University of Wonderland

Chapter Thirty-Two

Hearing Sehun's confession brought back emotions I'd tried hard to suppress after my parent's death. I attempted to concentrate in my next class, but the words in all my textbooks said the same thing: My parents might have been murdered. In the middle of the teacher's lecture, I suddenly stood up from my desk. I didn't even notice people were staring at me until the teacher cleared her throat and asked where I thought I was going.

Even though the lights were lowered to movie-theater ambiance, I squinted as if they were too bright, trying to focus on her but only seeing a blury blob. "Uh . . . I don't feel well." I didn't wait for her approval. I walked through the classroom to the door, smacking into the desks along the way. I slowly walked into the hallway that tipped so much it seemed it might slide right off the face of the Earth. I didn't stop moving until my legs carried me out of the building and all the way to the bus stop.

At the library, I looked over newspaper articles about the accident. It was exactly what Sehun had said: very little information with vague details. One article speculated on the set of tire tracks left on the road, suggesting the other-car theory and requesting that the drivers of the offending vehicle come forward. When no one did, the paper retracted its statement at the request of - dun-dun-dun - the city hall, whose expert analyst confirmed that the second set of tires was still me parents' car, spinning out fo control. The large-animal theory resurfaced after that.

When the running nose escaped from my nose at the computer screen, I packed up my things an dsat in the cold air outside the library until the wind stung my cheeks and froze my tears.

I wanted to interrogate people, find out more information but I didn't know who to confront. At school the next day I asked Sulli if the city would ever escort to murder, but she just said, "This isn't the mafia."

I concluded that Sehun had been telling the truth about Sulli's ignorance over this. I decided not to ask Shin-Hye because I'd figured if she knew about a potential murder plot involving our parents, she wouldn't be working at City Hall. Maybe that was why they put her - an amateur - in charge of such an important investigation. They thought she could lead them to the ecotage suspect because of her ties to Eomma and Appa. Keep your enemies close.

Which left Sehun as my only news source. Each time I saw him, fired off questions about the accident. He didn't know what to believe since the lack of ecidence supported and refuted both theories. I felt like we were agruing about whether God existed or not. Or what exactly was that brown, goopy stuff on the salad bar at school.

"What do you think?" he asked me in between stolen kisses in the school hallway, his body pressing my back into the gray lockers. It took me a moment to remember what he'd even asked. Kissing must be one of the causes of amnesia. "Do you think it's true?"

"I think . . . I want it to be false." I don't want  Shin-Hye's employer, possibly even her boss, to be capable of murder.

He interwined his hands in mine. "Then let's sgree it's false."

It's false. I repeated the words over and over until they were imprinted on my brain, stamped there so I couldn't deny them anymore.

And that worked. Only for a few hours. Later that night I lay in bed unable to sleep, my head spinning. If my parents had been murdered, I needed to know. They deserved to have the culprit behind bars, not running free, able to do it again. All my other sources for information were dead ends. Except one . . .

I jump out of my bed, my pulse pounding with a new kind of determination. Fear and adrenaline mixed together to create a caffeine cocktail even Starbucks could copy. My head buzzed as I slid on my trusty black hoddie, courtesy of Sulli. I slipped on black leggins and black ballet flats. I could be simply going to dance class, if it wasn't in the middle of the night. I tied my hair into a tight bun and secured it with a headband. Defense against unwanted flyaways and security-camera identification. Sunglasses completed my disguise.

I took extra care descending the stairs. Once upon a crime I'd gone through Shin-Hye's bag; I'd been an amateur. Now I was practically a veteran at snooping.

A single breath left my mouth as I pulled out my sister's keys, fingers sliding between the metal like toe-dividers at the nail salon. Not even a clink sounded as I stuffed them into the front pocket of my hoodie.

I closed the door behind me and headed to City Hall to break and enter.

=^_^= . . . =^_^=

A short update for today~