On top of the nearest apartment, there he was; his striking gray eyes locked on hers, filling her small little heart with ineffable emotions she could not describe in profound words.

It was as though her feet were nailed to the ground, her whole body frozen and had ice trickling with water down at her sides, chilling her legs with stiffness. She swore it wasn't sweat that had been stuffing up to remove her flexibility. The wind was slapping her cheeks hard that night as her tied up hair danced with the flawless night breeze.

Her heart didn't migrate in fear yet she was strained, Aiya's limbs unable to move in the way she wanted. Bringing out her maximum force, brought upon the storm of twinging pain to every bone she possessed. Her mind was supposed to be the commander, the one demanding her body to at least instigate a mere flinch. But in a few more seconds, she discovered that it was her heart that was in full control of at that moment.

She should've just turned away, asked her half-brother why he suddenly gazed at that man out of nowhere, who that man is, and why he's been watching them. Something wasn't right from the minute Quinn surrendered himself.

He isn't even the real culprit, Aiya pondered, her brows, furiously screaming for being tricked into one of his games, knitted together as to figuring out if it was that man at the apartment who did the murder.

"What are you playing at? I know you aren't Trevor's murderer. I've seen you handling a kitchen knife and it's not a nice scenery to look at."

Before she noticed it, the devouring sensation had been eaten away by her consciousness, determined to get the facts straight and prove justice for Trevor. She shifted her feet closer to her half-brother, elaborating eyes blazing with a fiery flame of persistency and her chest becoming shallow and hollow each time she had been reminded of her late butler.

Quinn stretched the edges of his lips to the side. An infuriating widened smirk nibbled on Aiya's patience. "Perhaps I was just pretending. You may never know."

She almost screamed out of frustration if not for her strong practiced self control. Aiya immediately took a deep breath and answered, "You almost chopped off your little finger if not for our father watching your every move. Taking desparate measures just for the sake of keeping up the pretend? And you're telling me you're the one who sliced through his vital points precisely?"

"Alright fine. And I admit that I'm not good at kitchen stuff, but you and I both know who the killer is." Quinn rolled his eyes out of annoyance, folding his arms across his chest. He attempted to avoid her gaze to prevent the amount of pressure from burning him. Soon enough, his brownish irises threw sharpened pointy daggers back at the top of the building.

She looked once again. He was still there, watching her every move and frozen in place. With that feeling she experienced before, Aiya recognized who he was. From just the dark uncombed hair and grown body structure, she already knew. Even though he had grown a lot, Aiya's brain fused with the bafflement of what was real and was fake. "No. He can't be. He's just living in my head-"

"You mean, living in your heart?" Quinn taunted, cutting her sentence and pointing at her chest.

"Shut up."

"Will do, lil' sis."

That was one thing she never understood from Quinn. He was a month older, they had different mothers, he had been named as the inheritor of almost everything she wanted, they never last one minute without arguing, and he was all brilliant smiles while she was almost being consumed by her degrading frowns.

So why was it that no matter how many fights they'd been in, he always listened to her words? Always done everything she asked for her to do and always remembering the promises he made that she'd forgotten. She shouldn't be despising him, yet Aiya did. After all, he was the reason her biological mother died.

Flashing lights began to shine on them. Cameras glued onto the scene, the crowd surrounding them with no escape from every corner. Her breath trembled from the coldness of the night. Quinn's lips formed an 'o' as he learned of how easily she revealed a clue about the real identity of the Midnight Detective.

Quinn, the only son of the mysterious big company president everyone the whole world knew about, was related to Lumiere's very own Midnight Detective. It was a huge shock for everyone; eyes bulging as their lips pulled apart and jaws started to drop.

"Oh shit," she blurted out. Her palm glued onto her face, contemplated, thinking what she should next.

He laughed at the result he wanted. Lumiere therefore knew of how they both were acquainted. The accused killer and the prodigious detective were siblings: contrasting ones at that.

Heh, funny though, she mused as she tasted the icky disgust on the tip of her tongue, we are different starting from our mothers. Both of you are shameless, leaving me and my mother almost on the verge of being kicked out of the family.

Unfortunately, life didn't give her the chance to see what she predicted. Aiya thought it'd be better rather than not having a mother at all. She was the last person to ever give her the definition what love really means. And because of the loneliness she encountered in life, that knowledge of hers melted away. She couldn't reform it back. She could only find it. But how do you find something that rarely existed nowadays?

Aiya just gave up in the end.

Reporters instantly jumped out of the crowd, microphones and cameras were pointed at them like an edgy sword dedicated to plunge deep into their open wounds. Quinn gave a flashing smile, disregarding the fact that he wrongly surrendered himself as a murderer, in front of the lenses while Aiya just hid behind him, like the shadow she always had been. The police force ran to surround the children in the nick of time before he reporters got to them. Inspector Graham's knitted brows of worry and narrowed eyes at the Veleen siblings signified that he knew them. That it was his job to protect them.

Diamond Veleen wasn't known in Lumiere. Only a few people recognized the young lady of the Veleens. One of them was Damon Graham, a detective in his late thirties and for all she could remember, one of her father's closest friends.

Now it was either Inspector Graham would tell the fact that his friend's daughter had escaped his reigns or he'd keep silent and let her still be free, just how she wanted to be.

The most digressing part of her night was Quinn. He was a tattletale; a snitch who couldn't even keep one mere secret. And that boy who she thought to be an imaginary friend wasn't so imaginary.

Kei, she reminisced his short name.

She wanted to meet with him again, this time with a conversation even if it's short. She wanted to talk to him again, but then she remembered her father. That day was filled with lasts. She couldn't remember how she beared to carry everything over her chest. It was the last day she saw Kei. The last day she was naive to Quinn. The last day she wanted to prove that love still existed between her and her father. And the last day she had her mother since she slept for eternity, leaving Aiya to despair in the darkness.

Without Midnight Detective, she'd be a bird in a cage. But without the life of Diamond Veleen, she'd become a puppet only pulled with strings by her father and half-brother for all her entire life.

She had to choose one. It was only unfortunate she quickly chose to become trapped.