I S A A C

"Where are they? What's taking them so long?" Shawn repeated for what felt like the hundredth time that night.

"Shawn, for the love God, just relax!" Arthur huffed out in frustration. "They said they were going to be back at ten. It's only half-past-nine."

"No. They said they would be back before ten," Shawn said as he restlessly paced across the parlor. "This is driving me mental! We've been waiting here all night! It's killing me!"

"We haven't been waiting here all night! We just returned from that 24/7 diner down the street!" Arthur countered.

Sighing, Isaac walked over Shawn and gently grabbed onto his arm, leading him toward one of the red armchairs by the fireplace. "Here. Sit down."

"I can't just sit down!" Shawn whined, but Isaac used all his strength to push him down on the armchair.

Isaac then grabbed his bag, taking out a piece of dark chocolate and forcefully handing it to Shawn. "Eat that. It's good for stress and anxiety."

"I'm not stressed!" Shawn complained, but when Isaac threw a meaningful at Shawn's bouncing leg, he fell quiet and grumpily took a small bite of the chocolate.

"Okay, now a little bit of this will do the trick," said Isaac, digging out a small vial from his bag that contain a yellowish liquid. He poured a few drops of it on his hands and then rubbed all his fingertips together to get them all soaked in the oil. With that, he walked up behind Shawn and started rubbing his temples.

Shawn jolted away from him, turning his head to look back at Isaac with wide eyes. "What the bloody hell do you think you're doing?"

"It's lavender oil. It's good for calming the nerves," Isaac explained with a broad smile.

"There's no way I'm letting you put that thing on me! I'll smell like my great grandmother!"

"It's not just about its scent. Lavender has been medically used for more than 2500 years now," said Isaac.

"That's actually true." Arthur nodded in confirmation. "It was even used in ancient Rome, by a Greek military physician who collected medicinal plants."

"And its name comes from the Latin origin, 'lavare', which means 'to wash'," said Isaac, proud at his own knowledge. "It's like saying 'lavender washes all your stress away.'"

Shawn groaned, holding his head in pain. "That was a lot of useless information for twenty seconds."

Isaac rolled his eyes. "Just let me do this, will you? You'll thank me later."

Before Shawn could protest any further, Isaac began massaging his temples again, watching as Shawn's face softened.

"Okay... this isn't too bad," Shawn muttered, taking another bite of his chocolate as he leaned his back against the armchair and allowed himself to relax a bit.

"Thanks. My mum makes the oil herself," Isaac was saying, but just then, they all jumped when the door to the parlor opened and they saw Nicholas and Luca walk inside.

"Took you long enough!" Shawn rose to his feet almost angrily.

"Well? What happened?" Arthur asked, looking at them expectantly.

Isaac noticed the uncomfortable look that Luca and Nicholas shared, as though they were the bearer of bad news that they weren't sure if they could even speak of it.

"There's something we need to talk about," Nicholas said as he glanced over at Shawn, but his voice lacked its usual vim. Something was wrong.

"Spit it out, then!" Shawn said impatiently, darting his eyes from Nicholas to Luca, waiting for one of them to explain what was going on.

Nicholas reached into his coat pocket and took out a red envelope. Isaac didn't know what was so terrible about that; they had already read Nancy's letters to John many times.

"Where did you that?" Arthur asked with a confused frown. "I had locked the letters inside my drawer and I have its key here with me."

"This one wasn't in your drawer," said Nicholas, his gaze still fixed on Shawn. "I found this in Shawn's trunk. It... it has his name on it."

Isaac couldn't understand what was going on, but by the stunned look on Arthur's face and Shawn's suddenly-pale complexion, he tried connecting the dots together.

Nicholas held up the red envelope, and that was when Isaac saw it. On the back of it, written in black, there were a few words engraved,

NANCY
To Shawn

"What is going on?" Arthur mused, turning to face Shawn. "Why did Nancy write you a letter before she died?"

Shawn was awfully quiet, his chest heaving up and down as he tried to steady his breathing. All eyes were now on him. An unnerving silence had spread through the room.

"Shawn?" Luca whispered his name, causing Shawn to glance over at him. It seemed as though Luca was the last person he wanted to face at the moment. "It's okay. You can talk to us."

"In the letter Nancy says the exact words she had written to John Carter," Nicholas said reproachfully before opening the envelope again to read it for the others.

Dear Shawn,
I know I had promised that we wouldn't have to see each other ever, but we need to talk. I can't keep our secret anymore, because it's eating me up. I've been silenced for too long. Meet me at my dorm at six-thirty. The convocation starts at six o'clock, so we'll be alone.
Please, if you ever cared for me at all, you would come.
Nancy

(1/4)

"What is this, Shawn? Why didn't you tell us about it?" said Nicholas, after he was done reading it.

"It's not what you think it is," Shawn finally spoke up, his usual confidence vanishing. "I — I went out with Nancy at the beginning of last year, for around three weeks. Back then, I wasn't close with you four, so I saw no reason to talk about it. And Nancy kept insisting on keeping our relationship a secret from others, because she said she was afraid of what others would think about her. I couldn't understand why she wanted this, but there wasn't much of a relationship between us to even talk about. We only went out together a few times, and then I ended things soon."

"Then why has she written this to you?" Nicholas asked.

"I don't know! All right?" Shawn threw his hands up defensively. "I hadn't even read this letter! A few days before Nancy died, she had slipped this envelope underneath our dormitory door. It was the day after my fight with Wilson. I wasn't it the mood to read it. So I just tossed it inside my trunk to read it later, but I completely forgot about it. This was the only letter I had ever gotten from her."

"What I don't understand is why you didn't tell us that you had known Nancy all this time?" Nicholas countered in an accusing tone. "You had even dated her, but you pretended like you didn't even know who she was!"

"I was scared, okay?" Shawn snapped. "At first, I didn't say anything, because even back then Nancy had asked me not to tell anyone about it. But after finding out that she was murdered, I was scared to talk to you about it! Do you have any idea how that would've made me look? Our main suspects of the murder were the two people she had dated! Just like me! But I swear, I had forgotten about this letter!"

"So you were afraid that we would assume you had murdered Nancy?" Nicholas retorted as the rest of them remained in silence.

"Maybe! I don't know!" Shawn shouted, losing his temper little by little.

Nicholas was quiet for a while, gaping back at him. "Where were you on the night Nancy was murdered?"

Isaac held his breath once the words had left Nicholas's mouth. His ears had started buzzing as the tension grew thicker.

"What?" Shawn had thrown out the word in a dangerous whisper, his jaw jutting and his teeth grinding together.

"You left the hall for a while on the night of the ceremony," Nicholas went on.

Shawn was now glaring daggers at him. "How dare you even suggest something like that!"

"I'm not trying to suggest anything! If you hadn't been so secretive about all of this, we wouldn't even be having this conversation right now!"

"You know what I think this is all about?" Shawn snarled, taking a step closer toward Nicholas. "I think you're just mad that I accused your little girlfriend of making this whole thing up. You're just trying to get back at me."

"It's not about that, and you know it!" Nicholas snapped. "I'm not saying you had anything to do with Nancy's death! But you and I both know that you've had a lot of problem controlling your temper in the past! And accidents do happen!"

Shawn looked as if he was about to leap toward Nicholas in an angry movement, but Luca and Isaac were quick enough to hold him back.

"You need to stop this! Both of you!" Isaac yelled, his voice ringing loudly across the room. "What is the matter with you two? This is not the time to turn against each other!"

Shawn wetted his dry lips, his dark gaze still on Nicholas. "I was with Arthur that night," he said more calmly. "In case you have forgotten, we went to temper with the ballroom's speakers to play the radio's music."

"He's right, Niko," Arthur began in a small voice.

Shawn turned his sharp glare back on Nicholas, shaking his head at him. "Thanks a lot for being a friend." And so, he turned on his heel and stormed out of the parlor, slamming the door shut behind him.

***

The following morning, Isaac and Arthur woke up early to get ready for their classes, exhausted and anxious after the series of events that had taken place lately.

"I still can't believe Niko would jump at him like that," Isaac mumbled, closing the dorm's door behind him after returning from his quick morning shower.

"Shawn shouldn't have kept something as important as this from us either," Arthur countered, cleaning his glasses with the hem of his coat. "But you were right. This isn't a time for us to turn against each other. Let alone accuse each other of murder."

Ever since last night, Isaac couldn't get Nicholas's words out of his mind. Niko had been right about one thing:

Accidents do happen...

Isaac was now standing in front of the room's mirror, combing his dark hair as he found his thoughts being carried away. Grinding his eyes shut, he fought the images of that day from flowing back into his head. There was a heaving sea in his mind, and it drowned him in itself every day.

They don't know that I'm a murderer, too, Isaac thought to himself, his whole body beginning to shake and his breaths becoming unsteady. Billy is dead because of me... I killed him...

"I should probably get rid of this," Arthur said with a long sigh, snapping Isaac out of his thoughts.

"What?" Isaac blinked a few times, looking over at Arthur. He was gesturing at his Motion Detector Camera which had been by their window for many weeks now.

"It's useless," said Arthur, running his hand over the top of the camera. "But I guess I can get some of my money back by selling its pieces. It was my whole lifesavings."

"Are you sure you don't want to keep working on it?"

"No. It's no use. It was a failure." Another deep sigh. Arthur began to disconnect the wires from the machine, clearing out the area. Isaac had forgotten what their room looked like without those wires taking all the space and making it hard to walk. But just as Arthur began to open the camera, he came to a halt when he noticed something. "This is impossible..."

Isaac looked over at him. "What is it?"

"The film rolls... I had eight shots in this roll," Arthur said in a hollow voice, his eyes wide as he took out the black-and-white film and examined it more closely.

"So?"

Arthur turned to look over at him, a mingle of shock and glee appearing across his face. "The night of the ceremony, I wanted to test my M.D.C, and I asked Shawn to help me with it."

"Yes, I remember you saying that you wanted to do something like that. But you said that it hadn't worked."

"It worked at first," Arthur continued with unusual vim. "I took five test shots in our dorm; I moved my hand in front of the camera from different distances, and it automatically took a picture of my hand. But I wanted to see if it could work from a long distance. So, I placed the machine in front of the window and went downstairs into the courtyard. I started jumping up and down so the machine could detect my motion and take a picture, but it didn't work. Or so I thought."

Arthur walked over to Isaac to show him the film roll. "See? All eight shots are here, even though I thought it hadn't worked. There are three pictures here of the courtyard."

"Wait a minute..." Isaac began as he thought of something. "On the night of the convocation, you said that you and Shawn had been the last ones to leave the Residency Hall. But there are three shots here."

Arthur's eyes widened in realization "Which means two other people have entered or exited the building after us!"

"Yes! Which means that there's a small chance that one of these pictures will show the person who had killed Nancy!"

"Oh, my God! Isaac, you're genius!"

Without another word, Arthur grabbed everything he needed and put them all in his bag, before leaving the dorm with Isaac. As fast as their legs could carry them, the two boys headed down to the university's darkroom, where they could bring the pictures to life.