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Prologue

28000. That's the amount of days the average person lives. 9.500 of those days are reserved for sleeping and 9.000 days for working. Imagine spending 1/3 of your life forcing yourself to a place with people you don't even want to talk to, doing things you don't even want to do. And another 1/3 on regenerating your wnergy so you got more power to go to this said place again and again and again.

Knowing you only got 1/3 of your entire life yo properly live makes everything seem pretty pointless. You might think "lifes just too short" but I can promise you. Even with a longer lifespan, life is pretty pointless.

- Lyla

"Rosie loves blue flowers" a males voice randomly appears after a loud door slam.

A girl is sitting in a big brown chair, staring at a letter not paying attention to the man. He walks up closer to her and waves into her face "Erm…Lyla? Hello?" his voice is getting louder.

Finally the girl is looking up, "she likes blue flowers? And?" her voice sounds rather annoyed.

The man takes out a notebook out of his brown leather bag and flips to one specific page.

"look" he points to the word 'coffee' and continues. "we were missing the connection" lyla looks confused and raises her left eyebrow "which is…?"

He smiles confidently "coffee and flowers."

The girl stares at him with a blank expression not understanding any of his words. He gets closer to her and hits the table with his hand "Look, Look!! In the first case -rest in peace jodie- we found drops of coffee on the spot. We thought it was an accident right?" He flipped to another page "But actually it was not any type of coffee, it was a bean from guatamala. Which is very rare to find here. And you would never guess what else was from guatamala…"

Lyla answers confused not knowing if this question was serious or rhetorical. "the flowers…?"

"YES! And there is only one store in this entire town you would get them from. And guess what happend!"

His face screams excitement which lyla doesn't understand since the topic of this conversation is a tragical seemingly unsolvable muderer case.

Although she felt tired and exhausted, she tries to join his energy and smiles "what happend?"

Tristan slams against the table again in a joyful way "I went to the store to ask about these flowers and coffee beans but they were not available. and the next day…THE SHOP WAS PERMANENTLY CLOSED"

the girl stands up now joining his excitment "so the shop owner is the killer!"

"EXACTLY" tristans starts jumping and dancing excited.

Tristan wasn't always the brightest but there was one thing he was extremely good at. Solving puzzles. He had this special connection to unsolvable problems where he could see strings that are entangled and detangle them in a very fast matter. It was his gift since he was born, which made hom the ultimate detective.

Lylas gift was different. She had an excellent intuition. Almost like a future vision. Well she can't particular tell what exactly will happen, but she can see multiple occasions that may take place and their probability. So once her cousin solves a case she knows exactly what the next steps are.

"Kate is still in france until tomorrow. Once she is back I will tell her to track him and bring him to the police" lyla sits down again and looks at her paperwork

tristan stops his little dance "what? this case is so important to you and You just wanna let kate do all the good stuff?"

the girl looks up "how do you consider 'catching a killer' 'the good stuff?"

tristan sits down and looks at her with consideration "you know what I mean. This is very important to you. You know where he might be. Lets get him"

In fact, the moment tristan told her about who the killer is, she knew three things. One, he would leave his shop and hide in his house today, not knowing where to go. So if they went to get him now, they would catch him. But the second thing was, that someone would die if that happened because today was a day of death. There were some unchangeable death dates. Noone knew why but if you saved one person on one of those dates, another person had to die. Only lyla knew about those dates because knoweledgr was her gift. The third thing she knew was that if kate chased after the killer in two days, another woman would die today, but the killer would be catched by the police and everything would be fine. At the same time, those conclusions were not facts, they were just the most probable outcomes. So there was still a small possibility of things turning out a complete different way.

lyla kept staring at her letters.

Tristan touches her hand "I know you miss her. That's why we have to go today"

she collects her courage and stands up. The sun is already going down but they both don't mind.

Ignoring her cousin Lyla walks past him to grab her black coat.

"so…we are going?" he asks excitedly seeing her pulling her hair into a bun

"I suppose so. Let's go."

the first time lyla noticed her gift was when she was 6 years old. Back then there was a disease that killed almost half of the countries population. But since she had a feeling about a horrible event taking place, she warned her family and they could escape. At first she was very scared that her family would become sick and die. So she couldn't sleep for weeks. But when she told her aunt about it, she just said "Being sick now, would be very annoying for all of us." There was no fear of dying or empathy for others. She just saw this illness as something that's considered a burden for her daily schedule. An inconvenience one could say.

Back then she never understood how her aunt could react with such a cold tone to her fears. She also didn't understand how her family would believe her, a 6 year old girl telling them there will be a big plague killing the entire nation. But her family was not ordinary.

They arrived at the mans house. Everything was dark and quiet. The floor was full of trash, which was considered normal in the city but not in a suburban area like this.

"When is the police coming?" tristan whispered while checking for a way in.

"if everything goes right, 20 minutes. If not 3 hours."

usually both of them are very calm when it comes to crime cases, but this one is different. With this one both of them feel tense and even a bit scared.

"it's alright. I got a plan" lyla knocks on the door. Noone opens

"Hello, this is miss forbes. I visited your shop earlier. I wanted to pick up my coffee"

noone answers

"It's very important for me to pick it up now.Please"

she hears the squeeze of a floortile as if someone is trying to move quietly.

"I can not remember you. I must demand you to leave" the man shouts angry.

the girl starts talking again "I can't leave without the coffee sir. It's my sisters birthday tomorrow and it is her favorite. Please, once I got it I will leave"

she can hear the mans breath on the opposite side of the door. suddenly the door opens and a 178 cm tall old man in his 60s appears. "alright, but you got 10 minutes and your friend is not coming in" she looks at tristan.

He frowns "I am coming in indeed, old man"

she walks into the door step "don't worry, 10 minutes." the man closes the door behind the girl.

Inside it is very dark, just a few candles are shining. But not only the lighting is forming a scary atmosphere. The walls are all pitch black and the floor is dark brown which adds more darkness into the setting. her attention switches to a consistent unnoticeable drip sound, coming from the kitchen.

She turns around and faces the man "your roof is broken, I think. There is rain dripping into your house."

she looks down to his hands, that are red stained.

he just smiles as if he was a completely different man from the one that was telling her to leave on the door step. "Thank you for telling me. I will have a look tomorrow." He walks towards her.

Lyla stands still. In situations like this she still gets scared. It's one of those moments that you can relieve 100 times and still feel the same feelings all over again. But whenever she feels like this she convinces herself not to show fear. Her head gets into a spiral of trying not to fear and trying not to care. Although it doesn't work a 100%, it's better than peeing yourself.

She finally notices the man holding a small knife in one of his hands. He keeps walking closer into her direction. Suddenly he grabs a bag lying on top of the table next to her. He cuts it open with the knife. "Are these the beans?" He asked smiling.

she releases her tension and takes them. "yes thank you." She looks into the bag, and finds coffee beans that are shining red instead of the usual brown color.

"They look pretty" she says in an admiring tone.

The man walks past her into the kitchen.

"follow me" she didn't know exactly when, but she knows that in the next 10 minutes he would try to kill her. So she would have to be prepared and react quick. She kept her gun in her bag inside her coat and follows the man to a horrendous smell.

all of a sudden, she starts hearing the sound of walking through a rain puddle. But this can't be rain, she is thinking to herself. She looks down to the floor and sees red footsteps next to her shaddow. She looks up to the man in front of her smiling. Behind him a female body hanging in the air, bleeding out.

He walks up to her, with the same knife that he opened the beans with. "letting the beans marinate in blood, gives them a special taste" he gets closer and continues. "The moment you knocked on the door I knew that you would have a particular nice taste."

lyla doesn't move. 'No fear. No fear.' She is thinking to herself.

"usually women like you try to run from me. You are one of a kind" He is now standing in front of her

STAB

suddenly she feels a sharp pain in her stomach. Her shirt starts to wet from all the blood running out of her body. He stabs her again. The pain is unbearable but she still doesn't show any signs of emotion. Out of a sudden, the stabbing stops. She falls down and sees the old man lying next to her with a hole in his head. She tries to open her eyes, but all she can see is a blurry figure standing in front of her.

Her eyes close and everything is dark. No pain, no fear, just peace. Death usually feels like that. It's nice once in a while to get into that state.

seconds later she wakes up again. For a second she doesn't feel anything but that changes soon as she is feeling the pain of the knife inside of her body. Her eyes whiden as she pulls out the knife in one go. "Fuck, couldn't he just cut my throat" she gets up cleaning her trousers by patting them with her hands, as she gers up she notices the former figure.

She examines. it's a woman holding a gun, looking at her in shock.

the woman hold up her gun in shock "what are you?"

lyla looks at her with no emotions "rude"

she closes her coat so her bloody stomach wouldn't be visible and walks up to the hanging body"wow, if the police is coming in time she will survive. Good for her"

The girl is still standing behind her holding up the gun shaking. "you died. Just some minutes ago"

lyla turns around "yeah, and now I am alive again. That's my thing. Can you put down the gun"

The girl hesitates. Lyla continues "look, if I wanted to hurt you I would have done it. And apparently you cannot kill me."

The girl thinks about her words and puts down the gun slowly. She follows lyla to the girls body and helps her untie it. Laying her onto the floor slowly.

"now we have to leave." Lyla demands taking her hand. "what's your name if I may ask"

The girl, still confused follows her forcefully "Claire"

Lyla opens the door and walks past christian. "police is coming in some minutes, we gotta leave."

tristan follows them confused "what happend to the k-"

"dead"

"And who is-"

"claire" lyla answered being focused on getting back home as fast and unnoticed as possible

suddenly claire stops and pushes her hand out of lylas force "Why would I follow you. You- Demon"

lyla rolls her eyes "You disturbed our plans aswell. You were not even supposed to be at that spot. What were you doing there?"

the girl straightens her back proudly "catching the killer…as I did"

lyla laughs "YOU, catched the killer? If it was not for is you would've been his next victim"

she walks up to her madly "and if it wasn't for me, you would be dead"

lyla presses her finger against the girls forehead and releases "well smart woman, I DID die"

they both stare at each other angrily. Tristan walks between them trying to release the tension "heyyy, no need to fight! We got the same goal in mind, am I right?" He laughs awkwardly.

The two girls still look at each other angrily and frown annoyed.

tristan continues "let's maybe start with an introduction. I'm tristan and this little angry girl is my cousin Lyla" Lylas eyes shifted to the 180 cm tall man. She hates when people make remarks about her height. 160 is not even that small. Claire starts looking at tristan, who makes her feel more comfortable than before. "why does she look like that?" she whispers remarking lylas curly hair, rather small eyes and tan skin, which is a very unusual appearance. Lyla rolls her eyes at the girls comment. "Well, she is mixed raced, her parents travelled alot-"

lyla cuts him off annoyed "why bother explaining to her, its none of her business"

she walks off "come on, lets get home"

tristan looks at the young girl "do you want to come with us for the night"

claire smiles awkwardly "no, it's fine. I will get home just fine"

tristan screams after lyla who is already 10 meters away "hey, we can't leave her here alone. It's dangerous" lyla stops and sighs. She looks back at them tired "alright, take her with you. I just wanna go sleep" tristan smiles happily and runs towards lyla. "come!" he shouts at the girl with a bright smile.

That is the beginning of the story of how lyla met the person who made her wish she would die.