"I think we should split up."

Twenty- year -old Huohu Wang couldn't believe his ears. His girlfriend of 6 years whom he loved with all his heart was breaking up with him just out of the blue. He brushes a hand through his neck-length brown hair in utter disbelief, not knowing why the woman would make such a drastic decision.

"What?" was all he was able to muster up in his shock. Within the mist of confusion clouding his mind, he struggles furiously to understand what went wrong as his face remains unchanged from its surprised state.

"It's just not working out," she tells him monotonously.

"How?" choked Huohu, a mixture of anger and sadness mingling within his heart. In his left hand, he clutches a silver ring so tightly it was embedding its etchings into the palm of his hand. It was the one reason why he had wanted to see her tonight, the one thing that was going to change their lives forever. He didn't realize that she also had a reason to meet him tonight. Someone was supposed to be surprised tonight and it wasn't supposed to be him.

"I'm sorry," the woman spoke as short black strands of her hair fell over her eyes. "You'll find someone better."

"How can I find someone better when I already found the best?" Huohu utters quietly, hanging his head.

Ling Li forces a tiny smile upon her petite face in a wasted effort to cheer him up. She then puts her hands in the pockets of her jean pants in order to keep herself from touching him.

Looking into her eyes, Huohu could tell there was something more to her sudden decision. He could feel the immense heat in his chest as he fights back tears.

"But we've been together for so long," he exclaims, trying to keep himself from yelling. He looks up at her with pain in his eyes. "I wanted to give—"

"STOP!"

Ling turns around as soon as she saw him bring up his fisted left hand. Now it was her turn to fight back tears.

"Please… don't…" she begs pleadingly, her back still turned to him. Quietly, she spoke. "You don't… understand…"

"Why are you doing this?" Huohu asks desperately. "What went wrong? What's wrong?"

Turning around, Ling pulls her jade bead bracelet off her left hand and puts it in his free hand. Closing his fingers around it, she grasps his new fist with her hands and looks down.

"I don't know if I'll come back," she whispers inaudibly.

"What?"

Ling releases her hold on his hand and slowly backs away; the meek smile still on her face though her sorrowful eyes betray her.

"Goodbye…"

CHAPTER 1

Opening his eyes, Huohu was greeted by the warm rays of the sun peeking through the blinds of his bedroom. Groaning, he rolls over and looks at his alarm clock.

4:06

Why can't I sleep? he wonders to himself as he lies in his bed and stares up at the white ceiling above him. He hasn't been able to sleep well for a whole month.

Not since… the breakup.

Dang it.

Huohu rolls on his side, clutching the pillow and forcing his eyes shut in hopes he would fall back to sleep. Moments later, he sighs exasperatedly as soon as he finds he couldn't and decides to give up. Rolling back onto his back, Huohu stares up at the ceiling once again. His mind is a swirling soup of questions and answers to explain the sudden change in his girlfriend.

No, he refuses to refer to her as his ex-girlfriend. Somewhere, down in the deepest recesses of his heart, the breakup was not a choice she wanted to make. She had to break up with him. But why? The reason had to be something big, something dangerous that affected them both. There was no reason for Ling to leave him. They were everything to each other.

Blackmail?

But who? And for what? Huohu can't think of anyone who would possibly want to hurt either him or Ling. They weren't widely known, but they weren't unknown either. Huohu is a journalist for a high-end Beijing news company and Ling provides photos for him as a photographer. Ling had a thing for hands-on stuff so art had always been her calling. Her drawings were what drew Huohu to him. He couldn't draw to save his life, but he could write like nobody's business. His expressed his creativity though his literature, having finished a novella and was halfway through his second while in high school.

He and Ling met in the United States and went to the same high school. Despite Mandarin Chinese being his native language, his English was as good as any native speaker. Many times, he was mistaken as a U.S. citizen because his English was so good despite the medium Chinese accent that coated his words. Ling had began learning English when she was still a child in China so she was able to speak about as well as Huohu could, although with a much heavier accent. She didn't think much of it as she much preferred to read and write in her native language. Unlike many others, Ling can remember traditional characters better than simplified. She abhorred simplified characters so much that she made it her mission to learn traditional characters and only traditional characters. This made things very difficult for her on the mainland as much of China had adopted the use of simplified characters in everyday text.

Rolling over on his other side, Huohu glances over at his alarm clock.

4:32

Had he been lying in bed for that long? It seemed less than what he thought.

With a final stretch, Huohu finally decides to get out of bed. Sitting on the mattress with his feet on the floor, he looks over at his nightstand at the framed photo sitting behind the alarm clock. It was a picture of him and Ling standing nonchalantly at a convention in America. It was the first time he ever saw her smile and they were together ever since.

Until a month ago.

Huohu rubs the sleep out of his eyes and heads for the bathroom to wash up. He didn't have work until 10:00 so he was at a loss for what to do for six hours. As he brushes his teeth, something big and furry came in and began sniffing his feet. Unalarmed, Huohu looks down to see the face of his Pekingese mix gazing up at him with his little pink tongue lolling out of his pressed muzzle.

"Hungry, I suppose?" spoke Huohu after spitting out the mixture of toothpaste and saliva that was gathering up in his mouth.

The dog sneezes on his feet and looks back up at the man.

"Thanks," mutters Huohu, wiping his feet with some toilet paper as the dog playfully tries to rip it out of his hand.

"Xiao'xin, go find your ball," Huohu commanded and he watches as the dog speeds out of the bathroom into the apartment to look for his beloved toy.

Smiling, Huohu reaches for his face towel to clean off the toothpaste still on his face. He is grateful that the canine was well-trained and housebroken. When he had moved into his current one-bedroom apartment three years ago, he expressed to Ling how he was going to feel lonely living all by himself. At the time, it was meant as an invitation for her to come live with him. He totally did not expect her to go and buy a puppy for him, although she did make sure he was apartment-friendly. The last thing she wanted was for him to get grief from his neighbors about the dog misbehaving.

Walking out of the bathroom, Huohu heads for his closet to take out his outfit for the day: a dark red t-shirt and a pair of blue jeans. As he changed, he could feel the presence of Xiao'xin coming back into his bedroom with ball in mouth. As he pulled his pants on, Huohu began remembering how Ling had named the red puppy herself, stating that the reason she named him so was because of how Huohu was always telling her to be careful when she goes out in the field to photograph. People have looked at him funny whenever he takes Xiao'xin out for walks since it seemed as if he's constantly telling the dog to be careful when he was actually calling its name.

Ling…

He couldn't stop thinking about her ever since that night. In the past month, he had been unable to reach her via cell phone and she hadn't updated any of the social network sites they are on. She did have her own weblog which acts as her private diary, but she never applied any privacy restrictions on it since she never told anyone about. Since she didn't put any information about her on the weblog's profile page, she never had to worry about someone close to her reading it since they wouldn't know it was her. But Huohu knew her well, well enough to recognize her writing and its trademarks. She doesn't know that he knows about her weblog and it's a secret he's kept out of concern if anything should happen. A secret that was well-kept, for three nights ago, he checked her weblog to find that she had a new entry that spoke of her being tired of fighting and wanting to end everything. To anyone else, this would be a sign of suicidal intentions, but Huohu knew better. It meant something, but he didn't know what. Was she involved in something big and hiding it from him? Or did something happen that she didn't want him to know?

Taking a seat at the kitchen counter, he sighs deeply and rubs his face with both hands. All this thinking was driving him nuts. It was just as possible that she simply didn't love him anymore. Why can't he just accept that and just move on?

A tug at his ankle brings him back into reality and Huohu saunters over to the pantry to grab the bag of dog food sitting inside. With a glad growl, Xiao'xin watches as his food bowl was replenished and then went to work to empty it once again. Huohu just took out a box of cereal and began pouring some into a bowl as the sound of Xiao'xin's munching fills the air. Going to the fridge to get some soymilk, he suddenly hears the sound of knocking coming from the front door. Curious as to whom it could possibly be visiting him so early in the morning, Huohu shuts the refrigerator door gently and walks over to the door. Peering through the peephole, he could see the familiar face of Ling's beloved younger cousin, looking rather anxious than calm and collected like he usually is. An unsettling feeling formed in the pit of his stomach as Huohu unlocks the door.

"Tianchui?" he says questioningly, raising an eyebrow.

The spiky-haired young man steps quickly into the apartment and turns to face Huohu. Immediately, Xiao'xin was at his feet, sniffing up the guest.

"Huo," he began, his voice filled with concern. "You haven't by any chance seen or heard from Ling lately, have you?"

An extremely puzzled look overtook Huohu's face as he stares at the young man.

"How would I know?" he asks him.

Now it was Tianchui's turn to have a puzzled look on his face. "Wait, what? How… You're her boyfriend, so it's only natural I would ask you of all people."

What? thought Huohu. Tianchui and Ling grew up together and were so close; they were practically joined at the hips. Ling's cousin is her best friend in the whole world; he's like a brother to her, the brother she never had as she had only sisters for siblings. There was almost nothing Ling knew that Tianchui didn't know, so it would only be natural that he would be the first one to know about the breakup. Seeing that he doesn't seem to have a clue only served to worry Huohu even more.

"Ling… didn't tell you?" he says in confusion.

"Tell me what?" wonders Tianchui as he prepares to hear something shocking.

"Ling… she broke up with me a month ago," Huohu answers sadly, closing his eyes.

A dead silence filled the room as the two men stood and looked at one another. Tianchui's mouth gaped open while Xiao'xin sits down and gazes up at him with curiosity in his eyes.

"What, why, she didn't tell me anything," stuttered Tianchui. "Why didn't she tell me?"

"That is a very good question," articulated Huohu, crossing his arms. This was a troubling development in addition to Ling's mysterious weblog entry. "When was the last time you talked or spoke to her?"

"I saw her last week," answered Tianchui. "I left to visit my brother in Hong Kong and she was gone when I came back. The apartment seemed as it's been untouched since I left."

Right, Tianchui shares a two-bedroom apartment with Ling, thought Huohu.

"It was really creepy for some reason," noted Tianchui, hugging himself as he envisioned the state of the apartment upon his return. "I mean, I've been alone in the apartment before, but something felt different this time."

"Did Ling leave a message or anything?" questioned Huohu as Xiao'xin saunters over to the couch and hops up to get a better view of the two men.

"No," said Tianchui. "She always leaves a message on the fridge when she's gone, but I didn't find anything."

Scratching the back of his head, Tianchui goes over to the couch and sits down right next to Xiao'xin, who walks over and settles in his lap.

"It's weird," he continues, laying a hand on the dog's head. "Ling never closes the door to her room except when she's changing. But, for the past few months, she's kept the door closed almost all the time."

He begins scratching the dog's head.

"Whenever I ask her what she was doing, she just tells me she's researching. She always finds something to do when she's not working, you know? But, whatever she's been doing lately, I've been getting a bad feeling about it."

He looks over at Huohu. "What says you, Mr. Sixth Sense?"

"I don't have a sixth sense," affirmed Huohu, taking a seat in the armchair near the couch. Truth be told, Huohu had a latent sixth sense when he was a child, able to see things that no one else could. Eventually, he lost his sixth sense and any memories of that time have been long forgotten. He told Ling and Tianchui this once and that was when he was unceremoniously dubbed Mr. Sixth Sense. "But, I have been having a bad feeling ever since Ling broke up with me."

He looks over at the living room clock to see that it was 8:43.

"I have to go to work soon," he says, turning back to Tianchui. "If you find out anything about Ling, could you let me know?"

"Actually…" began the younger man as he held Xiao'xin close. "Could I stay here for a while? I don't feel comfortable going back to the apartment by myself."

"… Sure," Huohu replies as he grabs his keys off the coffee table. "And while you're here, you could finish the bowl of cereal on the counter for me."

Opening the door, Huohu was about to step out when a thought occurred to him.

"Hey, Tianchui," he exclaims without looking back. "After I get back, let's go over to your place."

There was a moment of silence as he could tell Tianchui was contemplating the prospect of returning to what was once his sanctuary.

"… Okay."

Nodding in response, Huohu went out and locked the door behind him.