"Goodness." Sister Agnes gasped while the plump teacher sighed in sadness. His face paled when he saw the state of the body. He immediately looked away before he fainted again.
"Why would the boy do something like this?"
Before anyone could reply to the matron, the three of them noticed two figures walking in their direction. The most eye-catching things about these figures were their shiny outfits and their calculated steps.
"The members of the Law Enforcement Unit are here." Mrs. Walker subtly whispered; the coldness in her eyes deepened, but no one seemed to have noticed it.
"Is this the boy who jumped?" Seeing the body on the ground, the two officers increased their pace and rushed to the scene.
The one who spoke was the younger man with a clean face and sharp brown eyes. He tried to move closer to the body in attempts to examine him, but the older officer beside him used the hilt of his sheathed sword to stop him.
"Have you forgotten everything I told you?"
This man was an entirely different story compared to his youthful companion. He was advanced in years, oozing maturity. Though his hairline was receding, his eyes carried a vigor.
He carried his gray hair with style, slicked back, and his thick mustache rose at the edges.
Hearing his gruff voice, the youthful officer stiffened. With a sheepish smile he took the hand back. "Secure the scene… got it."
He moved around the body to reach the three members of the orphanage standing there. "Please follow me. We must ensure that only our unit members touch the body.
He gestured with his hand to lead the group towards a lawn on the side of the pathway. There were benches in the lawn surrounded by flower bushes and some tall trees.
The balding senior watched the young man leave with the group and shook his head before turning his attention to the body. His arched eyebrows twitched as he looked at the boy's bloody face.
"What a tragedy. You look so young." He talked to the boy as if he were talking to a living person and not a dead body. "Will you tell me what happened to you?"
The younger officer guided everyone to a bench before he started his interrogation. He asked many questions, like:
"Who first found the body?"
"Did anyone touch it before we arrived?"
"Who was the boy?"
"Was there anything off about him for the past couple of days?"
After these questions, he got familiar with the three of them and their roles in the orphanage. Then he moved to more serious questions, such as their whereabouts at the time Torus died.
Mrs. Walker gazed at the young officer with such coldness that even he began to perspire.
"All the teachers were in their respective classes, giving their scheduled lectures."
With a wry smile on his face, the member of the law enforcement unit nodded and turned his attention to the matron. "Did you have a class as well?"
Sister Agnes looked at the man with surprise at the question. She shook her head and said, "I only take lectures when someone from the teaching staff is absent, and every teacher was present today. In the morning, I attended to Father Augustus, and after sending him off at the front gate, I went for a walk around the orphanage.
The young man in the shiny outfit scribbled everything she told him on his pad.
The matron glanced at the pad once before looking away. She continued on, "When I heard the commotion, I was busy in the main hall. By the time I arrived, Mrs. Walker had taken care of the situation as much as she could."
"I worry today's event might scar their lives." While she spoke, her thoughts were focused on Jinn and the extent to which he had been affected by the seizure incident during the awakening.
The officer offered her some condolences before asking, "How was Torus as a student and a child?"
"A menace. He liked to break the rules and skip the classes. You could count his good qualities on one finger." This time Mrs. Walker took the opportunity to speak.
"So, you are saying that you did not like that kid?" With eyes narrowed in suspicion, the officer pointed the back of his fountain pen at the woman.
She recognized that his tone was suggestive and understood the implications of his words, but she replied with the same cold expression. "Mr. Moon was a troubled child but a child nonetheless. Taking your own life is a sin, and I do not wish any of my students to go away like this."
The orange-eyed officer paused; he forced himself to look at Mrs. Walker's face despite how frightening it appeared.
"That should be all for now," he said. He closed up his small notebook and stuffed it into one of his pockets before lowering his voice to a whisper. "I know you all are close to every child who lives in the boundaries of this place, and I cannot fathom what you are going through now— What I am trying to say is that I am sorry for your loss."
After a few more words, he instructed the teachers to stay in their place and returned to the crime scene.
"You talk too much." Without even looking up from the body, the senior officer spoke once the other man was close enough to hear him. "Stay focused."
Without even allowing the man to respond, he raised his head and looked at the opened windows in the roof of the topmost floor. "I am done checking this scene; we need to go up and check there."
The darkness inside the window seemed to twist under his stare, giving off a chilling vibe.
"Did you ask them what is up there, or did you just keep gossiping about how their day went?"
"Ahem," The Junior Law enforcer forced a smile out and said stiffly, "It's an attic, sir; they have guards stationed at the place, waiting for us."
"Hmm." The gray-haired man glanced at the three teachers one by one before walking towards the entrance of the building. 'Was it really just a simple suicide or…'