Chapter Three: The One With The Serious Interview

"Sit." I pointed at a couple of empty chairs in the waiting room, signaling politely to the lady behind the desk that we'd return in a moment. The demand to the boy came off more strongly than I anticipated, and I thought that even so I wouldn't feel the need to apologize, but the more time passed, the more it ate me up.

He's still a stranger to me so just because he claims something so unrealistic doesn't mean I can go off and label him rude and disrespectful. Not yet. I decided to try to start our bond over, since it's only just begun and it was already crumbling. I needed to find deep enough reason to dislike him. "I'm sorry. I don't have the time to be nice about this. I'll have to try extra hard to do that. It's just, you're not making any sense. This is so out of nowhere."

"You are being nice about it, silly. Are you saying apologizing is for cruel people?" The so-called Gianni, sat down obediently, resting his head onto his hand, his elbow balanced on his crossed legs' knee. Rachel caught up with me, instantly confused, but surprisingly her instinct wasn't to intervene. She sat down next to me on another chair, putting me right in the middle. Even more surprisingly, Gianni didn't ask about her, remaining on the topic I was beginning to bring out. "Hit me with whatever you want. That's if you're willing to answer my questions too. I'm just as lost as you seem to be. It makes me pity you when we're on the same boat. If you are who you say you are, you didn't exist in my book. Same goes for me, doesn't it?"

I nodded hesitantly, my neck hurting to move from the way it tilted my head for what was way too long. "S-so you really knew Mew? Since when?"

"Mew?" He questioned, and both his eyes showed it, until it was covered over by a flood of understanding, and realization. "I've known Camille for what would be three years coming up. We have more boys than girls on our dance team, and I was the extra boy without a partner, so they sent her to practice with us to even the competition. She was on our side since that decision even though our schools are technically rivals, we spent a lot of time perfecting our choreography together, and the rest is history."

"Camille wasn't into dancing. She was too reserved and quiet to do anything that would get her attention, even if she was good at it. That's how she's always been." I replied, using the name that made him more comfortable, and I don't know why I let myself 'look out' for him that way in the first place. It just came to me and I acted on it.

"Are you kidding?" He scoffed before changing his position to look more deeply at my expression to pick up on something he might of missed, but he understood me perfectly. It's like we're talking about different people who would've never known each other. "I mean, sure, Camille had a shy, timid side, but for the most part she was the life of the party. She loved the attention and without her a party wasn't the same. That girl knew how to get crazy and have fun."

"I-I've never heard anything like that before." I admitted in a stammer. I was struggling to wrap my head over such an idea and I was hoping saying it aloud will make it easier to soak in. "I've heard people say that she had a rare fun side that she only let a few people she was close to see, but not that being shy was a rare piece of her. That's how everyone here knows her as." The attempt didn't do much, and I found myself turning to Rachel for an opinion, input, argument,- anything really. "Did you know about this?" I asked her.

"Hey, hey. Don't get me involved. We clicked in the first place because she was shy. We were opposite and that's why we got along. I don't know her in any other way." She has her hands up in defense by her face as if I was interrogating her for something, and her eyes widened as if I was accusing her. I let the topic go, deciding to worry more about it later, and she seemed to breathe better that way.

"Alright, alright. So you don't know about it. I get it." I stated, to be sure she knew I wasn't planning to attack her about the matter out of nowhere anytime soon, and I got the conversation back on track. "Gianni, we seem to know very different sides of her, but if you really do know any remnant of her then you do know what happened to her. Do you think that Mew-." I trailed off. I still had trouble to say such words unless it slipped out accidentally, but I had to say it now. It would confirm how well he knows her. So far, we were on the shallow.

"C-committed suicide?" He stuttered but finished my sentence, pulling his phone out from his pocket to admire his lock-screen. Mew was on it; I couldn't mistake her face for somebody else even if I wanted to, and she planted a gentle kiss to his cheek. Looking at the photo brought back memories for him, that he could break down right here right now.

I almost liked seeing someone on a similar page as me. Someone that showed they were in pain and let me know I wasn't by myself, and that understood as we went through the same situation. He gradually brought his head back up before he continued talking. "Definitely not. It's not like her to do something like that. Especially because on the news and all the articles online said she overdosed. That girl is afraid of pills. It's her biggest fear. There's no way she'd turn to that if she actually wanted to die, which she didn't. Someone killed her and they're still out there somewhere."

I exhaled through my nose, nodding at what I was hearing, until a sad smile, the most I could manage, spread across my face. "For the first time it actually seems like we're talking about the same person." I stated. A gentle laugh escaped my lips, but I've never witnessed one that was more depressing in my entire life. The thing is, it wasn't just me. His expression was mirrored to mine in ways I couldn't say, as if I was looking right into my own reflection, and that though comforting, kind of stung. For the first time I felt the need to keep the conversation rolling like a defense mechanism. "Is it coincidence that we're meeting here? Because I have the smallest feeling that it isn't."

"And your feeling would be right." He hit his hand against his pants as he stood up, eyeing the woman behind the desk again. "Everyone knows me here, especially her. I've come here almost everyday since the case closed to convince someone to give me Camille's medical records so if you came here we'd almost definitely cross paths. In case something more is on there that we don't know and stuff, I felt I had to come. At first because I was underage, and now that I'm 18, because I'm not blood, they're not going to hand it to me due to the policies. They won't kick me out because I'm not using force or anything, I'm just a bit annoying - maybe I minor inconvenience but I feel better about myself somehow. At least I can say I tried, you know? To figure this out. I could've been the only one fighting for the truth. I wasn't certain she had a family, so I had to do something."

"I understand, and kudos to you, I have to say." I fumbled around with my hands, as I debated on telling him more about myself and my situation, and ended up deciding on it. "When Mew passed, I was 17. My parents made sure I didn't look into it anymore no matter how eager I was and I listened to them. When I turned 18, I felt too tied down to be able to do anything because I thought they must've told me that for a reason, even if I didn't understand it. I'm 19 now and I'm just getting myself out of the house to figure out the truth. So really, I'm glad you've been trying so hard all this time. I can't say I did the same."

"Don't get so worked up, Shang." He didn't turn to face me, but kept his face in the opposite direction, standing tall compared to my remained-sitting figure. "I did my best for what my circumstances were and you did your best for what yours were. That's what counts. Besides, you're legal age now, you're Camille's sister - if she had you listed to see her records you'll easily be able to get ahold of them and with as close as it seems you two must've been, it's likely."

It was odd to me how easily he accepted that I was Mew's sister when moments ago he admitted to her never telling him I existed. For me, it was still difficult to accept that she's had a boyfriend that I never knew about, but I didn't have any bad feelings about him. I felt he could be of help, so I put up with it.

"Shang, I really don't think you guys have good ideas. Like I said before, this is only going to open up things that didn't have to be opened up. Things that were already buried." Rachel spoke up. She was a lot less chatty than usual, which was weird. Still, Gianni continued gesturing me on to the desk, and it was more persuasive in encouraging obedience.

All Rachel could do was stutter, but no actual words were coming out of her mouth. Without her saying something worthy of standing by, I found myself face to face with the woman who I just noticed to be in scrubs. She was a nurse in this building, who rolled Camille into a surgery that couldn't save her. I couldn't mistake this woman. Giselle Dela Cruz, her name-tag read, held up by her lanyard. She lives in our neighborhood.

"Can I help you, madam?" She said professionally when she noticed me, and it drew me in to spit out what Gianni and I had said in unison at our first meeting, once again. Her eyelashes fluttered flustered at my request, like it's one she's never heard of before, which is obviously far from true because of the blond boy, but her words went on without second thought, unlike her expression. "Of course, Miss. Can I have your name, age, and your relationship to Camille please? And your ID if possible."

"Crishia Lobrigas, 19, sister." I responded directly to the point, rummaging through my bag to find the card she asked for, which I placed up on the desk when I felt it in my fingers.

She examined the card to confirm the information, comparing it to some documents in the computer, before heading off to a printer behind her to collect a couple pieces of paper, which she handed to me almost reluctantly. That is, unless I'm imagining things. "There's that for you Miss Lobrigas. Is there anything else you would like me to do for you?"

"That's it. Thank you." I replied as polite as I could, before taking off back to the other two. I kept the paper folded so I wouldn't be tempted to look at it until I made it closer to them, but I was anyway. I had to get a glance. I couldn't wait any longer.

Stopped in the middle of the hospital's walkways, I could feel people have to ruin their patterned footsteps to get around me, but it didn't bother me this time around, as it usually would. Skimming through the documents, I looked for evidence from the day of her death; if there was any proof of struggle, or fight that she had to go through. Bruises, strangling, signs of beings tied up - that might've been overlooked, but I didn't see anything like that. Only the proof of the one thing everybody claimed. Her overdose on painkillers, when all along I didn't know she was hurting - suffering.

"Did she actually-?." I mumbled. My knees went weak, and I fell to the floor too rapidly to find a chair to sit down in. Rachel and Gianni both came running to my aid, but only Gianni was frantic of what went wrong - what exactly I saw and why it would cause this reaction. He had his hand reached down to help me to my feet, which I accepted after hesitation. Rachel seemed unphased, standing like a tree above me, and she didn't say anything for a good moment, but with one look at her no one could deny she was thinking about something.

"I told you didn't I?" She finally said, "That this wasn't a good idea. That Mew really did do that to herself."