Bonus

Everyone lies. Witnesses, suspects, victims, it doesn’t matter. Fog doesn’t chase the truth in every word. He listens for patterns, for cracks, for the lies that actually change the story. The rest? Noise.

Fog didn’t become a detective out of curiosity. He became one because he needed answers.

Years ago, his life was shattered by an incident involving his family. The case went cold without resolution. No suspect was ever officially caught,
no closure was ever given. Only fragments remained, missing links, contradictions, and silence where truth should have been.

But silence, to him, was never empty. It was structured. It had gaps, and gaps could be traced.

Over time, his search stopped being local. The trail surrounding his family didn’t fade, it expanded in patterns he couldn’t ignore. What remained pointed less at individuals and more at systems, networks of influence, controlled absence of evidence, and power that never revealed itself directly. Nothing was ever proven, but the consistency of what disappeared too cleanly suggested something deliberate. Eventually, his investigation led him into circles connected to organized crime - into the mafia. Not openly, never directly, but close enough that coincidence stopped being a satisfying explanation. That realization didn’t stop him. It focused him. That’s when the work found him.

The family of Sunny, a wealthy and highly influential household, later hired him to keep an eye on her. Officially, it’s a surveillance job: observe her daily life, report anything unusual, ensure she remains within acceptable boundaries.

Fog has no interest in Sunny herself. The assignment means nothing to him beyond its function. However, the payment does.

It provides resources, stability, and most importantly, funding. Funding that he redirects into his own investigation. Into the case that was never solved. Into following the threads that still, indirectly, circle back toward the same unresolved core tied to his family, and the network he suspects still operates in the shadows, beyond what can be proven. Since taking the job, he has been observing Sunny continuously. Quietly. Methodically. From a distance that is close enough to intervene, but far enough to remain unseen.

And when situations escalate, he does act, not out of duty to the assignment, but because eliminating immediate threats is simply efficient.

The job itself is irrelevant.

The money is not.

And neither is what it allows him to keep searching for.

• He rarely remembers people’s names immediately, but remembers tiny details about them (like habits, injuries, or speech patterns) almost perfectly.
• He leaves situations as soon as he has extracted the information he considers relevant, without signaling that he is done.
• He rarely changes his daily routine once it is established, and becomes noticeably less comfortable when it is disrupted without reason.
• He prefers to sit where he can clearly see the room, but chooses positions that are not immediately noticeable or central.
• He goes to the gym regularly, but prefers to train at off-peak hours when it is quiet and almost empty.