The car parked near a wooden cottage in the mountains. Will visibly furrowed his brows upon seeing another car parked in there. When they got off the car a man with red highlights in his hair appeared in front of them. With the biggest smile that reached from ear to ear, Ren said in a single breath,"Hi guys! What took you so long? I have been waiting for a good half an hour here!"
"How come you are here?" Will asked seriously.
"Answer me and I"ll answer you!" Ren said playfully.
"Hey, Ren! Sorry about that. It was kinda my fault for taking ages to change." Sia said a bit apologetically.
"Oh, it"s no problem at all if it was just that. I thought something may have happened. Like, the beautiful you getting kidnapped or something." Ren said laughing without realising the effects of his seemingly harmless words.
"No, nothing of the sort happened," Sia said smiling but she couldn"t control the darkness that was now invading her sight.
"It"s alright now, I am not that weak anymore," she thought and the next second all her negative thoughts were replaced with a genuine smile.
"Now answer my question," Will said strictly but his eyes didn"t leave Sia"s face.
"I could swear I saw something in her expression. Or was it perhaps just the lighting? "
"I am here cause the source of the scandals stopped," Ren answered happily and stealing a glance at Sia continued, "The guy had his own reasons to retract."
Sia"s interested was picked. If she knew about the person"s ident.i.ty who was behind the past events, wouldn"t she get closer to knowing King"s ident.i.ty?
"But is it actually right to do that? I mean, he isn"t telling me because of his own reasons. If I sneak about his ident.i.ty wouldn"t that be a kind of a betrayal? But then if I wait for him he might take ages to tell me."
All these thoughts crossed her mind in a matter of seconds and she soon came to a conclusion as to how to deal with her dilemma:
"Screw it! I am just gonna give it a try if it works it works! If it doesn"t I won"t pry into it."
"So you knew who was behind the scandals?" she asked with the greatest interest.
At her words a cold sweat started forming on Ren"s forehead: after all, he couldn"t simply say that it was Cain who went crazy after he learned of their crush on her. He was thinking of what to say when Will answered instead;
"Not exactly. It was one of the best hackers in the world who released the scandals, so we couldn"t trace back their ident.i.ty."
"This should be safe. Even Ren and Alex think that number 1 is just someone working for Cain."
Sia could tell that they were hiding something but she stayed true to her words: she didn"t pry any deeper. "I guess what"s not meant to happen won"t happen."
"Oh, that"s Ok! So, on a different note, shall we go in or are we staying here?" Sia said trying to lift the heavy atmosphere.
Will quickly answered with a smile, "You go in and look around the cottage. We will come in a moment."
Sia nodded and went in. Even if her curiosity was killing her she knew where to draw lines.
--
After Sia was gone Will turned to Ren and asked seriously,
"Now, the full story. What happened and how come you are here? I remember full well that we didn"t tell you about our outing."
"Yeah, you traitors didn"t. But that doesn"t mean I don"t have my ways of knowing!" Ren said with a hurt expression.
"Ren, stop it. Tell me everything. And you better be quick!"
Seeing that Will was running out of patience, Ren took a deep breath and with all the previous playfulness replaced by seriousness he started narrating,
"What do you want to hear? Is it not clear that it was Cain? He stopped the scandals but hacked into my computer with a message saying the location of your outing. But more importantly there was a big warning in there for both of us." Ren started searching his suit pockets and taking out his phone he opened a message and showed it to Will. It read:
"Seems like my kind warning wasn"t enough last time. Make sure you don"t cross the boundaries or else there won"t be a next time. Even I am not sure how your end will come." C.
Upon seeing the message Will"s eyes turned a shade darker. He clearly remembered his talk with Cain last time: "She will never see you as anything but a friend... You better back off now. If you don"t, I won"t take our previous friendship into account anymore... You know of my methods. I guess you wouldn"t want to experience them firsthand, would you?"
His thread of thoughts were interrupted by Ren;
"Hey, I think he is serious about her. I honestly like Sia, but even if it is you, going against Cain is the same as opening the gates to death. I think you need to back away."
Will started looking at a distance with darkness in his eyes. After some time, he finally answered;
"As long as she likes me back, I wouldn"t care less about Cain. If need be, it"s not like there aren"t any ways to stop him."
Ren could feel the darkness surrounding Will. He was truly worried now,
"Hey Will, why do you sound so....? You aren"t thinking of something bad, no actually evil, are you?"
Will gave him a slight smile and answered,
"As long as there is a chance, who knows?"