Aselia waited for Yurian to fall asleep. Once she could hear him snore, she quietly entered his room making the least noise possible. The carpet in the room absorbed any sound that her feet might have made.

She stood near his bed and whispered:

"I never wanted to do this but you have left me no option," she picked up his phone from his side table and walked away as quietly as she had come.

Aselia had known his password like forever but she had always respected his privacy and never touched his phone. But she was desperate for answers now, answers anyone refused to give her.

She tiptoed to her room and after settling down in bed, punched in his password. The phone clicked open and the last call was indeed from someone named Xiran, her heart quickened its pace as she copied his number and saved it into her phone.

Aselia then went on to open the message box but she didn’t find many messages from him. Just one which said he needed to talk to him about something urgent. Yurian had most probably deleted the previous messages.

There were messages from Frila but Aselia didn’t open them. She didn’t want to encroach on their privacy. She only wanted to find out the connection between Xiran and herself.

She then opened his gallery to see if she could find any clue there and clicked on the folder with her name. There were so many pictures of hers with Yurian, some random selfies they had clicked, some when they were drunk. This put a small smile on her face.

She scrolled down and jolted as if a current of thousand watts had hit her when she came upon a picture. There was a man chained to the floor with his knees touching the ground and his hands had long chains tied to them, which were embedded in walls. She sat in front of him, feeding him something.

What chilled her to the bone was the appearance of the man, his torso was naked with bruises while he had silver hair and a pair of hypnotic grey eyes.

These were the same eyes, which had watched her from behind that mask yesterday, the same eyes that caressed every inch of her body, the same eyes that made her heartbeat erratically.

There was no mistaking them. She would recognise them anywhere. Those eyes had made her feel things no eyes had ever had.

A million questions erupted simultaneously in her brain. Who was he? Why was he chained? Why was she feeding him? And most importantly why couldn’t she remember him or this moment?

Her heart was going crazy in her chest cavity and no amount of breathing could calm it down. He has been real all along? And she thought she was crazy for thinking about him.

Seemed like he was a prisoner who had been tortured, and his hair was much shorter in the picture, and so was hers. Yesterday they were almost triple in size and the way he stared at her, even in the picture. It made her heart melt and her insides twist in knots.

Was it him?

The mysterious stranger from the Masquerade Ball?

The angel-like being who swarmed her dreams daily.

Her eyes flickered and went to the painting she had made of the faceless man. His handsome face would fit perfectly.

She could swear she had never seen such an exquisite-looking man before, he seemed to have been sculpted in perfection. Aselia couldn’t help but stare at his picture, lost in his divine beauty.

Her fingers traced the sharp jawline of his face and those robust arms of his, remembering he had held her when they had danced together. All those sensations were making her restless again.

Why didn’t she remember him? The question was unsettling her and she wanted to just go and scream at Yurian for keeping secrets from her. But she decided to wait until Esma and Razian had left for their trip to confront him.

Aselia sent the picture to her cell phone and then deleted that message from Yurian’s phone.

She then quietly went back and placed his phone from where she had picked it up, giving Yurian’s sleeping self a disappointed look. She had never thought he would have secrets from her.

Aselia returned to her room and picked up her phone. She took out his picture and stared at it again with loving eyes. The pain in her heart eased the more she gazed at his serene face. It brought her peace, a peace she hadn’t known in the past year.

Something clicked in her mind and she took out Xiran’s number and without thinking much she texted him with shaking hands and a raspy breath:

[Hi! Are you Xiran?]

Xiran didn’t have her new number. He never took it so he wouldn’t be tempted to text her. He was awake when his phone chimed and the text floated, making him wonder who it was in the middle of the night. He read the text in confusion and replied with a furrowed forehead:

[Who is asking?]

Aselia read his text and answered with a thudding heart:

[Someone you might know...]

This infuriated him and he thought someone was playing tricks on him. But this was his private number and only his friends had it and Yurian. How come a stranger obtained it? So he gambled to see what the person says:

[Someone that I know, please!!! State your business.]

Aselia wasn’t sure how to ask him or what to ask him. What if he denied knowing her? Or what if he was talking about someone else? But all his conversation pointed towards her. Only one person was jealous of seeing her with Jaguar and that was the mysterious stranger. A while ago Xiran was chiding Yurian for letting her go with Jaguar. That only meant that Xiran was the man behind that mask.

’Xiran...’ she whispered his name as it slightly seemed to echo all around her. She was still profoundly staring at his name when the phone began to ring so loudly, she was startled and it slipped from her hands and fell in her lap.

It was Xiran, he was calling her.

’Oh! Shit, why is he calling me in the middle of the night,’ Aselia quickly grabbed her phone, her heart was hammering so loudly that she could hear it in her ears, banging away.

She cut the call and texted:

[Don’t call. It’s the middle of the night. I have no business, just wanted to confirm it’s you.]

"Hmm," Xiran mumbled in annoyance reading the text. Someone was playing games with him. He decided to give the number to Rumail in the morning so he could trace it down. He then texted back:

[If you had no business, why were you texting me in the middle of the night? Wasn’t that rude?]

Aselia read his text and contemplated her action. She did initiate the conversation and then didn’t ask what she wanted to. He was right. And from his texts, it was evident he didn’t have her number.

[Sorry! I didn’t mean to disturb you or be rude. I apologise.]

Xiran pinched the bridge of his nose at the text. What did this person want exactly? Now they were sorry.

[Then what did you want from me???] He sent the following text, still perplexed about the mysterious sender.

Aselia let out a deep hopeless sigh reading the next text. What did she want from him exactly? To see the kind of man he was. To understand why she had been seeing him in her dreams and had no recollections of him whatsoever. But she didn’t know how to ask him any of that. She thought long and hard before finally typing away on the keypad of her phone and hitting send:

[Just the surety that you are real...]

For some reason, Xiran was anticipating the next text and it threw him into deep thought. Who would want to know if he was real? So many people wanted his identity known. It could be anyone.

He needed to check with Rumail first before entertaining whoever was texting him in the middle of the night. So he locked his phone and put it away. He placed his arm over his eyes and tried to sleep. Earlier he had called Yurian to ask about Aselia. They exchanged words, he had been so pissed at his inability to hold her back from going to Emeradius City.

But his reasons were valid too, he didn’t know who Jaguar was and Aselia seemed to care for him. This enraged him further and a vein popped out in his temple. Tomorrow he was returning home. He was angry at Frila too, there was a reasonable chance that she knew about Aselia’s involvement with someone else.

On the other side, Aselia waited for his text with a fluttering heart. She felt like a teenager, waiting for a text from her crush. But seconds turned into minutes and Xiran didn’t reply. Disappointment clouded her and she pouted like a child. Her heart wanted to text him again but she decided against it. Closing her phone she placed it aside and slipped under her duvet.

Tomorrow she will seek answers from Yurian, this she promised herself before sleep engulfed her.