november 19, 2019.  

"I'm glad we're finally done and I still have time to spare before my work study in two hours."

A young woman sighed in relief upon she and her two partners finishing their group assignment with one of them agreeing.

"Right with you on that, Sherryl. I gotta meet Dean Huntington in less than half an hour to give a tour to some high school kids and I have to be on my best behavior or I'll get my pay deducted again."

Both women rested their heads onto the table they occupied leaving the last of their trio to chuckle at their words.

"When are you ever on your best behavior, Sara?"

"As long as I don't go too far and just stay right under the radar, Sophie." Sara acknowledged with a grin before looking between both of her classmates. "I'm glad we were put together. We really came up with a great story plot and Sherryl's drawings are amazing compare to mine."

"I wouldn't say that." Sherryl spoke in a modest manner. "You and Sophie happened to explained everything clearly that I could imagine it."

"To which we should pass with a big fat A and to hoping that Mr. Stiles isn't in one of his moods like last time." Sophie commented as Sara scoffed. "When isn't he in one of his moods? I really think he needs to get out of this teaching job to pursue his own artistic dreams."

Sherryl just smiled not adding more of the conversation when she felt her backpack vibrate. She quickly went through it, pulled her phone out, and saw that it was a call from her half-brother, Milo. She excused herself giving them a small wave and hurried outside to answer the call.

"What's up, Milo?"

"Sherrie!" Milo greeted happily and Sherryl winced from the loudness of his ecstatic tone.

"Could you be even more loud, Lo?"

"Of course, but thank god you picked up! I was beginning to worry an-"

"Get to the point, Lo. You should be in school right now. Why are you calling?"

A sheepish chuckled could be heard from the other line and Sherryl wasn't amuse by it.

"Milo."

"Um, you're good with math, right?"

Sherryl found it an odd question, but curious as to why her little brother would be asking that in the first place.

"Not really. Why?"

He dodged her question and asked another.

"Do you perhaps know someone that does?"

"Even if I did, what's it to ya?"

"Hmm, are you busy then?"

Sherryl did have her work study, but that wasn't until another two hours.

"Milo."

"Just tell me if you're busy or not, sis."

"I'm still at school. I got done with a project. What's up, little bro? Aren't the cram school teachers strict?"

"No. I've been skipping it lately. It's been getting too much lately."

"Milo. You know how Diane feels about your education, especially when winter break is coming soon."

"I know, Sherrie, I know, but mom doesn't let me have any fun and all I do is study, study, and more studying."

Sherryl knew that her step-mother could be a bit strict, high strung, and controlling, but it was her duty as a parent to make sure her child had the best education as possible despite her own child's best interest at heart. Sherry understood Milo's slight behavior because of it.

"Are you in trouble again?" Sherryl asked knowing the habits of her step-brother whenever he needed to be bail out of serious trouble.

Milo reluctantly revealed the real reason he contacted his eldest sister and Sherryl let out a sigh knowing that he got himself into another sticky situation again. She left campus immediately and hurried to meet him and his other hooky playing buddies.

"Officer Bang."

Christopher stopped typing upon hearing his name and gazed up at his superior with a curious look.

"Yes, Chief Purdy?"

"Have you heard about your upcoming promotion and transfer to headquarters?"

He knew, but he feigned cluelessness wondering why it was being brought up now.

"Headquarters? No. Why am I being promoted and transfer, Chief Purdy?"

"You've produced excellence results over the year since you've been here at the East Akaso Police Station, Officer Bang, but we here and those higher up decided that you'll show even greater promise at the First Unit of the Nizho Metropolitan Police Department thanks to your impressive results after evaulation."

"Thank you kindly for your words, Chief, but I can't just leave you guys like that." Christopher said with a polite smile. "I really enjoy my time as a part of the Community Safety Unit at this station."

"Don't worry about it, Officer Bang. We all know that you are meant for greater things."

Chief Purdy dismissed with a wave of his hand while also complimenting Christopher.

"Ah, thank you, sir."

Christopher became shy upon hearing those words before asking more about it.

"Um, so then when does my transfer and promotion become effective?"

"After the end of this year starting on the first day of the new year." Chief Purdy answered with a sad smile.

"Oh? That's pretty fast."

"Yup. Just need to finish some more paper work and you'll be hanging with the bigshots soon. Just stop by when you're in the area."

"I will, sir."

Chief Purdy walked away after patting Christopher on the shoulder and he looked about the office. He sure was gonna miss the place and the people he had gotten to known since he started. Christopher continued with his report when the chief asked him for one last thing.

"Actually, if you could take care of this last thing for me that would help us a whole lot."

Chief Purdy placed a file onto Christopher's desk.

"Can do, Chief."

"Call."

Sherryl pushed the set amount of chips into the pile with a neutral expression. She watched awaiting the results while playing in some dingy and poorly lit bar-like place that allowed minors within their vicinity. She found herself playing Poker for her brother and his friends against a bunch of college students that she knew, but had never associated herself with. They were Masaki Suda in Mechanical Engineering, Jun Shison in Journalism, and Kento Yamazaki in Physical Education. Sherryl knew of them due to the people on campus talking about them, especially Sara as she had a crush on Jun. Anyways, Milo and his three friends, Leo, Adam, and Justin thought they could out-smart these college students only because the older trio had let them win on the pretense that they themselves weren't good players.

"Two pairs."

Sherryl laid out her cards with two pairs of Three's and Six's.

"Three of a kind, ten." Jun said following her after.

"Two pairs, Seven's and Eight's." Masaki announced next.

"King, four of a kind." Kento stated with a smirk and a quirk of his brow.

The young quartet gasped in shocked that Sherryl had been bested and were horrified of their oncoming punishment. Earlier they had signed a contract with the trio in paying three thousand dollars if they lost. If they won then they would get the three thousand dollars instead.

"It looks like you lost, sweetheart." Jun mocked as Sherryl ginned at him in a wry way.

"Did I though, non-sweetheart?"

The older trio furrowed their eyebrows in confusion.

"I hope you have a plan, sis." Milo responded from behind her.

Sherryl nodded in acknowledgment as she reached for something within her bag and pulled out a portable black light.

"What's that?" Masaki asked curiously as Kento peered closer.

"Do you carry such a thing with you all the time?"

"You'll see." She replied in a crytpic tone before eyeing Kento. "And yes, I do."

The group of males watched as Sherryl clicked a button on the portable item and held it above the playing cards. After a few seconds the cards' edges began to glow faintly of green, blue, and pink before the colors brightened seconds later. This only left the cards of the three Ten's, two Seven's, two Eight's, and the four King's with no markings.

"Hmm, strange." Sherryl stated with feigned cluelessness.

"What's strange?" The young quartet asked wondering what was going on.

Sherryl didn't answer them, but continued to speak about the coloring.

"I know that I marked the whole deck with my very specially homemade glow-in-the-dark ink based highlighters when I dealt the cards not that long ago, but why are these cards that were in your guys' hands the only ones not glowing?"

Sherryl lifted her gaze towards Kento who won with the Four of A Kind.

"The three of you've been cheating all this time and even tried to trick my little brother and his friends, right?"

"Whoa, whoa, calm down." Kento said with a laugh. "It was just a joke."

"Yeah, just a joke." The other two chimed in with uneasy expressions.

Kento cast her a small wry smile.

"Neither of us has that sort of money on us, anyways."

"Just a joke, right?" Sherryl asked in confirmation.

The older three males nodded.

"Then lemme see the two contracts you had us signed earlier."

Sherryl held out her hand beckoning for Kento to give her the contracts with a serious expression not wanting to play around any longer. The older males looked at one another nervously before handing over the pieces of paper they had the quintet signed earlier. Sherryl skimmed the contracts again before ripping them with a smug smile.

"Then this is all voided."

"Hey! Y'all signed it, so it's not voided." Jun exclaimed in anger. "Now that's a double fine!"

"Oh, really?"

She paused in her ripping to re-read the important parts of both contracts.

"The agreement signed was by a Mio Grayson, a Leon Chin, an Aden Fen, and a Jason Wang."

She held up one of the partial ripped contract with one hand before holding up the other with her other hand.

"The other one was signed by a Cherry Grayton. Neither of which is our real names."

"You-"

The older trio were about to say before she interjected with a proud look.

"Don't get mad that you've been had right back. So it's all clearly voided."

Sherryl ripped the papers shredding them down to even smaller pieces. Jun and Masaki groaned and held in their anger not wanting to admit that the contracts were indeed invalid.

"I know you, don't I?" Kento suddenly stated with a curious glance at Sherryl.

"You also attend Zaira Esme University."

Sherry didn't answer him and instead continued ripping up the contracts while her brother and his buddies silently cheered behind her at not having to be in debt or in trouble.

"I clearly remember you." Kento repeated as he tried to recall where he's seen Sherryl.

"I think you're the one that's been changing majors over the years."

Once again Sherryl ignored Kento's words as she tossed the pieces of paper at him. Before Kento could try again with his memory, the bar's door busted opened with several voices shouting, "Freeze! Don't move!", and similar phrases one after the other while moving into the place.

"Of all times they could've showed up, it had to be right now."

Sherryl shut her eyes with a sigh. She knew this was gonna be a headache for sure later.

"You're well aware that playing for money is a felony, right, Ms. Grey?" Christopher questioned Sherryl.

He sat before her with a calm demeanor as she didn't reply to his question and gazed at him in boredom. Christopher tried again.

"May I ask why you had these on you?"

He placed the portable black light onto the table along with her art kit supplies as well as her backpack.

"I revoke my rights to speak without an attorney."

She knew how the police work. She wasn't gonna confirm their words when she hasn't done anything wrong.

"Okay."

He backed off with a nod while trying to gauge the female's body language.

"Do you want something to drink or eat?"

Christopher meant this as a genuine question due to observing Sherryl's slightly dishelved apperance. He thought that Sherryl might be under some sort of stress that she was not aware of. Christopher happened to glance at her exposed skin when the sleeves went up and noticed a few thin markings on them. Sherryl instinctly moved her arms down to her lap and under the table. She instead answered his question with another question with a netural tone.

"Can I go?"

Christoher dismissed the lines on her arms and had no reason to keep her. His colleague had mentioned some of her priors, but knew that there was no real association to the situation at hand. Thanks to Sherryl's special friend, Sherryl wasn't the culprit in this case he was looking into. He had gotten a slight headache before entering the interrogation room and knew that there were two inside although one was more solid than the other.

"Sure, you can go."

Christopher pushed her items back towards her and she placed them inside her bag before standing and swinging it over her shoulder. He stood while leading Sherryl out of the interrogation room. Christopher bid her a good day despite the frown appearing on his face as he noticed the numbers above her head kept going up and down frequently. Sherryl's spirit friend walked alongside her and waved goodbye to the male with a polite smile. Christopher cast the ghost a small smile as he felt a weird feeling in his gut.

"You're not gonna tell Mom, are you?" Milo asked while he, his friends, and Sherryl left the police station.

Sherryl didn't respond back to her brother as she just wanted to get far away from the police station as possible.

"Please don't tell her." Milo pleaded once again. "She'll ground me for life if she found out."

Sherryl just side-glanced him with a blank look.

"No, seriously. Don't tell Mom because then she'll tell Dad and I won't hear the end of this until the day I die and beyond my grave."

"Well, you shouldn't have been playing for money now, huh?" Sherryl countered in a playful tone before looking over at Milo's friends.

"So how did you guys get caught up with those three from my university?"

"Online." The quartet answered.

"There's this one website where you can do trials of games for fun." Justin explained with excitement.

Leo spoke next explaining further.

"And they give you the option if you wanna take it to real life, but the website won't be responsible if something were to happen."

"Wow, seriously?" Sherryl commented with a disgusted face. "No wonder."

"Yeah." Adam answered. "It was simple at first, but then we made actual money and wanted more."

"We know that we're wrong." Milo admitted in the end.

Sherryl shot them a knowing look.

"I get it, but seriously, stay away from that site and don't go around playing for money in a shady place ever again. Got it?"

"Got it." The quartet agreed in unison.

Just then a car pulled up before them revealing the half-siblings' parents, Harry and Diane. Diane rushed out of the car before it parked to hug her child and spitting about words of concern whereas Harry walked up to his daughter with an unsure look.

"I'm fine, Dad." Sherryl said with a neutral tone. "Milo's fine, too, as well as his little buddies."

"It's not that, Sherryl." Her dad began.

"Then what is it, Harry?"

Sherryl knew where this conversation was going and why she was being the way she was with her father and treating him like a non-parental figure. It was a normal thing for her and she wished that it wasn't.

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