[Isaac Mahoka POV]
[Day 4|August 5th]
Hearing Miss. Sommers announced my victory in this match-up. I did the math in my head to see if I got the logistics of the winnings for my class right.
Time for math!
Enoch, Borsalino, Marie, Areli, Zisel, Tao, Avram, Leonidas, Alexandra, Camila, Benecio, Jun, Arabella, and I got sixty ruby points for winning the dodgeball game yesterday and now adding that with the matchup winnings excluding the bet winnings, that is adding fifty which adds up to one hundred and ten.
And as for Milicia, Aurelian, Viviana, Nirvan, Kai, Leonid, Sinclair, Giovanni, Baldwin, Mihal, and Adrien since by our collective contract, they would get the matchup winnings of fifty ruby points, and since the bet conditions say that they get sixty if I win, it means they also get one hundred and ten.
Which means once the Rankboard updates we'll likely end up in Class G, F, or maybe even E.
But I shouldn't be thinking about the logistics of my class right now after what I orchestrated; I am not someone who is inconsiderate.
"How… how did you…?" Araxie looked at me, finally shifting her dazed expression to pure confusion. "You couldn't have possibly figured it out; even if you had an idea about it, it couldn't have been that fast…"
"It's because you underestimated his reasoning prowess to see through the layers of your false strategy." Aurelian put it bluntly.
Alexandra purred and nodded. "Mhm, our dear magician's incredible skills are deception, reasoning, and seeing through all forms of deception."
All forms of deception are quite an exaggeration, while I am skilled at seeing through deception. It doesn't mean I can't be fooled.
Though, I cannot deny the fact that there hasn't been anyone who has successfully deceived me.
After all, I accumulated my awareness of deception around me to sense it.
"I wouldn't say all forms—" I tried to protest.
"Don't insult our intelligence," Leonidas said calmly. "We all already know."
I sighed.
I would answer Araxie's question, but as a magician, when two casualties were caused by me, sometimes explaining strategies and revealing twists of wit is just not the right time.
I went to Miss. Xian gave her my biometrics bracelet.
"Alexandra," I called out to her softly. "Do you still have my phone and the black overcoat, black dress shirt, and umbrella?"
Alexandra nodded quickly and pulled them out from behind her back. "Why of course!" She handed them to me while sticking out her tongue as I took off my red dress shirt quickly since it was ruined and put on the black dress shirt, then my overcoat, and finally my dress shoes.
I gave Alexandra my ruined red dress shirt. "I shall keep this treasure forever!" She threw it in the trash.
I turned back to look at Miss. Xian. "I apologize for my rudeness just now, but I wanted to request something of you," I suggested.
"You may ask."
I nodded as I thought back on Wednesday when I used my time to learn many more languages which were Hebrew, Gaelic, Arabian dialects, all Nordic languages, Korean, and Mandarin.
And I thought of how funeral arrangements in Greece and Estonia were in terms of the USD, which were five thousand six hundred thirty dollars for Greece and two thousand two hundred fifty dollars for Estonia.
I decided to finally apply my Mandarin skills as I spoke. "我愿意为帕梅尼乌斯先生的家人支付五千六百三十支安魂曲作为葬礼的费用. 为小姐付两千两百五十安魂曲. Runerth的家庭用于葬礼资金. 如果你能得到一些裁判的帮助安排葬礼的话,还要另外两千. 这两个人和他们的家人应该得到这么多"
(Translation: I would like to pay five thousand six hundred and thirty requiems for Mr. Parmenius' family for the funeral funds. And pay two thousand two hundred fifty requiems for Miss. Runerth's family for funeral funds. And an additional two thousand if you can have some of the referee's help arrange the funerals. The two and their families deserve that much.)
Miss. Xian's eyes widened. "Your Mandarin… it sounds so natural…"
I hummed softly. "I was told whenever I learn a new language I sound like a native speaker," And I went to the translation app on the phone. "So is it fine if I can do that? I have enough. I'll only have 20,000 Requiems remaining."
She nodded. "Of course," She pulled out her phone so we could proceed with the transfer and it succeeded. "You're a very considerate person, Isaac," she whispered.
I shook my head and whispered back. "I'm just trying to help to make sure that even in death that Mr. Parmenius and Miss. Runerth, there is someone who cares about them. It's showing decency even to those you barely knew."
It was true; even if I was the reason they died, I still cared for them as I didn't want them to be used by any of the Moonlight Society's unknown members who assimilated amongst the student body, or be used by me…
The circumstances did not give me any notable choices that I liked, so I made a terrible choice through my willingness to act even if it's the most depraved option, that I will carry the weight and channel it through my emotions and goals.
After all, I am many things but I am not detached or clinical no matter how I try to deceive others into thinking that I have distanced myself from my heart. It is simply untrue.
And I want to earn their forgiveness from Mr. Parmenius and Miss. Runerth not by pleading or begging, but by actions and pursuing my goal because if I didn't then it would be an insult to them.
"Now why the fuck! Are you spending money on people you don't know?!" The one whom I read in the binder they call Levi Bismingston demanded.
I looked at Mr. Bismingston. "It's because I want to honor them, and I don't expect anything in return."
"That's stupid."
"Then I am the stupidest person in the world," I said, shrugging.
Mr. Bismington poked his finger at my chest, having to look slightly up at me because he was 5'8" and I was 6'0". "Don't act smart-ass at me, boy," He said, his breath minty but with a hint of something you wouldn't detect on a man who showcases his masculinity.
Unfortunately for him, I heard what he said and did to Mr. Parmenius, his comment about Miss. Sommers, and his grandeur monologue of his own depravity when I was still underwater bringing up Miss. Runerth.
And I noticed Mr. Pelley had already taken Araxie, Miss. Morena and Mr. Emilianos to the door to the subfloor leaving us here.
My gaze was at him, serene, warm, unreadable, and unafraid of the man in front of me. "Do you know what your problem is, Sir?" I asked softly.
"What? That I am rich and smarter than you?"
I ignored his provocation. "You get off on your antisocial personality disorder too much. It's irksome. It suggests overcompensation and a lot of issues you haven't dealt with properly. You're a ghoul for your own sexual pleasure in your sadism. Quite frankly, you are rude." and I whispered to him. "And you perform your masculinity quite well."
His face turned red immediately in anger when I said that. "You little shit—!" But before he could do anything the two nurses pulled him away.
"Stand down, or I will report you to Lewis." Miss. Xian said coldly.
"Forget this shit!" The man stormed out of the building.
"Finally", I heard Miss. Sommers muttered as she walked to me. "Given the circumstances of Araxie's conspiracy against you and the rules of the school. Would you like us to press charges against her? It will result in her imprisonment here. Or should I give her a slap on the wrist?"
Given that the latter most likely means Araxie will end up getting strikes if I made that choice. "How many strikes would she get if I chose the latter?"
"Five."
"Five?" Leonidas said. "If we do the math that would be—"
"Would deduct them to eight ruby points." Aurelian finished.
"Ah~," Alexandra purred. "Considering that they are in a collective thanks to my super intuition~ then all of them would have eight ruby points which would send them to Class H once the rankboard updates next quarter."
"That's if they don't get back up." Aurelian pointed out.
"Falling from two hundred fifty ruby points to eight ruby points is a massive downfall that usually no one gets back up from." Alexandra pointed out.
Aurelian thought about this through his apathetic expression. "Fair point."
I thought about it as I spoke. "I believe that Miss. Runerth and Mr. Parmenius would want Araxie to have a second chance."
In truth, I was very unsure if that were true if they wanted Araxie to have a second chance, but the fact that they accepted this matchup to help Class C means that they must have seen that Araxie would be a great help for Class C to rise.
I continued. "And I am someone who believes in chances. We are after all human, and I am someone who believes in rehabilitation methods and I believe the penalty will be a good help for rehabilitation to do better while she still has the agency to walk her path that she is currently on, or choose a different path."
Miss. Sommers nodded. "Very well then," she said typing on her tablet. "You four can now depart from the building; then, we'll take care of the rest."
We nodded as we began going outside hearing the rain.
I held my umbrella up as we started to walk back to the dormitory square.
"Isaac," Aurelian called out to me. "Regarding the referee Levi, what did you mean he was performing his masculinity."
It was a question I wouldn't have expected from Aurelian as a question like that would have come from the unpredictable mouth of Alexandra.
However, Aurelian was anything but predictable which can be said the same for Alexandra and Leonidas.
"I concur," Leonidas said, glancing at me. "I am curious about what you saw in the man then what your profile of him suggested."
"He's a unique man," I said softly, my serene smile unchanging. "Despite his antisocial personality disorder and his tendencies toward sadism and lack of social etiquette. He is a rather complex soul of trauma and depravity."
"Really?" Alexandra purred under her own umbrella showing curiosity despite her eyes being hidden by her umbrella. "He has complexity?"
I nodded. "When I first saw his appearance when I stepped out of the pool and talked to him. I noticed the smell of a very earthy and nutty scent with a mixture of the scent of rubbing alcohol; usually those scents mixed are from taking testosterone. But there was another scent of cooking oil that was mixed with a slightly sweet soapy natural scent odor, which would explain why he has such smooth skin despite his masculine demeanor, build, and sweat from him."
We stopped walking as Alexandra's shoulders twitched indicating she was about to laugh. "Oh my god, you're not suggesting…"
"I believe he is indeed suggesting that…" Aurelian trailed off as well.
"That Mr. Bismington was not always a man." I confirmed their suspicion.
Leonidas hummed. "That actually explains why you made that comment."
"If I were to construct his early life, he was born into a masculine household that wanted a son, but the father was disappointed in having a daughter that he began abusing her and most likely the mother as well, which made the mother complicit and helpless for the time Mr. Bismington was a girl, which instilled in his mind that he was helpless and decided to mimic his father's actions and behavior, and when he became a teenager, he started to adopt a tomboyish manner, hoping that would make his father proud of him, but that didn't help, if anything it most likely increased the abuse. And then one day, he snapped and killed his own father and mother and began to accept who he was and went down the path of depravity, which explains his comments about Miss. Sommer and the disregard of morality towards children, and performing toxic masculinity behavior. And then he began taking testosterone and hormone therapy to transition into a man but since he was also taking estrogen in secret to maintain his smooth feminine skin, it means that he yearns for his own femininity but the abuse he endured made it impossible for him to return to such a state. This led him to become self-loathing and misanthropic towards everyone."
And that complexity would destroy many psyches making them do bad things.
But that doesn't mean it is impossible to have them see that they always have a choice to go to the light side of love, hope, and kindness. But we must not judge them if they refuse; it is their choice at the end of the day, and we must respect it, we just have to remind them that the choice still exists which shows that someone sincerely cares about them even if they are extremely depraved.
"That's really unfortunate," Leonidas said. "To be subjected to abuse so thoroughly that even transitioning to a different gender to fit in still didn't help and only fuels self-hatred and misanthropy."
"It's hard to really feel something for a guy that was willing to use children as slave labor and then try to buy someone's daughter to be a sex slave," Alexandra said. "He's like the embodiment of the moonlight society's corruptness but more crude and depraved."
"You are right Alexandra," I said to her. "It is difficult, but difficulty does not absolve them of being human. We label them as monsters or devils because we perceive that we ourselves cannot commit such acts, which the thought mentality itself is arrogant to assume that we aren't capable of it due to not acting on it."
"It's why you have an unwavering faith in humanity," Aurelian told me. "You believe that there is always a positive and believe that they can always choose to be kind and loving even if they don't want to choose it, you would still continue to offer the choice to them because you care for them."
My smile widened. "That's exactly correct Aurelian," I said. "It always comes down to the autonomy of choosing to be kind or the opposite."
And I have struggled with this, even when that man tried to rape Scarlett, even when I killed him I felt sorrow that I had to kill him because it was at the same time killing myself despite saving my sister.
That is what revenge is, suicide; you kill for vengeance, and you'll become what you tried not to be.
But I understand why people choose revenge; I don't condemn them, because they still deserve the option to be at peace and feel hope.
After all, all humans, virtuous or depraved, still deserve the choice to choose lightness or darkness.
"So how did you really make Araxie pick the wrong answers?" Alexandra stopped in front of me with a grin.
"She wanted to appeal to my empathy," I began explaining softly with no calculations in my tone. "To make sure I dance at the frequency she wants to give off, that was the first red flag I noticed, and I played along. She had her assistants each have an earbud that would have the other class C students watching the matchup to tell them which card Isaac picked so the assistants would give Araxie the message through coded language to I hypothesize were lip reading, blinking Morse code, sign language, and shivering position. She would let me win the first round and then she would win the second, third, fourth, and fifth because rounds two through five would show that she would want me to find the earbuds to take them out. And then on the fifth round she would win and that would've induced confusion on me about how she was even winning, and then I would have come to a realization that how she figured out my cards was because their is sensors beneath her tattoos that are connected to the anchors that can help detect which cards I picked. Hence why I planned on saving up my ammunition for the air compressed pistols since if you shoot close enough to certain anchors, the pressure and heat would render the sensor connection obsolete. And that was why I wanted you three there to help distract Araxie's assistants so that I could see which cards Araxie would pick. And I decided to kick five random anchors to trigger her sensors so that she would pick the incorrect ones. My original strategy was going to be intentionally losing the first four rounds and then do the air compressed pistol method I explained for the last six rounds to win."
"And that was just the original strategy until…" Leonidas said.
Aurelian finished. "Until Araxie chose Lina, which activated your contingency while still keeping the original strategy in place to act as a misdirection to conceal your contingency on Lina."
"Yes…" I admitted quietly.
They understood my reason
We continued walking in silence for ten minutes as I finished reading all of the charters and the comprehensive code of conduct for this school which consisted together of twenty-five thousand pages.
The reason why I read it was that I was curious about when RankBoard gets updated if a student is expelled, an unfortunate event happens to a student, or to get arrested and it said that the rank would be removed around the time of eight A.M. through four P.M.
"Well, it seems like we made it," Aurelian said, as we stood in the center of where the dormitory buildings were.
I hummed in agreement. "You three should get some rest," I softly suggested, looking at them. "I kept you all up long enough; it would be cruel to keep you all awake especially when we have class in less than four hours…"
"What about you, Isaac?" Leonidas asked. "You should also get rest as well."
"I will," I said. "I'm just gonna stay outside for a bit in the rain."
"In the rain?" Leonidas blinked in confusion.
I nodded. "Yes, since it has been sometime I have felt the rain on my face," I explained. "I think it would be refreshing to feel it. If you all don't mind."
Before Leonidas could protest, Alexandra already held his mouth, grabbing both Leonidas and Aurelian's hands. "Of course we'll let you be in the darkest realms of the wetness and see you in class!"
I smiled at them as they retreated to their corresponding dormitory building by the leash of Alexandra.
I stayed quiet as I walked towards a lamppost and dropped my umbrella and looked up into the night sky where the moon and stars were not seen due to the clouds.
I closed my eyes feeling the cold drips of the rain drops hit my face and hair.
"H-hah…." I let out a shaky breath.
My shoulders began to shake as I felt my eyelids open, feeling the cold raindrops mixing with a new warm wetness coming from my eyes, as I allowed myself to cry.
It has been almost six years since I have cried like this…
Sometimes turning the valve of your emotions to let them come out is for the best rather than compartmentalize, dissociate, cage, or kill the emotions that people perceive as weaknesses.
But I never view emotions as weaknesses, even the ones I consider parasitic are not weaknesses since those parasitic emotions can be channeled to bring wonder and love to people.
"Oh Nicandro Parmenius and Lina Runerth…" I whispered their names like it was a prayer, my voice a shaky whisper.
My actions of what I did to them had a reason, but that reason came from the circumstances that had me make a terrible decision that I will forever carry.
But reasoning is not the same as an excuse, and I am not gonna begin rationalizing killing, no matter the necessity in the situation…
For I am not above the consequences of my actions.
In order to love humanity, no matter how virtuous or depraved, you must be with humanity, not apart nor above for I am no messiah nor a martyr.
For I am a flawed human who made a horrific, necessary choice, and I must answer for it like everyone else.
And my love for humanity means I refuse to exempt myself from the human condition; I see myself as another link in the chain of the existence of humanity because I do not view myself as an exception, as I believe that breaking a fundamental human law of taking another human being's life requires a human or divine price to pay.
And I do not want a reward, monuments, or to be remembered as some hero because I made a terrible choice that the reality of my circumstances demanded of me.
And now I am weeping for the tragedy I have caused.
That is why I will always step back into the crowd of humanity to stand with them to await my judgment like any other human being.
As a magician, I believe that there could be the existence of a mystic cosmic authority and my boundless unconditional love for humanity for the hope of the sanctity of life.
I hope that a divine cosmic authority exists because I want human life to matter that much.
To me, a god that punishes people like me for what I have done is proof that the victims I have taken the lives of had a soul, that life matters, and that the universe cares for humanity…
I want a divine authority to punish me because if a god punishes me for killing a depraved person, it proves that even the most depraved person's life was sacred to gods or God. I am willing to go to hell if it means proving that every single human life, no matter how broken or wicked, matters infinitely to the universe.
I don't want an exemption, because an exemption would mean the universe doesn't care about the person I killed.
I do not hate myself, I do not view myself as a monster.
I view myself as a person who did a horrific thing because it was necessary, who genuinely misses the person they killed, and who is entirely ready to pay the bill when it comes due.
And as for my unconditional love for humanity…
In philosophy and theology, Agape is the highest form of love: an unconditional, deliberate love for all people, regardless of their flaws, sins, or virtues.
I do not love humanity because people are "good."
I love humanity simply because people exist. Because my love is extended equally to the virtuous and the depraved, I view the person they killed with the exact same profound value. I will weep for the victims not because the victim was innocent, but simply because the victim was human.
And for that my actions in order to apologize to the victims will be to continue pursuing my goal to liberate the systematic oppression of humanity from the Moonlight Society and persevere through kindness for my journey till the end of my life.
I went to my knees, still looking up at the rainy sky.
"Forgive me…" I whispered a prayer. "For I have sinned… And hope for accountability to be held against me…"