Max was standing quietly in his balcony. The late afternoon's sunlight flooded the narrow space. He was thinking about his works...his life. This was the only time when he got some free hours to spent alone with no one disturbing him.
But today luck wasn't with him. His ear suddenly throbbed with the unexpected bursting out of many voices together from the street without warning.
"Those damned bitches are never gonna make peace...huh" Max cursed under his breath.
He stepped down the stairs and got out of his house. And what he saw, disgusted him totally. A whole crowd of people were jotted down in this particular spot of the street. To him it felt like the whole population of the city has gathered here. He looked up at the sky, which now seemed gray to him.
A beautiful weather.....? Are you.....broken? he couldn't help but think.
He spotted a man standing nearby throwing cants randomly at the air. He pushed through the gathering, which felt like swimming in hot lava to him. After several hasty steps and pushing people, he saw an empty space in the middle. He stepped closer and saw cops standing there.
A dead body.
A dead body was kept in the middle which was covered with a white sheet from it's head to it's toes.
He turned to the police standing right beside him.
"What happened?" Max asked, a bit confused.
"Murder." said the police briskly.
"And who is it?" Max pointed hid index finger at the dead body.
"Arashi Toriyama." said the policeman shortly.
Suddenly all the confusions drifted away from his mind and a slight smirk appeared on his face. Wasn't that Max himself who pinned that daned kitchen knife on this man's chest? Yeah...indeed it was him. But no...he felt no regret...why would he?
It was just like any other day while Max was walking back home after his work at night. He was with his wife Yara. But then some fool decided to take his worst decision in his life - A knife...A demand to capture Yara. It happened so quickly.
The knife was in that guy....what's the name....Arashi...yeah...his hand. That fool tried to attack Max from behind. But Max twisted the game. In the next swip, the knife was digged inside the man's chest. Quick, clean. Efficient.
The body hit the pavement with a dull thud, but for Max, the noise might as well have been the sound of a leaf falling. He looked down at the blood pooling around the man's lifeless form, his expression as blank as if he were observing a change in the weather. There was no rush of adrenaline, no panic, no guilt. Just... nothing. Yara may have flinched a bit....he didn't noticed tho.
He crouched down, not to check for signs of life, but to see if the knife had bent on impact. It hadn't. Quality craftsmanship.
"Huh, good blade," he muttered, wiping the handle with the guy's own jacket before slipping it into his pocket.
For a brief moment, he considered the man lying in front of him. A life just... gone. His mind wandered, but not in the way it should.
"I wonder if he had a family... would they cry at his funeral? Would anyone even show up?" He smirked at the thought, a tiny flicker of amusement curling his lips. Then, as quickly as the thought came, it disappeared. Meaningless. The guy was just... gone. Nothing more to it.
Max stood up, brushing the dirt off his hands like he'd just finished some mundane chore, not murder. He checked his watch. Only five minutes had passed. Plenty of time to grab a drink before heading home. He looked at Yara and noticed her wide-eyed reaction.
"Maybe whiskey," he thought casually. "Something strong." His stomach growled. He hadn't eaten since lunch.
Walking away with Yara, he didn't bother to look back at the body crumpled in the alley. It was already fading into the background of his mind, like an insignificant detail in a boring story. For Max, killing wasn't personal. It wasn't even worth thinking about. Not in this cases specially.
It was just... another Tuesday.
"Hey! Why are you smiling?"
Max was jerked out of his thoughts. He realised that he was smiling.
He turned towards the policeman, his smile fading a bit, and said in a cold oddly-sympathetic tone,
"Arashi Toriyama was a really good friend of mine."
