november 19, 2019.  

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

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

"Right with you on that, Courtney. 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, Ciize?"

"As long as I don't go too far and just stay right under the radar, Claudine."

Ciize acknowledged with a grin before looking between both of her classmates.

"I'm glad we were put together again. The Triple C's! We really came up with a great story plot and Courtney's drawings are amazing."

"I wouldn't say that." Courtney spoke in a modest manner.

"You and Claudine 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. Blunck isn't in one of his moods like last time."

Claudine commented as Ciize 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."

Courtney 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, Jake. She excused herself giving them a small wave and hurried outside to answer the call.

"What's up, Jake?"

"Corgi!" Jake greeted happily and Courtney winced from the loudness of his ecstatic tone.

"Why are you calling?"

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

"Jake."

"You're good with maths, right?"

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

"Not really."

"Do you know someone that is?"

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

"Are you busy?"

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

"Jake."

"Are you busy or not, sis?"

"I'm still at school. It's only a little three. I got done with a project. What's up, little bro? Don't you have cram school right now?"

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

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

"I know, but all I do is study, study, and more studying."

Courtney 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. She understood his slight behavior because of it.

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

Jake reluctantly revealed his sticky situation again. She left campus immediately and hurried to meet him and his other hooky playing buddies.

"Call."

Courtney 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 ex-college students that she knew and had classes with, but had never associated herself with. They were Peniel Shin, Eunkwang Seo, Changsub Lee, and Minhyuk Lee. Anyways, Jake and his three friends, Leo, Adam, and Justin thought they could out-smart these adults only because the older quartet had let the younger quartet 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."

Eunkwang said following her after.

"Two pairs, Seven's and Eight's."

Changsub announced next with Peniel doing the same.

"Three of a kind, ace."

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

The young quartet gasped in shocked that Courtney had been bested and were horrified of their oncoming punishment. Earlier they had signed a contract with the older quartet 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."

Eunkwang mocked as Courtney ginned at him in a wry way.

"Did I though, sour-broken-heart?"

The older quartet furrowed their eyebrows in confusion.

"I hope you have a plan, sis."

Jake responded from behind her. Courtney nodded in acknowledgment as she reached for something within her bag and pulled out a portable black light.

"What's that?"

Changsub asked curiously as Peniel peered closer.

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

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

The group of males watched as Courtney 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, three Ace's, and the four King's with no markings.

"Hmm, strange." Courtney spoke with a feel of being clueless.

"What's strange?"

The young quartet asked wondering what was going on.

Courtney 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?"

Courtney lifted her gaze towards Minhyuk who won with the Four of A Kind.

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

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

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

Minhyuk cast her a small wry smile.

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

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

The adult men nodded.

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

Courtney held out her hand beckoning for one of them 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. Courtney 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." Peniel exclaimed in mock anger.

"Yeah, now that's a double fine!" Changsub chimed in the same demanor.

"Oh, really?"

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

"The agreement signed was by a Jack Johnson, a Leon Ehcee, an Aden Bing, and a Jason King."

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 Brooke Yardis. Neither of which is our real names."

"You-"

The older quartet 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."

Courtney ripped the papers shredding them down to even smaller pieces. The four men groaned and held in their anger not wanting to admit that the contracts were indeed invalid.

"We know you, don't we?" Minhyuk suddenly stated with a curious glance at Courtney.

"You went to Kevalee High School. Right?"

Courtney didn't respond.

"And Northern Nizho University, yeah?"

Courtney still didn't answer 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." Minhyuk repeated as he tried to recall where he's seen Courtney.

"I think you were part of the Sports Club at Kevalee."

Once again she ignored his words as she tossed the pieces of paper at them just as 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."

Courtney 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. Park?" Taehyung questioned Courtney.

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

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

"Can I go?"

He dismissed the lines on her arms and had no reason to keep her here at the station. One of his colleagues had mentioned some of her priors, but knew that there was no real association to the situation at hand. Thanks to Courtney's special friend, she wasn't the culprit in this case that 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."

Taehyung 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 Courtney out of the interrogation room. He bid her a good day despite the frown appearing on his face as he noticed the numbers above her head which kept going up and down frequently. Courtney's spirit friend walked alongside her and waved goodbye to the male with a polite smile. He cast the female ghost a small smile as he felt a weird feeling in his gut.

"Don't tell Mom." Jake said while he, his friends, and Courtney left the police station.

She didn't respond.

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

She side-glanced him with a blank look.

"No, seriously. Mom's gonna tell Dad and I won't hear the end of this until the day I die."

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

"So how did you guys get caught up with those four?"

"Online." The trio answered.

"We were supposed to meet our other friend, Nathan, but his mom signed him up for cram school and couldn't make it." Jake stated. "He luced out for sure."

"Anyways, 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?"

Courtney made 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." Jake admitted in the end.

She shot them a knowing look.

"I get it, but seriously, stay away from that site. 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 their dad, John, and Jake's mom and Courtney's step-mother, Diane. Diane rushed out of the car before it parked to hug her child and spitting about words of concern whereas John walked up to his daughter with an unsure look.

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

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

"Then what is it, John?"

She 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.

"Could you not do this right now, Courtney?" Her father pleaded in a low tone so that the others wouldn't overhear.

"I'm not doing anything, John. You and Rachel always seem to think I'm tryna do something."

"This is my point exactly with that tone and attitude of yours that makes your mother and I think that you're trying to do something all the time. It's when you use my name and your mother's name like that. Like we're strangers to you and not your family."

Cour