POV: Eunice/Roanne

It was a Monday morning. The smell of the crisp morning dew mixed with the light scent of car exhaust fumes filled my nose as I scrolled through my phone and searched for a specific web comic under the ‘Monday Updates’ tab. The comic app would glitch now and then. I leaned on the wall of an apartment building opposite to the police centre and tapped frantically at the frozen screen until the webpage reloaded. Then, the title appeared on the screen of my phone.

‘The White Dandelion’

A romance story about a prince and a saintess who were destined to be together. My younger sister introduced me to the comic. The story didn’t appeal to me the first time I read it, yet my sister urged me to read the entire story so she could brag about it to me and fan-girl about how hot the male lead was. Eventually, I read it during my leisurely time, after patrolling and investigating the city of Rydney. Although, I would feel embarrassed if I told Officer Winston that I was reading this kind of stuff.

He and all my new colleagues still saw me as a rookie cop, anyway. A naïve rookie that still needed help with a lot of things in the unit. I hated their impression of me. It was passively belittling my reputation from the first time I joined them. I tried proving to Winston and the others that whatever decisions I make will be the best decisions made throughout our police unit.

It’s annoying enough for them to look down on me like that. I spent the last four years in another town doing the best police work I could. I received multiple awards for my achievements in the community, and I was popular enough to be treated to dinners and parties in the neighbourhood.

Yet, no one acknowledged my accomplishments the moment I moved to this city.

I expected that the chief-of-police would promote me as a detective, only to have the same ranking of the last four years given to me with an extra gift: a ‘babysitter’ and partner named Officer Bernie Winston.

A 52-year-old man with heavy eye-bags and dark brown hair that was turning grey. He looked like a person who never ate a proper meal for lunch or dinner.

The first time we met, he told me he used to work at the south-side of the country before they transferred him to Rydney 14 years-ago.

Winston walked out from the entrance of the police station, taking a deep puff out of his cigarette. He crossed the road, holding a yellow envelope which I assumed contained reports of incidents around the city. He took out his cigarette by stepping on it and opened the door of the police car.

I turned off my phone and entered the car with him. The smell of tobacco consumed the air inside the car as he coughed in front of the steering wheel.

“You should really quit smoking.”

“Tried it a dozen times, Delvin. But I always fall back into it,” he said with a raspy voice.

“You’ll die of lung cancer.”

“Yeah, I know, but I’m bettin’ that I die before that happens,” he opened the envelope and took out the reports, “that’s why I chose this job in the first place.”

“Tsk, tsk, tsk,” I uttered to him and shook my head. He smirked as he read the texts printed on the white papers.

“Anything new?” I asked.

“There’s a few,” his eyes moved from left to right of the report paper, “It says here that a woman witnessed-“

“A murder,” I butted into his unfinished sentence and he gave me a straight face.

“No, Delvin. She witnessed someone steal two bikes from the public bicycle park.”

“That’s the same report we had two weeks ago!” I grumbled.

“The most crimes being committed in Rydney are bike stealing.”

I sighed and said, “That’s what they get for being too lazy. What’s so hard about taking your bike home and not leaving it out like that in public? What do they expect when they leave it parked and rusted for two years?”

“Don’t complain to me about bikes. I’ve never used one in my entire life. I’d much prefer driving a car.”

“Ah! Whatever. Let’s just get this over and done with.”

We spent the next six hours patrolling the city, graciously giving out parking fines to the most vexed citizens, and finally knocking on the door of the thief and arresting him for stealing the two rusted mountain bikes from the bicycle park.

Later in the afternoon, we went back to the police station and changed out of our uniforms. I walked out of the girl’s locker room with a flannel shirt and jeans.

“God, you look even more awful without a uniform on,” Winston puffed his cigarette and formed clouds of smoke in the air.

“Oh, piss off,” I said sarcastically.

“No smoking in the hallways, Winston,” one of the office ladies passed by and warned him.

“My bad,” he replied.

We headed to the nearest pub we could find and took a few mugs of beer. While we sat on the bar stools and leaned on the tabletop with our drinks in front of us, Winston mentioned about the case of the medical device raid in Rydney’s Port. It had been five weeks since they brought the report up to the defense department from two of the biggest regional hospitals in the city. The two detectives from our station, Morris and Dudley, spent day and night searching for clues on who the culprit was. They interrogated the logistics staff that worked at the port. I had my suspicions on who it was and told Detective Dudley about it. A guy in his 30s who worked overtime at night. They cross-checked him, but he was deemed clean. The results disappointed me.

“Why did you suspect that person?” Winston asked.

“I kept an eye on him for a while.”

“What did you do?” he raised an eyebrow at me and took a sip out of his beer.

“I went to the port at night, just to check what’s happening.”

He put the mug down, making a loud clunk against the tabletop. He said my name in a serious tone, “Delvin.”

I looked away from him and chuckled guiltily, “Don’t worry about it so much! I’m a responsible cop after all.”

“You patrolled the area alone?”

“Yeah,” I shrugged, “What of it?”

“Promise me you will not do that again?”

“Oh, come on, Bernie! What’s a criminal stealing medical equipment gonna do to me? At least it’s not firearms or any other weapons.”

“Don’t be so naïve! If he can cover up his tracks for this long, he might have something else hidden up his sleeves. Promise me you’ll stop going there alone.”

“Fine! I promise.”

I lied.

I wasn’t very good at keeping promises, because I went to the port again the next night. I was supposed to go to the bar with Winston again, but I skipped it and told him I had stuff to do at home. He went to the bar alone, whilst I went to the port to catch the criminal.

I fixed my mind on the idea that if I caught him, I’d get the respect that I wanted. The chief-of-police would finally realize my potential and possibly promote me to become a detective.

Besides, the guy was just a thief. It would be easy for me to catch him during his overtime work.

Or so that’s what I thought.

I snuck into Rydney’s Port by climbing over the barbed-wire fence. I was quite far from where the main entrance was. The main entrance of the port was locked with chains and a padlock, and my usual bolt cutters weren’t in my car trunk for some reason.

The tall lights of the port shone above multiple, large stacks of metal compartment. The stale smell of saltwater surrounded the whole port and a powerful gust from the sea nudged my balance. I hid behind a large red shipping cargo and heard two men talking to one another.

Each of them was wearing a black hoodie and a white mask.

“Oi! Did you find it?”

“Yeah, It’s this one here,” he pointed at the blue cargo in front of him.

Then, one employee of the logistics staff appeared from behind the two men. The employee was wearing a neon-yellow safety vest.

It was him. The guy that I had suspected to Detective Dudley.

At that moment, I realized that going into the port alone was a bad idea after all. I wasn’t faced with just one criminal, but three.

“Ah, fuck it!” I whispered under my breath.

I took the glock from my holster and gripped it firmly with both hands, placing a finger near the trigger. I reminded myself that I needed to calm down before shooting.

Straightening my arms in front of me, I took a deep breath and aimed at the right leg of one of the black-hooded men, limiting my peripheral vision and narrowing it down to the trajectory of the bullet as I closed my left eye.

I took another breath as my finger moved closer to the trigger.

My heart rate was getting slower.

I let a few seconds pass before I pulled the trigger and a loud bang echoed throughout the port.

The bullet went into the man’s calf and he cried in agony as he dropped to the ground. He breathed heavily and grunted at the pain. He stood up and hopped on one leg, grabbing a pistol from his waist and firing three bullets at the red cargo that I was hiding behind. I ducked my body and dashed to the other end of the cargo. The other two men ran away into the maze of shipping cargo.

I peered at him and shot a bullet before hiding back behind the compartment. The bullet missed him. He fired another three bullets at my direction and the metal of the cargo clanged through my ears. I quickly peered at him once more and saw that he was reloading his pistol.

That was my opening.

As I was about to aim again at his left leg, the lights of the port dimmed until everything was pitch black.

“Shit!”

I took out a small torch and turned it on. Usually, I’d rely on Winston if we ever needed to light up a situation in a dark place. I instantly regretted having to buy such a small torch instead of the bigger ones that Winston bought. The moon was also hiding among the clouds, which made my vision even worse.

I treaded speedily through the maze of compartments, with only a 40-centimetre radius of light making my surroundings visible.

I found myself in the middle of two compartment stacks towering above me. It was odd that the separation between the two stacks was so wide. It was wide enough to have 2 roads created in between. In front of me was a black emptiness. I couldn’t tell what was beyond it. I was hoping to find some abrupt end where another cargo would be lying around. But as I moved further into the pitch-black emptiness, I heard a motor engine running.

I slowly lifted my small torch. To my realization, a white truck appeared in the torch’s light. A black-hooded man was in the driver’s seat. My eyes widened and my heart was racing.

Before I could react with my gun, he stepped on the gas peddle and rammed me over with the truck.

My ears were ringing, and my bones cracked. The numbing pain of my entire body kicked in a few seconds after the collision. I laid on my stomach above the concrete pavement with a broken spinal cord and a couple more fractures in my skull and left leg. My right leg was completely lifeless. The rough gravel of the concrete scraped my right cheek as blood spewed out from my mouth. I looked at my left arm and tried to move it, but all that I got was a twitch.

I heard the truck’s door close shut. Footsteps rustled against the gravel and approached my frail body. He kicked my gun away and crouched near me with his hands in his pockets.

“You... piece of... shit,” my voice croaked as my eyes darted to his face.

“Sweet dreams,” he said in a gruff voice.

My vision blurred, and my breath was shortening. I could feel my heartbeat slow down with every second that passed. My eyelids slowly closed to an infinite black space.

They say your life will flash before your eyes when you die. But that didn’t happen to me at all. I wondered why?

Ah! Whatever! I should’ve just gone to the pub!

I opened my eyes to a white bed canopy with hanging drapes that resembled the softness of the clouds in the sky. I could feel the silky texture of the sheets as I sunk into the foam of a spacious mattress. It felt so long since I slept in a comfortable bed. Was this heaven? Was heaven a comfortable bed that I could sleep in forever?

I could still remember the time I moved into my rental apartment in Rydney. I couldn’t help but compare it with the mattress that the landlord gave to me. It was as hard as sleeping on the floor. Every morning, I’d wake up to a sore neck and the back of my head felt like it was flattening.

“Wait a minute.”

I lifted my back from the bed and rubbed my eyes before analysing my surroundings.

“You gotta be kidding me,” I murmured as my eyes widened with surprise.

Every furniture in the room was antique and looked expensive as hell. The four walls were shining with golden decor and floral wallpaper. A bright chandelier hung at the centre of the ceiling. This reminded me of some show that I had seen with a Victorian setting in it. Was it a show? No, it wasn’t a show. It was something that I had read before.

I peered down at my body that was wearing a white nightgown. I touched my arms and stomach several times to reassure my senses were still alive and well.

“My leg... My right leg!”

I grabbed open the thick blankets to reveal my right leg. It was perfectly intact and not crushed. The bones, tissues and skin were in place. As I wriggled my toes, I noticed that my skin colour was lighter than usual. It wasn’t my normal Asian skin tone. I held a hair strand from my shoulder. The light purple colour of the strand glistened with the lights of the chandelier.

“This body...”

I got off the bed and walked towards the gold vintage mirror at the corner of the room. The reflection of the mirror showed another person.

“This... isn’t my body.”

I touched my face with both hands and gaped at my reflection. I couldn’t believe how smooth my skin was! There were no wrinkles on my forehead either. My hair was such an abnormal, yet natural hair-colour. Compared to the muscular build of my original body, this body was slim but still quite tall. Out of all these features, what awed me the most was my clear, turquoise eyes. It was really mind-boggling.

“What the fu-“

The door behind me creaked opened, and I realized I wasn’t alone anymore. The reflection of the mirror showed a maid with dark brown hair and hazel-coloured eyes, entering the room and holding a tray of tea and biscuits. She didn’t notice me standing in front of the mirror until she quietly put down the tray on the table and peered at the king-size bed. Her eyes darted from the bed to my face. She jumped on her toes and immediately straightened her posture.

“M-m-my La-la-lady,” she stuttered.

“Hello,” I muttered.

As I got closer to her, I became aware of the scar that was on her left cheek. She was shaking terribly as well.

“Um... Could you tell me my-“

“Please forgive me for what I did yesterday!” she cried, and I was taken aback.

I didn’t know what to say. I barely knew her for ten seconds, and she was already asking for forgiveness. What the hell did I do to her?

“It’s... It’s oka-“

She dropped to the floor, and was on her knees and palms. I jolted and took two steps back from her.

“Please forgive me for ruining your dress!”

A dress?

“I’m very sorry for spilling the tea on your dress in front of Prince Aesar!”

It dumbfounded me. I just woke up in someone’s room, in another person’s body a few minutes ago, and I was already faced with a problem. Was this situation harder than the one I had faced with the criminal? Equally, so.

But why in the world would I care about a dress?! I didn’t even know what happened yesterday! The only thing that I could remember from yesterday was a bicycle theft and few drinks with Winston!

As I took a deep breath and was about to speak again, I hesitated and realized that she said a particular name. A name that sounded familiar.

“What did you just say?” I asked with my eyebrows furrowed. I bended down towards her and put my hands on my knees.

She looked up to me with her lips trembling. Tears were gleaming in her frightened eyes.

“I- I said, I’m ve-very sorry for spi-spilling the te-tea on your dre-dress in fro-front of Pri-prince Ae-Aesar,” she stuttered heavily.

By the time she finished her sentence, a memory of my sister appeared in my mind. My dear sister was sitting next to me on my bed explaining how the male protagonist of the web comic was handsome and attractive in every way.

Prince Aesar’s blonde hair, his purple eyes and his muscular body can make any girl orgasm! Her voice annoyingly echoed through my mind.

One memory lead to another, when I recalled the time she made a yaoi fan-fiction between Prince Aesar and his younger brother, Prince Stalo. The title of it was called ‘Brotherly Love’. I cringed at the thought of it and placed a hand on the maid’s shoulder.

It was clear to me that the body I was stuck in appeared in that web comic. The body of a character that I knew was going to die.

This body was none other than “Roanne Imrora’s.”

The maid gazed at my dead expression after I said my own name and whimpered, “My lady, what is the matter with you?!”