Chapter 32 Misfortune

Jacob Asher...

Nope, no idea who he is..

I don't remember making a character like him, so he should just be an extra.

But his name.... it sounded familiar.

Thinking this, I exit the classroom.

But Max and his group ambushes me as soon as I leave the classroom.

'' Dude, are you okay ?'', Max asks with his hand on my shoulder.

I smile and nod my head,

'' I'm fine.''

'' That's good then.''

All of us walk to our rooms together, as we're walking Emilia walks closer to me and asks,

'' Did you have to take it that far ?''

'' What ?''

She's obviously asking about my fight with Stephan, but I choose to ask anyway.

'' I know that, Stephan's a dick but you didn't have humiliate him like that...'', she says.

Everyone in the group stops all their chatter and eavesdrop on our conversation.

I take in a deep breath and stop walking resulting in the entire group stopping as well.

I turn towards Emilia and say,

'' Emilia... you're beautiful and kind-''

'' Eh what-'', she interrupts me but stops when I raise my hand to let her know that I wasn't finished.

'' You're beautiful and kind.... but you're naïve. Let's say that I didn't escalate that situation that much and stop it without violence. That'll make him think that he's stronger than me and the thought of revenge would pass over his mind making things even more complicated. By squashing him like a bug in the classroom, he'll never think like that. When he thinks about me, he'll feel fear. You should never let an enemy think even for a second that they have a chance to win over you, you either kill them or destroy their will to fight.''

I stop talking.

'' I-'', Emilia opens her mouth and closes it again.

This was something they all had to hear.

She does this a few times more, getting impatient I say,

'' I'll see you guys ,tomorrow.''

Waving them goodbye, I walk away.

Katherine has a really weird expression on her face, but like always I decide to ignore her as I have too much shit going on.

~~~~

After dinner with Max and the rest, I go to the the teacher's quarters and meet with Liam.

I wanted a white board and some sticky notes.

Liam provides them both with a frown on his face, It seems that I had interrupted him while he was sleeping.

Peasant.

Sleep is for the weak.

I take both the whiteboard and sticky notes and go back to my room.

Eric gives me a weird look as I take the whiteboard and the sticky notes to my personal training room.

I close the door to my training room and fix the whiteboard with the stand that came with it,

I take out a pen, and start drawing on the sticky notes.

After a while, I start sticking the sticky notes one by one.

One of them had the drawing of Jeremy's dead body, which looked like a rooster if you turned the note upside down.

Another note, had a drawing of a knife, which looked like a pen.

Instead of a drawing in the last note, there was just one word,

' WHY ?'

I stand up and take a look at the board.

Finally, realization dawns on me....

I finally understood... what a huge waste of time this was.

In the movies, the detective always put up a board with all the important information and clues. Doing this did help me understand a single thing,

I don't know shit.

The only important information that I currently had was already displayed on the board and they were of no real use.

As I'm contemplating on my next plan, I hear the door to my training room open.

I look back in surprise and find Eric staring at the board behind me.

This rude, piece of shit.

Hasn't he ever heard of knocking ?

He walks towards to the board and asks in slightly amused tone,

'' You're trying to solve the murder ?''

'' What if I am ?''

'' Why ?''

'' I like mystery.''

It's good that I'm proficient at making random excuses.

A small smile breaks out on Eric's face as he says,

'' I like mystery as well.''

*30 minutes later*

It seems that Eric has become my sidekick.

We're like Shymock and Vatson.

During the past, thirty minutes.. we exchanged our thoughts on the murder and any possible clues. But something still baffled us,

'' Why would the killer just leave the murder weapon on the victim's body ?''

Silence follows Eric's question.

'' Maybe the killer wanted to challenge the police or something, like the killer can't be found even with the murder weapon.... a show of the killer's confidence .'', I say after thinking for awhile.

'' But isn't that just stupid ?... I mean they're gonna find his prints on the weapon.'', Eric refutes my thoughts.

Silence once again descends upon the smelly training room.

After a while the same thought comes to the both of us and we speak at the same time.

'' What if he has a concealment-type skill ?''

The both of us high five each other.

Finally... some progress.

I have to say, having Eric did help-

'' Hey, Adam.''

'' Yeah.''

'' Couldn't you have just stuck the sticky notes on the wall, why did you bring the whiteboard ?''

...

I walk away from the training room silently.

'' Adam ?'', He calls out.

But I ignore him and lay down on my bed.

So now that, I found out that the killer was possibly concealing himself using a skill, there was only one thing to do... I have to ask Katherine for help. I'm pretty sure that the killer's skill might be good but I doubt that it can hide from the great, ' Kill Count'.

I close my eyes and sleep.

~~~~

The next day, I'm sitting in class waiting for Katherine.

She comes in late but something's off.

She's not wearing her uniform, instead she's wearing a dress that looked like a literal rainbow. In the novel, I did mention that her fashion sense was trash, but this was too much.

Everyone in the class was probably having the same thought as me, it was evident from their facial expressions. Even Max, who had come in early had a disturbed look on his face.

I also feel a little disgruntled by her dress but I also slightly admire her.

It's not easy to express yourself in a society, where people judge you for the smallest things and yet there wasn't an ounce of embarrassment on her face.

You go girl !

But please tone it down a little.

'' It's Katherine's birthday and she wanted to share some sweets with you all---''

Leslie goes on and on but I tune her voice out and think.

There was something suspicious about this.

Katherine wasn't someone who celebrated her birthdays this extravagantly.

She takes out a packet of sweets and bring them to each student personally, her eyes were always above the head of the student whom she was giving chocolate too.

Ahh...

I see what's going on.

She had the same idea as me.

Every time she gave a chocolate, she would look at a student's head subtly and then let out a small sigh of relief.

She's pretty easy to read when she's concentrating.

The only time she frowned was when she gave.. no it would be more accurate to say that she threw it at me.

Why's everyone so rude to me ?

I'm a nice guy, aren't I ?

This meant that the killer most probably isn't a student in our class.

~~~~

Eric and I have hit a dead end in our investigation.

We've become somewhat closer, more closer than I would have liked but there's no helping it since he's actually pretty skillful in identifying clues and what not.

It's been almost a month since Jeremy died, no other murders have sprung up.

The killer might have just stopped after killing Jeremy, it might have been a one time thing...

But my gut told me that this wasn't the end yet.

During the past month, I did go to the mansion a few times.

Lecia is recuperating well and she's gotten closer to the staff as well.

I get up from my bed and wake up Eric, who was still asleep.

He must be tired since we were up all night, brainstorming on how to find the killer.

The both of us get ready quickly and head off to class.

But on the way to class, we see a huge crowd at one of the bathrooms that were built separately. As the class and dorms had quite the distance between them they were built, so that students didn't have to walk all the way to their dorms to use the bathroom.

A bad feeling rises up in my chest as I see the crowd, which was larger than the one at our class the day Jeremy died. Both Eric and I look at each other with worry and run past the crowd, pushing our way through.

We enter the women's bathroom and a slight gasp involuntarily comes out of my mouth as I see the sight before me.

The door to one of the stalls was swung wide open.

Inside, slumping on the toilet's seat was Leslie's dead body.

~~~~