring way. The tapping echoed through the room along with the shuffling of aluminum bags being picked up and tossed into a trashcan.

"How come you make such horrible mess even when you don't move away from your computer…?" the quiet murmur almost reached his ears, but he was too focused to notice it anyway.

The redhead stared at the screen as the satellite photoshoots appeared and for a few seconds, there was such silence surrounding them that Vanderwood was genuinely curious if the agent didn't faint in the meanwhile. It was the third day since he started working and he didn't get any sleep in this time. His only friend was this junk food that made him look like a zombie, but at least be productive.

And he didn't even touch the actual work he had to do, Vanderwood sighed.

Seven didn't look good lately. Ever since the mysterious explosion, when he almost barged into the burning residence, he tried to restore all the information from all the sources he could find. The files saved on computers in there were mostly destroyed, but he worked on what he could find.

And it seemed as if everything he found was somehow suspicious.

Vanderwood didn't question it.

"This…"

Seven's eyes flickered and his hands froze in the air right before he was about to start tapping again.

His associate stalked closer, quietly glancing over his shoulder, but knowing better than to say a word.

"No…"

His voice died down and his shoulders trembled slightly.

"Huh? Seven? What's going on?"

In a blink of an eye, he got up, almost tripping over his own feet and making the chair collide loudly with the ground.

Without a single word, he ran to the door.

"Ack- wait! What with the wor-"

"Need to talk to V" Seven mumbled.

A second later, the door slammed behind him.

Vanderwood shook his head in disbelief, staring at the door for a while.

Was he annoyed? More than ever. Was he surprised? Not at all.

Before he returned to cleaning all the mess Seven left, he briefly glanced at the satellite photos, still opened on the huge screen of his computer.

In one of them, fairly small, there was a boy. Injured, with his clothes torn apart, which wasn't too clear because of the photo's quality. But even the monochromatic coloring didn't hide his white hair, dirty and messed by the hot wind breathing onto him from the nearby fire.

„We need to talk… about that hacker."

Seven's hand gripped tightly his phone as the other made sure his car doesn't turn suddenly, keeping the steering wheel stable.

"What do you… want to know?" V's voice was quiet all of sudden, but the boy didn't really mind it much. His heart was racing from nervousness.

"I… What would I want to know? It's just…" He took a deep breath. "He didn't die in the fire."

"What?"

He could almost feel V's facade drop and he heard some shuffling, along with someone's voice telling him to not move too much.

"Wait a moment."

"Are you still at Zen's place?"

"Yes, but…"

"I will be there in a few minutes."

"I… don't know if it's a good idea."

"What? Why?"

There was a short silence on the other side of the phone. V sighed softly and Seven heard even more shuffling. Someone mumbled incoherently, trying to stop him from moving too much, but it seemed that everyone was already too drunk to actually care.

The soft, quiet voice could be heard when V spoke again, probably from a place where he couldn't be heard by the others.

"Are you sure about that…?"

"I… don't know if he's still alive. He's injured. But he escaped the building, that I'm sure of. V… I know it's been three days, but he may still be somewhere in this forest. He could be not able to escape too far. No one really checked it. If it's true, we need to find him before anyone else does. Or before he… I don't want him to die, V."

"I don't either, but…"

"But…?"

"MC."

"Huh?"

V's voice quivered slightly, betraying his own nervousness. He was clearly reluctant to talk about this, even more that any second someone could hear what he was talking about.

"She… can't know."

"What…?"

"She can't. Promise me that you won't tell her about it. Or anyone else in the RFA. And… It'll be the best if you just leave it to me."

"Wha- V! Are you kidding…? Did we go through the whole start to fucking trust others phase only to make more secrets…?"

"…"

"MC deserves to know. And I won't leave it either."

"Luciel, I really think you shouldn't-"

"And I think you should take it seriously for once."

He threw the phone onto the backseat, not even caring whether or not the call ends from the impact.

He drove silently for a few minutes, his mind emptied. He didn't even know where to go now. V complicated things, as always. He didn't change at all.

Rika wasn't the problem from the beginning. The problem was V himself.

He stopped the car in the middle of the road and stared at the dark surroundings. It was late, almost midnight. He just barged out without a single thought, only knowing what he wants to do. Was he at least a bit considerate? Should he really risk that much only because of this suspicious feeling he had now?

Because he was more than sure that he shouldn't just leave it like this.

Was there a reason why he was so desperate to continue this inquiry? Why couldn't he just let go of it?

Maybe it was because it was the first time he met someone who could actually be a competition to him? The hacker's skills were impressive, that's for sure. They made Seven curious, more than ever.

From the moment he started digging, he kept having that weird feeling: it didn't let him give up, even when he collapsed while going to the bathroom during this three days long restless work.

He didn't hesitate even for a second opening the car's door, even though he knew how dangerous driving in this state could be. Was it still devoutness or should he already call it stupidity?

Now he did hesitate. Something seemed very off in this all. Some pieces of this puzzle seemed to be missing, preventing him from finding the final answer. His mind was empty for a moment, and now all the thoughts came back with such a force that his head spun.

He rushed out of the car, slamming the door closed and leaned against it, breathing heavily.

What was wrong, what was going on?!

He couldn't calm down now.

He heard the faint sound of his phone on the backseat and turned around, expecting to see V's number on the screen, ready to reject the call or just ignore it.

But that wasn't it. The phone showed a number he already knew, even though he didn't use it too often.

It belonged to MC.

He opened the back door and reached for the phone, pressing the green button and without a word, placing the phone next to his ear.

"Seven…?"

"MC… What's up?" he asked, trying to sound as cheerful as possible. The tiredness in his voice was more than clear though, he could tell how unconvincing he was right now.

"Is this… true? Is he…" She cleared her throat, trying to sound calm. He could hear her voice trembling though. "I heard you talking with V just now, is he… Is Ray… alive…?"

"It's…"

"Seven… Please, don't lie to me… Not you, at least…"

"V wouldn't approve talking about thi-"

"I couldn't care less now. Seven. If he really is alive. If there's a chance. The smallest chance that he didn't die, that he… That he is somewhere, alone, without anyone to help him now… Please, help me look for him. I can't leave him, I can't leave him alone, Seven. Ever again."

He took a deep breath and held it in his lungs for a while, before letting it out heavily.

He slowly closed the back door and got back onto the driver's seat. He shook his head in disbelief.

And spoke.

"Wait at Zen's place, I will pick you up. Sneak out so that V doesn't notice. He can't find out. And you need to tell me everything you know. I will need more info. Deal?"

"I'll be waiting."