It had been an extremely long and tiring day for Gemini, and he was relieved when the cool water in the shower began to cool his hot body. Evening came. There were still almost two hours until the meeting with Prim. Gem took a quick shower, changed into his pajamas and sat down at his desk to once again carefully review the messages between Heart and LiMing, which he now had access to thanks to P'First's help. It was just a regular chat filled with mostly emojis, sweet words, flirting, and cute photos and videos. Nothing suspicious. The last message was from Heart, asking Li to buy him some things when he goes home. LiMing never replied, surprisingly, he didn't even view the message. Gem looked at the date: the message had been sent over a year earlier. Something was very wrong here, but Gemini didn't have a chance to think about it.
He heard a familiar knock on the door and went to let Fourth in. A moment later, his older brother also appeared.
First returned from his mission to find new information in police databases with a thick folder, slightly dirty with navy blue ink, which he immediately showed to Gemini and Fourth. One item didn't fit with the others: a shortened copy of the birth certificate of a little child, a girl named Laura.
“I think I've found the motive…” First pointed to one particularly important entry. “Look who's the father. If we consider the feelings, including jealousy and pain, caused by betrayal...”
Gemini and Fourth immediately abandoned looking at the remaining documents. Fourth almost tore the certificate. Neither of them could believe their eyes.
“LiMing?! I thought...” Gemini didn't finish, seeing an unexpected movement behind P'First's back from the corner of his eye. It was Heart who held up a photo of him and LiMing together. As his rage grew, the lights in the room began to flash.
“Heart! Calm down!” Gem shouted at him, but the ghost didn't listen. Suddenly, the cabinet doors began to open and close with a loud bang, and the script for the TV series Moonlight Chicken, for which they had recorded the last scenes over two weeks earlier, fell off the desk. The sheets of paper containing their roles immediately burst into flames. Fourth began to panic and scream, and Gemini was equally terrified, and his fear was made worse by the fact that he didn't know how to calm Heart down.
P'First, however, kept his cool. He took a jug of water from the table and poured it on the burning sheets of paper, then said in a loud voice:
“Ghost nicknamed Heart, I order you to stop immediately!”
All the noise and madness stopped as suddenly as it had started.
“Heart, we need to talk. Please explain this to us. Has your boyfriend had an affair?”
Heart didn't want to answer that question. Gemini got angry. Fourth sat huddled in the corner next to the bed, trembling. It was obvious how much it cost him.
“You said you needed my help. You said you wanted to know the truth, and now that we're getting closer to finding out what happened to you, you're acting like a spoiled child who doesn't know what he wants”.
“Gemini…” First now tried to calm Gem down by placing a hand on his shoulder, but Gem shook it off.
“Leave me alone. Maybe Heart doesn't want to know the truth at all. I don't know. Anyway, I don't want to deal with an idiot who is clearly playing with us right now. I've had enough. I have already devoted too much of my precious time and energy to this matter”.
Gemini didn't know what made him so angry. Was it just because of Heart's behavior? Or maybe it was also about Fourth?
Gemini couldn't sit still. The story with this child, Laura, reminded him too much of something else, something that had happened in his family. He thought about his father, about the betrayal he had committed, about the child who was supposedly his little sister, whose name he didn't even know. The memories hit him again with the force of a typhoon. Their father now had a new family, but Gem had witnessed more than once how much their mother missed her ex-husband, whom she had never stopped loving. He thought that love can blind you and can often be the cause of crime. He suspected that Heart, when he found out about the betrayal, might have killed LiMing himself.
“I'm going for a walk. Take care of Fourth. In the cabinet next to the bed on the right you will find sedatives, give them to him. I have to think it all over”.
Gemini only took his phone and a bottle of water and left without even looking at the sight he was leaving behind. His head was buzzing with unwanted thoughts.
According to the documents, LiMing became a father two days before his death. Gemini didn't like it and it didn't fit with what Heart had already told him. According to Heart, he and LiMing were madly in love with each other and were planning a future together. They had not been in America for long, but they didn't know that someone had followed them there: an eighteen-year-old girl who was already pregnant at the time, Ellie, Laura's mother. Heart claimed to trust LiMing, but what if Li betrayed him and he found out and killed him himself?
Gemini began to think about whether Heart could be capable of this: could he kill the man he supposedly loved more than life itself and with whom he planned a future together? The man to whom he owed so much? Gem's mind was filled with doubts. He walked forward at a fast pace, not really paying attention to what was happening around him. He didn't even notice that he passed Joong, who was walking towards his house with Phuwin. Joong turned around as soon as he saw that Gem had ignored them and continued walking.
“Hey, Phu, it's Gem!”
“What? Oh, ah, yes, indeed, it was Gem. Sorry, I was thinking about something”. Phuwin seemed distracted. It took him a long time to find his brother in the crowd. Fortunately (or unfortunately), Gem was very attention-grabbing that evening, dressed in red pajamas with sneakers on his feet and a phone in his hand, and still a little wet hair, he was hard to miss. Moreover, Gem was a rather tall man. Joong and Phuwin followed him and stopped him.
“G? Where are you going so alone?” Phuwin asked, giving his brother a critical look.
“I? I... Uh... I'm not going anywhere. I'm just walking around”.
“In this outfit?” Phuwin tugged a little roughly at his pajama shirt, and Gem suddenly realized that he must have looked really weird and felt embarrassed.
“Oops. Okay, I'm back now”.
“Gem, what's going on? Did you learn something?”
“Yes, and you won't believe what! This ghost, Heart, simply lied to us! Fourth had another panic attack because of him. I swear that if I catch him, I will personally kill him with my bare hands”.
“Will you kill him? Whom?”
“Heart, who else? For all the lies, for playing with us, for probably consciously leading us astray”.
“Do you want to kill a ghost?” Joong wanted to make sure. “Gem, he's already dead, there's no way he could be more dead!”
“What? Oh, right. Then I'll just stop dealing with it, it's costing me too much”. Gemini shrugged as if it didn't matter, but the truth was that this riddle was tempting him. He wanted to find out what the motives of the person behind the death of both boys were, but now he was curious about something else: little Laura. What happened to her? Did Heart get rid of her too in this frenzy?
“Well, listen to this, Gem. You'll never guess who left the country with LiMing and Heart”.
“Who?”
“Three people. We'll tell you at your place. Fourth is already there, right?”
“Yes, together with First. I had First sedate Fourth, Fourth was in bad shape when I left”.
“And you left him alone like that?”
“What else was I supposed to do? First is with him. And besides... What does it matter?”
“It's big, too. I just don't trust First”. Joong didn't want to express his doubts in the middle of the city, which was still bustling with life at this time.
“Why?”
“I suspect he may have had something to do with the death of our friends, but we'll talk about it at your place. Come quick, we don't have much time, Prim will be here soon”.
Joong and Phuwin grabbed Gem's arms as if they were afraid he would escape. Gem thought that it must look funny and that random passersby would think that Gem had escaped from the mental hospital and that Joong and Phuwin were the security that had been sent to catch him and bring him back to the mental hospital. They needed to talk and talk very seriously. The information they had couldn't wait. Joong had already asked Prim to lure Heart's ghost out of Gem's apartment. He wanted to make sure that no unauthorized person would overhear their conference.