Those Five: Short Story Compilation

Three of Hearts

Arthuro was remembering what his superiors had told him about the boy - that he was perhaps the most dangerous member of the Underground Order than any member there was. But the man somehow felt uncertain of the idea especially as he’d spied at him from a distance, seeing that he was simply a boy, not even old enough to drive his own car.

Faust (that was his name), is not even fifteen, yet the government had accused, well, supposedly proven with many a legal document and such evidences, on many a murderous occasion to be a supervillain in his own right in the illegal world.

He was said to be the head of the Saroza Syndicate, dealing with drugs, guns, and those confidential carryalls the Americans were hankering the Japanese about, stolen three months ago. But under Arthuro’s surveillance, he seemed your typical teenager coping with the ordinary stresses of any other student.

The older one had followed him some days and found that he possessed an otherwise normal life. He studied in one of the local universities, had friends, enjoyed mall-outs and weekend trips with them. And he had a scholastic record that proved he was a young version of Einstein.

He likewise lived in seclusion, sheltered in a lone mansion in the richest district of the city with only a butler, a maid and a couple of stern-looking guardians.

So his family was loaded. The parents died in a car crash when he was five and was left with their entire wealth equivalent to the accumulated riches of four generations before them, no other heir except him, having no other relatives to speak of and being the only child as far as everyone knew. And get this: no one could tell what investments the family had made the previous years. No one knew where the money went to, or how it rolled back in. 

But in high class society, everybody undeniably agreed to the point - and his bank statements, all legal, attested to it - that every year the boy gets wealthier and wealthier than he already was. 

Compare that to my paycheck, the man mused.

He does pay his taxes on time and in the right amount, rumors stating the businesses of the family were actually abroad and scattered, kept confidential for the purpose of secrecy until Faust came to age.  Though things still didn’t seem to add up now that the man thought about it, and this was the prime cause for suspicion for his superiors. No other information was available…

It was therefore a mystery.

So Faust was a genius, no secrets there, and he could do great things in the future if he worked hard at it (not that he needed to though). But how would you explain the accounts, the expanding wealth…all this quiet power the  boy possessed? His lifestyle was that of a recluse, an anonymous world no one could penetrate, not even his friends.

And now the government wants him dead, for the reasons that got him branded as dangerous. Arthro still didn’t get it. Still didn’t get it really, but who was he to complain. He was here for a different reason after all…

The man stayed observing the boy as the latter walked out the University gates and unto the suddenly-bustling sidewalk.

“Ei Fau-chan, wait up!!”

One of his classmates hurried to his side and threw an arm over his shoulders, beginning to chat noisily about something, sending the blonde Saroza boy to flush red, smiling awry, perhaps with what the other had said.

Arthuro shifted from where he was seated on the hood of his car. He took something from inside one of his coat pockets, looking hard at it…

It was a card. A playing card which belonged to a deck of other obviously, the three of hearts, crumpled and stained with blood. They had found it clasped in the hand of another government agent whose body was found near the river a week ago, bruised and badly mangled, three bullets to the head which was the cause of his death. It had been an overkill. He’d been tortured.