Origins of the QED Club

Chapter 01: My Pesky Little Problem

"Do you have any prospective members?" he asked next, raising his gaze from the piece of paper he's holding to me. If I were an ordinary student, I would have looked away instead of meeting his eyes. They said they could send shivers down anyone's spine. "Students who have expressed intention of joining your club?"

"I have a long list," I lied. "As much as I wanna give you their names, I can't recall all of them right now. I'm also not really good with names."

I'd met a number of people in my seventeen years of existence on this earth—classmates, schoolmates, teachers, school personnel, clients—but I barely remembered ninety-nine percent of them. I didn't develop a habit of memorizing the names of people that I met unless they're important to me or to the case that I was investigating. If it's a useless piece of information, I wouldn't store it in my mental hard drive.

On the afternoon of my third day back to school, I was summoned by the committee with a long ass name to discuss about my clubroom's status. I normally skipped these boring formalities, but I made an exemption this time. Was I afraid to lose my small office? I could take clients and listen to their problems anywhere on campus. But the comfort of a clubroom—a place where I could go to whenever I cut my classes—was something that I didn't wanna lose. Hence my appearance in this unnecessary hearing.

There's also a personal reason why I didn't want to give it up.

"You had a list of five registered members last academic year," said the towering guy. I always found his glacial voice annoying, but I must endure it for half an hour. "None of them submitted their individual accomplishment reports. There was also not a single documentation of their engagement in your club activities."

"They're camera shy—"

"We cannot help but assume that you've only used their names and signatures to make your club a qualified beneficiary of our room assignments. You must be aware of the criterion that a club must have at least five members to qualify. You found a loophole, and you exploited it."

"Look," I held up both of my hands, "I know that there's an issue with the minimum number of club members needed to apply for a clubroom. But my club has helped a number of students and faculty members over the past year. Shouldn't you take that into consideration?"

"Rules are rules, Mr. Mendez." He regarded me coldly, but his gaze wasn't chilling enough to intimidate me. "We can make an exemption to this rule, but only if we deem you worthy of it. At the moment, I fail to see any justifiable reason why you should keep the clubroom. There are other clubs with more members that are waiting to have their own space. I am certain that they would be delighted to occupy Room 315."

"I hope that you're not taking this personally, Mr. Mendez," I spat his surname like poison.

Yes, that's right. We're both Mr. Mendez in this room. No, it's not a mere coincidence that we happened to share the same surname. I wished that I didn't. But some things in life couldn't be changed easily. For example, the family that a person was born into.

We're brothers, unfortunately. I'm Loki and he's Luthor. But those were just our nicknames. My dad's a huge fan of Norse mythology that he patterned them after those gods. Our full given names were too fancy.

"I am not taking this concern personally," my dear brother replied in a matter-of-fact tone. "I am only trying to be just and fair in this particular matter. It will be unbecoming of me to involve our personal issues here."

"It must be so nice to have an excuse to bully me," I replied after letting out a sigh. "Today, you're taking away my clubroom. What's next? Are you gonna expel me?"