With dinner concluded, they decided that it was still early enough to get a bit of dessert. They walked on a bit further and slightly out of the way to go back to her pce. They decided to get some ice cream.

  Seulgi thought that she was going to have to do more than just ‘light yoga’ tonight to burn calories tonight. But, it was a punishment she was willing to bear. It had been a while since she had a sundae. She would splurge and get a single-scoop ice cream sundae with caramel sauce. Bhuwakul, with an unexpected sweet tooth, got a full banana split.

  They sat down at a table and began to talk while enjoying their rare treat. Seulgi pointed at a building and asked him about it. While he looked at where she was pointing, she quickly snatched the maraschino cherry off his banana split and ate it.

  She thought that she was being slick, but he watched her do it in the reflection of the window. Each smiling at the other, thinking that they were both being clever. One was more right than the other.

  Bhuwakul walked Seulgi to the front of the apartment building. He started to walk away after they got to the door, but she stopped him. “Come in, there might be something.”

  They entered the building and walked to the front desk. She approached the guards and asked to speak to the on-duty supervisor. No one thought anything about this as they all knew that she was not a ‘Karen’.

  They waited for a few moments while the supervisor was found and arrived. They all chatted while waiting, not excluding the guards in the friendly banter. Soon, the supervisor arrived and asked how he could help them.

  “Earlier today, I asked the morning supervisor to review the tapes in front of my door. I was wondering if there were any results.”

  “Yes, ma’am I was told about this. Let’s go into the office and take a look if there were any results.”

  Seulgi and Bhuwakul trooped into the small, cramped office. Seulgi could not imagine working in such a custrophobic office. There were a few redeeming features. It was brightly lit, and the mirror behind the front desk turned out to be a one-way mirror, so it ‘opened’ the office enough to not go start, raving mad. The most incongruous thing was there was a happy, thriving pnt, a heart shaped leaf philodendron if she remembered right, with vines tacked up all over.

  Seulgi was secretly jealous over how successful they were with the pnt. She had a brown thumb at best. After all this was over, she ought to ask them what they did better than her. But that would be ter.

  The manager went through the logs and checked notes. He flipped through several sheets, made a little, subconscious ‘Ah, ha!’ and logged into his computer. He started pulling up the camera software.

  “I might have something for you. There was one suspicious person near your door. Just a moment while I get the video log.” The manager hummed a bit of a song that Seulgi was singing earlier. She was tempted to hum along, but the manager ended too soon. He swiveled the screen so they could view it as he brought up a still photo of a slightly blurry, pixited man.

  They could see the figure wearing a bck hat, a bck jacket, bck scks, and what appeared to be bck shoes. It was as if someone was writing a very bad story saying “LOOK AT ME!! I’M THE BAD GUY!!” It was too ridiculous to be taken seriously.

  At least he was not wearing a rainbow wig, heavy makeup, a red bulbous foam nose with a literal clown suit. She rethought about it – the clown suit might be less conspicuous as they could carry around balloons and get into someone’s pce as ‘Balloon-O-Gram’. Someone wearing that would be remembered just long enough to be forgotten.

  Seulgi shook herself. She had been hanging around Jeong-Hui, Bhuwakul, and Yeji too much. Her mind was getting twisted into thinking some bizarre things.

  Coming back to herself, she noted that there was a disconcerting familiarity to the figure. She could swear that she had seen that back before. This was a maggot that would rot in her brain until she figured out where she knew him from.

  “Now, the video.” He brought up the video feed and hit py. He showed an empty hall. There was an occasional person who walked back and forth across the screen as her neighbors entered and exited their apartments. There were lots of empty blocks of time as they got ter into the night.

  Then it happened. She saw the man walk to her door and drop the package by her door. He had walked away from the stairwell, where there were cameras that were few and easily avoidable.

  What happened next confused them even further. The man, who was still facing away from the camera reached up and stroked her door in what appeared to be in a loving way. He leaned his head against the door. If it were anyone else you could be mistaken that it was as if he was praying. Or just extremely exhausted.

  In the top middle of the screen, there was a door to the stairwell that opened. All that could be seen was from the waist down, a pair of legs. There was nothing too descriptive to be said about them. Jeans and sneakers.

  The man at the door jerked as if he was being prodded. It would be nice if there was sound so they might know what was being said. It’s too te to ment now. They would have to revamp the whole security system to get sound. There would be people who opposed it, too.

  The person in the stairwell motioned for the person at the door to hurry up and come to the stairwell. He motioned again, this time more emphatically. There was also a fshing glint of metal in his hand.

  The man at the door stood up, turning toward the stairwell. That was when two things became apparent. One, that the fshing metal was a gun. The other was that she knew the man next to the door. Knew him intimately and would never, ever have expected that he would be there.

  She stood up, gasped, and fell in a half faint into Bhuwakul arms. He was just as shocked as she was. He pced her into her chair and fanned her.

  She started, “Tell me that is not him. Please. It can’t be.”

  Bhuwakul simply nodded. “It’s Jackson.”