THE detective stood just outside the interrogation room door with his hands hiding in his pockets as his eyes stared at the paper his colleague was holding out near his eye level.

"What am I looking at?" His question caused the woman to nod her head. "This is a picture taken from inside the morgue. The forensic scientists insisted that I show it to you before they finish up the autopsy."

The man accepted the pictures from his colleague, his gaze fixated on their contents. It was a familiar picture of the corpse found in the Gluck's backyard, yet somehow clean from all the dust and the unnecessary details. The picture focused on the corpse's upper body, as it was the only thing visible.

"Do you see it, sir?"

The question rang through his ears as he continued to scan the picture with his dark orbs.

"W-What is it?" He accidentally stuttered out, seeing nothing but the rotten organs and the decaying flesh. As far as he could tell, it was a basic picture of a dead body.

However, when the gears in his mind began to spin, he began to realize it.

The visible bones had barely covered what looked like the remaining organs, the organs that were now decomposed and decayed. Some parts of the intestines were still visible to the naked eye, along with one kidney on the left side of the body, and now-black rotten lungs.

It hit him where he didn't realize it.

Griffin's mother had disappeared around a month before, meaning if she was directly buried in the same period, that meant that her organs, the organs they were looking at that very moment, were supposed to decay a while back, and only her bones were supposed to be visible.

But that body in front of him had organs still inside of its rib cage, along with some parts of her intestines and some occasional flesh on some parts of her bones.

That meant that Amanda Gluck was buried around two weeks before.

And then it clicked.

Two weeks before was a pretty popular date. After all, it was the famous ceremony his aunt held.

"She didn't die right away, did she?" The detective slowly spoke, his head spinning with thoughts. "She was somewhere before she died. But how can this be when she disappeared around a month ago? Where has she been this whole time?"

The woman nodded her head, slowly gulping down her saliva to take back some of the uncanny thoughts that went through her mind.

"That's not the only thing, detective."

The detective continued to stare at the picture, his eyes scanning all of its contents once again before he turned to his colleague, his forehead wrinkled in confusion.

"What is it?"

"Oh, detective." His colleague whispered. "Sometimes you focus on the little things too much, to the point where you sometimes miss the big things."

He furrowed his eyebrows in further bafflement at her sentence, and it didn't take long for the woman to point her finger at something in the picture, something he would've noticed if it even crossed his mind in the first place.

"She's missing some organs."

. . .

Mal sighed heavily as her back rested against the driver's seat, throwing her head back in distress before slowly turning to her lover.

"I didn't expect him to be... Like that." Her voice came out above a whisper, shaking with fear and concern. "I didn't expect him to be this broken. I thought he'd recover after a week had already passed..."

Recover after a week if he hit his shoulder playing baseball, her mind scolded her, not after being buried alive by his own father.

The thought had crossed her mind and made her barely nod her head in agreement. When the doctors had told her that they had to sedate her ex-boyfriend multiple times so that he couldn't go through a mental breakdown was something, but her image of Griffin was something else.

Griffin was always acting as if he was strong, and unbeatable, especially in front of his loved ones, including her. She certainly hadn't expected him to go through shock after what happened, but then again, it was a normal reaction to what had happened to him.

After all, it took Felix more than a month to move on from having his kidney stolen, and more than that to get through his speech trauma. Not that he could speak anymore, but with professional help, he was working on it.

Maybe professional help would work with Griffin too?

Would getting a licensed therapist make him feel the slightest bit better?

Maybe she was a little insensitive, and maybe she didn't understand how her best friend felt...

But she wanted him to get better, by any means possible.

"I want him to feel better..."

The image of her best friend crossed her mind, along with the memory of his pale skin, his tear-stricken eyes, and the heartbroken stare as he stared off into the distance.

"Me too," Felix replied, his voice raspy and hoarse, barely audible to her ears.

"I can't believe I lost both of my best friends in the same week..." Mal whispered, tears filling up her eyes as quickly as she could imagine. "This is terrible. Maybe Mum shouldn't have prepared this ceremony after all."

Felix's hand grabbed hers in a wave of reassurance, his thumb rubbing circles on her smooth skin.

"It's not your mum's fault." He mouthed, staring off into the distance as flashes of unwanted memories crossed his mind. "Everything has been going downhill for a while now. It's hard to believe this is the town we have been living in and got used to."

Mal nodded her head in agreement.

"Ever since my mother started her projects inside this town, so many people have been involved. So many people showed up and invested their money, so many people we don't know." She explained, shaking her head at the memories of all the ceremonies they had been to over the years, so many unfamiliar people began investing their money and properties. To the point where even her mother didn't know their roots, their origins.

"It's hard for me to believe what happened, let alone get over it." She whispered, a small tear escaped her eye and allowed itself to stream down her pale, exhausted face. "I genuinely don't know what I would do without you, or the rest of the members."

"I can't believe what happened too..." Felix nodded his head in agreement. "I'm sorry about everything."

She softly smiled at that, resting her head against the back of her seat while her fingers unconsciously rubbed random shapes on her lover's hand. With the comfortable silence that filled the car, her mind could only flow with one thought.

After all, the circumstances were more terrible than they both thought. It was true that she had lost her two best friends in two weeks, and everything was just going downhill. However, ever since the thought had crossed her mind in the first place, she always wanted to ask her lover to be her beloved husband.

And it was enough that she had lost multiple people over the last three months, including Felix himself. Her almost losing him made her realize how much she couldn't live without him. She had wanted to make their relationship official for a while now, and everyone rather knew it.

Everyone except Felix, that was.

The rings were in her purse, and overall she knew it was the worst timing ever, with the melancholic atmosphere that surrounded their every move.

But with her sitting in the car, with him by her side and them holding each other's hands, alone, it somehow seemed like the perfect time as well.

And she didn't know how, but his mere existence made her anticipate whatever was going to happen between them. She had loved him to death, and so did he.

So what was she waiting for?

It took her a few moments to swallow her saliva, gather her courage, and turn her head in his direction.

"Felix?"

He let out a soft hum in reply, encouraging her to continue as his gaze shifted towards her.

"I know this is, like, the worst timing ever, but..." She began, stopping her sentence mid-way to catch her breath. "Will you, by any chance, be willing to marry me?"

The question caught him by surprise, shock even. He glanced into her eyes, only to see them shining with hope, with her hand holding his tighter in anticipation.

And he couldn't help but listen to the sound of his heart shattering in the distance.

The last thing he needed right now was to break her heart, especially when they were both going through difficult times. He knew that she had just wanted to make their relationship official so that they would at least have something exciting going on. Nonetheless, so that they would at least have each other.

No matter what happened, they needed to stick together. That was their promise ever since their relationship started three years before.

But at that moment, he had no idea what he wanted anymore.

The last thing he wanted was for him to be an official burden on her. After all, he was still recovering from his incident for a while now. The same incident in that he had lost his kidney, along with any hope of ever being a normal person, not to mention that he had lost trust in himself.

He couldn't trust himself to be the perfect husband she needed, and he couldn't even trust himself with the fact that he was about to get better any time soon. He couldn't trust the fact that his incident might be the last situation he could get himself into, and he couldn't expect her to rescue him whenever he was in trouble.

His trauma, his nightmares, his illness, along with the fact that his speech wasn't getting any better. There was no way in hell was he going to give her more things to worry about. She was already doing so much for him, but with the entire package, it was hard for him to even believe that she wasn't going to get bored of him in a few months maximum.

Because any normal person would've just run away whenever they had the chance.

But she didn't.

And he couldn't help but wonder how long would it take for her to get tired of their relationship, of him.

Hell, he couldn't even respond to her.

"I-I..." He mumbled, his heart aching more than ever in his chest. "I can't..."

Her heart dropped to her chest almost immediately. Her hand trembled and her fingers unconsciously let go of his own, more tears already escaping her eyes and streaming down her cheeks. Tears that could tell her pain and shock, and if his heart wasn't already broken, it would certainly be now.

"I'm sorry," he whispered, tears of his own streaming down his face. "I'm really, really sorry..."

She opened her mouth in shock and stared off into the distance, ignoring the dull ache in her heart.

"I-It's fine." She found herself replying, despite her own mouth rejecting the attempt to speak any further. All she could repeat to herself was how could be so foolish? "So stupid of me, I shouldn't have asked. I'm sorry."

Despite how much his heart ached at the sentence, and despite how much he wanted to say something in objection, about how he didn't have a problem with the question and how she wasn't stupid, frankly, it was his problem, not hers...

But nothing came out, even if he wanted to wrap his arms around her and sink his face into her neck, then attempt to weakly apologize for breaking her trust and hurting her feelings.

All his mind could do was to tell him to get out of the car, so that he wouldn't ruin the situation any further. So that he wouldn't break her heart any further.

"I'm going to go back to our room, baby..." He whispered, to which she could weakly nod her head.

Ignoring the familiar urge to vomit his heart out with how much his stomach had been turning inside out for the past thirty minutes, he found himself opening the door to her Mercedes and hopping out.

"Bye, Felix."

And his heart broke at that too.

Because right now, he wasn't sunshine, darling, sweetheart, or even baby.

He was just Felix.