Disclaimer: I still put these damnable things for some reason, and some of you still read them for some reason... You won't learn anything new with this, so why? because this useless thing always stated the fact that I don't own 1/2 Prince... If I did... I bet this story wouldn't exist or be like the hack series that are mysteriously having common characters... or was it the game? (I got bored at some point and I don't remember).

Anyway, 1/2 Prince is not mine, but I'm not upset since I'm proud of my little baby ^_^

Previously in LK ICE:

Day 0: Love hotel + Missunderstandings + Kidnapping

Night 0 : Murder of the kidnappers + Alice cuts her hair with a knife (epic, but don't try it at home) and after chasing out Mr. Driver she faints.

Day 1 : Alice gives the order to erase her existence -to the guys in her secret network- along with her father's, taking care of not affecting his brother as much as possible.

Night 1 : "Alice" dies, Liang gets kidnapped and then his sister -who is not really dead- says her farewell.

Day 2 : Alice wakes up at Mei's, and after taking "Zhuo Xia" to the neurologist she decides not to tell her friend about the amnesia.

Night 2: Darkness tries to confess and is knocked out.

Day 3: Fa-gege accepts Alice's death, Jiao decides to conceal the fact that "Alice" is dead by all means possible and President Long (who doesn't know what's going on with the Alice issue) Hears the very misleading conversation between his little flower and Mei, but decides to support the "Path" she chose as long as it makes her happy.

Night 3: Darkness learns a valuable lesson (he will never accept loverboy's love advice again)

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This chapter was going to be dedicated to fighter136 and SummertimeSun who made a request a long time ago ^_^... But SummertimeSun hasn't reviewed me in like forever, so I concluded he didn't read this anymore, so...

THIS CHAPTER IS FOR FIGHTER136!

\(^V^)/ CHEERS FOR YOU!\(^V^)/

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Ch 24: The last pieces of the puzzle.

*Phweeeee* The vapor coming out of the teapot could be heard echoing in the walls of a kitchen. Three maids where assembled next to it, whispering softly, so the sound of the device could drown out their voices as much as possible, making it impossible for others than the ones standing a step away from each other to hear their exchanges.

"The president is such a stingy person, if not for Alice providing money for our silence, and for whatever causality, we would all have long have quit by now."

"Right, right, just because his company is not doing well it doesn't give him the right to cut our incomes. It's not like we have to pay for his problems!"

"And we have to put up with his abnormal demands anyway."

"Geeze even a peck of dust is unacceptable for him! We practically keep the windows closed 24/7 to prevent that for happening!"

"And he is so stingy that when he comes he orders to turn down the light's to save electricity, we can barely see a thing the nights he is around since we only can get light by candles, how can anyone be so stingy?"

"Pfft, I bet that it's because he is using the lack of light so none of us notice that he is wearing a wig."

"You think so too?"

All the girls giggled.

"You should stop saying nonsense." An old authoritative maid approached the giggling trio.

"Charlotte!" The three of them chorused at the old maid's approach.

Charlotte walked towards them with a serious expression that vanished after verifying that not another soul was around the place, and with a gossiping expression she stood up by their side so the loudly sounding teapot could drown her voice as well.

"Is there any news?" She asked.

"There is nothing much since yesterday." A maid named Ai replied

"Nothing here either." Another named Beatrice added

"I see." Charlotte said disappointedly.

Alice hadn't come home for the past four days, and despite the fact that it was announced by one of the President's employees that Alice was aboard with her mother, none of the maids in the sect believed a word of it; after all, if that was true then Charlotte would have received a report beforehand.

As things grew suspicious after a night of absence, the four of them had taken care of disposing of Alice's personal items as she instructed them to do in a situation such as this, and they -well aware of Alice's illegal antics to some extent- had executed the procedure until the once pink colored room, looked no different than a guest room, the only difference being that this one was twice as big.

"I do have something to report." The youngest of them said timidly, earning a surprised look from the other three; after all, she was not a very chatty fellow and she was bad at gathering info.

They all knew about the six or so cops that met the young master in his room behind shut doors several days ago and have been searching all around for more info, with hardly any luck. And since the people left in the sect was a small number -due to the majority of their former members retiring for: old age, personal motives, marrying, or simply because they got fed up of putting up with their 'boss'- they were extremely close to each other.

"Go ahead and report." Charlotte commanded.

"Yesterday I received a call from my sister Erin, who had been looking for clues about Miss Alice's situation, since she is deeply grateful for supporting her, when she was fired by the boss who refused to pay her a maternity leave." Darla made a pause and put an angry expression, still resentful for the despicable gesture.

"Keep going." Charlotte reminded her and so she did. "Up till now we had been suspecting that Alice was being chased by the police, but what my sister found out suggest that we where wrong all along. My sister poked around and stumbled upon a journalist who was writing a story about the corpse of an unknown girl who had been shot to death -for an unknown reason by an unknown criminal- and was burnt inside a car to erase all evidence of her murderer."

Darla made a pause to breath before continuing. "The story was bought by an anonymous person but the same person asked the police to catch the culprit at all costs. And that incident happened the same night that the cops came home; and even if that isn't suspicious enough to jump to conclusions, it looks like our Young Master was found collapsed and injured near the crime scene."

"WOW! Erin is still the best! to think that even after all this years she still has it in her." Ai shouted exitedly, and the other three looked at her with a frown, such a loud tone of voice was defeating the purpose of talking beside the teapot.

"There you were!" A non important maid -who didn't belong in the sect- was drawn by Ai's voice and came into their way. "You girls should stop chatting in here, there is a lot to clean right now."

"They have my permission to being here right now." Charlotte turned around and the angry maid backed down.

"Fine! but as soon as you are over with you conversation get back to work." She hissed and then walked away with a broom in hand.

The four maids turned to each other once again. There wouldn't be much of a difference to go clean now or not. The house was pretty much clean as always, but since it was scheduled that the president was on his way, there was no helping that the ones who where relatively new were panicking. However the ones left since the old days knew that a certain ogre would complain no matter how clean the the house was, so they calmly remained in the kitchen.

"Darla, please resume your report." Charlotte commanded and Darla nodded.

"It seems like the person who was killed at that point was Alice at first glance, however Erin kept on digging over the matter and then she discovered that the girl who died was 3 cm taller than Alice. This info is unknown to anyone else, since she investigated things, and made the visit to the morgue herself..."

"But why was someone who can't possibly be Alice be made to look like she is?" Ai interrupted again, this time a lot softer.

"Well that's simple." Charlotte concluded. "Someone wanted to make Alice dissapear, but the ones doing so didn't want to harm her or expose her -which discards her being discovered and murdered for it- so I can only conclude that this was planned by either a friend of Alice's or Alice herself... She is alive and hiding somewhere right now."

"No way!" Ai shouted again, but before she could say any more she had her mouth covered by several hands that prevented her loud voice bring any more attention.

The other maids were equally impressed by the news, but they knew better than to make a big fuss about it in public. Now the important thing was to decide on what actions to take given the situation.

"Why do you think Alice would vanish if she wasn't discovered?" Beatrice asked Darla with some curiosity.

"I don't know." Darla admitted. She was not as smart as her sister and not as good searching up things and the only reason she was in the sect was since they considered her trustworthy and for being Erin's sister and having a debt of gratitude to Alice for her help.

"I see." Beatrice trailed off with a dissapointed tone. 'If Darla was half as good at gathering Intel as Erin things would be so much more convenient'

"I have a suggestion." Ai spoke, and the others looked at her with tiredness. 'Has she ever suggested something useful?'

Ai ignored the other's disdainful looks and talked her mind anyway. "Even if we don't know the reason why Alice did this, the most wise thing to do is take actions on the premise that Alice is dead... Charlotte, you should stop supplying the extra payment for the rest of the staff." She added after much thought.

"Why is that?" Charlotte asked with confusion.'what kind of plan is that?' "This will obviously lead to the employs quitting; and might lead to people discovering that Alic was getting money from somewhere-"

"But it should be impossible to trace it to her now that she is 'dead'." Ai clarified, and many of them realized that for once she was not speaking random nonsense.

This suggestion -and the implications of it- caused an uproar. "How can you say that? If we stop the income to the other ones it would be really prejudicial to them!" Beatrice was indignant.

"It might be, but it might be not." Ai declared. "The result of it would only be that they will quit, and will be forced to search for a job elsewhere. If we don't do this now the money on the account will be depleted, and things will go down the same road."

Ai carefully looked for understanding in the other's eyes before finally making her point. "But there is a big difference in cutting the payments now and doing so in two to three months, and that is that people on the staff would start make a big fuss about things"

"You might be right." Darla frowned. "The staff of the house is aware of Alice's interference, but her family isn't; given the circumstances we should attempt to talk to them and since the majority of them was helped at some point they would simply quit and back off for respect to the dead."

"Don't be so naive." Beatrice pointed out. "The source of the income might have been kept a secret so far since everyone knew that if a word of Miss Alice's action's were heard, their own income would suffer a big loss, but now that there is no 'next extra payment' it's a matter of time for someone to spill things out."

All of them were in silence once again. What to do from now on? It was a delicate problem. And they wanted to protect Alice's secret, in part for that they felt that she was one of them, and the other since they had made an oath.

"What should we do?" Darla wailed, completely at lost.

The silence thickened once more. But then Charlotte made a decision. "We shall do as Ai sugested."

"Ehhhh!" This time it wasn't only Ai who exclaimed too loudly in surprise. "Why is that?" The other three chorused, surprised that the conversation seemed to be going in the opposite way.

Charlotte put a finger over her mouth -reminding them that they were supposed to be quiet- before she explained further. "Out of us four no other employe left in the house knows what Miss Alice had been up to; they think that they are being paid but Alice's father doesn't know about her cooking hobby and possible lover, since she sleeps out so often and sneaks back in the house without her family noticing. That much is to be expected since her father is so oppressive and her brother too overprotective."

"I see!" Darla clasped her hands. "So what we have to do, is do nothing!"

"To think that you managed to make the whole thing sound so idiotic." Beatrice complained angrily of Darla's lack of brains, then adding irritatedly, "In any case, things are going to explode on payday by the end of the month."

"Yeah, and I bet that when it happens the staff will ask for a rise in the salary, and even if they got it -which is hard considering the economic situation in this family- it never would reach the generous amount Miss Alice provided and the majority of them will throw a tantrum and quit." Charlote added.

"To think that it will be known that Alice had an income even bigger than her brother's, I bet that the whole thing will be huge!" Ai gestured wildly, but remembered not to raise her voice.

"Then shall we quit before the whole thing happens?" Darla asked seriously.

"Of course not!" They chorused and she flinched closing her eyes, not knowing who was saying what, but too embarrassed to care.

"If we quit now, things would be even worse! After all, it would scream suspicious that the four of us would be the first ones to run."

"That would clearly point out that we knew this was coming."

"Besides, we still need to find out many things like the reason of this turn for events."

"Plus if Charlotte quits, then there will be an uproar! Since she is the one who distributes the money that Alice provides."

"AAAAAND we have to make a plan before jumping into unemployment."

"Geeze you are so clueless..." Beatrice finally concluded at the same time Darla opened her eyes.

"Then?" Darla asked timidly, and thus the others glared at her and chorused. "We stay let things be until the payday."

"ARE YOU GOING TO KEEP CHATTING IN THE KITCHEN FOREVER OR WHAT? THE PRESIDENT SHOULD BE ARRIVING ANYTIME SOON!" The new maid that had passed by before was now yelling on the top of her lungs in panic.

"Lets get to work!" Charlotte said enthusiastically and the others repeated her words -much to the relief of the new girl.


Meanwhile in Taiwan...


Behind the bars of a prison a man in a suit sat. He looked extremely angry and confused; normally such a formal suit wouldn't be allowed in such a place and the prisoner would have been forced to wear the standard issue prison uniform, however no one had both the heart and the guts to force the very distressed man to change into it. The last three days had been hell for him, and now he was waiting for his personal lawyer to arrive from China to Taiwan.

"Good evening." The lawyer bowed respectfully to the man who he had been serving for years.

"What did you find?" Asked the fancy prisoner, too impatient to bother greeting him back.

The old lawyer took out a couple of papers and gave them to him. Usually the man would have read them patiently, but the circumstances where not the usual ones; he had been framed, he knew it, he had been unable to take out money from his account to pay for the hotel fees so he was imprisoned for it. He called had the bank, however, the inefficient employee insisted that he had the wrong bank. 'It had to be a woman'

"I will read the details later, tell me about the situation." He urged the lawyer to speak.

The lawyer nodded and then breathed deeply before he started speaking. "I have been researching for the past 3 days, and to put it blunty the results are that you don't exist."

"What do you mean by that? Of course I exist, I even own a prestigious company in China-"

"Not anymore." The lawyer interrupted. "All virtual proof of existence had been swept clean, your birthday certificate disappeared, your bank accounts deleted and every single one of your properties including the company and the mansion are now under the name of Liang Liwei Men…"

The president paled as the lawyer kept talking for ten more minutes explaining the gravity of the situation; however as he finished listing everything he found in the last days of research, Lang-hao Meng tried to see if the lawyer had overlooked something. "What about the birth certificate of my son?" The president asked with the hope that it proved his existence, after all if his son was the one owning the company now his certificate must state that Liang was 'Meng Lang-hao's' son.

"I'm afraid Mister Meng, that it has been altered both virtually and in paper. I asked for a copy of it and you don't appear as the father. The one who does is 'Manchu Ping Meng', Your father, and thus your son is, by law, the second generation owner of Meng's…"

The lawyer kept talking about really complicated legal stuff that made the president pale even further and even after the lawyer had nothing else to report he sat there in silence, lost. He didn't know what to think or what to do.

"Whoever the person was I don't think it could have been your son." The Lawyer spoke after 5 minutes of silence that seemed to stretch forever.

Having a lead of where to start with his suspicions now he asked to the man on the other side of the bars. "Why do you say so? To me it seems like the current state of affairs could only benefit my son, since all the propieties are now under his name."

"Don't get me wrong President, but to go this far to get his hands over everything that you posses now is not woth the trouble." The lawyer stated and after he received a death glare from his boss he clarified further. "To do something like erasing a person is not an easy feat, it requires not only a wide net and great influence, but also a huge amount of money. If your son had any of those, then he could have funded a company of his own, or buy another in a better situation… the point is that the amount of money this person put in destroying you, to the extent of making even the papers with your signature, fingerprints record and police records disappear, must have had at least twice the amount of money needed to pay back the company's debt… And the fact that it was aimed only at you shows that it was out of a personal grudge…" The lawyer paused and looked with some distress to the prisoner. "May I know who was the one you offended?"

"I haven't offended anyone as influential as the one you describe."

"Are you sure? I would want to remind you that, as your lawyer, the more I know the better I can prepare for your defense."

"Do you think I'm stupid? Of course I know that! I wouldn't hide anything that could help you find the identity of the fuck head who made this sick joke to me!"

"I understand Mister Meng, please excuse my mistake, I will be taking my leave then."

"Wait! There is something else I want to ask."

The lawyer stopped in his tracks and the other man continued. "What about the money from my daughters life insurance?"

"I didn't know you had a daughter Mister Meng."

"Of course I have a daughter, Alice Meng."

The lawyer put a very startled expression, the man had never mentioned having a daughter in all his years of service to him, so when he asked him about his daughter he took out his phone to call the detective working in the case, and whose repot had been apparently incomplete.

The call was answered ASAP by the detective and both of them had a very long discussion after which something seemed to click in both men.

"Interesting." The lawyer finally said, and the then he hurried to enlighten the man who had been ignored for the whole length of the call.

"And well, what about the insurance money?" Asked the President before the lawyer could began explaining, worried for his beloved company.

The lawyer put an unredeable expression as he told the man the gist of what he has discussed with the detective. "It seem that whoever deleted you, did the same with everything related to your daughter. In fact, contrary to the procedure done in your case, this one was even more drastic, to the point of being impossible to find out that there was such a person living in the house."

"What do you mean by that? Hadn't I been erased as well, how can a person be even more nonexistent than one who doesn't exist anymore?"

"It's simple, in your case every legal proof vanished; but on the other one -your daughter's case- things like tooth brushes, books, toys and other personal items were nowhere to be found. On top of it, there was no picture of her, no recording of her, nothing, like she had never existed in the first place, not even a wisp of dust could be found about her; which leads me to believe that this whole situation might be related with your daughter's death."

"How so? Are you trying to tell me she did this? Impossible, my daughter is dead, there is even a corpse to prove it."

"Maybe a friend of your daughter discovered what you had done and is having revenge for her sake?"

"That's absurd, my daughter has no friends; she was the black sheep, the shame of our family and she was antisocial to the point of being easily mistaken for an autistic... How could a person like that -who even failed to serve the simple purpose of keeping her engagement in place- have someone willing to go this far for her? the only good point she had was her looks, which she inherited from her mother..."

"That might be it." The lawyer pointed out. "But maybe she had a lover, or a person who desired her enough to grief him into doing this."

"Find out who he is." The president roared, infuriated with the man who was set on destroying him for the sake of someone as unworthy as his daughter.

"I understand" The lawyer said with a business expression as he requested "But before I go any futher I would like to get the payment for my services so far."

"What do you mean? I payed you in advance already." Lang-Hao roared.

"That was then and this is now" The lawyer smiled "As things stand, to help you get back in the game I would be going against a person who shouldn't be messed with, and to do so, there is no amount of money you could -in your current state- offer to me in this situation; so I'm afraid you are on your own from now onward."

"We have a contract, have you forgotten?" He reminded.

"I'm afraid I can't have a contract with a person who doesn't exist." The lawyer smirk grew bigger as he saw the man pale.

"Are you planning to betray me as well?" He said not wanting to believe what he just heard.

Ignoring the plea, hidden into the last words of the man behind bars; he gave a shameless grin as he stated. "It was a pleasure doing business with you, good night." And with not even a single wisp of remorse the lawyer walked out of the cell trying to decide in what he was going to spend the money he received 3 days ago.


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AN: Hurray for the new chapter! \(^v^)/

I looked for days for a Chinese name that meant something among the lines of 'greedy bastard' and 'stingy murderer', but there was not a single one of them, so I decided to name Alice's father "Lang-Hao"which means generous, for the sake of irony.

Review and comment!

Ps: To lilT, my regular schedule was supposed to be on Mondays not Fridays... but I guess that my not being able to hold the chapter until the fated day made you feel that way; so, for the sake of brightening your damned Friday I decided to post it even earlier than usual ^_^