‘Hooooooow? I was so nice when I asked too!’

We were back in my kitchen. Gwen was at the table with her head in her hands and Ryo and I were making stir-fry. Gwen had offered to help of course, but Ryo and I had decided that it would be safer for our stomachs if we didn’t. And so, Gwen had nothing to do but lament.

Ryo snorted as he chopped the vegetables. ‘With the way you asked her, I would have been surprised if she didn’t.’ 

‘What do you mean?’

There was no tactful way to explain.

As planned, we – and by “we” I mean Gwen – had invited Ai to come to my place the next day. She was so intent on making it happen, I swear you could feel her determination radiating in the air. 

Ryo’s sentiment was one I could agree with. If someone asked me something with that kind of intensity, I’d be slowly backing away.

He sighed and shook his head. ‘Forget it. You wouldn’t understand even if we spelled it out for you.’ He frowned. ‘Why are you here anyway? Slumber party was called off so there’s no reason for you to hang around.’

Gwen smiled, bemused. ‘Obviously, I’m here to come up with Plan B.’

‘Plan B?’

‘Yup, Plan B.’

‘Sounds fishy. What’s tomorrow’s excuse?’

‘I wasn’t aware that I needed one.’

‘Well, you do.’

I glanced at him. ‘She does?’

‘She does.’

Gwen’s eyebrows rose. ‘Ryo, do you live here?’

‘No.’

‘Are you Evelyn’s boyfriend?’

‘No.’

‘Her husband?’

Ryo’s ears turned red. ‘Of course not!’ he sputtered.

‘Then it’s none of your business whether I come here or not.’

He didn’t have an answer to that. Face as flushed as my skin in the sun, he went back to preparing dinner. I would have come to his defence, but I was too busy trying not to laugh. I quickly wiped the grin off my face as Gwen looked at me and crossed her arms.

‘So,’ she said, ‘what should we do now?’

‘About what?’ I asked. 

‘About Ai, of course. We have to find a way to change her mind.’

‘We do?’ said Ryo.

‘We do. I heard what you said about that Andrew guy, you know. Made me curious enough to look into him myself.’

Ryo and I exchanged looks – his annoyed, mine confused. How had Gwen ended up taking point in this case?

I turned the confusion back onto Gwen. ‘What do you mean you looked into him?’

She spread her hands in a half-hearted shrug. ‘Oh you know, I just did a little Q and A to get a better picture. He’s a real nasty piece of work. Not to mention…’ Her green eyes locked with mine. ‘I think you're right. She’ll be better off if she stays away from him.’

A prickling sensation crept up my spine. I blinked and looked away.

Gwen smiled.

‘Anyway, we just have to find a way to make her want to hang out with us. Shouldn’t be too hard. We’re all nice people.’

I checked the temperature of my fry pan. ‘That’s easier said than done.’

Ryo sighed as he dropped the vegetables into the oil. ‘Why not just tell her if you think it’s that bad? That’s what I’d do.’

There was a full minute of silence as we stared at him, incredulous. 

I smacked him with my spatula.

‘Ow! Are you stupid? I’m holding a knife!’

‘Gee. Just tell her. How ingenious!’

‘What? That’s what I’d do!’

‘Because I totally didn’t think of that before.’

He elbowed me, annoyed. ‘Sarcasm is the lowest form of wit, Rin-chan.’

‘It’s insults, Ryo. Insults are the lowest form of wit.’

‘Your sarcasm is insulting.’

I shook my head. He was so clever, yet so dense. ‘Come on, Ryo. You talked to her about Andrew. You really think she’d listen to us if we told her to stay away from him? We’d just lose credibility.’ Just like I have with almost everyone else I’ve ever tried to forewarn about a murder.

‘Don’t worry, Evelyn,’ said Gwen, reaching across the bench to snack on a snow pea. ‘We’ll think of something.’

* * *

Thursday rolled by without a single idea cropping up. It was getting to the point where kidnapping Ai off the street before her date was starting to seem like a viable option. 

Rolling his eyes at my silent fretting, Ryo went and took it upon himself to tell Ai about Andrew’s bad rep. She got upset and left mid-way. Gwen spent the last half hour of lunch trying to coax her out of the girls’ bathrooms. 

Ryo was out after that, ditched the rest of his classes and didn’t even show up at my house in the afternoon. Angry with himself, I think. Or embarrassed. Angry because he was embarrassed?

Gwen didn’t invite herself over either. Nor did she randomly appear at the pavilion during lunch. 

Me? I spent the afternoon trying – and failing – to one-handedly make jewellery while planning the best way to intercept Ai before or during her date. It’s a hobby I picked up after Dad started disappearing on his trips and coming back home with bags full of ‘treasure’. Selling handmade trinkets online is how I supplement the allowance that he sends me every month. It’s a mostly useless skill, granted, but twisting wires into various shapes while listening to Dad’s collection of vinyls does wonders for the concentration. 

But even while focused it was fruitless.

After three frustrating hours of trying to get threads of copper wire to look like a miniature birdcage, I came to the conclusion that I always came to: I’d just have to stick as close to Ai as possible and pull her out of trouble at the right moment. Past experience told me that I wouldn’t get away with it unscathed, but if I kept good tabs on where we were and had emergency services pre-dialled on my phone, we’d probably have a good chance of making it out alive.

Probably being the key word.

But a probable chance was better than no chance at all – I’d almost convinced myself of that when Friday morning arrived.

As I whacked my alarm clock into submission at 7:15AM, Ai’s countdown was clear in my head. Today was the day. I had just under seventeen hours left.

That probable chance was looking slimmer by the second.

Ryo showed up at the pavilion at lunch looking more than a little sullen. He had a couple of new scrapes and bruises that I didn’t remember seeing the day before. I would have grilled him about them because it's rare for him to get into a fight, but I knew he’d take it as an indirect ‘I told you so’. With everything else that was going on, I didn’t need another fight with him to add to the stress.

Gwen and Ai, on the other hand, were nowhere to be seen. Gwen and I hadn’t had classes together for two years so I gave up on trying to talk to her when I couldn’t find her at lunch, and the only time I saw Ai was during in sixth period math. 

Nine hours, two minutes and fifteen seconds.

The final bell rang.

The end-of-class flurry seemed to go by in slow motion. I could have told her. If I really wanted to, I could have warned her about it then and there. There was every possibility I that I would lose sight of her between now and midnight and that this moment was the last chance I’d ever have to save her.

But my selfishness got the better of me. It was too easy to rationalise: it would be better if she didn’t know. It was always better when people didn’t know.

I made it out the door before she did. Her locker was in another a building; mine was just one floor down. If I sprinted, I could make it to the gates before she left and tail her to wherever she was meeting Andrew.

Trust Ryo to screw that plan over.

I got to my locker and found him standing there with my backpack slung over his shoulder. Funny. I don’t recall ever giving him my locker combination. 

He quirked an eyebrow at me. ‘Why so sweaty?’

Today of all days...

‘Can I have my bag please?’

I went to take it from him, but he sidestepped me.

‘I’ll carry it for you.’

Ai could be leaving any minute. ‘No thanks. Give it here.’

‘I believe the correct response is: thanks for helping my crippled butt.’

‘For God’s sake, Ryo… I don’t – ’ I leapt at him and he side-stepped again. ‘ – have time – ’ Another miss. ‘ – for this!’ I slammed my right shoulder into his chest and he staggered back into the lockers with a bang.

I grabbed my bag and sprinted down the hallway.  

There was no time for explanations or apologies. I had a life to save.

* * *

I’m no stranger to stalking people – wait, no, that sounds creepy. What I meant was helping people the way I do often requires me to shadow them for some time. If I don’t, then that means I have to find some other way to gather information about them without making them think that I’m some kind of crazy, weirdo stalker. It’s not so much that I mind the label, but when they get suspicious and start to think that you are a crazy, weirdo stalker, it makes it that much harder to save their lives. 

It was way easier when I was younger. You could ask a question point-blank and most adults wouldn’t even bat an eyelash – they’d just think you were some annoying, nosy kid.

Once, when I was ten, I managed to get some soon-to-be-squished receptionist’s entire weekly routine by asking her about the yoga mat she had behind her desk. All I had to do was coincidentally run into her in the street on her expiration date and fob some story about being locked out of home to make sure she wasn’t in the line of fire when the equipment fated to turn her into a pancake fell to the floor.

Accidents are easier to prevent than murders.

I made it to the train with minutes to spare. It took a few scans of the platform to find Ai and make sure I was on the same carriage. I kept my gaze level, staring vaguely at a point on the wall while watching her from the corner of my eye. She got off at the next station. I followed her. She didn’t notice me, not even when I was standing right behind her at the barricades. Not that I was surprised; most people don’t look twice to see if there’s anyone following them unless it’s dark or the street is noticeably empty. 

Andrew met her looking just as he did in my premonition with the added addition of a pair of sunglasses. Personally, I’ve never understood why people wear sunglasses on cloudy days. It makes zero sense to me.

I followed them as they wandered off, completely oblivious to my presence. What followed was the longest date I'd ever endured. And no, I don't go on dates - I've never been asked on one; I just stake them out. Guys generally don't ask out girls whose first instinct is to tell them that they're going to be hit by a truck and die. Not that I'd actually say that, but you know what I mean.

Although, if all dates were like this one, I’m not sure I’d want to be asked out in the first place.

Andrew and Ai spent a good hour or so window shopping in the arcade – just looking, no buying. Afterwards, they saw a truly hideous, sappy romance movie that had me cringing with second-hand embarrassment the whole time. When it ended, I found myself sitting several booths down from them at some awful pink, frilly café, pointlessly sucking on the straw in my fourth empty smoothie glass. 

Four hours and six minutes.

I wanted to bang my head against the table. I was bored silly, had wasted more than thirty dollars on my stakeout mission, and after all those drinks, I desperately needed to pee. I was weighing up the risks of running to the toilet when a shadow fell across my table.

‘All those smoothies are going to make you fat.’

Only one person would talk to me like that.

I sighed. ‘What are you doing here, Ryo?’

‘Funny, I was just about to ask you the same thing.’ He slid into the seat opposite mine and folded his arms across his chest. Talk about passive-aggressive. Ryo knew exactly why I was here. He just didn’t want to say it out loud. 

Fair enough, I didn’t want to say either.

There was a long, awkward pause.

I scratched idly at my cast. ‘Did you follow me?’

He scoffed. ‘You’re following them.’ He jerked his head at Andrew and Ai. ‘You want to explain what you’re doing?’

‘Nope.’

‘Rin—’

‘Ryo, if I have to remind you to call me Evelyn one more time, I swear—’

‘Fine, Evelyn then, whatever. Just cut to the chase.’

‘I told you, no.’  

‘Why not?’

‘You know why not. Anyway I need to pee. Watch them for me.’

He blinked. ‘Huh?’

I was already out of my seat. ‘Watch them,’ I repeated and ran to the restroom. It was risky, but what can I say? When you’ve gotta  go, you’ve gotta go.