Chapter 4: Best available

The confrontation took place in the parking lot of our school. However, Michel didn’t show up there, only Ted walked past the corner of the building with his hands in his pockets. He raised his shoulders. I looked at him shaking my head, and he shook back.

“He said fuck off.”

“Looks like he will not cooperate,” I exclaimed.

“A very precise interpretation!” Beth said sarcastically. “What’s next?”

“Find another sponsor for Alicia?” Ted gave an opinion.

“I can take her with Neetz but as long as Michel is still around I don’t think she will accept my invitation.”

Yes. I was right all along, making him disappear was the only way.

Then I asked Ted. “Any chance that you can give me one or both of Michel’s concubines’ contact info?”

“Konomi and Kate? I think I have Konomi’s.”

Beth watched with her investigating eyes. She raised her eyebrows after Ted sent me the contact. I put my phone back in my pocket.

“Then I’m afraid that this’s all we can do,” I spoke with my poker face. “Now it is entirely on Alicia if she can save herself.”

Beth still didn’t believe that I would just give up. She asked. “And you will still take the CAP test since we did help you? Even If Alicia will be with us or not, you’ve promised.”

“Yes, I will. I’ll be your slave. Don’t worry about that.”

“Good.” She nodded and gently tapped my shoulder a couple times. “I’ll keep trying to invite Alicia. If she will come to her senses then you’ll be with her, otherwise, it’s all about destiny.”

I didn’t lie to anyone that I didn’t have a plan. I mean, I can think of many possible plans but haven’t yet identified the best possible plan that can resolve the situation.

To do that I needed to know as much information as possible. If Beth lets me know all the requested info, maybe I could find a better solution. I don’t blame her. I can only blame myself that I did not persuade her hard enough. I blamed myself for my inadequate social skills. All of this shaped us into only one solution.

Michel needed to be disappeared.

3 days later. It had to be this day.

I watched the clock as I stalked Michel all day. He went inside the pharmaceutical store in town. I decided to proceed with my plan. I parked the mom’s car that I borrowed in front of the store, got out, and stood against the trunk waiting for him.

Michel played center on our basketball team. So he was very thick and tall with a muscular build. He was a handsome man, and I would not be surprised if Alicia did actually fall in love with him. He exclaimed as he got out of the store and noticed me.

“Oh, it’s you. I told you guys to fuck off, man.”

“Michel, look. I knew you wanted to shake her off. I’ll help you with that but you have to come with me.”

“What the fuck. Just get away from me.” He said and tried to get away. I put in a pair of cotton gloves and then grabbed his arms from behind.

“Just come with me.”

“Fuck you.”

He shook me off and threw me at the street pole. I let go of his arms and tried to tackle him. The big man was not caught off balance. He threw his right fist at my back, but since football made me no stranger to pain, I still stayed in contact trying to lift him. He shot his knee up into my torso. This actually stunned me by the impact. He managed to get out of my grip and threw his punches at me. I evaded the first punch but the second landed on my left cheek. I intentionally staggered onto the trunk of my car.

He followed with the momentum. A fist after a fist pummeled me violently. At some point, I managed to grasp his left hand and pull it close to my chest. While he was elbowing me with his right arm, I got my right hand in my pocket and uncapped the lid of the chloroform tube, that I got from the biology lab, soaked my glove with it, and grasped his face.

A couple seconds after inhaling the substance, he collapsed on me. I pushed his body down to the street and then opened my trunk. I used duct tape to cuff his hands and ankles and taped his mouth before I threw him inside the trunk. I took a picture of him with my phone.

I quickly got into the car and saw the guy in the pharmaceutical store was talking on the phone which I assumed that he was reporting to the police. I drove to the north. After a few blocks, I went down a small alleyway which led me to the road on the other side of the town. I then headed to the south.

My face started to feel pain as I drove off the town.

On the highway, cranking noise from the trunk broke the silence telling me that Michel awoke from his anesthesia. I turned on a local radio station. The sound from behind was drowned by the music.

I did not drive in a hurry at all. Everything now was according to my plan, and I believed that I even had an hour to spare. I opened the window and enjoyed the air, the fields, the woods, and the music from the radio. The noise from my trunk banged once in a while.

I tried to avoid Eugene so I turned left to 288 then hit Brush Creek Rd at Crawfordsville. A couple kilometers later (Yes, I still prefer the metric system), I was on the road that cut through the woods and rarely saw a car. I whistled with the radio for a diversion.

I have never believed the idea of good and evil, or the existence of good guys and bad guys like they were stereotypically presented in the shows. I don’t believe that somebody is a bad guy because of evil in his/her nature. Even if there is proof in our DNA, I still believe that one can resist his/her own malevolent urges. I believe that everybody wants to be good. They want to be a paragon of their kind.

Then how do I solve the problem of evil? That everybody in our society keeps harming each other, plotting against one another?

I believe that because we are not smart enough to get ourselves into the best possible solution, we choose our worst choice which contributes to a bad outcome, harming ourselves and one another.

Michel wanted to kick Alicia out of his way. He might be too young, too foolish, or too incompetent to find a better gentle way to make her go. So he started doing bad things to her hoping that she would be hurt, hate him, and leave him someday.

I didn’t buy that Alicia actually drowned herself in the idea of an old-school relationship because of her stupidity. I thought she was just scared of the things going on in the world. Billions of people will be eaten alive, and she thought might be one of them. Given she had a great look, people can customize their appearance and their concubines to whatever they want after being picked up. The CAP score was more important than the physical appearance, and she didn’t have a good score. I believe that she’d do anything to remain a promised concubine because she was so scared. So she lied to herself and hoped that using a relationship would work. No, it would never work.

If I were way smarter I might come up with a better solution. There were millions of possible solutions, many of which would bring happiness to each party in the end. But since I was not omniscient, I just came up with the solution that Michel need to be disappeared which will force Alicia to find herself a new sponsor.

So this is what was going on.

I spotted a police car on my tail and noticed that when I turned left to Camp Creek Rd, they turned too. Then I checked my GPS.

“Maybe I forgot to throw your phone away Michel.”

I glimpsed at the clock and kicked the accelerator pedal. Now the police turned on their siren and accelerated to get closer. When they reached my side they shouted through the loudspeaker.

“Stop the car.”

I turned at them and shouted back. “No comprende!”

“Detén tu auto.” They shouted back.

I touched the brakes which lost the police car immediately, though it made my car drift to the side of the road. Luckily there was nothing there but a grass field since I was in the countryside. I rapidly U-turned and drove into a little road about 50 meters ahead. I continued driving on the rough path until it got me to another road. I crossed the bridge and parked at the parking lot near a BBQ food truck.

I spotted that there were many cars in the area which let me know that I had come to the right place. I saw Konomi and Kate standing near the street, looking around. I got out of my car and opened the trunk. Michel was not quite in his healthiest state, I supposed. He was conscious and wriggled for his life when he saw me. I pulled his body out of the trunk, dropped him onto the ground, and untapped his mouth. He spit in my face.

“Fuck you. If I can get this off. I’ll fucking kill you.” Then he saw his surroundings, and seeing other people in the area, he shouted, “Help. Help me.”

I swiped his spit off immediately and found it mixed with blood.

“I’m sorry dude. I told you just come with me peacefully.”

Then I saw the girls turning this way alerted by his crying voice. I waved my hands to them and then they rushed to me. When Konomi saw her dear sponsor wriggling horribly on the ground and then me with one of my feet stepping on his body, she unsheathed her samurai sword and held it over her head, war-crying and charging at me. The first thing that came to my head was if she would shout ‘banzai’ just like a famous Imperial Japanese army charge in WW2 and then my senses came to me.