The only odd thing was no one had heard her mention anything about going camping. Her mom had thought she was on campus studying at the library, and her best friend had been under the impression she was at the movies with her boyfriend. The boyfriend had nothing and merely stated they hadn’t discussed their daily plans. Since they both attended the art academy and were fairly busy working on their final projects, everyone Zane spoke to mentioned this was fairly normal for them. They weren’t the clingy sort of couple and could go a couple of days here and there without communicating.
Since there’d been an official death announcement, the police had tried to take over, but Kelevra had blocked them. The shot against him had to be kept hush-hush to avoid leaking into the media, so he hadn’t wanted them involved.
An art major randomly decides to go camping in the middle of the forest near the Academy campus and ends up murdered. It was all types of weird. It would have made sense if she was actually a part of the mock case, but they knew now she hadn’t been.
Though, it was a little strange that Rin knew all of the fake victims as well as Nila…Over the summer, he’d gotten to know a bunch of the students who went to Guest Fine Arts at the bars and a few parties Calder had held at his parents' place, but that didn’t mean Rin knew the majority of the campus population.
There was a link to Nila’s Imagine account, and Rin absently clicked on it and began scrolling. It’d taken him an hour to comb through the information collected just to discover Kel had been right and there really was nothing useful. They’d reached a dead end.
A particular photo caught his attention suddenly and Rin backtracked, frowning. The picture was of Nila with a group of friends at one of the bars downtown, Fireworks. It was on the ritzier side and was always packed, so Rin tended to pass on invites to go there. In the background of this particular photo, however, just over Nila’s left shoulder, he could be seen in his Academy uniform with a beer in hand, laughing at something a person out of view of the camera had said.
Only, that wasn’t Rin.
It took him longer than it should have to place the night in question, but he recalled once over two months ago when his brother had asked for them to swap and he’d gone along with it. Rin had been over being dragged all over town by his friends and had spent the night catching up on comics and sleep in Sila’s apartment. They’d done it a few times that summer, switched when one or both of them were too burned out to follow through on prior commitments with their different friend groups.
Rin sat up straighter and switched over to the search section, typing in Arlet’s name. He wasn’t even entirely sure what he was doing, but he scanned through her account until he hit photos posted over the summer, stopping when he found another photo of himself.
Sila, dressed as Rin, had his arm draped over Arlet’s shoulders, the two of them leaning over a round table, beaming at whoever was behind the camera.
That explained why she’d been overly flirtatious with him at Kelevra’s pool party.
He switched over to one of the other fake victims from the mock case. Same thing. There were pictures of her with other cadets, sure, but there was one of just her and who she thought was Rin but was really Sila.
By the time he’d searched the other and found even more damning evidence, Rin was seeing red. A hypothesis was forming in his brain and he hated everything about it. He was already storming out of the penthouse and hopping into a cab before he realized what he was planning, mind reeling.
When he stepped back, his assumptions were weak at best, but knowing his brother the way that he did…
Banks had told them a member of their class had been assigned the role of killer. Rin hadn’t seen any messages himself, so had assumed it wasn’t him, but…He’d failed to recall he wasn’t the only person who had access to his Academy email account.
He didn’t even bother calling to check if his brother was home, storming up the stairs to the third floor and using his emblem-slate to unlock the door with the side panel. It shut behind him and he came to a stop just within the kitchen area, eyes landing on his brother who was standing by the bay window on the other side of the room.
The apartment was small, with two bedrooms, a single bathroom, and an open area that acted as the living and dining rooms, as well as the kitchen.
“What’s up?” His brother turned from the window, eyeing him closely.
“I was going over the case files for the assignment and looking over what the Retinue managed to dig up on Nila’s murder,” Rin said. Now that he was here, he was less certain, but if there was even a remote possibility his theory was correct, he needed to know about it immediately.
“Ah.” His brother gave nothing away, which in turn gave everything away if one knew what they were looking for where he was concerned.
Shit.
“Tell me it isn’t you.” Rin was overreacting. He did that sometimes—a lot. He did that a lot. This was just one of those occasions. That was all. There was no way—
“We don’t lie to each other,” his brother said matter-of-factly. “It’s a rule.”
Rin swore. “Are you serious? How could you keep this from me?”
He stepped away from the window, moving closer to the couch where Rin met him, tilting his head. “You’re upset. It’s not that big of a deal.”
“Of course it is. What if I’d made a mistake because you didn’t feel the need to read me into the situation?”
“It’s not like I would have missed and hit you instead,” his brother drawled.
Rin went cold. “What?”
“Oh.” His brother stared back at him blankly for a long, drawn-out moment. “I thought you were talking about the incident in the forest. You mentioned Nila so I just assumed you’d figured it out.”
If he’d stopped to consider things beforehand, Rin most likely would have, as it were, he’d jumped to conclusions and raced over here without giving himself the chance to. Maybe even subconsciously. Because this…
