"I love Christmas" A little girl said to her mother as they both walked home hand-in-hand.

"Why?" Her mother looked down at her and asked with a smile. 

"Because, everyone seem to be really happy. Isn"t that right?" She looked up at her mother to ask.

The older woman stopped walking and squatted down to meet her little girl"s height.

"Hmmm...Well, to some people, it can be the best Christmas of their lives...."

In one part of the city, Li Sun smiled as she looked at the family picture they had taken together that morning.

In another part of the city, with a light kiss, Muchen waved Sara goodbye as he drove home. 

The woman continued to narrate.. "To some others...it can be the worst day of their lives..." 

In a part of the city, Jianjun remained seated by the side of the field and cried his eyes out.

In another part, Changyu lay on her bed in a curl and cried to stupor. 

Cixi on the other hand, was still inside their used-to-be restaurant as she kept thinking about the past with bloodshot eyes and a liquor bottle in hand. 

"Some others, get what they deserved..."

Weiyoung wailed as Aotian kept working on her without mercy. 

Whenever she tried to cry louder, he simply shoved his tongue inside her mouth in a forceful kiss and even her bite seem to do nothing to him. 

"Some...do not actually feel anything.. To them, Christmas is just like every other day so they simply continue their various jobs"

Kim Eva looked through some doc.u.ments in the office before eventually dozing off. 

In another city, Hani and the driver looked around a tiny dark compound as they waited for whoever was inside to open the door for them.

"And some...make resolutions"

Heya who was quietly sitting in the back seat of the car Muchen was driving, rejected yet another call from Jin Cearo before looking out the window.

And in another country, Dexi looked out the window of his hotel room and wondered what he was doing there when he was supposed to be cerebrating Christmas somewhere else.

Dexi hadn"t bothered to let go of Sara"s case. He was still very much curious and wanted to find an answer no matter what.

He had stopped at a point and decided to just let her be. But he realised he couldn"t. She was always popping up in his mind; from the first day he saw her, to the second, to the third and so on. He couldn"t stop remembering every of his encounter with her.

Maybe if he was able to uncover some dirt from her past, she was probably going to leave Muchen and come to his side if he threatened her with it right? 

It was the reason he continued with this.

He closed his eyes and imagined Sara beside him. 

The past night, he was not able to sleep a wink after seeing her picture appear all over the internet. 

She was pretty. So pretty. And someone like her, deserved to be beside him.

He had never been the type to care for women or struggle to have one to the point where he had to come to the country she had disappeared from years ago. But Sara was simply driving him crazy. 

"Still nothing" His PA said to him as he continued to look out the window.

"For two days, we still haven"t been able to find anything?" He said without turning to look at him.

"It"s been nine years already. Most of the workers are no longer working here" He explained. "The ones I could find didn"t know anything about it. Apparently, it seemed there was no case of a missing guest reported as at that time. So no one knew about it." 

They were currently lodging at the hotel where the girls had lodged back then. 

It was not that just the building that changed to look more "modern" and refined, majority of the workers were also changed and it was going to be a problem for them to get any useful information since they were not able to find any CCTV footage from that time.

"One more day. If there"s still nothing, I"ll have no choice but to ask her myself." 

Sara carried the sleeping Joreen on her back and climbed the dreaded stairs to their apartment. 

As she was about opening the door, she found it was slightly ajar.

She furrowed her brows before gently pus.h.i.+ng the door to walk in. 

She wondered whether her Aunt or Father was back. But, why would they leave the door open? 

"Dad? Aunt?" She called softly so as not to wake the sleeping Joreen up. 

When she got to their room, she found out her Aunt was not there. 

She carefully lowered the sleeping Joreen on the bed a d went to check for her father but even after checking his room, kitchen, and bathrooms, he also was not in.

As she walked past the sitting room again, this time, the door was even wide open than it was before. 

Now, she knew something was wrong somewhere. 

She had locked the door after entering but now, it was wide open?

Someone was obviously messing with her. 

She ran her eyes around the house and found nothing strange or suspicious. 

As she slowly began to move closer to the door, she saw a yellow postcard taped to the door.

She removed it from the door and read out the words..

"Merry Christmas little sister. Do not forget to check the laptop"

She looked at the note in confusion before peeking outside to check if she would probably see the person who had left it there but the hallway was empty.

"Little sister? Laptop?" She looked again at the note in confusion before closing the door. And straight she went into her room.

As soon as she entered inside the room, she quickly took her laptop to check for any mail and after searching and waiting for over five minutes, there was still nothing. 

She shut the laptop and hissed angrily.

Who the h.e.l.l was messing with her? What was she supposed to check her laptop for? 

As she asked herself these questions, her eyes fell on her Aunt"s bag that was on the ground. 

After Cixi left, Sara had carried back her luggage and backpack back inside the room but since she wanted to meet Changyu quickly, she hadn"t bothered to leave them in the wardrobe so she had dropped them on the ground.

As she looked at the backpack, she remembered the laptop she had taken from Joreen"s school princ.i.p.al"s office. 

Was that it? She wondered before walking to where the bag was. 

She was skeptical about it since no one else knew about the laptop except for her aunt, the princ.i.p.al and herself. 

Even if the princ.i.p.al told someone about it, they would come for her and the laptop instead of reminding her to check the laptop right? 

As she took the laptop out of the backpack, she carefully placed it on the table and opened it. 

It was the same screensaver she had seen on the day she broke into his office. It was of the princ.i.p.al, his young wife, and little son all having fun in a park. The only difference was, the laptop was not locked now.

She took in a deep breath before searching for his mail. But when she finally found it, she could not access it. She guessed he probably must have tempered with it so they wouldn"t be able to access it. 

She sighed before remembering her aunt had made mention of a secret file. 

She searched through the system and finally came across a file labelled with a capital letter X. 

Out of curiosity, she clicked on it and saw many other doc.u.ments and pictures of a building. 

She had seen the picture in the leaflet the school had shared during the graduation party and so she knew this was the school"s new project. They were making plans to relocate to this building after it was completed.  

She was about exiting that particular page to go look at something else when something suddenly caught her eyes. 

Underneath the picture, there were two tables that looked like a ledger of some sort. 

She furrowed her brows as she carefully began to study it. 

The table included the list of the materials that were purchased for the building, the number of materials and the amount they were purchased with.

From the look of things, she guessed the first table was the real ledger while the second was forged.

The prices of the first were all very low in contrast to the exorbitant prices she was seeing on the second. 

Although she didn"t know much about things like these, she knew it was near impossible to buy construction materials for such a low price, especially with the quant.i.ty demanded.

She quickly opened her laptop again to search for the prices of some of the materials in other to know the exact prices they were sold for.

When her system showed her the prices of such materials, she frowned even more. It was just as she expected.

The first word that came to her mind was "Embezzlement" 

He was obviously buying counterfeit materials for meager prices while pocketing the rest and presenting a fake statement of account.

How could someone be this evil? Everyone knew there was going to be a change of princ.i.p.al soon. Was that why he was doing this? What if the building collapsed? They do hear cases of collapsed buildings at least twice in a year. 

Was he really subjecting other people"s children to this kind of danger? 

There was a ban on the sales of counterfeit goods. So who still had the effrontery to sell such goods in the country?

She continued to search through every doc.u.ments in case she could find where he was getting the goods from and the more she searched, the more angry she got because she happened to come across more doc.u.ments to prove he was a very dedicated embezzler. 

No wonder he was living in a very nice and well furnished apartment. She had suspected since that moment that he was an embezzler.

Soon, her eyes came across something.

It was the mail she had been looking for. So it was saved here all long?

She quickly clicked on it and saw the message..

  "For the graduation party, keep w.a.n.g Joreen out of the prizes. It"s the only way your embezzling acts won"t go public."

An emoji of a sword was felt at the end of the message.

Her angry eyes remained fixed on the sword emoji and it didn"t take long before her eyes shone as she finally recognised who the culprit was.