It was midnight when Star stirred awake, her throat parched and dry. She didn't keep water in her room—an old habit rooted in past fears. Groggy and half-blind with sleep, she stumbled through the dark hallway toward the kitchen. Everything around her blurred like a dream on the verge of breaking.
She splashed her face with cold water at the sink, blinking until the kitchen solidified around her. With a glass in hand and another filled for later, she turned to return to her room.
But fate had other plans.
As she passed the living room, her shin clipped the corner of a table, sending the remote controls clattering to the floor and skidding under the sofa. She almost left them there, thinking she'd fetch them in the morning.
But then she froze.
Maria.
The woman barely tolerated her presence. Star didn't need another reason handed to her on a silver platter—like a broken remote and a scratched table—to be thrown out. With a reluctant sigh, she crouched and reached beneath the sofa.
Her fingers brushed something thin, stiff—paper.
She pulled it out, expecting a magazine or forgotten homework. Instead, she found a report. A medical report. Her eyes locked on the bold black letters:
"PAOLA ASYLUM."
Her heart skipped.
"Wait... Paola Asylum?" she whispered. "The same one Mrs. Davids donated five grand to last year?"
Her eyes darted down the page. The patient's name stopped her cold.
Mr. David Davids.
"What the hell?"
She clutched her water and bolted for her room, locking the door behind her like a criminal with stolen secrets. The report trembled in her hands.
Admitted: 16 August 2016.
Diagnosis: Body and brain weakness. Mental instability.
Discharged: August 2021.
"Wait... Mr. Davids was here until last year? But everyone acts like he vanished without a trace."
Star's mind raced. "If this report is in the house, then someone here knows exactly where he is. They've been pretending—no, performing."
Her eyes trailed to the signature at the bottom of the report.
Madam Davids.
"No, no, no… this can't be," she muttered. "She knows where he is. She's hiding it—from Mendu and the others. But why?"
She sat in silence, connecting frayed threads in her mind.
"Mendu once told me his father gave him some files before he left… and that he'd planned a birthday surprise. Did Mr. Davids disappear that very day? Was it really his choice?"
Her heart sank. "He was going to tell Mendu something—to come clean about betrayals. What if the truth he wanted to reveal was about Madam herself?"
Star stared at the report again, now heavy in her lap like the weight of a secret too dark for daylight.
"I need to bring Mr. Davids back to Mendu," she said firmly. "He deserves to know the truth."
She slid the report into her PDF booklet, tucking it safely between pages of fiction, where no one would think to look. She tried to return to sleep, but her mind refused.
Sleep betrayed her.
Instead, she Googled Paola Asylum. The clinic's homepage lit up her screen:
"We take care of mentally unstable individuals and live with them like family. If you're struggling to manage a loved one's mental health, let us help. We adopt them, love them, and give them a second chance at life."
Her eyes narrowed. "So… Mr. Davids was unstable. But why did no one say anything?"
Then a cruel coincidence clicked.
"Mendu's birthday is August 16th. The same day his father was admitted."
She gasped. "That's not just a date. That's a message. He didn't disappear—he was taken, or he was sent away."
Star remembered Mendu's words—his father was going to reveal things. End the cycle of betrayal.
"And now, he's gone... silenced."
Something was definitely cooking in this house. And it wasn't soup.
Star screenshot the website, snapped a picture of the report, and stored everything in a hidden folder on her phone. She made a vow.
Tomorrow, she would dig deeper.
Whatever this family was hiding—she was going to find it.