Let's Kill Her (Book #1)

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I look from Taemin, Kai, and Jennie on my left to Rose, Jimin, and Lisa on my right, wondering if one of them murdered Taehyung and figured they could blame it on me. Sejeong gives me a look that tells me I need to stop staring, and I lean back in my chair.

Professor Küre spins an ancient-looking globe in a wooden stand. Her shoulders are pulled back and chin is held high, giving her a commanding presence. She watches the globe and not us. Küre . . . her name means "globe" in Turkish, understandable so far.

"Strange things happen by accident every day . . .every single day," Küre sighs. "King Ricci the First of Italy once ate in a restaurant where he discovered that the owner was born the same day he was and in the very same town. What is further puzzling is that they both married women named Aurora. Then in July of 1900, King Ricci learned that the restaurant owner has been shot and killed in the street. Later that same day, the king was assassinated."

I'm not sure where she's going with this, but so far, this isn't like any other history class I've ever had.

Küre looks up at us, still spinning the globe under her fingertips. "And during World War One, the Bristish army turning the passenger ship RMS Carmania into a battleship. They then disguised the Carmania as the German passenger ship SMS Cap Trafalgar. Are you following? This is all about to come back around. In 1914, this disguised British ship sank a German ship. That ship was in fact the real Cap Trafalgar" - she laughs - "which the Germans had disguised to look like the British Carmania."

A laugh bubbles out of me and a couple of people look my way. Apparently I'm the only one other than Küre who enjoyed the story.

Küre takes her fingers off the globe and tucks a stray piece of her hair into the hair that wraps around her head. "And have you read Edgar Allan Poe's only novel? The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket, it's called. It tells of an ill-fated Antarctic voyage here four shipwrecked survivors wind up adrift on a raft and, of all things, decide to eat the cabin boy, named Richard Parker. Well, in  1884, the ship Mignonette sank, leaving four survivors. They, too, decided to eat the cabin boy to survive. And what do you suppose his name was? Richard Parker. I can't help but wonder if they were Poe fans."

I've never really been one for history, and I was kind of dreading this class because of my meeting with Yoo, but I think I've just changed my mind. Maybe that tutoring from Sehun and Sejeong won't be so bad.

Küre looks directly at me. "Strange things also happen on purpose," she says before breaking eye contact. "During the Middle Ages, King Land of England wanted to build a highway right through Gotham. And the residents were required to pay for this highway themselves. At the time, madness was considered contagious. So the good people of Gotham decided to fake insanity to discourage people from wanting to pass through, trying to eliminate the need for the highway they didn't want. A whole town gone mad." She smiles. "Would anyone like to tell me where I'm going with this?"

"There's something about coincidences that people are attracted to," Jennie says, and she sounds annoyed by it. "The stranger the coincidences are, the more people want to believe them. An entire town gone mad is a good story; people will actually go out of their way to verify it rather than examine the motives."

I take a better look at Jennie. I can't help but feel like this particular conversation is somehow related to the murder.

"Absolutely true," Küre says. "Anyone else?"

"It's easy to talk people into believing coincidences and into not believing them," Rose says.

"Explain," Küre says.

Rose leans back in her chair. "If the coincidence gets reinforced, people will attach to it and expand upon it. They'll try to understand every last detail about what makes it so strange and believe it beyond reason. However, if the coincidence is argued against, it will forever be clouded with doubt, whether it's real or not."

"I quite agree," Küre says. "Which makes orchestrating one of these events extremely risky, but glorious if you can pull it off. Now tell me: Which story isn't like the others?"

"The first," Sejeong says. "Someone who knew about Kind Ricci's meeting with the restaurant owner might also encourage the telling of that story at dinner parties or social gatherings. Once the story became commonly known, it would be fairly easy to shoot the restaurant owner, tell the king, and then orchestrate an assassination. It build on the oddity and lends credence to the coincidences, suggesting fate as a possible reason for the king's death."

I look at Sejeong and I'm a little awe. Sehun was right when he said they analyze history, understand how one domino topples another, and use that information to predict future events. It's not unlike the way he reads my mannerisms.

"And furthermore," Jimin says, "Sejeong's analysis has created the very doubt that Rose was about talking about. So even if the restaurant owner's and king's death were pure coincidence, we've just been introduced to new variables that mean we can't deny the possible intentionality of the events."

"Quite so," Küre says. "The framing of history impacts its credibility as much as the facts. Just like a portrait painter who hides his subjects' flaws changes our impression of them. Peeling away those layers to find the truth is often difficult. And if the person who framed the story is skilled enough, there may always be doubt, so much so that the truth is lost forever." She says this last part slowly.

I swallow. A week ago I would have thought this conversation was a coincidence, but as I just learned, coincidences can be carefully orchestrated events.

"Let's talk about a specific plot that centered around the discovery of a body rather than the body itself," Küre says.

I fight the urge to scan the room, to see if anyone is reacting to Küre's doublespeak. Sejeong stays unnaturally still, with a blank expression, and I immediately realize that they all hear it. I'm just the idiot who is about to be obvious about it. Damn it. Every time I think I'm catching on, I discover I'm a step behind. Sehun was right when he said I was in the bleachers eating popcorn while everyone else was on the playing field.

"During World War Two, British intelligence dropped a body dressed as a British officer into the Mediterranean Sea," Küre says. "On this body, they placed the plans for an invasion of Greece. The thing was, Greece was a decoy; they were actually planning to invade Sicily. The Spanish found the body and bought the ruse, believing that the invasion would occur in Greece. What made the entire thing work, though, is that while the Spanish gave the documents to the Germans, they never handed over the body. Spain was chosen as the target of this plot because of their particular aversion to autopsies. Had the Germans discovered the body, they would have conducted an autopsy and would have potentially figured out that the person hadn't died from drowning and that it was all fake." She looks around the room. "The entire plan relied on the fact that the people finding the body wouldn't do the inspection they needed to."

The questions Küre is raising make my head spin, especially if there's a chance that she's referring to the way in which Taehyung was found and by whom. Kang did say that her investigative methods would be unusual and unpredictable. So part of me can't help but wonder if some of the staff are simply trying to stir the pot and get us to question what we think we know - exactly like I'm doing right now.