Cryptic Crimes - AU

chapter one - impostor

Dahlia pulls tightly on her violet hoodie strings, it's raining hard outside. The rainfall from outside was practically corrupting her house with coldness.

She glances down at her brightly-lit up phone, which hurts to stare at. The light illuminates her dark room. She's playing Among Us.

She squints at the screen, she still hasn't adapted to the darkness in her room. The screen reads, "Impostor".

She scrambles up from her slouched position quickly, almost knocking her dog, Winnie, off the bed.

Dahlia doesn't seem to care, though. She's glued to her phone screen.

Winnie growls, but Dahlia could care less right now.

What she cared about right now, was getting a two-streak Impostor win.

---

Dahlia ends up losing that round.

She screams into one of her pillows.

She was close to getting another win, but one of her friends, Zara, outed her.

Unfortunately, Zara had seen her vent, so Dahlia was voted off.

She quickly sends a "fuck you" to Zara on their Discord server, which contained her friend group. Their friend group was quite big, containing 7 people, including Dahlia.

Dahlia, being 16, was one of the older people in her friend group, so that earned her the role, "elderly" in their Discord server. Of course, she didn't mind, but she was often teased by Taylor, one of the "youngsters", only being 15 years old. The oldest person was Daniel, who was 17. Dahlia didn't really favor Daniel, he was annoying, at least to her, and definitely not a reserved person. He also seemed to hurt one of her long-time best friends, Allison, quite often. Not like she completely blamed him..

Kaiden was also not a favorite. He just gave off stalker vibes to Dahlia. She never really liked him in the first place, she made it clear a couple of months ago, or even years ago. Somehow, Kaiden knew a lot about her, so that was another reason on why she should stay away from him.

But, enough about her views on her friends, Dahlia was a collected and organized person herself. She wasn't completely reserved, but reserved enough. She never really cared about people's boundaries, but sometimes she respected them.

Flipping her long, dark brown hair to the side, only for it to go back in it's original spot, she answered another one of her friend's call, Yeosang.

"What do you want? It's like, 1 am," Dahlia says tiredly.

"Kaiden wants to help out at a crime scene," he explains casually.

"Kaiden wants to- he wants to WHAT?" Dahlia exclaims, almost falling off her bed. Winnie squeals from her spot on the bed and runs out of Dahlia's room.

"Yeah," Yeosang responds.

"How the hell are you so calm about this? You know, for all I know, he could've been the cause of the crime," Dahlia says with frustration.

"One of us is the impostor," Yeosang comments.

"Funny, I was playing Among Us with Zara earlier," Dahlia adds.

Dahlia chokes back on a giggle, she's still processing what Kaiden wants to do.

"So, a- a real crime scene?" Dahlia asks, biting her lower lip.

"Yeah. A real one. He says the blood is still fresh."

Dahlia feels like throwing up.

"You're disgusting," she huffs, "I'm going to sleep."

She hangs up without saying bye and sets her phone down on her nightstand.

She had time to think about Kaiden's offer, but for now, sleep was taking up half of her brain and body.