S H A W N

There was another meeting being held at the Scriptores Club that evening, but Shawn had a feeling that they weren't going to be discussing their newspaper at all tonight.

There was still half-an-hour left to their meeting at midnight. Nicholas was still in the library to catch up with his studies, which left Shawn in a restless state when he found himself all alone in their quiet dorm.

     Before, he had rugby to keep his nerves in check, but now he felt helpless against his own mind. So, just to keep himself busy, he betook himself downstairs and out of the dormitory building, walking relentlessly down the campus until he reached the printing room.

Nicholas was usually the one who had the printing room's key in possession, but to Shawn's luck, he saw that the lights were on in the room. Inside, the door to their parlor was prepped open, and when Shawn walked in, he saw that Luca was already there, knelt on his knees in front of the fireplace as he tried to light the fire.

"Hey," Shawn said softly, announcing his presence.

At the sound of his voice, Luca turned his head to look back at him, a little smile stretched on his pink lips. "Hi."

"I didn't know that you —" Shawn was saying with a smirk, but he managed to stop himself half-way.

He was about to say 'I didn't know that you were handy enough to make a fire', but he reminded himself of Nicholas's words.

I suppose I do tease him too much, Shawn thought to himself, and so he bore on a smile, saying instead,

"I didn't know that you would be here so early."

"I got the key from Niko so I could warm this place up a little before you guys arrived."

Shawn wanted to tell Luca that he was being too nice for his own good, or that it was a very thoughtful thing he'd done for them, but he didn't know how to pay a genuine compliment without making it sound sarcastic, so he merely nodded.

"Why are you here so early?" Luca said with a playful grin as he stood to his feet, dusting off his hands. "You're usually the last person to arrive, just to make sure you have a dramatic entrance."

Shawn laughed. "That's true."

"Well?" Luca asked again, this time more gently. "Why so early?"

"I... dunno," Shawn mumbled. "It was too quiet up in my dorm. I don't like it when it gets too quiet."

Luca nodded in understanding before turning his back to Shawn again and lending his gaze to the growing flame in the fireplace.

"Luca, listen..." Shawn said before he could stop himself, walking closer to Luca. "I... I wanted to apologize."

"You don't need to apologize." Luca shook a hand at him in reassurance. "I get why you were upset that I wasn't there at the beginning of your game. I should know how it feels," he whispered the last few words, but Shawn didn't throw a second thought at it.

"No, no." He shook his head. Luca had never seen him look this nervous. "I — I'm talking about the thing I said that night... when we were sitting on the rugby stands..."

"Oh..." Luca muttered in realization after a few moments of silence, during which time their eyes had been locked with each other.

Your lips... they look so kissable...

Even thinking about it made Shawn feel horrible for saying it.

"You — you were drunk that night," Luca tried to reason with himself. He then tried to lighten the mood by saying jokingly, "you say all sort of rubbish even when you're sober. It obviously has to get worse when you drink down a whole pub."

Shawn laughed again, amused by Luca's new wit. Although his laughter slowly faded away when a terrifying thought hit him.

It was true that Shawn hadn't been in his right mind that night because of the alcohol, but he was sober now. So then, why did Luca's lips still look so soft and kissable to him?

It was the sound of footsteps behind him that snapped Shawn out of his thoughts. Nicholas had just walked into their parlor.

"Oh, good. You guys are already here," Nicholas said breathlessly as he closed the door behind him. He had obviously been running all the way here from the library. "Where are Arthur and Isaac?"

"They should be here any minute now," said Luca.

"Good, good." Nicholas nodded, quickly walking toward the fireplace and holding his hands close to the flames to warm them. "I finished my essay early tonight and wrote a short draft for tomorrow's Scriptores paper about the best cafes and diners in town. This way we work on Nancy's case without having to worry about our newspaper for another week."

"Nancy's case?" Shawn repeated, leering at him. "You've already made a case out of it, have you?"

"This is serious, Shawn. A person has been killed!" Nicholas retorted. "I know you don't think that it's possible, but what if it is? That means that a murderer is walking freely in our university. What if it had happened to someone you cared about? What if he decides to kill again? We have to find out who's done it."

Before Shawn could reply, the door to the parlor opened and Isaac and Arthur came to sight, both having their coats and scarves wrapped around them tightly against the cold night.

"Sorry we're late," said Isaac. "We had to visit someone before coming here."

"Who?" Luca mused, but his question was answered when they saw Eve walking inside after Arthur.

"We went to see Eve. She'd known Nancy more than any of us, so if there's anyone who can help us, it's her," Arthur said fervently, taking off his hat and placing it on the wooden table inside room.

They all looked at Shawn, as if silently asking for his approval. They were relieved when he turned to Eve and asked, "What else can you tell us about her?"

"Actually, I found something else today," said Eve as the five boys took their usual seats around the table, on the black leathery armchairs.

She sat down as well when Nicholas gestured her to take the chair beside him, while the other boys began to light their pipes.

"I went over the book she had borrowed — the one that had the note in it — and I found that she had scrawled a few words on some of its pages in Latin."

"Do you have the book right now?" Nicholas asked.

"I have it here with me," said Isaac, taking the book out of his bag and propping it open on the table. "I went through a few of them on our way here." He pointed at some of the scrawling as he spoke. "Adiuva me... it means 'help me'. Or here she has said 'he's coming after me'." Isaac kept flipping through the pages, translating. "'I can't keep the secret any longer'... 'He made me do it'... 'It was his fault'... 'All his fault'... 'death'... 'he kills'... 'all he does is kill'... 'he will never stop'..."

Isaac finally stopped and looked up from the book. No one spoke. It was as if Nancy's words had possessed them like a ghost. The fear twisted in Shawn's stomach. The eerie silence made him shiver, as though winter had crept through the room like a thief.

"There's so many more of them," Isaac went on. "But the further you go along the book, the less sense it makes."

"What do you mean?" Arthur asked with a confused frown, bending his head over the book to get a better look.

"Some of her words don't have any meaning," said Isaac, skipping to the last few pages of the book where the scribblings had gotten messier. Darker. As though she had known that her inevitable end was getting closer."

"Maybe she wasn't that good at Latin?" Nicholas suggested.

"She was the best in every class. She was an exceptionally smart girl," Eve said reasonably.

"She's right. Nancy was in one of my Latin classes last year." Isaac nodded. "She was the only one who had received full marks on our final exam last year."

"Then maybe your Latin isn't good enough to understand what she's written," Arthur teasingly indicated, but Isaac only glared at him.

"I can understand Latin enough to know that some of these words are utter nonsense!" Isaac said defensively. "I mean, what kind of a word is jartencorh? What about waslinvidod? smonsahtah? Or even sednownahsan. She's repeated these four words all over the book! And after that, it's just crazy scribblings and dark sketches; it's like she had gone mad from fear near the end."

They all fell silent, staring down at the book wordlessly as if it would start to make sense if they gave it more time to sink in.

"I think if we want to find out who the murderer is, we also have to figure out what this big secret was," said Nicholas, breaking the silence. He then turned to face Eve, asking, "Did she ever act suspicious about anything in particular?"

Even nodded unsurely. "She kept writing to someone in secret. Every time she wanted to write her letter, she would make sure I was asleep, but I'm a light sleeper, so I kept waking up at the sound of her quick scribbling in the middle of the night."

"Maybe she was just studying," said Arthur. "Personally, I always like to study at night, because I'm more focused then."

"At first I had thought so, too," Eve went on. "But one night, I got out of bed to get a glass of water, and I saw that Nancy was at her desk, putting a long letter inside a red envelope. When she saw me, she freaked out and tried to hide the letter. I also know that she kept sneaking out of our dorm at nights. It always woke me up when she opened and closed the door whenever she returned."

"Hang on!" Shawn held his hands up to stop her. "I've seen those red envelopes before. With golden wax seals. I'm sure of it..."

"You have?" Nicholas asked in a hollow voice, his eyes wide.

"David Wilson," Shawn finally said thoughtfully, a dark shadow of realization falling upon his face. "He kept loads of them in his locker. I've seen them. I thought they were from his girlfriend."

"Wilson?" Isaac raised his brows in surprise. "That idiot who got you kicked off the team?"

"But what did he have to do with Nancy?" Luca wondered. "I'd never seen them interact with each other."

"Maybe they had a secret affair?" said Shawn hesitantly. "Maybe something happened between them or she found out a secret about him, so he had to get rid of her. I personally didn't see him anywhere at the convocations party, on the night Nancy died."

"I've seen it, too..." Luca suddenly whispered. All color had drained from his face. "I had seen that same red envelope before. I saw one in my music teacher's hand, before Nancy died; Mr. Carter. You — you guys don't think that he..." His voice trailed off.

"Just because Nancy was writing secret letters to someone, it doesn't mean that the person was the killer," Nicholas said as soon as he saw the expression on Luca's pale face. "But we have to start somewhere. These letters could be a lead. I say we go search for them. Tonight."

"Tonight?" Isaac repeated the word in horror. "We could get in so much trouble if they catch us sneaking into the teacher's office or breaking a student's locker."

"Which is why we have to be careful not to get caught," said Nicholas, almost mockingly.

"If this was really a murder, we should tell the police," Isaac said fervently. "There's nothing we can do."

"Isaac, we don't have enough proof or evidence to present to the police," Arthur said reasonably.

"Which is why we have to find these red letters. Because they might lead us to more evidence," Nicholas pitched in again. "Come on. The sooner we get this over with, the better. Now who's in?"

"I'm in." Shawn was first to speak after a few moments of silence, his usual smirk curling up at the edge of his lips. "I'll break Wilson's locker with great pleasure."

"Maybe it's better if you searched somewhere else instead," Nicholas suggested. "If they catch you trying to break into Wilson's locker, they'll think that you want to get back at him for kicking you off the team."

"I can do it. Isaac can come with me, too." Arthur raised his hand awkwardly. "I know how to pick a lock — don't ask how."

"Wasn't going to," said Isaac, eyeing him suspiciously.

"Luca, you can go to the music room to search for the envelopes there with Shawn," said Nicholas. "You know that place better than the rest of us. Eve and I can go to the mailing department and see if we can trace who Nancy was sending the letters to, in case the person wasn't really in this university."

"Sounds good. But take these with you," said Arthur, digging into his bag and taking out a few plastic gloves and handing them around. "If you find the envelopes, only pick them up with these. We don't want our fingerprints on them."

Isaac gave him a look. "Why do you even carry these gloves around with you?"

Arthur flashed him a sly grin. "Ask no questions, hear no lies."

Shawn laughed along with the others, but deep down, he was trying to hide the burning secret within him. There was something he knew. Something that had to do with Nancy.

But he couldn't afford telling anyone about it. Not now. Not ever.

It had to remain a secret.