13. "unthankful"

When Jewee stepped out from his room, he barely looked alive himself.

It's difficult to use the term 'dead' to describe him, because we've seen death in a whole new light than we've ever seen it before, and clearly, as he walked nearer to us, following Nova's lead, it wasn't a literal 'death', but he did look empty, like you could stand right in front of him and he would look through you, not at you. It's as if he wasn't there -- on a different planet, rather, far from here. He didn't appear like he felt anything. He appeared like he forgot what emotion was.

He was empty, becoming emptier, and reaching the point of emptiest if he wasn't there already.

For some reason, it made me drawn to him. I don't know if I felt like I could relate to him, or if I didn't like that he felt nothing inside of his body. I didn't know if I also felt that permanently numb, or if I envied that he could feel numb and I wasn't able to. Or maybe it's because his secrecy and mysterious ways that I thought nothing of before began to frighten me.

Seriously, I couldn't tell. There was just something about him, somehow, someway.

I couldn't think clearly, and I couldn't get to the bottom of my own perspectives and the 'why's in what came up in my aching head, but whatever it was forced me to keep an eye on him, which is when I saw something that I didn't want to see. It was there only for half a second, but because he captured my attention, whether it's good or bad, I caught onto it.

Guilt -- there only like a glitch of a computer screen, but certainly there, and yet nobody noticed. Nobody noticed because they trembled before the sight of the authorities, praying that they wouldn't be misunderstood for the mistakes they may have made or the things they did or didn't do, and I was the same as them. I was terrified of being misunderstood, just as I may be misunderstanding Jewee.

Just as I may be misunderstanding everything.

I only absorbed this information because I was looking at the wrong place at the wrong time. Or was it the right place at the right time? I don't know anymore -- and in that oblivion, that's when it hit me. Our flaws, though normal to have as part of the human race, are going to curse us in a lie or completely give us away, in truth.

"Thank you for joining us, Mister Choi," Officer Dela Cruz stated, and the boy, back to his emotionless state, bowed his head slightly to acknowledge it before the officer went on. "I just came from the university. It's a very questionable case, I must say. There's a lot of blanks here, which is why I wanted to ask you guys a few more questions."

Jared pulled up a plastic chair and sat down. "Yeah, sure, anything," he nodded, strangely a little more flustered than usual.

"I understand that there was a love triangle among Miss Nova Lim and Miss Jayvee Payawal with Mister Ryan Javers. Besides this, was there anyone who had a hatred for Ryan? Did he have any enemies?" The man asked. He looked down when he spoke. He would only look up if someone chose to talk, and when he would do that, he did it deeply, like he was looking for something in our body language. I couldn't say what.

"No. Not that I know of. He was a very nice guy. All of our conversations were calm and pleasant. It was always good to be around him," Jared, again, was the one to reply. As for the rest of us, we chose to jump on board with his statement, rather than mumble a word or two of our own.

That is, except for Nova. She was panicky since the mention of her name, and she felt the need to defend herself. "Even for being part of a love triangle and losing, I still loved him. He never gave me any reason to hate him, and I think that if I couldn't hate him, nobody could. That's the kind of person he was inside and out."

"Alright. I didn't doubt that. I just wanted to make sure," Officer Dela Cruz fumbled with the notes in his lap, turning pages in a miniature ringed notebook. "The seminar the six of you were attending was today. What time did each of you arrive to the campus?"

Everyone spit out times fairly close to each other -- 8:25, 8:30, 8:35 this morning, and I admitted that I came in after all of them barely before 9:00, when the session was nearer to starting. I thought it could be possible that the officer would get onto me for that, and that I'd be blamed for something so horrendous just because I have terrible time management, but our answers didn't bring the officer to look at me. He was looking back and forth between Jared and Jewee. It wasn't comforting either, to watch them get that sort of attention. It couldn't be good.

It burned in the spaces between us that we were sitting this close together. What if -- what if they had something to do with it? What if they were part of this behind our back in ways I could've never guessed?

Both of them swallowed. I could see the topple of their Adam's apple when they did. They knew the police had found something, and whatever it was, they realized that they would face consequences for telling a lie unless they had a really good explanation even though they haven't heard exactly what the officer knew.

"Explain to me then, Jewee Choi and Jared Kinoshita, what were you doing on the campus at half past seven this morning with Ryan Javers, whose now missing?"

Jared stared at Jewee until Jewee couldn't bare the silence anymore and he looked up, but not at anyone specific -- into the air, at a cloud in the sky. "I-I don't know," he stuttered. "I don't know why."

The officer cocked his head to the side. "You don't know? How could you not know what you were doing at the campus? You went there, early in the morning, -- much too early for the seminar, the three of you, coincidentally running into each other and that's it?"

"We just wanted to talk. It's been a long time since we've seen each other, and I thought that we should catch up -- you know, the boys, before it started," Jared said, changing positions in his chair constantly, as if none of them were comfortable. He was fine a moment ago, but suddenly he acted like he was sitting on thorns. "I misunderstood your question, sir. I didn't mean to lie to you. I arrived to the university for the seminar at 8:30, but I was there on campus earlier to catch up with them. So what?"

"Why wasn't Colby there then, if you wanted to catch up with the boys? And why would you go to the university? You're in a country far from your own. If you're going to wake up that early in the morning, why don't you go to some tourist spots? Make a vacation out of your stay here, you know?" Jayvee brought up, sitting forward in her seat, so she could see Jared who sat on the other side of me. I shut my eyes when I heard my name come out of her mouth. I was thinking the same thing, but hearing it verbalized made it seem like it never crossed my mind. "Look, I'm not trying to blame you for anything," she said, hands up in the air. "I'm just wondering is all."

"Officer, do I have to--," Jared made eye contact with the officer, complaining. Do I have to answer that? is how he would've finished. We all knew it, and the officer knew it too, which is why he interrupted him. He didn't come here to waste time.

"Answer her questions, Mister Kinoshita," he said. "I'm curious about that as well."

"I invited him," he claimed, answering only the first question. "He didn't come. I didn't think he would. He doesn't usually like that kind of thing."

I furrowed my eyebrows. "How would you know that? You didn't invite me to anything before. I'm on my phone religiously. I would've known if you invited me."

"Do you have evidence to prove that you invited him?" Dela Cruz ignored my complaint, eyes on Jared. He probably believed that if he was under enough pressure, he would crack.

"No, sir. I delete all my messages after they're sent."

"Why?"

"Because notifications bother me. It's just the way I am," he paused. "Why is this important? I didn't kill him. We were just talking and then later on the same day he happened to be shot. That doesn't mean that I was the one behind the trigger. I wasn't. That's coincidence. Am I not allowed to talk to the guy? Is that against the law?"

"I didn't say it was," answered Dela Cruz. "What I am trying to say though, is in regards to this tape that proved yours, Mister Javers' and Mister Choi's presence outside of the building at 7:35 this morning."

Swiftly, he picked up a black office-looking bag from the ground that was mostly balancing at his feet, probably to prevent it from collecting dirt. He pulled out a laptop from it, and opening it so the screen can be shown to each of us, was footage from a security camera. He wasn't quick to push play, but rather, he zoomed in on their faces. "It looks to me your 'talk' was pretty heated," he added.

Jared crossed his arms. "That's just a lucky angle for you guys. Sometimes I look like an angry person."

"Is that so?" was the response he got, then pressing the space bar to play the video. Once it started, even Jared himself couldn't deny that he looked angry, because he was. He definitely was, and there was no debating on it. His arms were thrown up in the air, and there were several times that he'd threaten to throw punches. Though he never actually laid a finger on Ryan and never physically hurt him then, it was unclear if he would later on. It didn't seem impossible. He was capable of doing some terrible damage if he so chose.

Surprisingly, Jewee too. He wasn't near as mad as Jared looked, but he was up there. They didn't meet up to simply talk. The two of them wanted to get something through to Ryan. There was something they thought was important that he understood, even if they had to use force -- so important to them that the shyest of all of us was no longer shy. Another version of him was released. There was a side to Jewee that nobody knew -- that nobody imagined.

"What the heck was that? You two? Why would you go off at Ryan for? What did he ever do to you? I thought you were both good people, but you can betray my trust in you that easily?" Adrenaline surged through Nova, that she stood up from her seat, and stepped out a couple steps so she could see the two boys much clearer.

"Nova, no. It's not--," Jewee tried to speak again, but he couldn't convey what he wanted to. He didn't know what to say to her when she stood up to him like that, or it could be he didn't know what to say to her whether she stared him down or not.

Jared sighed. "He didn't do anything, Novs," he butt in. He didn't allow Jewee to talk. I can't be sure he was protecting himself, if he was protecting them both, or he said it because he had something else in mind we couldn't know. "That's why I was angry with him. That's why I hated him, but I'd never kill him. I could never kill him."

"You hated him because he didn't do anything?" The young girl had confusion written on every feature of her face. She felt hurt, betrayed, offended -- she felt every negative emotion in the book, and her expression didn't know how to express that. "I didn't know either of you had violence in you. You're the last people I would expect to murder someone, but look. Look at what you've done."

"Nova, please--," Jewee started again, but this time he was cut off by the officer, rather than Jared.

"Tell me, you two, what was your conversation about?"

Each of them exchanged a glance. There was a language in it that we couldn't understand, but what came of it was this look of surrender.

So we waited, with patience as a front, though it was fake, for an explanation.

And it had to be a very good one if they wanted to be seen as sane in our eyes from here on out.