Of the Twisted and the Lost

Chapter 20:

Junjie closes his eyes, inhaling through his nose, hands pressed against his temple. "Isn't it obvious?" he says finally. "Who killed your niece, I mean."

Sera watches in utter fascination as his lips tilt up into a dazzling smile, one that sends Sera's pulse into an uneven pattern.

"What?" stammers Mrs. Santos.

They had gone from studying — "boring, boring, boring!" Junjie said, and Sera agreed — to greeting clients, who were giving them cases about murder.

"Your coat has creases, yet that jacket is obviously expensive. You care about your appearance, hence the huge amounts of face powder and cream, yet your jacket — it has clearly not been ironed at all." Junjie's eyes glitter with concentration, the blueness almost rivaling that of an ocean. "So why would you not iron your jacket?"

"Maybe she didn't have time," Sera suggests.

"Impossible," Junjie says. "She has all the time in the world, don't you, Mrs. Santos? She doesn't go to work, attends a bunch of fancy clubs — so there must be a reason she didn't bother to iron her jacket."

Junjie glances at the woman again, nodding and muttering to himself.

Then—

"Oh," he whispers before he smiles. "I see how it is."

"How what is?" Sera presses.

"This jacket seems fairly new. You brought it from Zara, I'm presuming? Don't bother answering, I already know. At around the time you called in your niece's murder, you also had come back from shopping.

"You've always been bitter that your niece was the one who got all the money, while you were stuck with a house. After all, what good would a normal house do, am I correct? After you murdered her, you threw on your new jacket — rumpled because many people were touching it at the store — and hurried to my house."

"Wait," Sera interrupts. "So you're saying that she murdered her own relative?"

"Is that true, Mrs. Santos?" Junjie asks.

Mrs. Santos seems to be faltering for an answer, before finally slumping back into the chair. "It wasn't my fault," she whispers brokenly. "It's not my fault that Melody was a little rich brat who cared nothing but herself! I was helping the world when I killed her!"

Sera hands Mrs. Santos a tissue.

After Mrs. Santos finally leaves, Sera heaves out a sigh. "How do you manage to do that?" she asks, turning to Junjie.

"Hmm?" he says.

"Like, how'd you know all that? How the jacket was new and why it was rumpled?" Sera clarifies. "It's brilliant!"

"You really think so?" Junjie says.

"Well, yeah." She shakes her head. "Anyone who doesn't think it's brilliant is clearly blind. That right there was true talent."

The smile he gives her is genuine, if not a bit hopeful.

"Try telling the blokes that come in here all the time," Junjie snorts. "They think I'm the most annoying person they've met."

Sera rolls her eyes. "Then they are idiots," she replies. "Anyways, you shouldn't hide the fact that you want to be a detective! Honestly, I think it's great!"

Junjie freezes.

"What did you just say?"

"Uh, that some people are idiots?"

"No, no, no — say the thing you said just a few seconds ago. With the same exact wording."

"You shouldn't hide the fact that you want to be a detective?"

Junjie fixes his blue eyes on her, giving Sera a look that she isn't sure is good or bad.

"How did you know?" he whispers, standing up to examine her closer.

"How did I know what?" Sera replies back, her skin prickling under his careful gaze.

"That I'm trying to hide being a detective."

"Well, aren't you?"

Junjie circles around her, something like predatory entering his gaze.

"Maybe," he says with a shrug. "Despite what everyone thinks, I do care about what the public thinks of me."

"You're like everyone else," Sera realizes. "You're afraid of what people think of us."

Junjie doesn't deny it, his gaze dropping to the floor.

"So you're not as invincible as other people think," she continues, voice turning breathless as he moves even closer.

His movements are graceful and deliberate, almost like a panther, when they're about to pounce on prey.

"Funny, isn't it?" Junjie murmurs. "Everyone thinks I'm untouchable, but the person who does manage to see through me is, well. . ."

His lashes lower and that's when it hits Sera: she's never seen him so uncertain, so not confident and sure of himself.

"You." 

That last word is quiet, so soft that Sera almost doesn't hear it. 

But the look on his face — it's proof that he did say something. 

He gazes at her with something like desire smoldering within those blue eyes and Sera's heart pounds. 

No. Quit fooling yourself. 

"I—" Sera starts to say. "You—" 

"I don't know why," Junjie says, his lips an inch away from hers, "but you confuse me." 

He searches her face. "What are you thinking?" he asks, before shaking his head. "You know, I hardly ever have to ask that question to a person — ever." 

Sera sucks in a deep breath, mouth parting slightly. 

Her heartbreak quickens, a small hummingbird finding its way to a flower, hope yet uncertainty lingering through Sera. 

"What are you doing to me?" Junjie sighs. "You make me distracted, baffled. You're like a puzzle I can't solve." 

"Comparing me to a puzzle?" Sera manages to say. 

Junjie smiles. "Consider it a compliment," he says. "You're the one thing that I can't solve." 

"I—" 

Before either of them can say anything, Sera's phone buzzes. Junjie steps away from her, cool air slipping between them. 

"Sorry," Sera apologizes, but it's too late. 

The intimate moment is over. 

Disappointment tears through her, almost like a tide of ocean-blue seawater. 

"It's getting late," Junjie says, glancing out at the window, where the sky is turning a gauzy shade of salmon pink and violet purple. 

"Oh," Sera says awkwardly. "I guess I'll have to be going." 

Junjie gives her a curt nod. 

Inwardly cursing at the distraction of her phone, Sera yanks out the device to see who interrupted that moment— 

Three words: tonight. eight. harbor.