(3 years later)
*BEEP BEEP*
She finally 'woke up' to the sound of her alarm, instead of snoozing it again, for the 5th time, annoyed at it's perseverance. 'Stupid alarm', Blue thought to herself.
But as she sat up and truly became awake, a smile crept up her face. "It's my 19th birthday", she thought, "Peace will be getting me apple pie in bed any minute now."
"I'm Uuuuup", she yelled out, and waited for a few seconds just to receive silence.
Surprised, she got off the bed and walked to the door, almost terrified of whats on the other side of the door.
As she slowly opened the door, and saw what's on the other side, tears rolled down her cheeks. It was a room filled with balloons and gifts and pancakes on the table. In just a second everything was okay again, in a second she had stopped thinking about her 8th birthday.
"Hm", she murmured to herself, as she walked over to the pancakes, confused as to why there were pancakes and not birthday pie. As she reached the table, Blue noticed the note right next to it, reading " Hi Darling, happy birthday. It's been a wonderful 3 years together. I am sorry I couldn't be there to wake you up, I had to run to office. But I promise I'll be back soon, with the apple pie of course. I love you. See ya.".
Tiara sat down on the couch with the plate of pancakes in her hand, sighing.
"I wish he was here", she murmured to herself, switching on the TV. She flipped through the channels, and stopped at the news channel.
As she took her first bite, she realised she needed a little more maple syrup. "Ugh", she groaned.
With a piece of pancake in her mouth, she walked over to the kitchen counter, looking for the syrup.
As she was going through the contents of the upper shelf, she heard something that brought back a lot of memories, or rather nightmares.
The news reporter was reading out something about Ointrel, which had now become a country that no one really knew anything about. They had intense security, and really liked to maintain their privacy, in any way possible. Any breach in their system of security was considered treason. And by breach they meant anyone trying to enter the country without official invitation from their President, who no one knew.
As she walked over back to the couch, poured the maple syrup over the pancakes and took a bite, the taste reminded her of the pancakes her father made. Memories of her eighth birthday floated right back into her mind, like it had just happened a few moments ago. She lay down on the couch, bringing her knees to her chest and forming a little cocoon with her body.
Before she knew it, she was sobbing. She needed Peace, she needed him then and there.
This was the first birthday he hadn't been here. The first time since they had met on her sixteenth birthday, she remembered, slowly her mind started to calm down.
She kept thinking about him, making herself feel better, and forgetting anything and everything that had happened to her before him, he always made her feel better. She started to lose herself in the memories, smiling. The first time he called her beautiful, how they had both said they loved the same apple pie, how he had chased her down, how he had asked her if she was new to the building just to start a conversa- wait. Suddenly she realised something he never had before.
Peace had said he'd never been to New York before. He'd lived and brought up in New Orleans, but then how did he know she was new to the building? He had no way of knowing unless he had been stalking her, but why would he? Maybe it was just a random question, she thought, but no, it couldn't be, she thought, as she remembered that as he had dropped her back home that day, and they had taken the lift up, and as she'd told him she lived on the 14th floor, he'd pressed it without much thought.
In general circumstances that wouldn't have been a big deal, but in that building, the buttons weren't placed in order, they were placed however. They were mixed up.
You see, when the building was initially being constructed, it was not supposed to have an elevator, but halfway through the construction, the owner of the building had changed, and so had the demographic for it. The new owner, while he had a specific idea of how he wanted the building to look, was not very bent on actually checking if everything was being done right, that's why like several other anomalies in the building, the buttons of the lift were not in order.
Anyone who got on the lift for the first time spent the first few minutes perplexed as to what button worked how. Most people assumed that while the numbers where messed up, they still probably worked in order, and would count up the buttons to the floor they wanted. Then, on reaching the floor, they would be even more confused when they wouldn't end up on the florr the wanted, but instead on the floor that the button said. But he knew, just like that.
How did he know?
Suddenly, all of Peace's activities, that had otherwise seemed just careless or stupid, started seeming suspicious. Like how he never told her what actually happened to his parents, or where in New Orleans he grew up, he always got too sad to speak about it. Or how he always had sudden errands to run at odd hours. Or how he said he worked at an NGO, but always needed to wear a suit and tie to work. Or how he never let her use his work computer or even open it.
Or how every time she figured out his phone password, he would end up losing it.
She suddenly realised she had never been to his office, she actually had no idea where he went. He never brought home anything office related. What did he really do?
Blue's mind became a box full of questions, and she knew exactly what she had to do, and she had always been very good at it.
Investigate.
The only catch was, did she really want to risk everything she had, to know the truth? Was it worth it?
She knew the answer to that before she had even thought through the question completely.
After all, in her mind, there was only one question,
'Who are you, Peace?'.
