"So, did Hoseok reply yet?" Irene asked as she walked beside her fiancé, arms linked together.

The younger shook his head 'no', slightly distracted.

"They're definitely weirder than we are, right?" Irene laughed out at Jackson's question a minute later. They had just reached her house and she had asked if they could take a walk around the neighbourhood. She knew that Jackson had been thinking about their afternoon with Mark and Mae.

After Mark had gotten out, he had sighed and then tried to reassure Jackson that he wasn't mad at him. But by the look on his face, Irene knew something else was on his mind. Jackson too seemed unsatisfied and itching to say so many things, which she usually only saw when he was working on a case or dealing with his father's business.

But then again, Mark was a part of his new endeavours. Well not new, but this is the first time they had been able to pick up on something related to the shoot out ten years ago. They were finally at a promising starting point, all those years she had seen the man she loved kill himself over all those dead leads, and now there was Mark. If Mark turns out to be the boy from the picture, this would change everything.

When Mark and Mae had left, the girl seeming so happy for reasons Irene couldn't understand. Jackson- she could tell- had a million thoughts flowing through his mind.

He had told her everything that had happened, down to the tiny details of Mark's jaded reaction.

'It was like he just suddenly decided he didn't want to have fun.'

She recalled him say when they waited at a red light, his fingered tapping on the steering wheel, just like he does when he reads through his files when he thinks he's missed something. Like when he knew there was just something he couldn't see or hadn't noticed yet. But that wasn't possible, Jackson was a brilliant observant, even as a child. He could pick up on every small detail, but for some reason Mark had managed to raffle his feathers. Without even trying, mind you. Not many people have the ability to make Jackson second guess himself. It's what got him here in the first place.

Trying to convince herself some (because Jackson was never wrong, but he's gotten her overthinking everything too now) she suggested that maybe Mark was just tired. She knew first-hand what Jackson's stamina was like, there were nights she'd be kept up all the way until morning, all catering to Jackson's youthful spunk. Maybe Mark needed a breather and didn't want to show it, because pride became a thing that mattered every now and then.

Jackson on the other hand, couldn't help but overthink. He knew that look Mark had when he had turned up behind him, all tense and rigid. It was a look of control, the type one would wear to enshroud his perturbation and unease. It was the look that haunted him till this very day. The look on his mother's face as she ushered him out the room. The last look he saw on her beautiful face.

Jackson's phone had dinged at that moment, and the youngster felt strangely nervous all of a sudden. If the fingerprints he'd manage to scan off Mark's laptop matched that of the boy's, he knew things will take a drastic turn from here on.

"So, what's the results?" Irene asked as she peered into Jackson's phone screen.

"Oh wow, you were right. Mark Tuan is the survivor." Irene said as she brought her hand over her mouth in utter shock. How did Mark even manage to survive that entire episode?

Jackson for sure thought that when the results came back as a match, he would have been at least a little bit enthusiastic about it. But all he felt now was a sense of dread that he could really understand himself.

All he knew now was that, Mark was the same kid from when he was eleven. That would mean that Mark was Michael Osaka's son. That would mean that he also probably worked for his father...and that could only mean that he was going to have to hurt Mark.

That sudden revelation somehow managed to send a shiver down Jackson's spine.

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 [ Well, that was short.

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