The Difference Between Us

{59} Martin Rutherford

Martin Rutherford, picking out the first two letters of each word, spelled Maru. It was an old and forgotten nickname given to him by his best friends, Mayorkun and Sara Fredrickson.

Martin was a genius and one of a kind. He was smart, intelligent and witty but unlike his two friends very unsuccessful. While Mayorkun became the town mayor and Sara a MD of an hospital, Martin was rejected in every interview he attended. They called his ideas crazy just because they involved human experiments. Other than his friends, many people worried for his mental health which he never understood. He was perfectly sane, normal.

When he was at his wits end, he gave up and applied to be an home tutor for Logan Dawn. The boy was smart and he often wondered why his parents would get a tutor for him. His eyes fascinated Maru a lot. One was green, the other blue. A rarity, someone fit for an experiment but he kept his thoughts to himself for fear of being fired. It came as a blow to his pride when he found out that he was given his job out of pity, and that was where it all started.

Anger, hatred, jealousy, they were no new emotions to him however they hit him hard like a baseball bat. Why him? Why is he the unlucky one? Why is he the only one among his friends to get a measly job? He was shamed when Sara visited the Dawns that he was not there on a business proposal deal but as a meager home tutor. He was heartbroken when the one he loved got engaged to his best friend.

When you stretch an elastic string, there are three points it reaches. One is a resilient point where it goes back to its previous shape no matter how much you stretch it. The second point is its limit point where the string can't take any more stretches. The third is the breaking point where the string snaps. This was Maru's breaking point.

He spent months concocting the perfect plan after submitting a resignation letter claiming that he got a job overseas. His plan was rather simple: get the dragon sannin from the Dawns. He knew just how much worth a sannin cost which would help him to start up a research facility and a firm. Martin created false travel records and hacked into major government systems to make his disappearance more plausible.

All of his careful plannings turned south when he killed Linely Dawn...accidentally. The resistance was something he never expected especially when he had a knife pointed at Logan Dawn's neck to threaten the protective parents. He had stayed with them long enough to observe that there was an hidden safe in the young boy's room which was one of the reasons why he targeted the boy.

Another reason was because only the boy knew how to open the safe. He remembered coming across a conversation between Mr Dawn and Logan Dawn.

Only you Logan, only you can open this safe. In it is something precious that would benefit you in the future.

Martin planned to capture the boy and force him to talk and at the same time hold him for ransom. If only Logan knew how to open the safe then his parents must've told him how. It was a two way plan that was sure to work but Linely Dawn was in front of him, convulsing due to rapid blood loss in a pool of red. In great fear, he stabbed Mr Dawn multiple times and hit Logan's head so hard that he blacked out. After the adrenaline rush had come down, he cleared all evidence and ran away before one of the maids decided to come inside. He was never as thankful for soundproof walls as he was then.

Martin fought for Logan's custody and won against Matthew Kin, now Matthew Adams. It was a close call but he won the boy over and supposedly sent him to a faraway boarding school overseas. Nobody knew that the one responsible for the murder of one of the most prestigious families was right under their noses. He was very sure though, that Matthew Kin was on his case and so he went to pay him a 'visit.' Danna recognized him but there was no need for that as he killed her off. He had planned to take Matthew with him but got shot so he fled.