Steven raised an eyebrow and tossed out the question like it was nothing.
“What about solving cases?”
“Huh?”
White blinked once.
Then she answered without even thinking, completely serious, as though she was reciting a philosophy she’d spent her whole life developing.
“Solving cases?
Bro, dangerous, brain-melting work like that…
that’s what those guys are for.
Not me.”
She folded her arms, wearing the proud expression of someone who was lazy and saw absolutely nothing wrong with it.
“If I ever become police chief, and there’s a case nobody can crack?
Easy.
I’ll introduce a new policy on the spot.”
She raised a finger drastic.
“Double the reward money and send Detective WHITE to solve it!”
White nodded to herself, thoroughly pleased with her own genius.
“See?
That’s leadership.”
She leaned back.
“People will worship me because I know how to put the right person in the right job.
I might not have the talent myself…
but I do have a talent for avoiding dangerous work.”
White unlocked her phone and held the screen out in front of Steven, her voice slipping back into its usual playful tone.
“You been watching any romance dramas lately?”
On the screen, the lead couple stood beneath a sky full of falling snow.
White covered everything around them, wrapping the scene in a silence so beautiful it hardly seemed real.
White watched for a moment before speaking, almost as if she were talking to herself rather than to him.
“Pretty touching, huh?
After everything they went through, they still found their way back to each other…”
She sat up slightly and began swiping through the screen, showing Steven one image after another.
Snow-covered streets.
The heroine’s face.
Aurora light spilling across her features.
Then more.
A snowman.
A Christmas tree.
People skiing.
Reindeer.
Santa Claus.
Then the video stopped.
Mark and his girlfriend.
Last year.
Standing together in the snow.
Their kiss was slow and a little awkward but real in a way no scene from a romance drama could ever quite imitate.
“You know them, right?”
White’s question was light.
But in the quiet room, it landed like a single drop of water in a sealed space far louder than it had any right to be.
Steven hesitated.
Only for a fraction of a second but it was unmistakable.
“How would I know them?” he said.
His voice remained perfectly even, but his blink came half a beat too late.
White swiped to the next photo.
Mark’s face filled the screen—gentle, the kind of face that looked as though he had never raised his voice at anyone in his life.
“What about this guy?”
“…I don’t know him.”
White gave a slight nod.
It wasn’t quite the kind of nod that meant agreement.
It was more like hearing a familiar song and realizing, somewhere along the way, that a few notes had gone wrong.
“When people lie,” she said, her eyes still fixed on the screen, “every part of their body can betray them.”
Steven narrowed his eyes.
“What exactly are you getting at?”