THE X-MASTER

Somehow trouble seems to follow me wherever I go. We were barely a week into the vacation, what's this about a murder? Ratchina stared at me, an emotionless face that my mind couldn't understand.

"What the hell are you doing here?" I whispered, "are you stalking me?"

She didn't reply. Just a stare and a brow raised, making her face resemble a fat rich snob looking down on peasants. Her hands laid behind her back and her chest raised slightly with a proper demeanour and pride. If we weren't in a hotel, I would have mistakened her for a pennyworth butler.

"What's going on here?" Lemon asked, cleaning her hair with a towel while she joined us at the door. She had a pair of black shorts on and a tank top.

"There's been a murder…" I got interrupted by the overlapping of Ratchina's voice.

We shared a glare, then she cleared her throat and continued.

"There's been a murder downstairs, the manager requests your presence."

"The hell!" Lemon said with furrowed eyebrows. "Well who's the victim?"

"A Mister Osas, ma'am."

"Well what are we waiting for, let's go."

She closed the door behind me and pulled me along while she followed Ratchina. We walked into the elevator and watched the door close with an ominous music in the air. Nah, actually that last bit was in my imagination. As we stood in silence while the elevator took us down, I couldn't help but wonder why Ratchina happened to be here, coincidental to the very time of my arrival in Yolo-Point.

It would have been a coincidence if we happened to meet somewhere on the streets of the city, but in the same hotel, at my very door? Honestly, this was no coincidence. And then there's the part about a murder three nights after our arrival, in the same hotel as we were. Something felt off. I didn't take my stare off Ratchina all through that night.

Down at the lobby, the body laid in the middle, close to one of the fancy tables. A man, possibly in his late thirties. He had brown beards and a pair of rainbow glasses that had been crushed and carefully placed back on his face. He laid belly flat on the floor. No much blood, or a sign of struggle, only a pair of shocked eyes and an X carved on both his palms.

"No, it can't be."

Lemon and I stared at each other in utter shock. In the room stood Ratchina and her serious, butler stare, the manager and five of the staff, and those who were present with the man in the lounge before his untimely death.

We stood up after examining the body, looking at the faces of those in the audience. There were two female human receptionists, a male Kion bartender and two room attendants from the planet of Oppaye present. Including Ratchina, that would make the staff six. The guests present were a pair of newlyweds, a human and a Kion, a chubby Zander that had something against shirts and a female Garnite. And as much as we didn't believe anyone present did it, Lemon and I declared everyone a suspect.

"There's a murderer amongst us," Lemon announced, walking around the body. "And no one is safe until the murderer is caught."

"Everyone in this lobby shall be interrogated," I added. "Please do not leave until we say so, Lemon!"

"Hmm?"

"A word please."

I took her to a corner far from the suspects, then I whispered.

"Did you see those marks?"

"Of course I saw those marks," she whispered in reply. "Everyone saw those marks!"

"You think it's the X master?"

"The X master?" She asked. "Can't be, Timothy Zeralf is still in jail, the hexagon."

I gave a soft scoff. "You and I both know Zeralf was not the X master!"

She paused, looking at me for a while. Then she gasped, and I nodded my head in reply as if reading her mind.

"But how the hell would he know where we were?!" She blurted, frustrated. "And why kill a Nigerian man just to send a message? AND why on the palms and not the back as usual—"

"Okay okay," i whispered in reply, shutting her up.

"Um, is there a problem?" Asked the kion bride from their seats.

"We'll be with you in a second!" I replied with a forced smile. Ratchina raised a brow up, looking at me with that side eye. I scoffed, returning my attention to Lemon. "Look, there are a lot of things that don't make any sense here, like how the manager knew that we were detectives without us telling him."

"Or the fact that the bartender is the cousin to the bride and the two Oppayeans are sisters."

I looked at her with some furrowed brows. "You got all that under ten minutes of standing next to them?"

She shrugged. "I had a good teacher."

"That you did," I smiled.

"Bottom line is, this whole thing is probably staged and that man is probably not dead."

I looked at the body for a while, then I turned to her with a stern. "He's as dead as worm in a bird's nest."

She exhaled. "It was worth a shot. Guess we have no choice but to go down the logical path."

"Exactly," I replied, looking at them as they stared at us.

"One of them is working with Halo the Reaper," we simultaneously said.

Indeed, Halo the Reaper was the X master. And seeing that the one who killed Mr Osas here did a poor job of leaving his trademark, I would say the new recruit was quite young, possibly rebellious. At least that was our hunch.

Thus, our first 'person of interest', were the newlyweds.