I woke up nearly an hour before my alarm, finding myself wedged into something of a 'sibling sandwich' on Ves' queen sized bed.

Shit, it must have been another bad one last night...

Whatever the twins were doing for me, though, it was working. I almost never woke up screaming these days, and though I was tired, at least I seldom remembered those horrific nightmares anymore.

Carefully removing myself from Ves' embrace and the leg Fes had hooked around my own, I headed to her bathroom to take a shower. I took some time to enjoy the hot steam before finally stepping out and drying off. Right before I could drape the towel around myself, the door flew open and Ves stood there, blearily staring at my naked body, herself only half-dressed in a tight white tee and pink booty shorts. Even though she'd just woke up she looked like a model; that blonde hair somehow falling into place as if meticulously styled, her natural height enhancing her curves, their every slope all the more severe because of it.

"Mornin', sis," she remarked easily, before stepping inside and closing the door behind her.

I squeaked loudly, fumbling the towel in my panic and helplessly watching it drop at my feet.

"Ha ha! You're cute when you're flustered, you know that?"

With a wink that reminded me of her mother's, Ves headed to the bathroom sink to brush her teeth.

"Wh-what are you doing in here!? I thought I locked it!" I blurted out, shocked by her boldness.

"What do you mean 'what'? It's my bathroom."

"But, I-"

"Come on Norma. We're sisters, aren't we? It's not like we're going to have any weird thoughts just because we happen to see each other naked, right~?"

She squirted some toothpaste onto a brush and rubbed a circle of steam off of the mirror, watching my reflection's spreading blush with a cheeky smile on her face as I found myself unable to agree with her aloud. Ves rinsed her mouth, laughed to herself quietly, and headed towards me.

"Fes was right, you really are quite troublesome..." Her voice had gone soft, and despite her earlier stoicism, she couldn't seem to stare at me as brazenly any longer now that we were this close. She leaned down... I found my lips parting ever so slightly...

...and nearly died of embarrassment as she picked my towel up from the floor. But the next thing I knew Ves had wrapped her arms around my waist from behind to drape the towel around me, a pleased hum coming from her as she pulled it into a tight knot, rocking me even closer to her as I nearly lost my balance. She leaned into my neck and all but whispered her next words.

"There you go. We wouldn't want Fes to see what I just saw, now would we?"

"N-no! Definitely not!"

Another of those harmonious laughs.

"That's right. Your cool older sister is the only one who could handle such a vision, anyway."

She stayed behind me for a few moments. I didn't dare move, still trying to process everything that had happened since I'd stepped out of the shower.

"...are you done in here?" she asked in an amused voice. "I need to use the facilities."

"Oh, uh, sorry! I-I'm going!"

Ves gave me a little slap on the ass through the towel, as if to usher me out.

"Get going then! But hey, feel free to come back whenever you like, alright? Sisters do share everything, after all..."

With that strange invitation echoing in my ears, I ran right past a still sleeping Fes to my own room and instinctively locked the door.

Damn it, Ves! That was not how I expected to start my morning!

She could be so maternal towards me whenever I needed her... I would have never expected her to be capable of entertaining the perverse kinds of thoughts I'd had about her the first time we met! This had the potential to get complicated...

No, no, no! Am I seriously thinking about this? Ves is probably a flirt by nature, right? She couldn't have actually meant anything by it. I mean, how many times did she say 'sister'? She was just teasing me as my new older 'sibling'! That's definitely all it was...

Whether this conclusion came as a relief or disappointment I didn't want to know, but when my alarm went off the next moment I realized I had to push these weird thoughts away and get moving. I didn't want to keep Myst waiting!

---

I had imagined myself sitting across the desk from a detective straight out of a film noir when Myst had first called me, but the reality was quite different. We were sitting side-by-side on a cheap futon in the corner of her office, presumably to make me more comfortable. She herself was also not quite what I expected. She was no 'dame' clad in a long red dress with impossibly long lashes - hell, Faye was much more the part than the woman beside me. Instead, Myst gave off the vibe of an art student who had somehow been forced into investigator work due to a lack of commissions.

That's not to say she wasn't attractive, though. As a woman nearly a decade older than myself, her body was quite well developed compared to my own despite being only a few inches taller than me. She had a variety of cute mannerisms too, like tapping a pencil against her lips whenever she was in thought. Myst's black and red hair was short at the back and long at the front, providing her with bangs that she was constantly moving out of her face whenever she did anything. It somehow made her seem both bumbling and endearing.

"Before we begin, I'd like your verbal consent that I can record this session to use as a reference during my investigation."

She was professional but empathetic, taking some of the edge off of her request.

"It's kind of embarrassing, but I know it's for a good cause. You have my consent."

"Thank you, Norma. To begin with, I'd like to ask about Quin Tessence's appearance. This seems to be the most recent picture I could dig up. As you can see, it's incredibly outdated; I doubt she was even in middle school by the time it was taken. Can you tell me what she looks like now?"

"...actually, that's pretty spot on. Unless she's had a serious growth spurt within the last month, that's definitely our girl."

"Oh, I see..." She looked from me to the photo and back again in surprise, eventually clearing her throat.

"Moving on, then. Before we get into anything too heavy, there was something regarding your rescue that I still don't quite understand. Your father mentioned that he and his girlfriend were the ones to discover where you were being held captive, but I didn't quite catch how he knew where to look. Could you tell me how it was he was able to track you down?"

This was something I had wondered myself, to be quite honest. He had been rather vague about it, saying that as my father, he 'just knew'. I was too grateful to really push at the time, but now that Myst mentioned it, I seemed to also recall a hazy memory of Mae saying something along the lines of 'my love for Norma led the way'. A sudden chill crept down my spine, causing me to shudder involuntarily.

"Are you alright? I can turn the thermostat up if you're finding it cold in here," she asked with genuine concern.

"I'm okay. Sorry, I don't actually know the details. I wasn't exactly in my right mind when they found me, and I guess I was too busy trying to return to my normal life that I didn't really think to ask."

"That's perfectly fine, Norma. Before we go any further, I want to remind you that if you begin to feel uncomfortable, we can end this session at any time, okay? Don't feel pressured to say anything you don't want to."

"...okay, I'll try to remember that. Thank you, Myst."

"Of course. I suppose we should start at the beginning... How did you know Quin, first of all?"

Taking a deep breath, I pushed aside my time as her captive and focused on the hyper, smiling young girl I remembered her best as.

"Well, she used to live here in town when we were kids, just a block away from me. We met at school. I hadn't made any friends yet, and over the course of a few weeks I noticed that she was always playing her Port-A-Game by herself. One day I worked up the courage to walk over and ask her about it, and she spent the rest of the day telling me anything and everything game-related. After that we were fast friends."

"And how did the nature of your relationship evolve as the years went on?"

"Well, it may have started as a friendship of convenience for two loners, but when my parents went through a rough divorce a few years later, she was my rock. Whenever things were bad at home I used to run over to her house to forget about things. Quin had a one-track mind and always invited me to play those old Saga Commencement games together. Our favourite was Sanic 2. Even though Taels - the player 2 character - didn't really have much of an effect on the game, I always felt happy to be there beside her, seeing how far we could get this time. She always managed to keep my mind off of dark thoughts, which is somewhat ironic since we were always playing in a dark basement... Oh god, I'm rambling, aren't I? You probably don't want to hear all this..."

"On the contrary, this is exactly what I want to hear. You're the only one who can provide me this kind of information, so I want you to feel comfortable with sharing anything at all, no matter how irrelevant it seems, okay?"

"Ah, you say that, but... Well, alright. I'll try not to be so self-conscious about it."

"Glad to hear it. So after helping you through your time of need, what happened next?"

"Well, not too long after that, we were supposed to be going to middle school together. But just a month before school started, she came over to my house devastated, telling me that her father had a new, well-paying job in another city and that she had to move away. I remember us crying together almost all night."

"I'm sorry to hear that."

"Yeah, it was actually pretty rough... luckily I still had my friend Mae to get me through, but it was tough adjusting to life without her. We had each other's e-mail addresses, so we were able to stay in contact, fortunately. We wrote each other these cringey reports about how our day went for like a year straight. Eventually we both got cell phones and exchanged numbers instead. Mae kept me busy, but I got the impression Quin still only really had me to talk to. Within the last couple of years we ended up playing this online game called Raid Fantasy pretty religiously, and... yeah..."

I hesitated, wondering if I was truly ready to open up about this, and how much I should actually end up sharing with Myst.

"...I assume we're coming up on the day of the crime. Take all the time you need. We could also call it here, if you like."

I lost count of the number of times my mouth opened and closed. I involuntarily moved closer to Myst, who braced a supportive palm against my back. When she noticed me leaning into instead of away from it, she began slowly, gently rubbing my back.

"Perhaps I'll start with a bit of a difficult question to feel things out. Did you have any idea of what she was capable of? Any inkling at all that she might act in this obsessive way?"

I thought back to the events leading up to my inviting her to my home. With hindsight, there were a few clues that should have been obvious, but I couldn't - or wouldn't - believe they were anything more than friendly banter at the time.

"Unfortunately, I was too blinded by our friendship to see it coming. It's not like she ever said "If I had half a chance I would drug you and kidnap you and force us to live together like lovers, ha ha, just kidding but not really!", you know? She was always very forward and flirty with me, but ultimately I had just pegged that as coming from my place as her best friend."

"I can understand that. We want to see the best in the people we've chosen to have in our lives, after all. Before we continue, do you have much time left today?"

"Hmm? My schedule's pretty much wide open, why do you ask?"

"I'm thinking about getting us lunch. We should take a small break before we dive right into the thick of it, don't you think?"

"Oh, that's very kind of you! I'm not picky, so we can get whatever you like."

"Alright, I'll place our order now. Make yourself at home, there's water in the fridge and the restroom's just over there if you need it."

With that Myst went to the other corner of the office to order something from Dish Dash. I grabbed myself a water bottle and sat back down, completely lost to my anxious thoughts.

Quin... when I finally talk about our time together, what exactly will I end up saying? I don't know. I'm almost... afraid to know...