《Beneath the surface - ZhanYi version》

《Chapter 6《part 1》》

"I have learned more in the darkness of my life, than in the light of any classroom . . ."

***

It has been some unfortunate months since the passing of Ely's case; it still makes me shift in my chair, knowing he was likely still out there somewhere, roaming the world with hatred in his heart.

The mask he had carved was so neat, and only rarely did he slip up; whenever I think back to all of it, there were some red flags, but even the little prince hadn't been able to put his finger on them back then.

It was just the unsettling feeling in the way he would sometimes look, but we couldn't have expected things to turn out the way it did.

My father had sent a special force team out to try and track him down, but it was as if Ely had turned into a shadow, disappearing into the night that he fell.

It told me all I needed to know that even the best team my father had dispatched couldn't find Ely.

Ever since that happened, I felt like there was a bridge between my father and my relationship, a gap unable to be bridged; we had barely spoken and when in the same room, it would often be quiet.

In the past, when this happened, my mother would always appear, calling us out for being so stubborn as a mule and getting us to bridge that space, but since the day she left, there had been a gaping wound in our hearts that never closed.

We were two boats on a stormy sea drifting further apart every second.

On the other hand, the little prince and I had grown closer than ever; even though we had not worked on any case since Ely's incident, we still made the best of our time together, spending each waking moment with each other.

We were in a sort of almost honeymoon phase, and sometimes, people around us would try to avoid us or look the other way when it came to the PDA.

Even though months had passed, something still bugged me to this day: the accidental switching of files; the little prince had tried to shrug it off, but I knew it bothered him.

I had promised to find out more about his identity, but the little prince seemed to shy away from it every time, and even though I spit through the whole internet database, there was nothing to find about a young man named Xiao Zhan.

It was as if he never existed.

And that, of course, made many conspiracy theories rise in my mind, from being a refugee to someone whose identity had to get sealed for someone's safety.

I pushed the thoughts aside, closing my laptop after another failed research into Xiao Zhan and whether he was my little prince.

Everything I tried led to a dead-end; it just felt impossible.

I glanced sideways at him; he had slung himself over the couch, immersed in another one of his many psychology books as he turned the page.

With one finger, the little prince pushed his glasses higher, his eyes glued to the book.

I had always questioned if ghosts have the remaining features of when they passed away.

Do they still have the same interests, or do they create a different, almost alternative personality as a ghost compared to when they were still alive?

It was always a complicated topic we spoke about in our education of doing our job because sometimes ghosts change, sometimes they don't, and some are so good at hiding behind a mask that they don't even know for themselves what the real version is of who they were. Just like humans, my mind supplied in a whisper.