I looked around, taking a deep breath before falling down onto my bed. I felt like it had been years that I had been locked up in that cell with Cross.

At the same time, it all had happened so fast that it had seemed like a blur, too. One moment I was there in that cell, feeling hopeless again. It was right after Cross had had another one of his mood swings. I was so confused at that point that I was sure I was going to go crazy. I was upset with myself for not only letting Cross kiss me, but for also being disappointed when he had stopped. He sat in the corner silently, and I was so thrown off by his change of mood that I just fell right asleep without another word, only to wake up the next morning to Cross shaking me, saying that he knew how to escape.

Suddenly, he knew how to escape. I wasn't buying it. Something, a soft, haunting voice in the back of my head, kept insisting that I was wrong – that it wasn't a coincidence. He had purposely been caught during his first attempt to escape. I couldn't be too surprised knowing that he had purposely stayed locked up with me.

I wasn't sure what to think of that, either. The fact that he had known all along how to get out and hadn't bothered to share it with me. Instead, he had led me to believe that we were permanently trapped together, and had spent another long, tiresome day with me. I knew Cross was a flirt, and a pervert, but I had never thought him to be so persistent. I was nothing special, and he dated plenty of girls before.

Yet he had waited around, wasting time he could use with girls who wouldn't play hard to get, to try and break through my shell.

Then when he finally about to win, he had raised his white flag.

I sighed heavily. Was he ever going to make any sense? You'd think that after spending so much time with a person, you'd start to understand how they thought. Cross was an entirely different story, I supposed.

I walked out of my room, Lau Shim on my shoulder, and began to wander aimlessly through the halls. It was true that Cross and I were seeing entirely different things in the world – I was seeing the right, and he was seeing the left. Still, it was hard to imagine that he could be so entirely incomprehensible.

I sighed, stopping by one of the windows that looked out over the grounds of the Black Order. Cross had realized he had stepped over an invisible line when he kissed me. He had thought it would have bothered me, just when we were beginning to talk civilly to each other. I was sure that was it. He had overreacted, though.

Then again, if he had kissed me on our first day of being captured, I would have thought he wasn't upset enough for what he had done. How fast I had changed in a matter of three days.

Now that Lau Shim was with me again, I didn't see any more of Cross. I walked around the entire building and didn't spot him once. With a sigh, I realized that he was already gone; off on another one of is dates. I had just been as much as a game as anything else. He had just been trying to see if he could win, and I suppose I had scared him off when he realized that he had been right. What an idiot I was to think that he, too, had changed a bit during these past few days.

I heard someone running up behind me and turned around to see a finder rushing towards me, holding a piece of folded paper in his hand.

"I've been looking all over for you, General," he panted.

"Sorry," I apologized. "I had been taking a walk around headquarters."

He handed me the piece of paper. "From General Cross, ma'am."

I thanked him and he turned around, running back down the hall. Cautiously, I began to open the letter.

"I wonder what this is, Lau Shim." I spread the paper open and read a short message, scribbled in Cross' handwriting:

You already owe me a bottle of wine from the game.

I crinkled the paper up in my hand, and couldn't resist a smirk. I owed him? Where had he gotten that conclusion?

I would have to go down to his room and sort this out.

I began walking down the hall, finding my pace picking up with each step, when the same finder spun around the corner, handing me one more note.

"Sorry, ma'am," he said, "but he'd like you to have this one, too."

I reached out, accepting it with a polite smile. I tore it open, still walking as I read it.

And don't bring the homicidal ape, please.

The next thing I knew, I was running down the halls to his room.

Author's notes: Thanks so much for reading this story from beginning to end! I hoped you liked it and that you'll let me know what you thought!