A few weeks before the sail Sawney asked me to get him some German chocolate. He wasn't a chocolate addict, but he would talk and joke about Super Dickmann's a lot. I have a good idea why; I just don't see the appeal.
I got him those, and myself some Ritter Sport chocolate and snuck it under my bed, thinking of sharing it with the Anja of now for the first time.
It's embarrassing for me to say this, but I've never tried chocolate until I flew to Miskatonic High School and Schmidt convinced me to. In fact, I don't think I knew what chocolate was until then. The first time I saw one of these, I thought it was a bullion cube. I didn't realise how embarrassing it actually was.
But that time had passed. After Schmidt bought me a pile of chocolate candy, I tried them all. The moment would've been phenomenal if he hadn't set a camera to record my reaction, but the point was that I loved the chocolate, so he began buying chocolate to tempt me. 'You know that doesn't work,' I said. So he told Sawney and Utterson about it and improvised a plan to haunt me with chocolate. For how they did it, they put a Ferrero-Rocher in front of my school desk and replaced it every time I put it away. It annoyed me more than tempted me, but the plan worked and I ate the chocolate after two weeks. It was a chocolate-covered brussel sprout.
Though Sawney is turning eighteen in the eighth, he already owns an asset of an advertising agency called The Wilmarth Foundation. In fact, he is next in line if one day her mother retires. I can understand why––at school he won last year's award for the best school project, finished every little schoolwork, and somehow got straight As in his finals. He wasn't perfect, of course, but he is a miracle by itself.
One time he was asked for his secret behind his achievements. 'Secret? I don't think there's a secret. It's just that I do the other way round and not try too hard.'
I notified Sawney through text that I'd bought the chocolate. No reply from Sawney. It was unusual for him, as he would see my message within ten seconds. With this, I shut the phone and took a long, comforting nap. When I woke up, there was one message from Lucius:
We lost. Pierre's pardon is denied. I'm so sorry…
Lucius is Sawney's adoptive brother since his father, who was Sawney's father's co-worker, passed away. Though I'd only talked to him a few times, and he is nowhere as talented as Sawney, his impressions on me were as many as Sawney's. The day before my flight to Magdeburg, Sawney realised he'd forgotten his birthday and gave Lucius an eyepatch for his right eye, whose ball never returned. On the airport I asked him if he wanted anything for his birthday. Picturing a cape behind him, Sawney announced, 'Super Dickmann's' while Lucius smiled and said, 'Nothing.' It made me want to slap both of them with a Bible.
I deleted the notification and sunk back into the bedsheets. It's best if I don't involve myself in the murders again. Yet, I told myself, 'I don't believe me.'
I replied, 'I do. I try to.'
'Trying isn't believing.'
The bedsheets smelt like bergamot.