Hawk in the Photo and

Hawk listened to the busy signal from the other end of the line and fell silent again.

The next moment.

His mind raced.

Hawk was not worried about Gwen going to his apartment. He was rapidly trying to remember whether there was anything unsuitable for minors—or anything Gwen should not see—in his apartment.

Unsuitable for minors?

No.

Forget videos; he did not even own a poster, much less any magazines.

Ask why? Because he was poor.

He could not even bring himself to buy a phone card, much less those expensive, energy-draining magazines.

A few years ago, when he was full of energy, he usually went up to the rooftop and punched the air until he wore himself out before going back to sleep.

As for things Gwen should not see?

There did not seem to be any.

The five Chitauri alien weapons were wrapped tightly in a bedsheet and stuffed beneath the bed in his bedroom.

Gwen probably would not find them.

So...

Forget it. Let her go.

Business came first.

With that thought, Hawk snapped back to his senses. After putting away his phone, the warmth in his eyes from speaking with Gwen vanished completely, replaced by an utterly cold gaze.

Little Black, whose mouth was covered, looked utterly terrified.

Hawk admired the terror in Little Black's eyes, the corner of his mouth curving into a handsome smile.

"Now..."

"It's my turn to rob you."

"..."

After hanging up, Gwen slipped her phone back into her pocket and headed straight for the fire escape built into the outside wall of Hawk's new apartment. She made it to the top floor without any trouble.

Gwen moved aside the shorts hanging in front of the half-open window—shorts that, upon closer inspection, seemed to have been altered from a pair of casual pants—then climbed through the window and jumped into Hawk's apartment.

Looking around.

The living room was small. A secondhand sofa and a secondhand folding table with a laptop on it took up two-thirds of the room.

But it was clean.

It was not spotless, but it was neat and orderly.

Gwen's first impression of the living room was that it felt comfortable.

She had never visited Hawk's previous apartment, and this was also her first time seeing this one.

However...

Just as Gwen took the envelope Dr. Connors had asked her to pass on to Hawk from her pocket and placed it on the folding table, her attention was drawn to the closed laptop on the table.

It was not because she was surprised that Hawk owned a computer.

Rather...

The stickers on the laptop case.

"This is..."

"Way too cute."

Looking at the girlish stickers on the laptop case, Gwen could not help laughing. She was rather curious which girl had sold Hawk this laptop.

It never even occurred to her that Hawk might have put those stickers on himself, nor did she think some girl might have given him the laptop.

Impossible.

Absolutely impossible.

Because no one knew Hawk better than she did.

She had no doubt that if she had kept talking to Hawk after handing him the phone back then, Hawk would definitely have returned it to her.

So, just to be safe, Gwen had not met Hawk at all during those ten-odd days.

With that in mind, Gwen withdrew her gaze. After glancing at the envelope on the folding table, she turned to leave.

The moment she turned around, her open sun-protection jacket stirred up a gust of wind as it shifted, blowing the envelope off the folding table.

The envelope took flight, then drifted unsteadily into the bedroom beside the living room.

Gwen instinctively walked over and bent down to pick up the envelope, which had nearly been blown beneath the bed. As she rose, a faint green glow lit up beneath the bed and caught the corner of her eye.

Her movement froze.

Gwen looked beneath the bed.

A bedsheet wrapped tightly around something immediately came into view.

But the bedsheet was definitely not high quality.

At the very least, it did not block light.

The faint green glow flashed through the bedsheet in a rhythm like breathing.

But the glow was dim.

Even though it was daytime, Gwen would never have noticed it if she had not happened to catch the light source from the corner of her eye.

What was that?

Gwen crouched down and leaned beneath the bed. Seeing it, her delicate brows rose slightly.

As Gwen wondered about it, she was about to stand up with the envelope she had just picked up when her gaze moved upward and landed on a somewhat broken picture frame beside the nightstand.

A photograph was tucked inside the broken frame.

The background of the photograph was Times Square, and its subjects were a young man and woman who looked around fourteen years old, dressed in somewhat faded old clothes.

Gwen knew the boy.

Hawk.

The Hawk in the photograph was smiling happily.

Gwen had never seen Hawk wear such a smile in all her memories.

But who was this girl in the photo?

Frowning again, Gwen set the envelope aside and picked up the photograph from the nightstand to examine it.

This photo had probably been taken not long after Hawk started school at fourteen.

Gwen studied the photograph, confirming the time it had been taken in her mind.

Because she recognized the pants Hawk was wearing in the photo.

They were the very pants she had just mocked Hawk for wearing for three years. Though they had clearly become too small, he had been unwilling to throw them away and had altered them into shorts instead.

Yes.

They were the shorts still hanging by the window.

But who was this girl?

Gwen frowned as she looked at the girl in the photograph. Her complexion was somewhat pale, yet she too was smiling happily, both hands tightly clasped around Hawk's arm.

His sister?

But she had never heard Hawk mention one.

Gwen caught the resemblance between Hawk and the girl beside him, and a thought stirred in her mind.

But...

After thinking carefully, she realized Hawk had never mentioned anything about it.

Had she died?

Gwen thought of the most likely reason Hawk had never brought her up. After a moment, she put down the picture frame, returned it to the nightstand, and got to her feet to head outside.

Just as she returned to the living room, she suddenly realized something, smacked her forehead, and turned back around. She had forgotten to take the envelope.

"Huh?"

"Where's the envelope?"

When Gwen entered the bedroom again and saw that the envelope on the floor was gone once more, she froze slightly. Then, as though she had thought of something, she crouched down again.

Sure enough.

The envelope had slipped beneath the bed, probably blown in by the breeze she had stirred up when standing earlier.

Looking at the envelope beneath the bed, Gwen stretched out her arm and reached inside, trying to hook it toward herself.

Very soon.

Her fingertips hooked the envelope.

At the same time, her fingertips touched the tightly wrapped bedsheet. The instant her fingertips touched it, the sensation of metal traveled from them into Gwen's mind.