[ WP ] Every night for as far back as you can remember , your parents have given you a new mystery to solve , but tonight is different . Tonight your parents have vanished without a word .

Pete's favorite mysteries were always about *people*. 
 
 
 Numbers and puzzles and equations, those were all logic. If set to the task, as he often was as a child ( most would still consider him a child, but as a *younger* child ), he would crack them eventually. It was a matter of time, whereas when the mysteries were about humans and their tumultuous nature, it was an exploration. 
 
 
 He traced a circle on the fabric of his pants, going around and around and around. He usually started by looking into the people concerned with the mystery, the victim and their family and the suspects and the witnesses and every slight thread connected to the case in some way. The motivations and hatreds and loves and histories -- that was the fun in it. What his parents did n't provide, he found on his own, and the next night he would come to them with a place or a name ready to close the mystery. 
 
 
 Then, he would receive another, and the circle went around again. 
 
 
 Today, the answer to the previous case was `` 471 Poplar Street,'' but there was no one to tell it to. Pete frowned at the empty coffee table in front of him, still tracing that circle on his leg. He was ashamed that part of him wished to just act his age and cry on the couch, but he could n't do that. He could solve this mystery. His parents were just people, like any of the other lives he had peered into. 
 
 
 The problem was, he could n't look into his parents, their histories and hatreds and motivations. Pete did n't know who his parents were without him. 
 
 
 It sounded shallow, but he was doing his best to look at it without bias. Did he really know nothing about his own *parents*? Sure, he may have no idea what they did for a living or where they went while he was working, but he knew that his mother did n't like celery and his father slept on his back, that they liked white wine more than red and both had a fondness for modern art. 
 
 
 Everything besides what he had picked up on over the years was a big blank. Pete knew the small things, but -- and he started to tremble at this -- he did n't even know their names. They were simply `` Mama'' and `` Papa.'' 
 
 
 Allowing himself a quick sigh, he stood up and marched determinedly into his father's office. Sure, it might be the fourth time he looked through it in the last hour, but he did n't know what else he could do. Maybe there was a secret compartment he had missed in the side, or a hidden bottom in the empty drawers. 
 
 
 Pete had to find them. He did n't know who they were without him, but he also did n't know who he was without *them*. 
 
 
 -- -- -- 
 
 
 Hopefully you liked this! I did n't really address the main point of the prompt, haha, but I felt inspired by all the short short stories I've read today on this sub and felt like doing more of a monologue.
