Chapter 80 - A Cage : Part 1

Alfred slammed the door behind him and sped walk to his desk. He kicked the chair while grunting to himself. The man sighed, brushing his hair and messing it up with his hand.

The city was in shambles after the identity of the mute murderer was revealed. Alfred had been trying to prevent it from spreading all over the media, but the ministries were all against him.

"We should keep the identity hidden from the media. It'll cause a catastrophe if everyone knows who he is," Alfred said, just an hour ago, in a pretty small meeting room for the higher-ups.

"Why are we protecting a criminal? Rather than doing that, we should expose everything so everyone could call the authorities if anyone ever catches a single hair of him." One voiced out, and everyone screamed in agreement. The meeting ended that way.

It irritated him, really. The boy was so young. What was Cain thinking?

But then a wave of regret drowned him in a second, knowing Cain was young too when he had killed all his family.

"So you raised your family to be like you, huh?" Alfred muttered to himself, sneering for Cain and him.

"This is really karma." He chuckled sardonically. He moved his hazel eyes to the window, staring at the breeze of wind that kept trying to get in his office.

"When will you realize this karma is for you too, Cain?" He asked as if his ex best friend could hear what he said.

"I hate that karma falls into our children." Alfred diverted his gaze to the picture of his late wife holding a baby with beautiful red hair.

"Why did they have to suffer because of us?"

✵✵✵✵✵✵

Alfred stood in front of his daughter's room, taking a deep breath before he knocked on the door. He went back early despite the pile of problems that had to be done. He knew Rune was in shambles because of the reveal.

He needed to talk with her.

"Rune," Alfred called after knocking three times. Somehow, he felt anxious wanting to calm his daughter. He never really did this kind of thing before.

"I want to be alone, father." A voice answered not long after. There was an etching sorrow within it that caused Alfred to frown.

"I know yesterday's event might shock you. I want to make sure you're okay." He did not wait for his daughter's approval and opened the door.

The room was so dark without any lights on, only the moon that gave the stolen lights so the father could see the sight of his daughter. Rune was curling on the bed, showing her back on Alfred.

"About your best friend..." He began, carefully trying not to make the situation worse. "I'm sorry that happened between you two."

"I know you must be hurt by him but-"

"I don't care." She spat viciously without giving a single glance at her father. "He's a monster. He's not my best friend."

"He never was." The last words came as pitiful from her mouth.

And Alfred understood what she was feeling right now. He quietly closed the door behind him and sighed. "Why did you call him a monster?"

"Because he murdered people." She answered fast without a second thought.

"So everyone who had killed even one person is a monster?" Alfred tried to reason, knowing how he was a murderer himself.

"Yes."

"Even though the one they killed was a criminal?" He softened his voice, asking the dangerous question while trying not to worsen anything.

There was a mere silence between them. The atmosphere was too dark and sad at the same time.

"...yes." She finally responded.

Alfred walked closer to her bed and cautiously sat on its edge. He looked at the wall in wonder, mind going into another place as he spoke again. "I used to have a best friend too."

"I was pretty much in your situation." He added, remembering how Cain holed up in his room after discovering that his family was a criminal.

"He wasn't a criminal at that time, but he was from a family of criminals." The man continued. A flash of how naive Cain was, went inside his mind.

"I thought he was the same as his family, but it turned out he did not know a single thing about that."

Alfred had thought that Cain was a criminal and even dared to think of ending Vergessene's life that day. His father told him to kill Cain too, but he was already attached to the boy and realized that they had become a real best friend after years of pretending to be one.

Well, Cain thought their friendship was real back in the day. Alfred realized it too late. He realized they were real when he could not go back the way things were anymore.

"But my best friend still loved his family."

Cain would still worry about his little brother even though he knew Raziel was a criminal. He would think about his brother all night and try to find a way to go back or run away with him.

"And his family loved him." There was a bitter taste in his mouth after he said that.

Alfred finally looked over to his only daughter. "So the question is, was my best friend a monster too by being born in a family of criminals?"

"He's not." She responded relatively fast, slowly moving her head to him. "He doesn't kill people, right?"

"He used to never even shed a single blood." He agreed, smiling as he remembered their innocent times back in the day.

His gaze suddenly darkened. It looked really dangerous under the light of the moon. "But then the family was killed." He stated, almost coldly.

"The family was murdered as they begged for my best friend to be alive. They begged and begged to never kill my best friend because he wasn't part of any of the criminal things they did."

"And the killer left my best friend alive. But the killer killed my best friend's loved ones in front of his eyes without any sympathy."

"Was the killer a monster too, then?"

The question hung in the air as Rune looked away from him again. She did not answer for a pretty long time, seeming to pile up in her own thoughts.

"Was he, Rune? Was he a monster?" Alfred asked again, even though he knew the answer.

"They deserved it anyway." She shrugged, causing her loosened hair to sway a little.

Alfred sighed again. "So, let's change the situation then."

"If you were in my best friend's situation and I was the criminal that the killer murdered, would you see the killer as a monster then?" He dropped the bomb and turned the film around.

Another silence was thrown between them. This time it was longer than before.

Rune got up from the bed and sat beside him. "You can't put me in that situation, father. That's unfair."

"So my best friend's situation was really unfair then." He retorted back, raising his eyebrows at her.

The man closed his eyes for a moment, taking all the courage within him as he put a hand on her shoulder. "The thing is, my daughter-"

"I am the killer."

A frown started to form on her innocent face. The pale lips slightly opened as she tried to process her father's words.

"...what?" She croaked. An obvious sign of confusion was on display.

"I killed my best friend's family." He repeated his words clearly. The man's face morphed into guilt that was covered by coldness.

"Am I a monster too?" He asked, knowing that he had been calling himself that without having to ask his daughter.

"You're lying." She denied, raising her voice a little. Her hazel eyes wavered a little as she stared at his eyes.

Alfred dropped his head down, catching a breath while trying to push away the guilt that tried to crawl back to him after a long time. "It's up to you whether you would believe me or not."

"I just want to say. There is no good or bad." Two pair of hazel eyes met. One of them was widened in surprise. "Everyone's always in between."

"Axel is a good kid wrapped in a bad situation." He continued.

Every time he looked at the boy, he would see the young Cain, too young to be in a criminal world. It was cruel, really.

"He's just like my best friend." He confessed, desperately trying to shove down the lump in his throat. "Too young to be matured."

"I can see how Axel adored you so much. How he clings to you because you're the only one he has at the moment." The man said while the world was shoving all the memories of regrets in his mind.

"When my best friend was in Axel's situation, I gave him a place to stay too." And how he wished he hadn't because every time he remembered those days, it would hurt him more with grieves on how he had lost the Cain he used to know.

"-Until I betrayed him and killed his family." The statement made Rune's breath hitched. Alfred could catch how she suddenly went stiff.

"I lost my best friend, and I regretted it ever since." He tried to reason again, not wanting the history to repeat itself. It was enough. "It's like I lost half of me."

"Your mother and my best friend were the ones who made me whole." Because Alfred really did not know what would he do without them.

And now that he knew, he wished he hadn't.

"And I don't want you to lose half of yourself just like I did." The sentence almost sounded pleading, begging. It was enough.

"It doesn't matter!" Rune shoved him away, shouting angrily with waters that began to collect at the bottom lid of her eyes.

"Your situation had no relation with me! You don't understand what I'm feeling, and you are not wrong!" She denied and denied it again. She did not even care anymore.

Alfred looked at her in understatement. He was at her place once, denying how he hurt his only best friend and turned him into a deadly criminal. He had denied that it was his fault and blamed anything but him.

"It's right for you to kill the criminals." Rune finally lowered her voice.

"Axel," Rune cringed at the name, saying it only made everything sound worse. "-was hiding the fact that he was a criminal all along." She continued.

"Then what if I told you the reason why Axel is a criminal was because of me?" The man began. His red hair glinted under the dim light. It was almost like blood.

"...what?" She halted with a shaky voice. Rune could feel her heart thumping too fast at the statement.

"After I killed my best friend's family, I turned him to be a monster," Alfred said, only making Rune more anxious.

"I was creating a monster by killing monsters. He became a criminal, a long-lasting one." Uttered the man as a sight of the hitman who covered his whole head flashed in his eyes. He remembered how Cain had brought his father's head and tossed it to him.

That day he realized he had been doing the wrong thing. And he still had the audacity to be angry.

"And then he had children." He carried on, and the sentence sent shivers down Rune's spine. She knew where this was going.

"And I just found out that one of his children was the mute murderer." That was what she had been waiting for, the truth. The agonizing and cruel truth.

"My best friend forced your best friend to be a murderer because I let the cycle continue." Alfred went on, spilling all the wrong things he had done, telling his own daughter that he was a bastard himself, a monster. "I thought by killing his criminal family. The crimes would stop there."

"But just like a fruit from a tree that died and made another tree from its seed inside, I made a new criminal because I killed the tree."

The realization made Rune unconsciously let a tear down her face. Alfred did not know what she was thinking, but he knew how she felt right now.

"Axel never asked to be born in that family. Just like my best friend did." He explained, knowing that he was saying this just to manipulate his own regret.

"When you're stuck in a cage since you were born, you would eat and absorb everything inside it just to survive."

"Because you weren't made to be like those outside the cage. You aren't free to do what you like or to absorb what you want. You are made different. That's why you're in a cage."

"You aren't given a choice of anything."

Another tear fell down on her face at the statement. The look that she made was a realization that she was selfish. And Alfred knew it too well.

"And your best friend found a key to break free tried to run away from that cage by coming to you." Alfred sounded apologetic this time. He wiped the tears with his thumb, calming down his daughter.

"I hope you understand what I meant, Rune." He hugged the poor kid, wishing that someone did this to him back in the day.

"I realized it too late about my best friend's situation. I just don't want you to regret everything just like I did."

But it was too late.

She already regretted it.