A Killer Made, Not Born

Year 2032

I stood before a wall covered with framed documents.

Each profession had its own diploma, license, or certificate:

Doctor of Medicine

Professional Engineer

Certified Public Accountant

Attorney-at-Law

Licensed Architect

Black Belt Championship Certificate

Muay Thai Championship Certificate

Every document bore the same name:

“Jack Bramms”

I silently looked at them before opening a nearby cabinet. Inside were even more certificates and diplomas, all of them belonging to me.

I turned around. I wore a mask that left my hair exposed.

“I am Jack Bramms, and I will purge this city—this world—of evil with my own hands,” I declared in a cold voice.

“Please don’t kill me. Please.”

A trembling man knelt before me, begging for his life. Blood flowed from a wound on his head and covered his face.

“Would anyone be sad if you were gone?” I asked.

“Yes. Yes… yes,” he answered, trembling.

I leaned closer.

“How sad would they be?”

“M-My wife wouldn’t be able to sleep for days. I also have three children. Who would take care of them? My mother is old now. She might not be able to bear it if I died,” he answered.

I turned my back on him.

“So there are people who would be sad if you died?” I asked. “Even though you hurt your wife? Even though you abused your children and put one of them in the hospital? Your mother is already old, yet you still force her to give you money. Do they know about your other wrongdoings? After everything you’ve done to them, why would they be sad?”

I shot him before he could answer.

Then I walked toward his lifeless body, leaned close, and whispered,

“I envy you.”

Years Earlier

The morning sun had already risen, but I was still lying on our sleeping mat. My mom was already scolding me because I was late for school.

“Hey, Jack! Get out of bed already. You’re going to be late for school!” she shouted from outside our house.

I yawned. “Mom, I don’t want to go to school today.”

Our house stood near a sewage area and had no separate rooms. The kitchen was only a few steps away from our sleeping mat, while the comfort room was beside the area where we slept. A black curtain was the only thing separating it from the rest of the house.

“What are you going to do with your life if you don’t study?” Mom scolded me again. “It has already been weeks since you last went to school.”

“I’ll just go on the day of the exam. I don’t need to attend school every day. I can still get the highest score without going there all the time.”

“But your teacher will call me again. I’ve already gone to your school and knelt before your teachers and the guidance counselor many times just to keep you from being expelled. I don’t want you to be expelled, my son. I want you to have a better future. I want you to get out of this place.”

Then she began to cry.

The moment I heard her, I got up from our sleeping mat and went to comfort her. Afterward, I began preparing for school.

A short while later, I arrived at Northwood High School, the public school where I studied. Although I had already missed the first period, I managed to enter the school in time for the second.

When I entered our classroom, my classmates stared at me with different expressions.

“Who is that?” one of the girls asked.

“That’s Jack,” a boy answered. “You don’t know him because he’s always absent.”

“Hasn’t he been expelled already?” another boy asked.

“I saw his mother crying and kneeling in the guidance office the other day,” someone else said. “Maybe that’s why he was allowed to come back.”

Their mockery did not affect me. Hearing that they had seen my mom crying and kneeling before the guidance counselor, however, broke my heart.

I silently walked to a vacant chair in the back corner and sat down. As I looked out the window, our second-period teacher entered the room.

“All right, class. Sit down. We’re going to have a long exam consisting of one hundred and fifty items. Let’s see what you’ve learned from our previous lessons.”

While speaking, she noticed me.

“Oh, we have a new student here. What’s your name?”

“I’m Jack,” I answered.

She looked through her records.

“Oh, I see. You’ve attended my class only twice in the past two months, and today is your third time. How are you going to answer my exam?”

I remained silent. The way she questioned me made it seem as though she was mocking me too. She then handed out the exam papers.

An hour passed, and we finished answering and checking the exam. My classmates began chattering and looking in my direction as the teacher collected our papers and announced our scores one by one. Since I was sitting at the back, my name was the last to be called.

She first announced the score of the top student in our class.

“Lyn, seventy-two.”

My classmates applauded her. I continued looking out the window while the teacher called the rest of their names.

Finally, she announced mine.

“Jack—one hundred and forty-nine.”

The room fell silent.

She turned toward me and raised her voice. “How did you get one hundred and forty-nine? You scored more than twice as high as the smartest student in this classroom. Did you cheat?”

She approached me and pulled me to the front of the classroom.

“Did you cheat?” she demanded. “I won’t record this score. You’re going to take another exam beside me. We still have twenty minutes before class ends.”

I returned to my chair, dragged it to the front, and placed it beside her desk. She gave me another exam before continuing her lecture.

After only ten minutes, I finished answering every question and handed the paper to her. She stared at me in disbelief before checking it. As she went through my answers, her eyes widened.

“One hundred and fifty.”

She could not believe it. I had received the highest score again—this time without a single mistake.

The teacher finally accepted that I had not cheated, while my classmates began chattering again.

Then a boy named Ron approached me. He was tall and known for joking around.

“You’re amazing,” he said. “You hardly ever attend school, yet you still got a perfect score. How did you do that?”

I remained silent and stepped outside the classroom to feel the cool breeze.

Then I heard a girl call my name.

“Hi, Jack.”

It was Lyn, a short girl with a cute face and long hair going down to her hip.

“I knew you didn’t cheat on the first exam,” she said. “Congratulations.”

She smiled at me.

“Thanks,” I replied.

“You should go back inside,” she warned me. “Our next teacher is grumpy. She won’t like seeing you out here.”

I returned to the classroom and sat at the back again.

Our next teacher, Ms. A, entered the room. She immediately took out her class record and announced that we would have a recitation. Anyone who failed to answer correctly would remain standing until the end of class.

She called us according to the alphabetical order of our surnames. Only Lyn and I were able to answer her questions.

Because my standing classmates blocked her view of me at the back, Ms. A called me to the front and told me to sit beside Lyn.

Our classmates teased us as I took the seat beside her. Lyn simply gave me another beautiful smile.

I did not enjoy being around other people. I preferred being alone and had no interest in making friends because I knew I would not remain in that classroom for long.

By the final period, our mathematics class, I was sitting at the back again.

Our teacher asked several questions during his lecture. Some of my classmates tried to answer, but none of them got the answers right. Eventually, no one dared to raise a hand.

The teacher scanned the room and called on me because I was sitting alone in the corner. When I answered correctly, my classmates—including Lyn—murmured in amazement.

He continued asking questions, but no one else attempted to answer. Whenever he called on me, I always gave him the correct answer.

When the final period ended, Lyn waited for me by the classroom door. She asked where I lived, and when I told her my address, she said she lived nearby.

She invited me to travel home with her. When our classmates saw us together, they began teasing us again. I ignored them, but Lyn seemed to enjoy it.

We boarded a bus going home. Lyn initially sat near the driver, while I chose a seat in the middle row. She turned and glared at me before standing, walking toward me, and sitting beside me.

It would take us an hour to reach our destination. During the first few minutes of the journey, Lyn asked me many questions about myself. I kept my answers short until she eventually stopped asking.

A moment later, her head gently fell onto my shoulder. She had fallen asleep.

I did not wake her. I simply looked at her as the scent of her hair reached me. It smelled like blooming flowers. At that moment, I felt something I could not explain.

Eventually, we arrived at our destination. Lyn lived in a neighborhood just across the street from mine.

The next morning, Mom shouted at me again to wake me up. This time, however, I refused to go to school.

“I already attended yesterday. I’ll go back after two weeks,” I told her.

She scolded me again, but she could no longer persuade me to change my mind.

Two weeks passed, and the day of our periodical examinations finally arrived.

All my classmates were already inside when I entered the classroom. The moment they saw me standing by the door, they shouted and began teasing me again.

“Hey, Jack, the missing boy!”

“Where have you been? Lyn already missed you,” one of them said.

At first, I ignored them. As they continued teasing me, I looked toward the back of the classroom for a vacant seat. However, the classmate sitting beside Lyn immediately ran toward it, deliberately leaving the seat next to her empty.

With nowhere else to sit, I had no choice but to take the seat beside Lyn. This time, she lowered her head and refused to look at me.

Our classmates continued teasing us until our first-period teacher arrived and began handing out the examination papers.

Our classes passed one by one. Ms. A scolded me for always being absent, while our mathematics teacher encouraged me to attend school regularly.

“It would be a waste if you stopped studying,” he told me. “Besides, I can’t rely on your classmates whenever I ask a question.”

I gave him a slight smile before he left.

I allowed my classmates to leave first and remained inside the classroom for a few minutes. When I finally walked down the stairs, I found Lyn standing there, waiting for me.

“What were you doing in the classroom?” she asked. “I’ve been waiting here for almost half an hour. Let’s go home together.”

As we walked toward the bus station, Lyn moved closer and handed me a red envelope.

“There’s a letter inside, but don’t read it yet,” she said.

Once we were on the bus, Lyn turned to me.

“How was the exam?” she asked.

“It was a little difficult,” I answered, even though I knew I had answered every question correctly.

“Why didn’t you attend school for another two weeks?”

I simply shrugged and remained silent.

“I waited for you to come to class every day,” she added.

After a brief pause, she asked, “Do you have a phone number? Message me whenever you can’t attend class so we can meet somewhere on my way home.”

“No. I don’t even have a phone,” I answered.

Poverty.

It was one of the reasons I rarely attended school. The other was that I was intelligent enough to learn without attending classes every day. We barely had enough money for our daily meals, and regularly paying the bus fare would cost us too much.

“Then how about we meet at the convenience store on the corner of our neighborhood?” Lyn suggested. “We can meet there around the time our bus usually arrives.”

“That’s fine with me,” I answered without thinking carefully about it.

A happy smile appeared on her face. She then invited me to have something to drink with her at the convenience store before we went home.

“I have a lot of things to do at home,” I told her.

The truth was that I simply did not have enough money.

We parted ways when we arrived at the bus stop. Lyn waved at me and shouted, “See you tomorrow!”

The next day, I did not attend school. I casually lay on our sleeping mat until I remembered the red envelope Lyn had given me.

When I opened it, something fell out.

It was a picture of me looking out the classroom window. When I turned it over, I found a letter written on the back.

Hi, Jack,

I’m sorry I took a picture of you without your permission. I’ve always watched you ever since you started coming to school again.

You looked so peaceful while quietly staring out the window, so I decided to take this picture. Whenever you don’t attend school, I find myself looking at it.

I’m also amazed by how intelligent you are. I want to know more about you and become closer to you.

It’s true that I missed you. I was always waiting and looking for you whenever you were absent.

I hope we can be friends.

-Lyn

That day, I waited for Lyn at the convenience store, just as we had promised.

As the days passed, we grew closer until I eventually began to like her. Because of Lyn, I became more open to other people. She was the one who drew me out of my own world and helped me learn how to get along with others.

Although I still rarely attended school, I finally had friends there.

One day, Lyn and I decided to get off a few stops before our neighborhood and walk around the park.

As we walked, Lyn suddenly turned to me.

“Jack, do you like me?”

I remained silent, unable to answer her right away.

“Why can’t you answer?” she asked. “Do you like someone else?”

“No, I don’t like anyone else,” I answered. “And yes, I like you, Lyn. Before I met you, I thought I could never be with someone. But because of you, I realized that I don’t want to remain alone.”

Lyn suddenly hugged me and began to cry.

“I thought you would never like me,” she said. “I’ve liked you for a long time.”

I placed my hand on her back and gently patted her. She then looked at me and smiled once again.

Holding my hand, she said, “I hope we can always be together.”

.