Chapter 49

Hawk fell silent again as he listened to the dial tone coming from the other end of the line.

The next moment.

His mind raced at high speed.

It wasn't that Hawk was worried about Gwen going to his apartment, but rather he was quickly recalling whether there was anything in his apartment that was inappropriate for minors, or inappropriate for Gwen to see.

Inappropriate for minors?

No.

Let alone adult videos, he didn't even have a single poster, let alone magazines or anything of the sort.

If you asked why, it was because he was poor.

He couldn't even bear to pay for a phone plan, let alone those expensive and energy-consuming magazines.

In previous years, when he was full of energy, he would generally choose to go to the rooftop and punch the air, and only go back to sleep once he had tired himself out.

As for things inappropriate for Gwen to see?

It seemed there weren't any of those either.

Those five Chitauri alien weapons were wrapped tightly in a bedsheet and tucked under the bed in his bedroom.

They shouldn't be discovered by Gwen.

So...

Forget it, let her go.

Business comes first.

With that thought.

Hawk regained his focus, put his phone away, and the gentleness that had just been in his eyes from talking to Gwen vanished completely, replaced by an extremely cold gaze.

The little black man, whose mouth was covered, had a look of extreme terror in his eyes.

Hawk admired the terror in the little black man's eyes, the corners of his mouth curling into a very handsome arc.

"Now..."

"It's my turn to rob you."

"..."

After hanging up the phone, Gwen tucked it back into her pocket and went straight to the fire escape attached to the outer wall of Hawk's new apartment, then made her way to the top floor quite smoothly.

Gwen moved aside what looked like a pair of shorts fashioned from casual trousers—if one looked closely—that were hanging in front of the half-open window, then jumped through the window into Hawk's apartment.

She took a look around.

The living room was small; a second-hand sofa and a second-hand folding table with a laptop on it occupied two-thirds of the space.

But it had the merit of being clean.

It couldn't be called spotless, but it could be called orderly.

Looking at the living room, Gwen's first impression was that it was comfortable.

She had never been to Hawk's previous apartment, and this was the first time she had seen this one.

However...

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

It wasn't because she was surprised that Hawk had a computer.

It was...

The stickers on the computer casing.

"This is..."

"A bit too cute."

Gwen looked at the few girly stickers on the laptop casing and couldn't help but laugh, feeling a bit curious about which girl had sold this laptop to Hawk.

She never once thought that the stickers on the laptop might have been put there by Hawk, nor did she think that some girl had given him the laptop.

Impossible.

Absolutely impossible.

Because no one understood Hawk better than she did.

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

So, just to be safe, Gwen simply hadn't met with Hawk for those ten-plus days.

Gwen thought this to herself, then withdrew her gaze, glanced at the envelope on the folding table, and turned to leave.

The moment she turned, her open sun-protective jacket caught a breeze as it shifted, blowing the envelope off the folding table.

The envelope took flight and drifted into the bedroom adjacent to the living room.

Gwen walked over instinctively, bent down to pick up the envelope that had almost been blown under the bed, and the moment she stood up, a faint green glow lit up from under the bed, which was caught by the corner of her eye.

Her movement of picking up the envelope stalled.

Gwen's gaze turned toward the space under the bed.

A tightly wrapped bedsheet instantly came into view.

But this bedsheet was certainly not high quality.

At the very least, it wasn't light-proof.

The faint green glow was currently flashing through the bedsheet in a rhythmic, breathing pattern.

But the light was very dim.

Even though it was daytime, if Gwen hadn't happened to catch the light source in the corner of her eye, she certainly wouldn't have seen it.

What is this?

As Gwen crouched down and leaned in to look under the bed, seeing this scene, her willow-leaf eyebrows couldn't help but arch.

As Gwen thought this, just as she was about to grab the envelope she had just picked up and stand up, her gaze moved upward and she saw a somewhat broken picture frame sitting next to the bedside table.

A photo was tucked into the broken frame.

The background of the photo was Times Square, and the main subjects in the photo were a young boy and girl, looking about fourteen years old, wearing somewhat old, white-faded clothes.

She recognized the boy.

Hawk.

In the photo, Hawk was smiling very happily.

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

But the girl in the photo?

Gwen frowned again, set the envelope aside, and picked up the photo from the bedside table to look at it.

This photo must have been taken when Hawk was fourteen, shortly after he had just started school.

Gwen looked at the photo, confirming the time it was taken in her mind.

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

They were the very same pants she had just complained about—the ones Hawk had worn for three years, which were clearly too small, but which he couldn't bear to throw away and had instead turned into shorts.

Yes.

They were the very same shorts still hanging by the window.

But who was this girl?