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X is there to see it when the director’s head gets neatly decapitated.
He, along with the orphanage staff, are there alone. The other children are all at school.
There’s no need for any of the children to have to see this, after all.
It’s a clean cut, remarkably so. The force is enough that it slices entirely through flesh and muscle and spine alike, emerging out the other end in a spray of crimson. The director falls; the roof shingle flies onwards and completes its trajectory by clattering to the stone floor. Kinetic energy spent, completely harmless now that it is no longer in flight.
Someone screams. X falls backwards in shock, legs crumbling under him. Blood pools in the tiles; the director’s head is facing him, expression slack in death. The force had catapulted it flying, rolling to a stop roughly two yards away from its original throne: the open wound of a neck, weeping silently.
“Harold?”
“Oh, god, what’s happened?”
“The police! Someone—someone call the police!”
X’s throat moves uselessly. He swallows, hands trembling. “A… doctor,” he says, too quiet to be heard over the clamor. “Someone get… a doctor?”
What good would a doctor be? The director is already dead; it’s evident to anyone with eyes. Even for the most talented mechanic, some things are simply too broken to ever be fixed.
It’s interesting. The director has never regarded X with this slack expressionlessness before. They are still the same eyes as always. The same composition of materials, still wet the way eyes are in life. The muscles have not yet sunk into rigor mortis; they must still be warm. Physically, they’re the same as they were mere moments ago, when the director had still been alive. Yet, something has left them still.
“Someone get the boy out of here!”
Someone grabs him and hauls him to his feet. The bruises on his flank protest at the harsh motion. He struggles against the hold, craning his neck for another glimpse of the director.
What is there to see? He’s dead. He’s a broken machine that will never be fixed. There’s nothing left to learn by observing him.
Listen. X didn't have anything to do with it. The whole situation is a crazy coincidence, a freak accident, and nothing more. A flying roof shingle as a murder weapon? It’s preposterous. Who could even set something like that up? With what time? Listen, there are less complex and more reliable ways of murder, if one is so inclined.
Seriously, X wasn't even on the roof. There’s no fingerprints, no traces of his DNA. There’s a couple strange odds and ends, sure, but they have nothing to do with him. Someone had probably left them there cleaning the roof a couple weeks ago.
Fine, maybe X had been on the roof. Maybe he’d been tinkering with a Goldberg machine. But how could he have known that this one specific shingle would get stuck on a wound spring, ready to fire at the slightest touch? How could he have known that the director would step into its path at the exact moment it fired? He was just building something to make the other kids happy. He didn't mean it. He certainly couldn't have planned it.
And listen, here’s the thing; most Goldberg machines take hundreds of thousands of failures before they work once. X is no stranger to those failures. The exact path of physics, gravity and friction and force, is never easy to calculate. Multiple trials are needed, tests upon tests upon tests. All X did was set up a single line of dominoes. Can you really blame him if they all happened to fall perfectly the first time? He didn't think they’d work. Every child dreams of things it cannot have. Can they really fault someone, who, out of petty longing, shook a vending machine in the hopes that a favored treat would happen to fall?
X just isn't capable of murder. He’s not a strong person; ask anyone. And he never even touched the shingle that ended Mr. Harold’s life.
“I don't know,” X says helplessly, “I got suspended because I tripped into the burner and set Miss. Tania’s hair on fire. He was making me write lines.” The smile has dropped from his face. That’s no good, the director will—
Well.
“Suspended,” the investigator repeats, looking at him with contempt. “Playing with dangerous materials—the staff says you have a history of trouble.”
He waits, an expectant pause. X swallows and says nothing. Suddenly, the investigator’s eyes widen.
“I know you—you’re that arcanist kid,” he swears. “The one with the complaint?”
X starts; he’d thought the investigator would have forgotten him. Really, it’s no wonder; his eye is hard to forget.
“...Yes.”
“Fuck,” the investigator swears, barking out a laugh. “It makes sense now. Typical arcanist; didn't get what you want, so you killed him. He was right to put you in your place.”
X’s side aches; a pattern of fourteen bruises along his ribs and down to his hip. His jaw flexes.
“But there was no way I—”
“Save it!” the investigator barks. “There’s a motive, you were on the scene; you must have used some arcane bullshit to do it. All you people deserve to be locked up!”
“Did you know,” X interrupts, “That the director would read us all stories before bed? Even me, a filthy arcanist. He would read about the most wonderful places and tell us the most wonderful tales. We all looked forward to it.”
The investigator is startled. “What—?”
“And in the morning,” X says, “He would sing to the gardens outside. He loved the plants, and every day he would tend to them faithfully.”
“What are you talking about, kid—”
“The director beat me,” X says, “But he still cared for us. I didn't want him dead. Why would I?” He blinks; there are tears watering in his eyes. “How could you accuse me of killing him? He just died—I had to see his head as it—! And you’re—”
X buries his face in his hands and sobs. His shoulders shake.
“You’re—” the investigator hisses, but his tone has cooled. “Fuck. Listen, we’ll hold an investigation, okay? If you’re guilty, we’ll get that evidence. If not—”
X says nothing; he sobs again.
“Fuck, just—get out of here. Someone, send in the next one! Get this kid out of here!”
X is pulled out of the chair and escorted out of the room. Once he’s out, he wobbles towards the bathroom and locks the door behind him.
He retches, but nothing comes up. Only air escapes his ragged lips. Instead, he turns to the sink and lets the water run.
Then he laughs.
He laughs so hard his spine bends from the force. His legs give out under him and he slides to the floor, still laughing.
X just killed someone.
X just killed someone, and it was as simple and easy as when he had to fix Michael’s old radio two weeks ago. It was as simple as the time he’d built a pulley system to grab Sasha’s bag from the door. He’d seen the fault points, put things in their place, and the universe moved as he predicted. In the end it was incredibly easy to end someone’s life.
X just killed someone, and he feels nothing at all.
His laughter peters out; he stares at the wall instead. What are they doing with Mr. Harold’s body now? An autopsy, likely. In the next several hours it will be prepared for the funeral, head sewn back on, clothes tastefully arranged to hide the wound, body stuffed to look full and alive.
He hadn't even gotten to touch the body once. Not even a drop of blood had splattered against his shoes.
He’s a killer now. Does he regret anything?
The position of director will pass to another. It’s possible it will go to someone who will kill the garden, reduce their portions, and beat them harder. It’s most likely, however, that it will simply go to Mrs. Pauline. Mrs. Pauline is detached but not unkind. She has never been violent.
No, he doesn't regret it.
His body aches, those fourteen points along his torso. When he had come to the orphanage, the director had beaten him for being ‘creepy.’ His face was too blank and emotionless; his eyes were touched by the devil. X had made an eye patch out of cardboard, and the director beat him for hiding the evidence of his sin.
The death had been quick, and painless for it. That shingle had been flying at more than a thousand miles per hour. The director had been dead before the shock could even register.
They say arcanists are slaves to emotion. Maybe X does wish things were different. He hadn't even gotten to touch the body. What would it have been like if X had done it with his own hands instead? A crime of passion, him and the director and whichever conventional weapon could do the job. X, stabbing or slicing and crushing; the director, a writhing body under him. The director would probably scream. Maybe he would beg. Maybe he would double down, spit, I knew you were a demon. I knew you were rotten. I knew there would be no saving you.
And X, bearing down on him, would scream as well.
Why? Why? Why?
It’s a question X has never asked, and a question X will never get the answer to. The only person who could answer it, after all, is dead.
And who knows? Maybe X could have asked. Maybe the director could have changed. He’s human, after all, and therefore redeemable. Maybe they could have solved this without a shingle to the brain stem.
No, X decides, turning off the water. He doesn't really regret anything at all.