"I have been thinking, Niko", she thought to herself about the day she came to that high rise apartment with Niko and that person.

She had Niko's attention while that person just lurked somewhere in the background, checking out the place. The two stood in the doorway, but her eyes were fixed on that person, fluttering from one corner to the other of the small one room apartment.

"Could it be that we were born in the wrong time?", she asked.

"Wrong time, wrong place, and to wrong people", Niko thought but said nothing. He silently smoked away.

The brief thought passed Yulia's mind as she scrubbed away at the bloodied walls of the bathroom. Niko would probably still have nothing to say to that question.

She scrubbed the walls with all her might. For once, she was conscious, although only for a brief while.

*************************

Zhang took one look at his face and broke into a laughter. Niko stood stone cold, expressionless, with a cigarette lightly tucked between his lips.

He let Zhang take his time.

"You...you're really too childish!", Zhang tried to muffle his laughter but one look at Niko's face made him break.

Niko really felt nothing standing there. The smoke rising from the cigarette was blurring his vision of Zhang, just like it was supposed to. He'd never really taken a good look at Zhang's face. All he knew was his devilish smile.

Who was it, really, that was holding the other prisoner? At times like this, the answer was really clear.

Niko didn't have a good feeling in his gut but he had no plan to leave, for Yulia's sake too.

"Well? Since you're here...", Zhang walked up to him.

Despite looks, that lavish chairman's room belonged to Niko, although he barely ever stepped in there. No one even knew when he was in the office. There was perfect silence in the room and the hallway outside, just as usual.

Only Zhang's muffled laughter broke the tension but it wouldn't have registered. They would be undisturbed,

The sun was peaking in through the glass wall, but the chairman's table was just beyond the sun's reach.

"You like to keep up appearances but you're only going to run yourself ragged like this. The meaning you're searching for is nowhere, Chairman. You should learn to lose yourself. Don't you think, it's about time?", Zhang pulled him in with his tie.

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Niko's face didn't change. The cigarette freed itself and fell down from his lips. For the first time, Niko got a good look at Zhang's face.

"So those are the eyes of the man who smiles like a devil", he thought to himself, before Zhang pressed his lips against his.

**************************

That blue porcelain bathroom had never been so pristine. Yulia showered, changed into one of Niko's night shirts, the only spare clothes she had, tossed her half torn tank top aside with the pile of Niko's dirty clothes and combed her hair.

She then looked herself up in the mirror for a good long while.

The butterfly that had been above her head was gone. She wondered what happened to it. That's when she felt a warm feeling on the back of her neck. She stood looking in the mirror.

A hand.

It moved to the front of her neck and all the way up to her face, caressing her cheek. Before she knew it, that person was standing right behind her, hugging her with one arm, caressing her cheek. Her eyes opened wide for a brief moment. But then a delirious state brought her calm.

"Beautiful as the day I saw you", that figure, engulfed in a fading light, whispered into her ear.

She couldn't see his face very clearly. But it was him, alright.

She opened her mouth to say something, but he cut her off.

"Yulia", the gentlest voice she'd ever known, echoed in that small one room apartment.

She almost lost herself in the melody of it. She kept staring at the figure in the mirror. It smiled, brought his face closer beside hers.

And that's when she could see it, the face she'd forgotten. Those honey colored eyes, gently piercing the soul, obliterating the rest of the world around it.

Yulia closed her eyes slowly and opened them again. The butterfly fluttering over her head, with its honey colored wings, seemed to leave a melody every time it fluttered.

Yulia was happy. She tried to dance like that butterfly. She went round and round in the room, laughing and floating with the butterfly until tears formed in the corners of her eyes.

That's when she caught the glimpse of the woman in the opposite balcony, hanging her laundry. For the first time, the woman noticed her too.

Yulia stood frozen for a second, but then a grin appeared on her face.

"We did it, Niko!", she opened her arms wide, looking above her head at the butterfly, "We made a change!"

She danced all the way outside her apartment. Grinning ear to ear, as if she'd found the perfect ecstasy, the answer they'd been looking for.

She was headed across the complex to the place they'd been looking at like it was heaven.

********************************

Niko couldn't help but think something huge was over. He tossed his head about on his way home, trying to get Zhang's smirking face and penetrating gaze out of his head.

It was hopeless, after all. It won't make a difference anywhere in the world. As much as he hated to admit it, Zhang was right. He could run himself ragged but nothing would change. He was chasing some phantom, only because of Yulia's whim.

Yulia.

He hastened his pace when her face crossed his mind. Were they really out of time? It seemed so.

"~Let me fly away~", some distant song played, but he paid it no mind.

Clouds were forming above, it would certainly rain soon. He didn't want to be soaked today. Taking a leap of a step, he hurried back to the apartment, so focused on getting back that he didn't even notice the commotion in the complex.

"~I'm not here to stay~"

The elevator was out of commission as usual. He took the stairs all the way to the 17th floor.

"~Take me far away~"

Sweat dripped from his ruffled hair and made its way towards his rumpled clothes. He smelled a mix of cigarettes and Zhang. He thought he'd clean the bathroom finally and take a nice long bath.

"~Away away away~"

He opened the door to the apartment so effortlessly that he wondered if it wasn't about to come off. Yulia wasn't there and the window they always kept close was wide open.

Unusual though it was, he went towards the bathroom first and foremost. Finding it spotless gave him reason for suspicion. He got back to the wooden table.

The laptop seemed to be on as well. He went over and closed the lid, looking out the window as he lighted a cigarette.

No. Something wasn't right.

He picked up the binoculars from the table and looked across.

The door to the balcony was wide open, curtains parted so that he could even see the open door of the opposite apartment and the many blue dressed men in the room, jotting things down, while some men, wearing gloves and masks, examined something in the balcony, the rail of which was broken and a red smear ran across the floor and the glass door to the balcony.

The women was dead, her laundry all but flown away.

Niko held the binoculars down. His lips loosened the grip on the cigarette. The air seemed stiff, he didn't have to close the window.

He looked below the opposite apartment in the complex. Some blue suited people were down there as well. His hands trembled as he brought the binoculars to his eyes.

"~Let me fly away~"

A butterfly lay there. Her wings—broken.