Before Her Very Eyes

Chapter 39

Arin was immediately consumed with complete and utter horror as she connected all the dots.

Woozi was a hacker, with a whole bulletin board about this girl. The girl ended up dead because of a hacker that stalked her. This bulletin board was kept in a locked up room that Arin was not supposed to have seen.

The girl's murderer was on the run, using a fake name. "Woozi" sounded like a fake name, and it was a name that didn't activate her curse, even though it probably should have at this point...

Arin was in this person's home, "lured" there, so to speak, vulnerable to anything he could do to her.

She remembered how she met him, how nosey he was about her personal life, how he wouldn't leave her alone...

Was he stalking her too?

She was terrified. She paced around the living room, shivering, scared. She hoped that this was all not what it seemed, and that she was just being paranoid.

But then again, it all clicked a little too perfectly.

She needed to get away from this person, regardless of who he was. As Arin was coming to these conclusions, she immediately called out to Meemo, who came ambling toward her.

Arin stuffed her scattered belongings into her bag and carried Meemo, preparing to leave and never return, but just as she was heading for the exit, Woozi emerged through the front door. He was wearing his pajamas and was out of breath, as if he had been running there.

He froze when he saw her. She froze too, wide-eyed, trembling.

"Arin," he greeted carefully with a slight bow.

She couldn't even say anything. She just stood there, with Meemo in her arms struggling to get down. Arin held her tighter.

"You saw, didn't you?" Woozi asked, gulping. Arin took that as confirmation and panicked.

He was blocking her path to the door, so in order to get past him, she had to go by him. She charged for the door, and Woozi tried to stop her by standing in her way.

"Wait, let me explain! It's not what you think!" he claimed.

She didn't listen. All that was on her mind was getting away at that point. However, no matter how much she tried to push and pull past him, he didn't let her.

"Please, Arin. You have to let me explain! Just give me a minute! Sixty seconds," he said.

Meemo had been scared of all the commotion and the pushing, and at that point, she had managed to wry herself out of Arin's grip and go hide in the bedroom somewhere. Arin had no choice but go back inside and try to find her. He followed Arin.

"The actual killer is one of my clients," he explained. "I'm a personal digital investigator, and this guy paid me a lot of money to track the girl down."

Arin called out to Meemo, but the cat didn't respond.

"The media got it all wrong," Woozi continued. "The person who hacked her was not the person who killed her; I was just the one who did the killer's dirty work. I hate myself for helping him in this crime, but I honestly didn't know what he was going to do! He told me she was a girlfriend, and he wanted to make sure she wasn't cheating!"

Arin found that she believed him, but she was still too afraid to be involved with him on the off chance that he was lying.

She knelt down on the floor to look under the bed, and saw Meemo hiding in the darkness. Arin had to crawl to get to her.