Conan: I'm really not the mastermind behind the scenes

"Wow..."

The heavy and continuous sound of rain made the man lying on the bed open his eyes.

This is an old apartment located by the river. The interior is dim, and the worn-out furniture and leaky doors and windows are well worth its low rent.

The man on the bed seemed to be still in a half-asleep state. He subconsciously wiped his forehead and touched the splashing raindrops. The cool feeling made him completely awake. He supported his body and struggled to sit up from the bed.

The surroundings were so cold that he shivered.

There was no heating or air conditioning in the cheap house, and even the quilt used to keep warm was only a thin one.

Timothy Hunter turned his head to look at the window, his thin face reflected in the glass. Seeing the windowsill splashed with rain, he reached out to grab the remote control there.

[“No, how could I do that?! You’re crazy!”]

"..."

He paused with his outstretched hand, then ignored the voice in his ear as if nothing had happened and picked up the remote control.

Before he could withdraw his hand, he suddenly felt his fingertips touching something.

Hunter looked there again and saw a moth sitting on the windowsill, its antennae trembling faintly.

……

The TV lit up, becoming the only light in the room.

Hunter sat on the edge of the bed, took a clean cloth, and carefully wiped the surface of a photo frame while listening to the news report.

"Another attack occurred in Beihua Town this morning. Fortunately, it was only a small explosion and no one was killed. Only a high school girl was injured and is currently being treated in the hospital."

The wiping action stopped and Hunter looked at the screen.

On the screen, the host and the invited expert sat on either side of the podium. After explaining the situation, the host earnestly asked the expert:
"Although the police have not yet disclosed the details of the crime, everyone believes that it is very likely that the criminals in the previous cases have committed crimes again. What do you think about this?"

The expert next to him said, "In my experience, criminals who use bombs to commit crimes are likely to escalate their crimes because they are more skilled in bomb making and have a better understanding of the power of bombs. In addition, they feel the excitement of repeatedly injuring people, so they tend to cause more casualties in the next attack."

"This time the bomb was placed in a trash can outside the company. Plus, today is Sunday, so most people are not at work..."

"So you think it's not the same person, but someone else might have copied the crime?" the host asked.

"No, I'm not sure yet..."

The two chatted about these random things, and the topic quickly jumped to whether the bomber was a psychopath, and they never mentioned what happened to the injured girl.

Hunter listened for a while with a frown on his face, and then lost his patience. He switched to a channel that was also broadcasting related news and picked up his phone, but he glanced at the heavy rain outside the window and hesitated.

After a few seconds, he sighed weakly and put the phone back.

Hunter put down the cloth and planned to put the photo frame back to its original place after wiping it, but when his hand was in the air, he suddenly shook again. A sharp pain exploded in his brain and his eyes suddenly went black.

His eyes widened, his body stiffened, and he tightly grasped the photo frame. He took several trembling breaths, as if he had used up all his strength to barely stabilize his body and not fall down.

Hunter gradually calmed down and placed the photo frame safely back on the table.

In the photo, he is holding his wife and sister, standing under the blue sky and sunshine, smiling at the camera.

[“Go ahead. Don’t worry about me, just do what you want to do! No matter what the future holds, I will support you!”]

"It's almost time..."

Hunter withdrew his gaze from the photo of the family of three and murmured softly, with a hint of determination between his brows.

He slowly stood up and picked up a photo and a black chess piece on top of it from the photo frame.

……

How easy is it to make a person fall to the bottom?
How easy is it to completely destroy all the honor of a person?

For Timothy Hunter, Waltz's reporting of him and his stripping of the Silver Star marked the beginning of his downward spiral.

When the verdict came out, he was still quite calm. He returned to the Middle East in this calm state, thinking that others would stand on his side because they should know what kind of person he is.

But he found that the attitude of people around him had changed.

He went to the commander to seek justice, hoping to confront Waltz, but the commander threw him out;

He confessed his innocence to his comrades, but they always looked at him with suspicion. Some even believed what was said in the tabloids, saying that he did not deserve to be called a hero and was just a cold-blooded butcher, and they were unwilling to have any contact with him again.

They said he shot civilians but did not remove him from the battlefield. He also wanted to prove himself with practical actions and worked harder. Then he was isolated and helpless, was hit in the head by a bullet, and left in the most embarrassing way.

However, even though he had retired from the war and would never pick up a gun again, others still did not let him go.

His wife and sister came to the hospital to take care of him, and reporters followed them in, snapping photos of him on the bed. The smiles on their faces were more ferocious than the clowns in horror movies. They tried desperately to protect him, and only after they finally drove them away did he realize that they had been harassed during this period.

Reporters continue to pay attention to him because many people are still "curious" about him. Those strangers, countless strangers who have never met him, pointed out everything about him on the battlefields of the Middle East, in various fields in the United States, and in different corners of the world, trying to peel open every pore of his body and examine it one by one, blaming every loophole.

“Why would you do such a thing?!”

"You are a murderer!"

"You've killed so many people, you're simply a monster!"

"You'd better not let me know where you live, brother, or I'll definitely come looking for you."

They were unwilling to let him go.

Once the stain is on them, they will not believe it no matter how you explain it afterwards.

The nightmare seemed to never end.

……

…and then?

The black chess piece fell from his fingers and landed in the sink where several dirty bowls were thrown.

The crisp sound and the severe pain in his head brought Hunter back to reality.

He tried to hold on to the edge of the pool, barely able to steady himself, the cold wind blew in from the small window in front of him, the window facing the river outside. His hands trembled as he held on to the pool, and he crumpled the photo.

After that, he lost everything.

The cost of the operation and subsequent recuperation required him to use up all his savings. When he used the remaining money to invest, he was defrauded of all his money.

His wife never left him, but the long-term harassment from the reporter caused her to suffer from severe depression, which required medication to control. However, one of the drugs she often used was problematic, and she soon died of an overdose.

His sister's fiancé had made a promise to her, but when he saw that he was caught up in the controversy, he began to back off and quickly abandoned his sister after hooking up with a wealthy Japanese woman. His sister was already exhausted because of their affairs, and after such a stimulus, she chose to commit suicide in the car.

In the end, even he himself was diagnosed with a terminal illness.

It seemed that his life went downhill from the moment he lost the Silver Star until he hit rock bottom.

——No one could save him, and he seemed unable to do anything.

Hunter still had a headache, but he loosened his fingers.

The photo was wrinkled and showed a middle-aged man with fat hair, greasy ears and a plump body. It was Jack Waltz who reported him at that time.

On the TV not far away, in the new channel, another invited expert was talking freely: "According to information revealed by the police, the people Hunter killed were all his former comrades and enemies, so this is not an indiscriminate attack, but a targeted revenge. Please don't panic..."

revenge?

Hunter looked at the enemy in the photo.

Despite his miserable state, he now has a happy family and a successful career, and is even protected by the police.

It was only natural for him to take revenge on them, and no one would notice anything wrong.

The photo trembled between his fingers for a few seconds, then stopped, and Hunter calmly raised the lighter.

Although the perennially drunk idiot landlord didn't like to watch the news, as long as the rent was paid on time, he wouldn't care what he did here. But after a few days, even the most insensitive would remember that he had a strange foreign tenant, and would come to take a look for peace of mind.

So, he had to end everything today.

The lighter spewed out flames, igniting a corner of the photo, and the charred black color quickly spread upwards, completely engulfing the face of the enemy.

There was no relief on Hunter's face. He looked at the photo quietly. When the fire was about to burn his hand, he let go of his hand and let the small flame fall into the pool.

Suddenly, something flashed in the corner of his eye.

He turned his head and saw the moth that had originally landed on the windowsill.

It seemed to sense a bright fire in the room, so it flapped its wings, flew up unsteadily, and tried to fly towards it.

It flew with difficulty, and Hunter had an even harder time seeing it. In just a few seconds, he could no longer see it clearly.

"boom!"

With a gunshot, the window glass in front of him shattered, and a bullet hit him right between the eyebrows.

Timothy Hunter fell backwards, and this time he never got up again.

----

This chapter is killing me... (End of this chapter)