Just like that, Menzi took his pistol from the drawer and said his goodbyes. I stood next to the bed and watched him until he exited the door. I couldn't dive much into my thoughts about his personality because he was secretive about it, even if I popped my questions. When he left, I spread the bed and arranged everything in order, even though there was not much to put in order. He kept his room neatly arranged. My stomach growled. Definitely, I felt it—I needed to fill it with something solid. Therefore, I went to open the fridge. It was full, from yogurts to ice creams, from beef to bacon, and from water to whiskey. I took the ice cream tin and went to sit on the chair next to the laptop table. I ate the ice cream and liked its strawberry taste, though my saliva neutralized it since my mouth was uncleaned. My mouth was still sour from the alcohol I drank the night before. I didn't have a toothbrush or anything to clean my mouth. All was at home. I continued eating the ice cream without caring. Ever since I started sleepovers from the Hutton bar, it was my first time to be not at my room at around eight in the morning. I knew my friends were going to get worried if they hadn't heard from me.
After eating, I undressed and went straight to the bathroom as Menzi suggested. I opened warm water into the tub and allowed it to be at most half-full. As the tub was filling, I looked around for the soap. To my luck, I saw an unused toothbrush. I took it, tore its pack open, and brushed my teeth. Thereafter, I laid inside the tub, just warming my body. I was thinking about the things I did from the night I met Menzi until that morning. I smiled after realizing how crazy the moments were, though I had limited time with Menzi. Viola was going to be jealous when I was going to tell her I visited Drazen Central and even entered inside the Kaden House. After a long stay in the tub, I stood up and dried myself. I wrapped my body in a white drape, took my clothes and my panties, and threw them into a washing machine. In no time, they clothed me after they dried, and I was back on the bed. The hangover didn't want to sway away from me at once. It was subsiding slowly. I tried to close my eyes, thinking I was going to fall asleep, but nothing happened.
Since I had nothing to do, I was tempted to investigate Menzi to get the answers to my questions about him. I remembered Viola also informed me she didn't trust Menzi, but I disagreed, only to see him carrying a pistol. Despite whatever I saw from Menzi, my instinct didn't push me far that morning. Menzi didn't seem like a man who could hurt women. Maybe his pistol was just for self-protection, since he looked like a man who liked to secure his privacy. However, I went straight to the drawers and opened them, one after the other. My expectation was to see a lot of money as I saw in the car—guns, and bullets—but I saw nothing. Only screwdrivers and some laptop parts were in the drawers. I even looked into his closet and there was nothing useful to help me know him better. After realizing I had checked everything, his laptop was the last option. Possibly, all his documents were inside his laptop, but there was no way I was going to know his password. I sat on the chair and scanned every corner of the room like a thief until at last I realized his bed had some drawers. I smiled as I went to open them as well. With little work, my hands picked the correct drawer, which had two pistols. I held the small shiny silver one and admired it as it was reflecting light from the bulb. It was as portable as a mug of coffee. I never thought a pistol was so light like that, and holding it was something that never clicked in my mind. The other pistol was brownish. It looked quite similar to the shiny one, only that it had a fun-looking shape.
I pulled the papers underneath the pistols to look. The information surprised me. Menzi was a war veteran. He volunteered for the Southern Clash of Drazen, which was a serious civil war between the military and terrorists. It occurred when I was starting my junior year at high school. My foster father also took part in it, but he didn't witness their victory against the terrorists because his leg got injured. He almost died, and his leg ended up amputated. It occurred to me that Menzi was much older than I imagined, far away from my imagination. If he was in that civil war, he was to be at least ten years older than I was. Anyway, I understood the reason he was keeping weapons in his room, but I got confused because I never saw my foster father holding any gun except in his pictures. Whatever, Menzi was still more energetic than my foster father was.
Underneath the papers, there were many other papers, which made me to sit on the bed comfortably to browse all of them. The police once charged Menzi Mabuyani for bank robbery and he served for two years. I wondered why he served for a few years, or maybe it was because he was a month behind from his eighteenth birthday, as the ink on the paper said. Menzi had a brother and a sister. He was the last-born. I continued looking at the papers until I noticed Menzi was thirty-nine years old, for sure, fifteen years older than my age. Another information shocked me again when I read a police report saying Menzi's brother Muzi killed the whole family when Menzi was away in the war. Muzi killed his family, complaining about his father's decision to allow Menzi to go to war. He wanted to go himself, but their father didn't allow him. When Menzi came from the war, he found graves, and his brother was already serving the second year in jail. It seemed Menzi tried to kill his brother in jail, but he failed.
There was a picture of the entire family in those papers. They looked happy. I asked myself what evil spirit could have befallen the Menzi's family. In my conclusion, Menzi was still afraid of his brother. He was always with a pistol to protect himself. I saw why he didn't want to tell me about himself. I put the papers back in order and closed the drawers. Since I had nothing to do, I played the music on the TV and lay on the bed. I also had no phone. Viola was going to get more worried. Worse, the clock was moving slowly for Menzi to come to drive me home. I lay on the bed, thinking about Menzi's past and how it had shaped him into the person he was. I felt sympathy for him as my mind raced with questions. Why did his brother commit such a heinous crime? Was Menzi still in danger from his brother? All the questions I couldn't answer. The music on the TV was soothing, so it drifted me off to sleep.