36 A Photo

That morning at the headquarters of a secret organization, agents were busy passing by to work on the mission they had. Although there were not many of them, they were able to do their job well.

Only trained and selected people could be there. They had a great responsibility to protect many people from the shadows.

At that time, a female agent who had not been part of the official agents for long was walking towards a room. It was his and her new partner's room.

"Good morning," she greeted as she entered the room.

However, there was no one in it. When she glanced at the clock, it was still 10 am.

"Oh right, William is coming at eleven. There's still an hour left until he comes," she said and sat down on the sofa.

She glanced at William's empty chair with the monitor displaying the server screen. Curious about the contents of the man's computer, Marin, his new partner silently looked at the computer.

"Let's see what he has here..." Marin sat on William's chair and opened the computer.

When the computer turned on and displayed its contents, all the data on it turned out to be password locked so Marin couldn't open it at all. She was annoyed that she couldn't see anything on the computer.

However, there was one folder that was not locked but was placed very hidden.

"Secret folder? What does it contain? No, no, no. He's secretly watching porn?!"

Marin imagined William busy with a porn movie on his large monitor screen when he wasn't in the room. Especially while playing with himself. Her body shuddered with amusement at the thought.

"Eww... Disgusting, making the computer the center for something like that. Let's see what he's collecting!"

The woman opened the folder which turned out to contain a lot of photos. In fact, there were over 1000 photos. When she opened one of them, it contained William and a brown-haired woman with blue eyes, who was none other than Amanda.

She pressed the next button to see the next photo and they were all the same, photos of William together with Amanda with various poses and backgrounds in different places. The two of them looked so close to each other.

"Who is this woman? I just saw William get this close to a woman. He's even smiling here, so different from the William I'm used to seeing!" Marin exclaimed in astonishment.

She could sense something different about the photo. The two of them looked so compatible with each other. There was even a pose where Amanda hugged William and William embraced Amanda's body.

"Is she his girlfriend? But I've never seen William with his girlfriend. She's very beautiful..." Marin brought her face closer to the monitor screen to get a closer look at Amanda's face.

"Is it necessary for you to look at her that closely, when you can zoom in on the photo?" chided a man from behind Marin.

Marin reflexively turned her head and found William standing behind her. The man looked at Marin with a cold gaze, completely different from his smiling face in the photo.

"I-I... S-sorry... I didn't..."

"Did I ever let you touch my stuff? What are you doing?" William asked again.

Upon hearing that, Marin jumped down from William's chair. The man sighed and sat back in his chair and closed the photo folder.

"S-sorry... I didn't mean to see that picture of you and your girlfriend..."

"She's not my lover," William said. "She was my partner before you."

"S-she? So she's also an agent? Ahh... I don't know. After the photo, you look very familiar with each other. Even like a couple..." Marin said.

Honestly, when Marin heard that the woman was William's former partner, she felt jealous. William seemed very friendly and familiar with his old partner but was very cold to her.

"Don't say that. She doesn't work here anymore anyway," William said in a rather low voice.

"Do... you miss her? It's been almost a year since the move," Marin asked.

Silence...

The man didn't respond to Marin's words. Instead, he turned his back to Marin and was busy with his monitor as usual.

The blonde woman then sat on the sofa and watched William who was busy again. For a moment, she couldn't believe her eyes when she saw William smiling so kindly in the photo.

And it seemed that his relationship with his former partner was very close. Even until Amanda's departure, he still had all the photos on his computer.

'If I remember correctly, he did look indifferent while on duty. But during our last mission, he looked completely different. When we were trapped on the burning ship, he hugged me tightly and pulled me into the sea. He even held me underwater so I wouldn't get hit by enemy fire...' Marin thought at the time.

Marin could clearly remember how serious William was about his mission. She saw for herself that William was very professional in handling his mission. Even when Marin was cornered, William immediately saved her.

Slowly Marin started to feel something different from William.

"I'm going to the convenience store to buy some snacks. Do you want something?" Marin asked while getting up from the sofa.

"Coffee, just canned coffee..." replies William.

"Alright, I'll buy it for you."

She left, leaving William alone in the room.

Looking at Marin who had left, William opened the photo folder that Marin had opened earlier. He opened one of the photos where he and Amanda were smiling at the camera with Amanda hugging him.

He still remembers clearly, when the photo was taken.

Flashback

It was the end of their mission. They had successfully carried out the mission their boss had ordered them to carry out on an island far away.

The island was very remote but the scenery was so beautiful. They decided to capture the moment for posterity.

"This place is so beautiful, it's a shame we have to go back to base tomorrow morning," Amanda said while looking at the view from the top of the cliff.

"Our job is done here, so we have to go back soon. But before we go back, let's take a photo for our memories as usual," said William taking out his camera from his bag.

"Oh? Want some! Let's take a picture together." Amanda ran over to William and pressed close to him to get into the frame.

"Come here, you're too far away." William embraced Amanda with his right hand and held the camera with his left.

Because of the embrace, Amanda reflexively hugged William's body and smiled at the camera.

They looked at the photo they took earlier.

"We look like a happy couple who just got married," William said with a laugh. "Are we going on a honeymoon after this, honey?" he continued to tease.

He thought Amanda would laugh at his joke. But instead, the woman was silent, staring at William.

"Hey, why are you silent? My jokes aren't funny?"

"Huh? What? Funny! Of course it's funny! Ahahaha... Seriously, you want a honeymoon, hmn?" Amanda teased back.

The two of them laughed at each other and left the place to prepare to return to Zondalia.

Flashback End

The woman's blue eyes closed for a moment remembering the story behind the photo she was holding. She had taken seriously the joke the man had told her.

"Honeymoon, huh?" said the woman who was none other than Amanda.

She still had one photo of her and William that she had tucked inside her passport.

Remembering him only made it harder for her to forget him. She put the photo back into her passport and went to sleep.