I thought I wasn't going to update today, but here you go! Hope you enjoy it!

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The sun was almost setting. She swore everything looked exactly like the previous day. The water rushed down as fierce as ever. The mundane forest was covered in thorn bushes with a few flowers visible here, and there, but she could tell that something about the day made it different; something about herself felt different, and it was all because of a little boy who stole her heart  with a single smile.

She found herself standing by the streaming water exactly like she did the previous day in a worn out skirt, and a blouse that had seen better days. Today though, she had an extra set of shirt in her hands. His shirt.

She had woken up pretty early that morning, and rushed towards the backyard with the shirt she had tucked into her pillow case so that no one came to know about it. She hadn't cared about pretty clothes before that moment, nor did she know how to clean a almost ragged one. Right now, she felt she should have known somehow.

Anyways she tried from the memory of watching her grandmother wash her clothes. By the time she dumped the cloth into the bucket of water, she knew it was a bad idea. Never had she seen a much more dirtier cloth before. Her passed down clothes from her elder sister seemed like a luxury compared to the stale one in her hand.

But nobody had smiled at her the way he did.

With that image ingrained in her mind, she set to work. By the time she was done, the early rooster crocked it's first sound, waking the village to life. She immediately rushed to the neighbour's backyard and hung the wet cloth on the rope, along with the rest of their clothes, making sure it got the most sun exposure that it could, and immediately she rushed back to her home, lying on the floor, beside her old grandmother. If anybody asked her about her wet skirt, she could say she peed in her sleep.

Lucky for her, nobody noticed it. Like they ever noticed anything about her. Now as she stood by the river bank, waiting to see his beautiful face again, she felt as if it were the most exciting time of her life. But as the time ticked by, the excitement began dimming down one second at a time.

Soon her mood began darkening the way the sky did. She would stay there all night if she could, but she had to go home soon, and she wasn't in the mood to listen to her sister complain about her not being at home in time even when she never really was. Hypocrite! She wanted to shout that to her face but she was just an unwanted child. She didn't have privileges such as that.

She finally decided she couldn't stay there any longer. Pressing the sun dried shirt towards her chest, she turned around and stopped in her tracks. The pulsating feeling inside her chest started again, and she couldn't stop the huge grin on her face. Like every cliched story of prince charming she has heard before from her grandmother, there he stood like a wolf in the forest, his tattered hair flying in the wind, and this time in a clean shirt, that almost looked new.

And at that moment, she decided that she had fallen in love with him completely.

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For the second time in the week, she found herself walking along with the stranger boy in the same pathway that she had come from. The moment his eyes fell on her when he first made his appearance, he immediately looked up at the darkening sky. For a moment, she felt as if she wasn't the only one who felt disappointed by the end of the day.

'It's dark.' Those were the first words he spoke, and the roughness of it made her heart jump up in excitement even though it should because those words meant one thing. It was an unspoken conversation between the two, but she understood it nonetheless. She had to go home, and so she nodded her head before she walked in his direction.

He gazed at the pathway ahead of him as if he was looking for any signs of danger. The chances of running into the villagers was more likely than having to witness a wild animal, but he knew the former were more dangerous than the latter. For words have far more power to inflict pain within one than any wild animal ever could.

Once he was sure nobody was in sight, he nodded for her to follow him. It was dark. He was a boy, and she was a girl. Though they hadn't as much as spoken with each other, any by goer could assume the very opposite.

Being born as the male gender gave him an advantage as people thought being male means being immune to gossip. Even though he could be in the wrong, people would assume it was her fault for tempting him in the first place, and he didn't like that thought one bit. She didn't deserve that.

So he rushed ahead of her, making sure that there was enough space between them so as anybody could assume they were both just strangers going in the same path, but not too much as to be lost from her sight. He slowed down a bit when she did, and picked up pace whenever necessary, and finally they reached her home.

The whole time they walked, she kept her eyes to the ground, scared that he might notice the tears clouding her eyes. She almost bumped into him when he stopped walking, and that's when she knew it was time to say goodbye. If luck would have it, she would get sight of him again.

Reluctantly she extended the shirt towards him, and just as slowly he retrieved it back. Without another word, she stepped towards the stair that lead up to her house. This time he didn't follow her though. The place was livelier than yesterday since it was time for working men to come home, and the women in the house were usually busy preparing tea and snacks for them to have.

'Don't go to the river again.' His voice sounded like a gentle breeze to her ear, almost as if he was afraid to speak. She stopped in my way but didn't turn around. She simply nodded her head but didn't do anything else. She could still feel him stand a few feet behind her, and the thought made her happy, but soon she understood what he meant to say in those concealed words of concern. 'Do not come for me.'

So he knew she had come for him. She wanted to feel mortified by the revelation, but she assumed he thought she had come only to give back his shirt when it was only a means to the goal, and not the goal itself; the goal being him.

Maybe he realised what she must have thought, for the next second he found himself speaking again. 'I meant to say it's dangerous out there for you to go alone.' He looked around to make sure they weren't any onlookers taking his words out of context before he decided to speak again. 'If you want, I can accompany you the next time you go.'

The very next second, she whipped around with a grin on her face, finally looking at him. 'Really?'

The sight made him smile sheepishly, and he ruffled his own hair. The action made her want to do that too. 'Really.' He answered.

'But how will you know when I want to go?' She asked, feeling smart for a second.

'I go to the field by the river every afternoon to help my father. I can come visit you before I go, and if you feel like it, you could tag along with me.'

She grinned harder at the thought that he wanted to visit her every afternoon. 'I would love to.' Then she realised he had walked into the river side from the path that leads to the town, and not to the field. 'Didn't you go to the fields today though?' She blushed once she realised she had actually asked him that. 'I mean, I came by to give you the shirt, and you weren't there.'

His eye brightened, and red tinted his cheeks. 'Oh, about that. I had to drop by your home to check if my favourite shirt was ready to use.'

'You came here for your shirt?'

He nodded. 'And also hoped that I could run into you, and not your grandmother. She was the one who told me you were out somewhere, but never did I think I would find you there again.'

She wanted to run up to him and hug the life out of him. Not even the thought of her grandmother having found out about him could stop the smile on her face.  'You came for me?'

'I thought friends could come visit each other. Right?'

She wanted to correct him by saying she didn't see him as a friend. But she didn't want to scare that one good thing in her life, and decided something was better than nothing. And so she found herself nodding her head to his words once again. 'Yes, friend.'

He smiled at her. 'Then I'll see you tomorrow?'

'I'll be waiting.' She knew she sounded desperate but she didn't care. For she had finally found her first friend and she wasn't going to let anything or anybody get in her way. Or so she thought, but little did she know that there was only so much a little girl could do to stop her fate from taking over.

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Cath's POV:

A knock on the door, disrupted my attention from the book. I closed it and looked beside me to find Sam still snoring with her mouth wide open. The knock sounded again, and I walked upto the room door, and opened it gently.

"Daniel?" I asked. "What are you doing here?" I whispered before looking out to make sure my mother wasn't around.

"I wanted to talk to you, seeing as though we haven't had much time to talk about anything other than patching up." He spoke as if it was the most normal thing. Maybe it was, but not when he was staying in our house, as Brian's ex-colleagues from when he worked abroad. Seeing him standing in front of my bedroom in the middle of the night would definitely get him kicked out.

I pulled him inside the room, and shut the door without making any noise. "So what did you want to talk about?" I whispered but there was no answer from Daniel. I turned around to find his eyes on the sleeping figure of Sam on the bed.

"Do you want me to get out?" My voice snapped him from his trance and he glared at me.

"Are you trying to get out of talking with me again?"

"No." I looked away as part of me was afraid I couldn't answer any of the questions he had for me.

"Then why do you want to get out?"

"Because I am sure that you want to talk about something very important but Sam doesn't know about it. I don't want her to hear about this in her sleep."

He looked at her before he looked at me with raised eyebrows. "Does she look like she could wake up any second now if a hurricane were to occur?"

I chuckled. "No, but I am not taking any chances. Let's get out of here."

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Daniel opened the door to the room they stayed at but I quickly shut it back. "What are you doing? They can't know either."

Daniel was about to open his mouth when the door flung open. Blake stood with a sunglass on his nose, and a cap on his head that could be worn by someone like Sherlock Holmes in a comic book. The only thing missing was a cigar pipe to finish his look.

"What took you so long detective? We have a case to solve." Blake places a cigar pipe on his mouth and blew out bubbles.

Daniel rolled his eyes and pushed his way into the room. I followed him inside and Blake shut the door. "Daniel.." I began but he cut me off.

"Everybody know."

I blinked a couple of seconds before the words finally registered inside my mind. "Everybody knows?"

"Yes." He huffed and sat down beside Harry on the bed. "I had to tell them. They could help us."

"Does Michael know?"

"I do." He emerged out from the dark. I didn't even know he was there. I looked away as he walked towards me. The guilt of not telling him was eating me up.

"I am not going to ask you why you didn't tell me." He cupped my cheeks and looked into my eyes. "No matter what the reason is, I would have still wanted to know, but there is no going back now. So I think the better question to ask now would be what else?"

"Wow." Harry sighed. "I can't remember the last time you acted so mature."

Michael rolled his eyes before he kissed my forehead. "We're all here for you no matter what. Please just tell us everything so that we could help you out of this mess, no matter how dangerous it is. I would give my life for you."

My eyes flickered between all the figures in the dimly lit room. Everybody had serious looks on their face as if they were backing up Michael's words, and the thought brought tears to my eyes but I held it back.

"I don't deserve you all." I whimpered.

"Don't say that." Zoran came forward and wrapped his arms around me. "This world doesn't such goodness as yourself."

"True that." Michael hugged around him and soon all of us were pulled into a group hug. Two years ago, my life was ruined by a man. From that moment I had been distrustful of the male species, and vowed not to have anything to do with them.

But now as I stand wrapped between five men I swear I haven't felt much safer before. Blake suddenly pulled out, and wiped a tear from his eyes. "All this mushiness is killing my vibes. Come on now! Let's shoot some scoundrels down."

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All five of them stood silent as I told them everything that had happened from the moment I had come here. Nobody dared to interrupt me and it made me feel so nervous since I didn't know what they were thinking.

"So you were not sexually abused?" Harry was the one to break the silence. I shook my head.

"You were not?" Michael asked again, more hesitant than Harry. I shook my head again. He jumped up from the bed and hugged me in a tight grip. "This doesn't change anything about the way I feel about you, but I am glad."

I wrapped my arms around him. "Me too."

Daniel cleared his throat and the two of us pulled away. "How can we be sure we can trust him?"

"I got the test done. It's the only thing that tells me to trust him."

"Then it means someone else is in play here. Someone else wanted to abuse you." Harry mumbled in thought. "That person could be anyone. A complete stranger who had see a way for him to quench his animalistic thirst, or it could be something more dangerous."

"Like?" Zoran asked.

"A planned execution." Harry looked up at me. "Did something happen during that time? Was someone after you? Maybe someone who was interested in you? Or perhaps someone who hated you?"

I thought for a while but I couldn't remember anything. "I don't know. I have been trying to remember but everything about the event seems hazy to my memory. And the harder I try, the more confused I become. The only thing I get as a result is a head ache."

Harry sat silent for a while before he spoke again. "It could be because you were under the influence of an alcohol or a drug at that time. Or maybe your mind is just trying to bury all those painful memories from your consciousness. It's something we call repressed memories."

"Are you speaking English?" Blake piped in to which Harry chuckled.

"When the brain experiences something really traumatic, it can be hard for it to process all those emotions. Sometimes it decides to bury all those memories under a blanket until the emotional self is triggered or strong enough to process those emotions. I think that's the case with Cath here. Has something like this happened to you before?"

I nodded my head. "T-There was an accident a few years ago. My father died in it. I remember waking up in the hospital bed with no memory of what happened. My memory was pretty hazy at that time but over the days, I started to remember more of the things I had forgotten."

Harry sat in silence for what seemed like an eternity before he spoke again. "I can help you recover your memories if you are up for it. Granted, it's not going to be easy for you to dig into everything that you've buried, but I think it's best for your mental health. What you keep deep inside you is going to stay even though it seems as if it's long gone."

"It could also help find out who that bastard is." Michael gritted in anger.

"I think you're missing the point here." All eyes turned to Daniel. "If the one sending the messages to Cath isn't the abuser, then who is he?"

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It's question time now!

What do you think of the characters in the book?

Should Cath tell Sam about what's happening?

And what do you think is the answer to Daniel's question?

Keep commenting and let me know!

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See you next week,

Until then,

Love, Sara!

P.S. Suggest me some good movies to watch!