[C h a p t e r 4 0]

“I’m listening.”

Amber turned to stare at his back, a sorrowful look in her eyes. She then turned to stare ahead as she removed Dino from her shoulder and placed him on her knee where she began him in an attempt to soothe herself.

“My mother never killed my stepfather. I did.” She saw his back stiffen slightly out the corner of her eye. “He tried to me and I stabbed a broken bottle into his throat. Then, two years later I killed a drunken man who was attempting to kidnap me in order to… me.” Amber looked down at Dino, laughing at herself pathetically. “I seemed to attract those kinds of men, before I became...” Her voice trailed off as silence fell between them. They both knew what she meant. “I met Kris when he came to try and help me from that drunken bastard and I ended up using his gun to kill the man. He then took me to… his boss, who is now mine.”

Henry remained motionless and Amber could not tell what his reaction was. As she was about to continue with her story, Henry suddenly said, “Lee Soo Man.”

Amber snapped her head in Henry’s direction as she glared at his back suspiciously. The look soon faded from her face as her sorrowful look returned. “I should have known you would have figured that out as well, Xian Hua. You truly are a great detective, just as you have always wanted to be.”

He turned around to peer at her, his face a knot of frustration and anger. “Why did you still go and work for him then? And not only as his secretary, but as his – his –”

“Assassin?” offered Amber weakly. A bitter smile then curved her face. “Because I wanted revenge. Because I wanted to forget the guilt of killing someone. And because… I hated myself.”

Henry suddenly jumped towards her, gripping Amber’s shoulders tightly as he shook her, startling Dino off her lap. “Revenge? To forget guilt? Were you insane, Josephine? And how could you hate yourself when I… when I love you.” He suddenly pulled her towards him, embracing her tightly as he slowly her hair. “I love you, Josephine, and I still do. There wasn’t a day that went by when I didn’t miss you, that I didn’t blame myself for causing your death. I… love you… Josephine…”

Amber closed her eyes as her arms went around Henry, returning his embrace. She breathed his scent in deeply, a deep, longing regret for the pain and misery she had put him through, wishing to return to the time before she had met Lee Soo Man. The sound of his beating heart echoed loudly in her ear and she smiled as she held him tighter. “I know, Xian Hua… And I love you too.” He suddenly loosened his grip on her as he peered down in surprise. Amber used this chance to pull away from him, wiping away the tears that had formed in the corner of her eyes. “But I haven’t finished telling you my story.”

Henry continued to study her face as she kept her eyes averted, before shifting to sit down properly beside her. He reached out to hold her hand in his. “Then tell me everything.”

She turned to peer at her hand in his before looking up into his face where their eyes met. Even though there was some hint of fear and anger in them, Amber did not fail to notice the encouragement and love that shone in them. She gripped his hand more tightly before she spoke. “I suppose you would want to know how I managed to survive that car accident…”

- Ten Years Ago -

Josephine had been staring out her window at the night sky, thinking over her meeting with Henry earlier when she suddenly heard a knock on the door. Turning to peer behind her, she said, “Come in.”

The door slowly opened and she saw Kris’s head poke around the corner. Turning to peer back outside the window, she heard the soft sounds of his steps and then the chair at her desk sliding. Silence enveloped the room like a heavy fog until Kris finally spoke.

“Lee Soo Man has decided to start your new life tomorrow,” he said, waiting to see a response from Josephine. When he received none, he then continued. “He wants to… kill Josephine.”

At this, Josephine spun around to face him, glaring at the man in shocked suspicion. “Kill me? What do you mean by that?”

Kris raised his hands in the air as if to defend himself from an attack. “Hey, what I mean is he wants to fake your death and give you a new identity.” Josephine’s glare turned deadly. “Don’t lash out at me over it because it’s Lee Soo Man’s plan, not mine.” Josephine continued to glare at him for another minute before turning to stare back out her window. Kris lowered his hands, glancing around the room as he tried to figure out the best way to tell her the details of the plan. His eyes then fell on the metal tin she had retrieved from the hut. “Do you really understand what ‘new life’ Lee Soo Man intends to give you?” Again, he was met by silence. “He intends to train you as his assassin.”

Josephine’s head seemed to lower down from the night sky as she raised her hands to peer at. “Is that so…?” Her fists then curled into tight balls, her fingernails biting into her palms. “It seems I will never escape killing in this lifetime.”

Kris felt a sudden tug in his heart as he watched Josephine come to terms with this new revelation. He suddenly realised that what he was feeling was pity for the girl, mixed with some new feeling: guilt. He realised that if he had not brought Josephine to Lee Soo Man, she would never be in this position. After a few minutes, he sat up straighter, chasing those thoughts out of his head.

“For Lee Soo Man’s plan to work, we will need a witness to your death. I told him about your little rendezvous with that boy in the mou-”

“You what?” snapped Josephine as she turned to face him with a panicked expression. “How much did you tell him?”

Kris continued to eye Josephine until she began to grow uncomfortable under his scrutinising stare and turned away. A small smile curved his lips. “Not much. I didn’t tell him his name, if that counts. And I didn’t tell him about that box, either,” he said, pointing at the metal tin. Josephine’s eyes darted to the object and she pulled it closer to her side. “What I told him was that you were worried about these birds you kept on the mountain and ran in to some guy who seemed to be close with you.”

“Oh…” was Josephine’s soft reply. Suddenly, she felt thankful that Kris had helped her protect Henry.

“Anyway, back to the plan. Like I was saying, we need a witness and Lee Soo Man said it has to be your friend. He wants you to call him out for a meeting or something.” He stared at Josephine hopefully, waiting for her answer.

However, Josephine continued to remain quiet. Kris shifted on his seat, trying to see her face. He then snapped back to his original position when Josephine finally spoke. “Why does it have to be him? And… what will he see?”

Taking a deep breath, Kris then let out a sigh. He knew Josephine wasn’t going to be too willing, especially since he knew the boy was important to her. “He will see you get hit by a car, right in before his eyes. And it has to be him because the best witness is someone who knows you really well.”

More silence. Kris continued to wait patiently as he let Josephine think over it all. It was not an easy decision, to go along with this absurd plan and lie to Henry. And it wasn’t a small lie – they were playing with death here. It was not a decision to make lightly.

After nearly twenty minutes, Josephine finally spoke. “I won’t have to call him out. He’ll come to find you.”

Kris, who had lain his head down on the back of the chair in exhaustion as he waited suddenly looked up in surprise at Josephine’s statement. “He’ll come to me? How?”

“He knows I am with you. He heard me say your name. He is determined and he has… links. He’ll find out where you live, and probably by tomorrow if he continues to act as crazy as he has been lately about me.” She then fell silent, refusing to say more.

He continued to peer at her, his brow creasing slightly in worry. “So this means you’re going along with Lee Soo Man’s plan? Did I tell you that you’ll be really hit by a car?”

“No, you failed to mention that one little detail. But it doesn’t matter in the end, doesn’t it? My life now belongs to Lee Soo Man. He is free to do whatever he pleases with it.”

Kris’s frown only deepened. Then suddenly, he stood and came to pull Josephine up onto her feet. She glared up at him as she pulled her hand out of his grip. “Where are you taking me?” she snapped.

He only came to grab her hand once more and began dragging her out of the room. “To practice being hit by the car, of course! You don’t think Lee Soo Man wants a crippled assassin, now, do you?”

“Practice? How?” asked Josephine in surprise but Kris refused to answer her.

- Present Day -

“… I was to practice rolling onto the bonnet of the car, jumping slightly so that I could lessen the impact. Of course, I was still injured in the accident and remained in hospital for two months,” Amber ended her tale.

Henry remained quiet as he absorbed this information. His thumb slowly Amber’s hand absently. “If the accident didn’t kill you, then why weren’t you breathing when you came out of the operating theatre?”

Amber let out another tired sigh. “Another cruel trick of Lee Soo Man’s. I was injected with a sedative that induces a death-like state for ten minutes. So technically… I was dead when you saw me.”

He turned to peer at Amber in disbelief before glancing away, running his free hand through his hair. It was all hard to believe… Josephine was really still alive and as… Amber. His brow then creased as he realised something else that had been bugging him.

“You know, Josephine… I have been wondering about this since I first began suspecting that both Amber and Josephine is the same person. It seemed incredibly… stupid of Lee Soo Man to allow your new identity to retain the same birth date and surname. Wouldn’t it have been obvious to change all that?”

A smile spread on Amber’s face as she turned to peer at Henry. “Who said it was Lee Soo Man’s idea to keep Josephine’s birth date on Amber’s profile?”

Henry turned to peer at Amber in confusion. “If he didn’t do it then… who? You?”

Amber shook her head. “No, Kris did.”

“Kris? That bastard who took you to see Lee Soo Man in the first place?” snapped Henry in disbelief.

A slight frown creased Amber’s brow. “You should be thanking him even more, for he has risked a lot to help me. It was he who went behind Lee Soo Man’s back and changed my birth date to my real one. To this day, Lee Soo Man still has not realised it. And as for the surname being the same, it just so happens that the identity I have been living with truly existed and Lee Soo Man decided to keep it seeing as Liu is quite a common surname. If you check back on Amber Liu’s medical history, you’ll realise that she was hospitalised for several months due to a car accident at the same time as Josephine Liu. It was all part of Lee Soo Man’s plan, to hit her with a car on the same day and switch her dead body with mine.”

Henry heaved a sigh as Dino suddenly hopped onto his lap. He began absently the bird’s feathers. “Why did you change your birth date back then?”

Amber turned to peer up at the sky, a soft look in her eyes. “Because I didn’t want to lose all of myself. If there was anything I wanted to keep, it would have to be the day my mother gave birth to me. My mother was my whole life and I love her deeply. But I soon came to realise that she would be disappointed in me, at the path I have chosen in life.”

He turned to peer at Amber’s upturned face, studying it under the pale glow of the moon. He moved a hand to brush the stray fringe from her eyes. “You said you became… ‘Dawn’… because you wanted revenge.”

Amber’s face then fell as her eyes darkened. “Yes… I wanted to kill the that killed my mother.”

A faint glimmer of pity flickered in Henry’s eyes as he peered at her, remembering the tantrum she had thrown when she found out that her mother’s murderer had walked free. “Who was she?” he asked, unsure whether he wanted to know.

“Dawn’s first victim,” replied Amber.

tbc.

There. Now you have the last remaining details about Amber's accident and why her b'day is still the same. Heh, I'm not so confident that it's all believable, but yeah, this is a fictional story afterall ;

Next Chapter: The story of Dawn's first murder and what will Henry do now he knows.

-