My dearest friend

34

 It's been two days since Emma and I made the connection between Michael and Stephen. I can barely sleep nowadays, but this situation made it worse. No sleep. Barely any appetite. I feel so hopeless.

I went to work like usual, maybe more tired than usual. I got to my desk, finished my work, went to Emma's place, worked on a story, tried to go to sleep, slept for like 2 hours, woke up, went to work like usual, got to my desk, finished work, got to Emma's place. Everything seemed too repetitive. It wasn't monotone, just repetitive.

Emma had a hard time sleeping as well since we both knew that Michael would look for me at her place. She hasn't left that gun more than 8 feet away from her sight. She cares too much about me.

This is all stupid. He could have been a normal guy and not a weirdo and maybe we could have been together. Why did he have to complicate things for both me and him? Why is he so... "in love" with me? Can I even call it love that he feels towards me?

Weeks have passed since I last saw him, but I still feel him getting closer. It's a sixth sense already.

I did the usual this morning: coffee, getting dressed, taking my bag and going to work. Maybe today Magnus comes after his recovery from the fight with Michael. I hope we can discuss more about what happened, but I have a feeling he'l just brush me off like last time, he blocked my number and even Emma's, I know that because she told me since they were talking from time to time.

When I got to my desk it was dead quiet, which is weird because people usually chat around at this hour. More and more people stared at me than usual. Did Magnus tell them anything about the fight? Once I stopped looking at them, they started to talk really quietly, barely audible. They were talking about Magnus and why he was absent for so long.

'The news says he got into a fight with some gangsters.' said a coworker.

'I saw an article that said that it might have been a life or death situation.' said another coworker.

'There are some speculations that he was beaten up only by one person out of them.' said the first coworker showing them a newspaper.

'Usually the speculations are more right than the actual article.' said the other coworker. 'Now that I think about it, wasn't there something suspicious about the article's about Mary?'

I knew exactly what was suspicious. Mary's killer was never found and she died as she tried to kill me. Huh, I haven't heard that name in quite a long time. The news forgot about her.

'Yeah, it was never a possibility that it might have been a muder.' the first coworker said.

What?! I remember reviewing and correcting many articles that said that Mary might have been murdered. How could people miss those? From the article that said that the autopsy result said that her death was caused by massive bleeding, not suffocation, to the article that had a huge idea about how the whole murder had happened. There were a bunch of them. No one could miss them.

'Is someone trying to cover it all up?' the first coworker asked.

Then it clicked. He wouldn't want anybody to find out that there might even be a small possibility that it was him. Michael isn't simply just smart, but a genius. A mad genius. But how did those articles never get published? Does he have someone inside the company who's working for him? Wouldn't he want that person to do the dirty work for him?

'That seems a bit far fetched if you ask me.' said the other coworker.

No. They most likely got it right. Michael is working with more people than I might have thought.

'I think we just don't have good journalists.' said the other coworker. 'Who would miss the clues that would point to the killer? Also what kind of dumb investigators worked on the case?'

They noticed me eavesdropping and looked in my direction. I turned around quickly embarrassed looking at the articles I was correcting. I felt a light tap on my shoulder and saw them looking at me curiously.

The first coworker was a short guy with brown hair, a brown eye and freckles. He was missing an eye. The other coworker was a tall woman with really short blonde hair and nice looking earrings.

'Hey, aren't you the guy that always hung out with Magnus?' the woman asked.

'Y-Yeah, it's me. Why do you ask?' I asked nervously.

'Do you know anything about what happened to Magnus?' asked the man happily.

'No.' I lied. 'He didn't want to talk to me lately.'

'Do you have any idea what might have happened with him?' the guy asked.

'He got beaten up and that's it.' I said trying to get back to my work.

'Who might be after him...' he said taking a long pause. 'Sorry, but I never asked for your name. I'm Nate.' he said more excited than I expected.

'Sorry for his reaction. He acts like a child at times.' she said. 'I'm Alexandra. What's your name?'

'I'm Patrick.' I said hesitantly.

'So what do you think about the whole Magnus situation since you knew him better than us?' Nate said pointing an invisible mic at my face.

'Um... He lives in a bad part of the city, so yeah, it might have been gangsters.' I said trying again to go back to work.

'What if someone here is manipulating the articles when they correct them?' said Nate, making a pose that I think was supposed to imitate an anime character.

'I doubt that.' I said quietly.

'How so?' he said.

Alexandra rolled up the newspaper and smacked Nate over the head with it. He yelped and held his head looking at her with a mean look on his face. She just looked disappointed.

'What was that for?' he asked.

'At what department are we now, donkey brain?' she said.

He looked at the sign at the entrance.

'Oh. Sorry, dude!' he said rubbing the back of his neck.

'Anyway, we've got to go.' she said grabbing Nate by the collar of his shirt. 'It was nice to meet you. Keep up the good work!' she said exiting the department.

I barely said anything in this whole conversation. I just waved awkwardly, then got back to my work. I don't really plan on making any new friends at the moment so I hope they understand my future refusals.

Hopefully, nothing will happen to them.