Seungwan moves like a cheetah. Sweat baths her face, dripping down her t-shirt. The sun is so strong she knows she will get burnt. The only thing she’s grateful for is that the earth dried and she’s not buried in it anymore.

“Son, answer me!”

Her intercom cries.

“Son!”

She doesn’t pick it up. Her hands rest over her face once she stops under the shadow of a big tree. She looks around, and she finds it hilarious that, with so many people, no one knows where the princess could be and no one saw who abducted her. Furious is an understatement for what she feels.

The intercom cries again, but this time it is Jongdae.

“Seungwan, pick it up. I’m sorry.” Static noise roars through the shapeless object. “They…”

More noise comes out of it, and then silence.

“A…” More noise. “... factory.”

She decides to finally pick it up.

“What?”

“Look for a place under a shadow or covered in some way. The light is minimal, and I have a hunch that they are wearing those masks for a reason.”

“It could be anywhere, Jongdae.”

“I know, but we are looking into abandoned places. I will let you know if I find something,” Seungwan is about to hang up, when Jongdae speaks again, hesitant. “They tuned in the news channel again. The show will go live at sunset. They’ll broadcast it for everyone to see it.”

She doesn’t say anything else, scrapping her brain to think about places the princess could be. She vaguely remembers she’s supposed to save Joohyun’s mother too.

It’s thirteen minutes past two, and the sunset is pretty close. It will come sooner that day, around four o’clock. She must hurry if she wants to prevent Joohyun’s death.

She’s sitting inside the kiosk when a little girl peeks from behind a big rock. The rock covers the girl’s body, but she can see her face.

“Can you see me?” The girl asks.

“No,” Seungwan lies, amused.

The girl seems content with her answer, making the rock disappear. She smiles, nervous.

“Are you my new neighbor?” The girl asks. The volume of people has diminished, and now the girl can sit on the ground without fear of getting crushed by a thousand feet.

Seungwan thinks about lying, but the girl doesn’t wait for her answer.

“You were asking things to people.”

Seungwan hums, sitting against the wide stem of the tree.

“I’m looking for a friend.”

“Is she pretty?”

Seungwan thinks about Joohyun’s face, how her heart-shaped lips make her seem attractive, and how her collarbone stands out. She stops there because she doesn’t need that image imprinted in her mind.

“Yeah, she is.”

The girl smiles like she knows Joohyun’s pretty too.

“I saw her.” The girl says casually. “Some bad guys took her, right?”

Seungwan stops her thoughts, perplexed.

“What? How do you know?”

“You’re thinking very hard about her,” the girl explains, shrugging.

Seungwan’s words get scrambled in , and she stutters.

“Did you really see her?”

The girl nods, hiding behind the rock again.

“Can you tell me where they took her?”

The girl shakes her head, looking directly at the sun for at least two seconds.

“My mom called me to have lunch,” The girl’s voice sounds distant like she’s there and not there at the same time. “But the place she’s in is very dark and it smells really bad.”

The girl looks at her again and smiles. She has some teeth missing, but she looks happy.

“What does that mean?” Seungwan says, resting her head on her knees. “That could be anywhere.”

“Snacks are ready.” The girl murmurs. “Bye, Seungwan.”

The girl walks away, in the opposite direction. She jumps, falling always on her tips and Seungwan thinks she’s never met a girl that strange before.

Maybe, the girl is a thinker, or a linker, or maybe both. She sees things, connections, thoughts, people. A lot of them are emphatic too. Seungwan doesn’t know if it was a casualty or destiny to find her there, but she’s glad the girl helped her, in some unique way.

The sun is starting to set on the horizon, and she’s terrified for herself and her siblings’ future. She wonders where her dad could be.

The intercom rings again, and this time she picks it up quickly. She breathes into the call, waiting for the other side to speak.

“Eight factories. The majority of them are close to each other, but three are in opposite directions,” Jongdae stops talking, waiting for an answer.

The answer doesn’t come immediately. Rather, it is delayed in such a way that someone might think she cares for the princess.

“We can’t cover them all before sunset.”

She hears a noise before Jongin picks the phone up.

“It’s true, but we are enough to cover six of the factories. The groups are already on their way.”

“And the last two? Can’t you send Chen to one of them and I’ll go to the other?”

“You know he won’t make it in time, and he’s powerless. It’s fifty-fifty. Your choice.”

“Give me directions to both.”

She writes the directions on the ground with a fallen branch of the big tree. She looks at both, before asking.

“What type of factory?”

“Wait, let me look it up,” Jongdae yells on the line.

“Fast, Chen, it’s almost sunset.”