Andrew

The man clasped his hands together and prayed in front of a black and white picture. It was of a girl, unsmiling. She looked young. Too young for her to have left this world.

Straightening his back, the man looked sadly at the picture. In his eyes, there was sadness, grief and guilt. Like a tornado, they tortured his mind as he stared into the black and white eyes.

"I know you will never believe me, but I really did see you as my own daughter. I wanted you to have the best life you could have."

He closed his eyes to hide the pain in his eyes.

He knew, that the casket behind that picture was empty. Her body was still in the police's possession. But, even if it was returned to him, it would never reach that casket.

Even though his reason for adopting her and her brother wasn't the purest, he wasn't expecting for his goals to come to fruit so soon.

While he was confessing to the picture in his heart, he heard a scoff come from behind him.

Turning around, there was another man with a disgusted look on his face.

"Daughter? Everyone on this side knows why you adopted them."

After spitting out that sentence like it was a piece of dirty gum, the man walked forward and erased the hostility on his face to pray to the girl.

"Daniel, even if that was the reason I adopted them, I truly wished for them to live long happy lives."

If not they wouldn't have lived for 2 years.

With the unspoken words in the air, the man named Daniel sneered.

"Some of the others may believe your words, but I sure don't. Andrew, we both know that she was the first ever case of someone with MDVA to die 'on her own'. Unless you really believe that she cared enough about you, someone she considered an outsider, to kill herself in order to conveniently give you an untouched body to dissect."

Mocking him, Daniel turned towards Andrew and glared at him.

"Her death was oh-so-convenient, Mr scientist. The chance of it being a coincidence is so close to zero it may as well not exist."

Mockery turned into hostility, which turned into a cocktail of rage and disappointment.

"She was only a child, Andrew! Even if you argue that sacrificing her would save hundreds, thousands, in the future. Murdering a child is unacceptable. I thought better of you."

Andrew shifted his gaze from Daniel to the picture of the girl.

Maybe this was his divine punishment for so cold-heartedly adopting a child for such selfish reasons.

"You may not believe me, but I didn't-"

"AGAIN WITH THAT BULL!"

Daniel screamed and interrupted him.

"Just admit it. You poisoned her. And risked a bus-full of innocent lives on a gamble. And guess what, your gamble won!"

Daniel threw down a newspaper. The headlines read "Public outrage over the cruel and inhumane law that is the MDVA-prevention act".

The picture showed a very famous politician that was previously very vocal about being for the MDVA-prevention act. Beside the picture was a paragraph of words.

'He used to be very supportive of the MDVA-prevention act. But during the large incident 2 days ago when an MDVA patient was found dead on a bus containing his beloved grandson, he changed his stance.'

"Did you get her to do it herself? Or did you find a way to slowly poison her until she collapsed at that time? It's publicly known that his grandson was going to be taking part at this cooking event. And that there would definitely be many guards around. So you made her sneak in as another contestant."

Andrew bent down to pick the newspaper up. He then set it on a nearby surface.

"No. I didn't do any of that. I'm not such a mastermind that I could plan all of that."

"Then how do you explain all these coincidences that just so happen to lead to the best circumstance for us?! Surely she didn't just happen to die at that exact time period where she just happened to share a bus with that politician's grandson. And she died in such a non-violent way that it just so happened to contradict the public view of every MDVA patient being a mindless killing machine that hurt others. And this just so happens to cause the public to fly off the hook at the MDVA-prevention act legalizing the murder of hundreds of innocent children every month in order to 'prevent' an illness that only develops in children from troubled backgrounds?"

Shouting at the top of his lungs in frustration, Andrew looked at Daniel as slight tears formed in Daniel's eyes.

"It's too much of a coincidence to be a coincidence. You know that. I know that. Everyone does. So why? Surely there was a better option than this."

But there wasn't. Daniel took deep breaths as he tried his best to rein in his tears.

They both knew. Everyone did. That the best course of action when the news that Oliver was caught in an accident was the death of Alex. It was common sense that once their object of affection was slightly hurt in any way, MDVA patients would go into a frenzy to either protect or destroy. And they would harm people in the process.

Before the MDVA-prevention act, the majority of tragic cases involved MDVA patients. And the decrease of this percentage was the main reason why most people lied and convinced themselves that sacrificing the lives of these patients was for the better. Now that there was a case where an MDVA patient hurt nobody, it broke all the reasons behind allowing this unethical law to continue.

"Either way, I didn't do anything. I swear. I didn't tell anyone to call Alex to inform her of Oliver's accident. Nor did I poison her or anything. I just wanted her to live her life as much as possible. Have a hobby, have friends. It's why I allowed her to go to the cooking event. Because her hobby was cooking."

Daniel gritted his teeth. He obviously still didn't believe Andrew even a little bit.

"Fine, don't admit to it then. Our police team will THOROUGHLY check her body for any signs of poisoning or foul play. And once we do find it, after you finish dissecting your oh-so-precious 'daughter', I'll make sure to put you into jail where you belong."

Bowing towards the photo, Daniel gave a last glare to Andrew before he left the mourning hall.

Andrew sighed as he turned back to face the photo of Alex.

"Maybe this really is punishment for adopting you and your brother. Being accused of a murder I didn't do is one thing, but now I've lost my children once more. Two to MDVA, and the youngest is in a coma in the hospital. Alex, tell me, what am I supposed to say to your brother when he wakes up and finds your casket empty. I was planning on coming clean to the two of you when Oliver was old enough to understand the cesspool the two of you have been in the middle of. But not like this."

He slid his finger down the glass of the photo frame.

"You may have not trusted me. Which is understandable. I am not a saint. But did everything have to come to this point."

Murmuring as he caressed the picture, Andrew sighed and stepped back from the photo.

Even though his heart was heavy. It was too crucial of a time for their anti-MDVA-prevention-act faction to mourn the loss of one child.

And so he must now leave the funeral of his only daughter and go to the laboratory, where he will watch her body be cut up for autopsy. And after the autopsy, he even needed to collect samples from her body to conduct tests on how MDVA affected a patient's body. Were there any changes to their brain? Their hormones? That caused such violent tendencies in them.

If he figured out a way to remove those violent tendencies, or even understand where they came from, the faction would have solid enough evidence to finally demolish the act. He didn't spend the entire of his latter half of life studying MDVA and everything related to it for nothing.

If only the government didn't classify MDVA patients to be unable to consent to anything due to their illness. The Act even went around and banned the dissection or use of their bodies in any experiment.

It was almost as if they were hiding something.

This was what he thought his entire life after he lost his first son to the euthanasia center. But now, with how orchestrated this series of coincidences were, he felt a small bud of doubt. Maybe he was overthinking. Maybe they were overthinking.

Feeling that bud grow rapidly, it was almost as if it wanted to suck him dry of his motivation to pull through this tough period. He mercilessly stomped the bud to death.

No. Regardless of whether he was right or wrong. The Act must go. And his daughter was the turning point for all of this.

He sucked in the cold air of the mourning hall, and pulled himself together.

"Alex. I am going now. If the next life ever existed, then I hope that life would be filled with friends, laughter and happiness. Enough to make up for everything you experienced in this world."

He bowed once more to the picture of his lost daughter before exiting the mourning hall, closing the door and plunging the whole hall into darkness.