Gilbert, driving his car at a moderate speed on the highway, glanced down at the file he'd been given by Justin. He snorted indignantly as he saw Oz Vessalius's residence was listed, along with a detailed address. Usually he had to go and actually track down the person he'd been hired to kill. That had always irked him, but now it seemed kind of stupid that he'd been given Oz's address. It wouldn't take long to get there, and Oz was only a kid. Surely Justin thought this over, and Justin had seemed like a rather impatient man, so why had Gilbert been given a two-month deadline? He could probably have this all over and done with during a week or less.

In fact, he was already one his way to Oz's home. It wasn't very far, an hour and a half away from where he'd started. If there was any sort of delay, though, even a small one, it would probably take two hours. It wasn't like it made a difference. There had been several times in the past when Gilbert had been forced to reach his destination by plane; otherwise, it was always a very long car drive, usually several days long.

But this time, Gilbert had been provided with an exact destination instead of having to track his future victim down, and on top of that, the address wasn't far away. Plus he'd been given a very decent deadline, considering the circumstances. Most of the time, Gilbert had to rush to finish all he had to do before the deadline he was given. But it seemed like his current mission barely entailed any work at all.

And that meant that, if he wanted to, Gilbert could probably take his sweet time completing this mission. It might be nice, for a change, to not be rushed. Perhaps he'd have a nice time examining Oz's neighborhood. Maybe he'd visit other neighborhoods. Gilbert barely knew what to do with all this freedom. To someone else, this wouldn't have seemed like anything new, but Gilbert wasn't used to getting to choose what he was going to do. It was as if he spent every tiny bit of his time tracking someone down or trying to kill someone without being noticed. And when he wasn't doing that, he was trying to get hired by someone who wanted him to.

Even with all the benefits, there was still one more: no matter how smart this "Oz Vessalius" was, he was still a teenager. Gilbert knew for a fact that he'd never had to deal with an assassin before, and he was young and innocent. He'd have no idea what to do in the presence of one. And Gilbert was a professional, with plenty of experience. Oz would be dead way before the deadline was up.

Gilbert had to admit that this all sounded far too good to be true. If anything, this mission seemed too easy.

After Ada had left, Oz went to his bedroom and cried.

Oz was an intelligent boy and an incredible person, and he tried to act chipper and happy around other people. He tried. He didn't want anyone to know how he really felt, because he decided that would just dampen the moods of people around him and cause them trouble. It was a twisted train of thought, really—sacrificing his own happiness for everyone else's. And despite what a lot of people would think—including Oz—it wasn't a heroic act, either.

In fact, all it was doing was damaging Oz more and more. If he'd told someone—meaning Oscar or Ada—maybe he could be getting help right now. But no, that could never happen, because Oz was hell-bent on hurting himself. At least, that was how it seemed.

Oz didn't know where the tears had come from, or the all-too-familiar feeling that his heart was a bottomless pit with nothing to fill it. Just a few seconds ago, he'd been so glad. He'd felt like he was glowing with happiness at seeing his one and only sister. What had happened to all that joy? How was it possible that his happiness could just...drain like that...and in such little time?

Oz felt like this more than people knew, though. He felt like this every day. He was just extremely good and concealing it so that no one could see it. He blinded them with an exuberant smile and glittering green eyes and a chipper, childish attitude mixed with false arrogance.

Nobody knew that Oz wanted to die.

He wanted to die, and he thought about it every single day. The feelings of hopelessness and sorrow and everything else—Oz took hard blows from every one of them. Oz's life felt weirdly empty to him, and it bothered him more than the public—or even those close to him—knew. He'd never been in love. Sure, he'd had small crushes once and a while, but he'd never been in love.

Sometimes he brought that up lightly with his uncle, and Oscar always said he would be soon. When he brought it up with other people, they said he was too young anyway, and that it was completely normal. They said he shouldn't even be worrying about it.

Since when did they have a right to say what he should and shouldn't be worrying about?

The problem was that whenever all the sadness seemed to disappear and the happiness would wash over him like untainted sunlight, Oz would finally gain some hope—for a second. And then after the rush, he'd be struck down harder than the last time. It was like his whole life was a drug. He'd get high, and then he'd just...go out.

Oz was quite good at pretending he was happy, which was a useful skill, considering he didn't want anyone to know he was depressed and suicidal and had more problems than he could count. He thought he had no right to feel this way. After all, he was the owner of a steadily-growing company and had a loving family.

Well...kind of.

Oz's father wasn't like Oscar or Ada. He hated Oz more than anything else in the world. Oz would bet on all that he owned that his father would kill him, if it wasn't against the law and he wouldn't get locked up for it. Oz's father's name was Xai.

Oz knew how Xai spoke about him. Instead of calling him "he," he called his son "it." And to Xai, Oz wasn't a human being. He was an object. He was a thing that didn't really exist for any good purpose and didn't have rights of its own. Xai thought that Oz was vile in his entirety.

And Oz knew why. Xai hated him because it was after Oz's birth that his wife had become terribly ill. It wasn't Oz's fault, obviously, but Xai, in his corruption, was convinced that it was. Xai's wife Rachel had already birthed Ada, since Oz was the younger of the two children. Rachel had given birth to Oz just before losing her life.

Xai didn't seem to be very fond of Ada, either, but he certainly liked her more than he liked Oz. He liked anyone and everything more than he liked Oz.

Oz would never recover from what his father had said to him. The words felt like a curse. Every day, they haunted him, echoing in his head over and over again. Each passing day, every fleeting moment, Oz seemed to believe them more and more.

"A child like that should never have been born."

Gilbert was only thirty minutes away from reaching Oz's house, but he'd pulled over to get a ham-and-cheese sandwich from a cheap deli. The sandwich wasn't particularly good—the bread was dryer than dirt, the ham tasted old, and the cheese tasted fake—but it would have to do, because Gilbert was especially hungry. Under normal circumstances, Gilbert probably would have been wincing at the awful sandwich. Under the current circumstances, Gilbert barely cared about the taste. His stomach was just happy to be receiving something.

Until then, Gilbert had been eating standing up. There hadn't been any open seats. It was a deli, so it certainly didn't have an abundance of seats in the first place, but all the seats had been taken. A heavy, middle-aged man had just gotten up and left, so Gilbert sat down. Abruptly, just as he sat down, he felt his phone vibrating in his pocket.

Gilbert took it out, wondering who was calling up and praying that it wasn't Justin, asking how he was doing. Although he had to eat to stay alive, it would still be embarrassing to be called by Justin and have to say he was eating a really bad sandwich at a deli he'd stopped at, as an assassin.

He practically sighed in relief when he saw Vincent's name on the screen. Then he tensed up again, realizing Vincent wasn't much better than anyone else. He cared deeply about his younger brother and wanted to help him with all his might, but Vincent messed with his emotions in more ways than he knew was possible.

Vincent was not the easiest person to talk to. But Gilbert accepted the call anyway.

"Hello?"

"Gil! I'm so glad you picked up. I came home and you weren't there." Gilbert could practically hear the pout in Vincent's voice. "What're you doing? Why aren't you here?"

"I'm...uh, at work." Gilbert had already admitted to Vincent what he did to make their family money, and Vincent had been strangely fine with it, even encouraging it. Anything you want to do, Gil. That was what Vincent had said, without a trace of concern or disturbance. Some things about his brother, Gilbert would never understand.

Despite all this, though, Gilbert still felt awkward whenever he was on a mission to say it to Vincent flat-out. Therefore, they'd wordlessly agreed on a code. Gilbert would say he was at work whenever he was on a mission. Not only would it prevent any nosy idiots from getting suspicious, but it would also spare Gilbert the awkwardness.

"Oh, I see." Simply from hearing Vincent's voice, Gilbert could guess with an impressive amount of accuracy what his expression was. Gilbert had no doubt that a cryptic smirk was spreading across Vincent's face at that moment. "Who is it this time?"

"It's Oz Vessalius." Gilbert said quietly. He knew anyone listening would have no idea why he was mentioning the teenage boy, but he still didn't want to give anything away about his mission.

"Oz Vessalius? The owner of the Cherry Blossom toy company...?" Vincent asked vaguely, although he surely knew the answer. Gilbert wasn't surprised his brother had heard of Oz, and was also aware that it probably wasn't due to Cherry Blossom's popularity. Vincent had an odd hobby of ordering dozens of stuffed animals and then mutilating them with scissors. He'd probably ordered some from Cherry Blossom by now.

This "hobby" deeply disturbed most who found out, but Gilbert had gotten used to it. That wasn't to say he understood it—to this day Vincent refused to tell him why he did such a thing, and there was no way Gilbert could figure it out.

He wondered if Vincent would be agitated that he was going to end the life of the owner of a toy company he was most likely a customer of...

But Vincent didn't seem irked at all. "Hmm...fascinating...but be careful, Gil. If you eliminate that child in silence, it will be a victory for you, but if you're found out, it'll be big trouble. And we don't want that...so...do approach with caution. I don't want anything bad happening to you, either. You're my dear brother, and I can't afford to lose you..."

Gilbert twitched in irritation. It wasn't at anything Vincent had said, but he had never liked how Vincent spoke every word with a mysterious conviction that made everything that came out of his mouth sound dangerous.

"I'll be fine, Vince," Gilbert replied, trying and failing to keep the annoyance out of his voice for that section of his speech. Soon after, he forced himself to sound normal, for the sake of both him and his brother. "You don't have to worry about me. Listen, Vince, do whatever you need to. If you have assignments for college, do them. I don't want you worrying about me. Pretend I don't exist."

Vincent let out a chuckle. "Oh, I don't know if I could do that. But if you don't want me to think about you...then I won't. Or at least, I'll try."

"Yeah...uh, love you, Vince." Gilbert wrapped up uneasily.

"You too, Gil..." Vincent was the one who hung up first.

Gilbert sighed. He never would understand that brother of his, but he'd make sure he was doing well until the very end. Being an assassin was what he had to do to hold his family up. And in truth, it wasn't that he cared very much about helping his parents. In fact, if Vincent didn't exist, he probably wouldn't be trying to make money at all. This was just how much he cared for Vincent.

He exited the deli, waving a quick thank-you to the man at the counter—although he really had no reason to be doing so, considering how horrible that sandwich had been. Gilbert ambled up to his car and got back inside in one swift movement.

Oz Vessalius had better watch out.