The next time Oliver visited Mai's apartment; he went alone. It had been two days and he still had not heard a word from her, and neither had Sarah.

Gene was convinced that Oliver had

pissed Mai off somehow.

Oliver was convinced that something far more concerning had happened.

He managed to enter the apartment block as someone else left. He climbed the stairs three at a time and banged on Mai's door as soon as he could reach it.

There was no reply.

He hammered his fist onto the door again.

"Mai? Mai, answer the door."

A quiet meow permeated the crack between the door and the frame.

"Luna? Go and get Mai."

"Sir…?"

Oliver spun around to see a teenage boy wearing a scruffy school uniform.

"What?"

"I have a spare key to Mai's apartment. I feed Luna sometimes. We haven't seen Mai in a few days but—"

"Open the door," Oliver ordered. "Now."

The teenager scrambled to pull his set of keys from his pocket and open the door. Luna was waiting to greet them with loud and hungry whine.

"Feed the cat," Oliver said to the boy, who jumped to do as he was told.

He looked around. Nothing appeared out of place. At least, nothing appeared out of place from what he could remember…

"Does anything look different to you?" he asked the boy.

"Uhh…" He stopped pouring out cat biscuits and looked around. "No…?"

Oliver rolled his eyes and headed into the bedroom. The bed had not been made. It appeared to have been slept in. A reasonable number of cat hairs had accumulated on the bedsheet next to Mai's pillow; Luna had been sleeping there.

So, Mai had been gone long enough for Luna to take a nap.

That did not narrow down anything.

"Uhh, Mister?" The teenager was standing in the doorway.

"What?"

"What's your name?"

Oliver frowned momentarily. Then answered. It wasn't entirely unsurprising that a teenage boy didn't know who he was.

"Oliver."

"There's a letter for you."

The boy held out an envelope with Oliver's name written on it.

"Where was it?"

"On the kitchen counter. It's not Mai's writing."

Oliver took it from him and ripped it open. The letter inside read:

Dear Oliver,

Come alone and tell no one. We have your friend. We'll release her when we have what we want.

At the bottom was an address.

"What does it say?"

"What's your name?" Oliver asked, ignoring the boy's question.

"Elijah."

"Elijah, great, keep the key you have and keep feeding Luna. Mai, pays you right?" Oliver pulled his wallet from his pocket and pulled out a few notes. He pressed the money into the teenager's hands. "This should keep you going until—"

"I can't take this much!"

"I don't have time to argue with you. This letter has Mai's location. I need to go to her. Look after the cat."

Oliver left without a backwards glance.


The last thing Madoka expected to see on her drive to work was Oliver Griffiths walking out of a run-down apartment and climbing into a hire car. She knew it to be Oliver — and not Eugene — because he was scowling.

What on earth was he doing in a place like this? Even Madoka, with her measly salary, could afford to live in a nicer area than this.

She did a U-turn, and began to follow the hire car. He drove like he was in a hurry, Madoka thought, but she would be in a hurry to get out of here.

It was unlike one of the Griffiths brothers to be without their bodyguard.

She followed for quite some time, almost half an hour. Eventually, the hire car pulled into the driveway to a warehouse. Madoka drove on and pulled into the next entrance. She grabbed her camera and abandoned her car behind a skip. Sneaking up to the fence line, she soon spotted Griffiths waiting by his hire car. He was looking around and checking his phone every few seconds.

Madoka pulled out her own phone and messaged Kim with where she was and what had happened so far.

Ten minutes passed.

Another car, the sort you'd expect an average family with two kids to own, parked up by the hire car. Madoka raised her camera and began to snap.

A man climbed out of the car and looked around. He smiled awkwardly at Oliver Griffiths. He offered a hand that the model refused to shake.

Madoka's mind was running wild. What was going on? Whatever it was, it looked sketchy. She grinned. Finally, the perfect Griffiths twins were not so perfect.

She expected some kind of handover. A package. Money in a briefcase.

But there was nothing.

She continued to take pictures as Griffiths threw his phone back into the hire car. The other man then bound Griffiths's hands together with duct tape. Griffiths then got willingly into the other man's car and they drove off.

Madoka swore. She would never make it to her car in time to follow them. But Griffiths had left his phone.

That would be worth more to her than gold dust.

She drove around and searched the hire car. She found the phone easily. It sat on the driver's seat. Madoka pocketed it and looked for anything else that could be of value to her. But there was nothing obvious.

She returned to her own car and uploaded the photos from her camera, via her phone, to the company's shared cloud storage. After another message to Kim to start writing the article, Madoka hit the road; it was time to get back to the office.


Lin frowned as he read the number of the caller ringing his phone. He did not recognise it. He swiped to answer in a reluctant manner.

"Hello? Who is this?"

"Lin? Is that you? I've been trying to get hold of Gene but he won't answer. Have you seen the pictures yet?"

Lin recognised the voice as that of Yasuhara, the lawyer.

"The twins are both still sleeping. They had a night shoot last night."

"Have you seen the photos?"

"What photos?" Lin asked.

"Get on Twitter. One of them has had pictures taken of them and… Well, I don't know, the theories are rife."

Lin put Yasuhara on speakerphone and opened up Twitter. He ignored his usual feed and checked the trending tags. The photos to which Yasuhara referred was top of the list.

"What on earth…"

Lin left his own room and barged into Gene's room. The young man jumped awake at the sound.

"Lin? What's wrong?"

Lin ignored him and headed for Oliver's room. It was empty.

"Fuck."

"I can start looking into ways of getting the picture taken down," Yasuhara's voice said from the phone, "but now that is it up, it'll be hard to squash the rumours."

"Lin? What's going on?" Gene had followed Lin into Oliver's room. "Where's Noll?"

Lin answered by showing Gene the photos.

"Why…? Why is he in a random car with… Who is that? Why are Noll's hands bound?"

"Your guess is as good as mine. He must have left before I was up," Lin muttered.

"Do you want me to try and squash the rumours or—"

"No, find out who took those photos and where. I'm going to check his phone's location."

"Osamu?" Gene mumbled. "What are—"

"He contacted me about the photos in the first place," Lin explained. "Do what you can Yasuhara." He hung up the call. "Go and get dressed. We need to find your brother."

"But why would he go willingly?"

"I can only imagine this other person is blackmailing him somehow. I only wish the photos had shown this other person's face. From what we can see, I'd suggest an older white man, but that doesn't exactly narrow it down."

Gene ran his hands through his hair.

"But what would they blackmail him over? Noll is squeaky clean?" Gene's face dropped. "It's got to be over her… It's about Mai, isn't it?"

Lin pondered the suggestion for a moment.

"It's the only thing that makes sense."


Author's note: So I haven't died of coronavirus or suicidal thoughts. This is short, but it was the right place to end it. Please review!