As strongly as he had reacted to the events of the day, Jeldrik fell into a deep, dreamless sleep, and when he woke up in the morning feeling rested and, after a few moments of blissful thoughtlessness, remembered what had happened the day before, it felt both less surreal and less overwhelming. He heard Viktor in the kitchen emptying the dishwasher. The smell of coffee hung in the air. Jeldrik sat up on the bed and looked out of the window. It was a beautiful September morning. The sky was cloudless and the sun was shining into the room. He felt good enough to go to the office and wanted to keep up the good impression he had made on everyone as far as he could tell. But despite feeling better, his determination not to forget the case still radiated hotly in his chest. He wondered what Gabriel would say if he told him about his plan to keep investigating. As Viktor had said, it was not illegal to do so, but Jeldrik had the strong suspicion Gabriel would try to convince him to let it rest. He doubted it could cause him any big trouble, but if the MMS would somehow catch wind of it, there was a possibility Jeldrik’s investigation could reflect negatively on the DMCI. He was, after all, their intern and knew about the whole thing through them. And would that in return demolish any chance to be hired afterwards? Jeldrik had to admit that it was possible. But how likely would it be that his investigating would create any ripples at all, especially at the MMS? Very unlikely, he told himself. Especially since he could stop at any time if he felt the risk grew too high. Yes, he had to make a plan of what to do. Everything he did was completely legal, so there was no reason to be worried. He rang Gabriel and barely had to wait five seconds before his supervisor answered.
“Good morning, Jeldrik. How’re you feeling today?”
“Morning! I’m okay, but I couldn’t get a wink of sleep last night.”
“I was expecting that,” Gabriel said matter-of-factly. “You’ll rest today, alright? Maybe take a walk with – you said you don’t live alone, right?”
“Right, his name’s Viktor.”
“Take a walk with Viktor then. And tonight you’ll be able to sleep again, I’m sure.”
“Thanks Gabriel!” Jeldrik was thankful, but felt a pang of guilt for lying. They said goodbye and rang off. Jeldrik climbed out of bed and put on sweatpants and a clean shirt. He went into the kitchen and gave Viktor a kiss.
“Who did you talk with just now?” he asked.
“Gabriel. He told me yesterday to stay home if I need a day to rest.”
“How nice!” Viktor had made pancakes for breakfast and carried them to the kitchen table. “Fits perfectly with this special breakfast, then.”
Jeldrik put a hand on his heart and played struck by love. While he put a pancake on his plate and covered it excessively with Nutella, he asked: “Don’t you meet with your friends from the orchestra today?”
Viktor nodded, his mouth full, then: “I need to leave in an hour.”
As much as he would have loved to spend a whole day with his boyfriend, Jeldrik was aware that he now had a whole day for himself to start looking into the ABA, which he decided was a sensible place to start his investigation.
When Viktor had left, Jeldrik settled himself comfortably on the sofa and waited for his laptop to start. His phone vibrated and he saw that it was a message from Anteo:
Jeldrik answered:
A few seconds later, Anteo had written again:
Jeldrik wondered with a small leap of his heart if his attraction to Anteo maybe was reciprocated. Not that it mattered in Jeldrik’s situation, but it was always flattering to know someone was attracted to you. On second thought, Anteo was likely just a caring person and Jeldrik was interpreting too much into it – a weakness he had had since he had started being interested in men.
He put his phone away and started the Portal Browser on his laptop. After he had logged in, he opened TeaLeaf and searched for “ABA”. As much as the movement had been in the news, there was very few facts about them Jeldrik could recall. He did not agree with their ideas, but the dismissive attitude the rest of society regarded them with irritated Jeldrik at times.
One of the first links showing up on TeaLeaf was the ABA’s official website. Jeldrik opened it and was greeted by a barely designed page. The header showed a mother on a sunny meadow, hugging a child she was carrying in her arms. The heading said “Let everyone experience the magic of love!”
Below that was an introductory paragraph:
Jeldrik curled his lips. While the text summarised the general goal of the ABA, he hoped its vagueness wouldn’t permeate throughout the entire website. An acknowledgement that consent was a vital part of magical bonds and the main issue in this discussion was the least he expected. He decided to click himself through the menu, which meant the next page he visited had the headline “What are magical bonds?” and contained significantly more text.
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As Jeldrik had expected, there was no mentioning of the main issue people had with the ABA. Even worse, the ABA had mentioned consent when describing what a bond is, but omitted any elaboration on what that meant.
The next page was titled “Our demands” and included a “three-step plan” on how to achieve a more just society. The first step included the removal of the death sentence for this crime to “ensure nobody else had to die for their act of love.” This made Jeldrik angry. He was trying to be open-minded, but such a statement did merely undermine the existence of those mages who, in fact, had malicious intents and had not acted out of love.
The second step was to lower the legal age for bonding to fifteen when a mage’s abilities usually surfaced. Reading this gave Jeldrik goosebumps. There had been multiple attempts by mages to lower the general age of consent to fifteen. Most of those movements of the last decades argued that the appearance of magical powers at fifteen showed a premature transition to adulthood in comparison to non-mages and very often contained a clear trace of supremacy that most mages rejected. Jeldrik knew that magical abilities had a proven genetic component, but he had never met any reasonable mage who attached any importance to that fact.
The final step meant the complete legalisation of bonds including minors. Jeldrik could not say that the ABA had so far convinced him to join – and he was quite relieved about that. He knew from experience that harbouring unpopular opinions was a tedious endeavour.
Next, Jeldrik clicked on the news page and was caught off-guard when a man looked back at him that he had only seen with a gashing cut in his throat. Argon’s face still looked morbidly thin and dishevelled with stubbles. The article headline read: “We are mourning the loss of one of our dearest friends, Theo Argon.”
Jeldrik clicked on it and started reading:
Jeldrik had to agree with the ABA about the state of the government if they were, in fact, trying to hush up a murder. But the most pressing question that came to his mind was: How did they find out about the murder? Was there an informant in the DMCI or MMS? He went through a mental list of everyone who worked at his office, but could not think of anyone who stuck out as an Infiltrator. Then again, not sticking out was of course any rat’s job. It made Jeldrik uncomfortable to think that one of the people that were so nice to him at the office could be breaching his professional confidentiality. At least Jeldrik was sure that it was not Gabriel, with whom the ABA would have more information than what they seemed to have.
He shook of his worries and went to the member page. Here he found a list of what looked like official members of the ABA, and Jeldrik was surprised that every name was accompanied by a picture of the person. He had expected a controversial political movement to be more anonymous, but here they were. He found Mia Waltz, a dark-skinned woman who could not be older than Jeldrik, her braided hair so long it disappeared on the bottom of the picture. Jeldrik had seen her before when her assault was mentioned on one of the news websites Jeldrik read sometimes. It had not been at the top of the page, but it was not ignored either, unlike Argon’s arguably more severe case. His picture was right below Mia’s. It was the same they had used for his obituary. Jeldrik spotted that the member names were clickable and opened Theo Argon’s profile. It had not yet been updated since his death.
Jeldrik leaned back on the sofa. The ABA’s website had left him feeling more clueless than before. While he now understood better what they wanted, he could not understand they felt so strongly about this law. There were so many other things a minors were not allowed to do and nobody complained. But this was suddenly a monstrous injustice? It was difficult for Jeldrik not to jump to disturbing conclusions to why some of the ABA wanted to bond with children. His feelings told him that it was, in fact, a small minority that did not have an ulterior motive and simply wanted to be as close as possible to their family. And while Jeldrik could not grasp that urge either, it was no crime to think that way.
The last page was called “Dates” and included the aforementioned public gathering on September 15th at six p.m. That was in two days. Jeldrik considered for a moment if there was another way, but if he wanted to find out who had killed Theo Argon, there was probably no better place to start than on that gathering. Maybe he could eavesdrop on some people speculating who killed him or find out who his family was and make contact with them. And even if he was unsuccessful, he could not think of any realistic problems it could cause to attend the gathering.
Jeldrik closed his laptop and stretched himself. Then he walked into the kitchen and filled a glass with water. While he was drinking, he contemplated if his course of action was reasonable. Why was he even so resolute to solve this murder when he had neither a personal nor ideological connection to the victim? Was it his strong aversion against covering up a murder case? It had indeed enraged him when Gabriel uttered his suspicion. And while in the moment they had only brushed over that possibility, it had not left the back of his head for a minute.
Maybe that was enough to keep sleuthing. And if he found out who had killed Argon, how could the DMCI not hire him on the spot?
