A Quiet Key

Chapter 15

I'll have you know that death is no simple thing. And I knew that. I knew what pain came from death all to well and I wanted everyone around him to know it too. I thought I could inflict on him the pain that he gave my parents, that he made Shay feel. And in turn, I wanted his family to feel the pain I felt when their son took my family away from me and they did nothing to stop him. I wasn't mad, no, I was furious. But it wasn't my normal anger that made me feel like my heart was burning. This anger was cold. This anger didn't make me want to scream and yell. It was more of a welcomed knowledge, it gave me a plan. I planned to see him fall to the floor lifeless. I planned to drive my weapon through his heart. And I was confident my plan would work.

After a few moments of tear-filled silence, Jake murmurs " Is that where Daniel could be?" to himself as his eyes lit up, " Yes that's it! Guys follow me!" He ran down a corridor and after sharing a glance the rest of us ran after him. 

After going down staircases and winding through hidden corridors we reached our destination: a door. Of course not the door but what was behind it. Excitement and anticipation pulsed in my veins and digging my nails into my palms were all I could do to not fling the door open. 

"Kizuato's room," Muna said in awe," Good thinking Jake."

"On three," August said slowly extending his arm to the door handle, "One, Two, Three!"

And behind the door was nothing. I mean nothing out of the normal. There was a bare and plain bed surrounded by pure white walls. No speck of dirt on the walls and no sign that this was the crazy psychopath's room. To the side of the baren room stood a small wooden desk with no chair. The desk was also in perfect condition, no pencil indentations or marks on the perfect mahogany surface. We're all silent as we explore Kizuato's room and I shuffle through his desk drawer. All that is in the drawer is clear white paper and a single silver 0.5 Pentel mechanical pencil. I threw the paper and pencil down in anger and saw something strange. The drawer was about a foot long but after taking out the pencil and 4-inch stack of paper there was already a bottom. 

August appeared next to me his eyebrows scrunched up in confusion," Is that a false bottom?"He asked looking down at the paper on the floor and then up at the drawer and then finally at me.   I roughly lifted the bottom and found a small slip of paper. On it was a simple algebra problem:  '2x+y+z=5, 2x-y+z=3, 2x+y+3z=9 What do the variables represent?' But it was one that I remember well, Kizuato loved this type of math when I had "tutored" him. Anyway, the answer was, "1,1,2." I stated as my answer. But I didn't know what it was for. Why was he hiding a math problem?

And then Jake hollered across the room, "Guys come, look!" We moved to find him standing in front of a silver safe. And then it clicked. I saw that August had caught on too as he typed 112 in the safe's keypad. The safe made a soft beeping sound before opening by itself. Muna grabbed the only thing inside of it: a small silver key. It had an ornately carved bow, a skinny stem and one bit. 

 "So we have a key, but what for?" Jake asked tugging on his dark red hair. From what we could see there was no secret door. There was no carpet and no bookcase. The only thing we hadn't touched was Kizuato's perfect bed. The sheets and blanket were tucked in perfectly and the pillows were perfectly placed. And so the bed was perfect and that was also a mystery to me. Why would Kizuato of all people make his bed so perfectly? The guy who killed a girl just for caring about him would make sure his pillow was perfectly straight every morning. That just didn't sound believable. So the only plausible answer was that he didn't sleep on his bad but that didn't make sense. Or did it? The rest of my friends were still stuck thinking as I raced to the bed and pulled off the covers. 

 Underneath it was a door.