An evergreen forest towered overhead, sharp stakes of ancient trees spearing into the clouds. The air had changed, the smell of pine was bracing; one could feel the needles just by inhaling. Either nightfall was arriving early, or rain was due, judging by the darkness. The road ahead was a strip of shadow disappearing into the treeline.

Sao wondered why cases so often led to the deepest and darkest woods. That then begged the question: how many mysteries were the woods hiding that were never uncovered?

They were in the thick of it, or the midst of it, Sao was not sure which word to use. One felt weightier, but it might not have been appropriate; despite all his musing they were only a little ways into the forest. They had come up onto the small, damp campsite with little fanfare. The place was vacant; the weather was hardly encouraging to campers. After trawling the site and dumping an armful of empty ice-cream cups in the trash can by the toilets, Rai hopped back into the car and set their sights on the forest depths.

He drove slowly, but not carefully. Par for the course when it came to Rai. He seemed to be closely watching the ground ahead, which was minor comfort.

After a while, Rai stopped again, crawled around on the grounds with his glowing hands pawing the dirt like a foraging animal. “Did it rain today?”

“A little early in the morning.”

Rai snapped some photos and trudged back to the car. “There are tyre tracks in the mud. Semi-fresh. Hard to see once they went off the road.” He inspected the dirt on his hands and phone case and began to pull them toward the sleek fabric of his jacket.

With more athleticism than he’d ever managed before, Sao whipped out a pack of tissues and threw them, clipping Rai square on the jaw. “Use those.” He waited for Rai to do so. “Who are you suspecting?”

“Maybe birdwatchers or mushroom hunters.” Rai refitted his gloves. “Not that I think shrooms and birds have anything to do with this. This forest doesn’t look like much fun - probably a warden?” He let out a hard sigh. “I wanted to get a better idea of what Sigma and the campers saw. What might have happened to the long-lost Mr. D.”

There wasn’t much to see beyond dense tree trunks and a slowly deepening fog. Sao shivered. “His body could be out there.”

“Don’t worry. If the police and military search parties didn’t find him, we’re not gonna be tripping over his skeleton anytime soon.” That might have been Rai’s attempt at comfort, but he sounded far too enthused at the idea of skeletons. “Do you think Desmond really took his own life?”

Sao strained to think. The forest wasn’t helping. “That’s akin to asking if I disregard the whole Bell story. I don’t know, but if so, it would explain why Sigma became out of sorts when Racer joined Bell Lodge. And Racer then taking his own life would have been especially traumatic: a repeat of a past he devoted his identity to forgetting.” Sao sighed. “Although, I’m not entirely sure if Sigma’s traumatised. I feel bad saying it, but he’s an actor. And I’m just not good at detecting that sort of thing.”

“Nobody’s universally great at it. Trauma looks different per person, per what happened to them...”

“Leave it to his therapist, then.”

“Yeah.” Rai tapped the packet of tissues with his fingertip, jabbing it nearly flat with each beat. “What do you make of the idea that Desmond might still be alive?”

“You’re thinking of the call I had with Indigo. She did seem to have an extreme reaction to his name. And it’s true they never found a body to confirm...” Despite the proposal of there being no skeletons after all, Sao shivered again. “Do you - do you think he’s still somewhere out here?”

“What, in this dingy forest? After being missing for 20 years? Probably not.”

“Of course not.” Sao closed his eyes, but found himself unable to relax. The overhang of trees was suffocating, and contemplating skeletons, aliens, lurking dead men…

“You don’t like forests much, do you?” Rai slammed the driver side door and frowned. “I said you didn’t have to come. You’ve also talked about hating camping.”

“My experience didn’t involve aliens but it did leave behind some lasting memories.” Sao scratched his face. “Something happened in the forest around my school. Camping trip gone wrong.”

“That happened at your fancy countryside boarding school? I thought you said they didn’t let you go too far from the mansion, get your hands in the dirt or any of that.”

“Yes.” Sao smiled. “We shouldn’t have been there. I suppose we learned why.”

Rai’s pupils were bobbing as if he were watching a mosquito. But upon inspection, he was watching Sao, his hands, which were clawing at his face. No - he was pulling at the mask that covered the scars on his face. Sao stopped. At least it was just Rai looking, he’d already seen the mess before. Judging by his taste in films, Rai even had a taste for the gory. “Anyhow,” Sao said “I’m not about to let one bad experience from over a decade ago stop me from ever setting foot into a forest again. Besides, this place is completely different. The forest around my school wasn’t evergreen; it didn’t smell like air freshener, like this place does.” He sniffed loudly. The pine in the air burned his throat. “And there were never any cars going through the forest. And then there’s you.”

“What?”

“Wishfort was a school aiming to produce presentable ladies and gentlemen. Outside influences were carefully vetted. If the tutors had seen something like this,” Sao waved his hands to take in everything around him: Rai, the used tissue on the dashboard, the muddy gloves, the croaking car, “blazing like a maniac through the woods, they’d have called in the national guard.”

Rai put his hand on the parking brake, smirking. “I’m a bad influence?”

“I’m just relaying what I remember of the school dogma.” Sao sat back. “That life wasn’t for me, anyhow. To the headmistress, a liking for pizza and sleeping in late would have also been hallmarks of a bad influence.”

“Glad you graduated out of that.”

“I didn’t. Graduate, that is. I left early.” 

Like the recruitment dinner. But leaving Wishfort had not helped him escape anything. If anything, he’d only gotten himself into trouble much worse. The family. Slamming doors. And holes in time that he - sometimes forcibly - refused to remember.

“And here you are now.” Rai kicked the car into gear. “In some maniac’s car.”

Sao yawned. “You get a pass with that jacket. The one you wore to Alga? I was just wishing I had one like it. I’m also enjoying the spin you put on it with the old t-shirt.”

Rai took his eyes off the road for a half second. “I just picked this up because it was the  cleanest thing around.”

“Effortlessly styled, then. A happy accident. Sprezzatura. If I'm recalling the term correctly.”

“More or less. I used to think I was going into journalism in college, got some fancy talk out of it. But the word doesn’t suggest a total lack of effort. It’s kind of like a mental defense. It usually means you practiced or prepared to look like you’re not putting in the effort.”

“Oh? Maybe my memory’s a little displaced. I just remember it from manners class - I learned the term in school.”

“Manners Class? So this was at Wishfort.”

“M-hm.”

“Your primary school.”

With a blithe smile, Sao only shrugged.

Rai scraped his blue fingers against the steering wheel. “The hell kind of teachers decided that’s what kids need to learn?”

“I suppose everyone’s got their own ideas on what to do with children.” Sao thought of the shadowy Desmond - a ghost, a spirit, or alive among the stars - and watched the final layer of trees brush by. They were out of the woods, back in the open air. In the side view mirror, Sao saw he’d taken off a good portion of his face, his cheek ripped to reveal a blotch the color of burnt meat. “I’d like to imagine that everyone wants children to be the best they can be. The question then is how one achieves it...”

“Beats me. I’ve never had kids.”

The sky fell into view, a sea of grey clouds. Sao thought he saw Delta’s face etched there somewhere.