“So, can I please be released?” asked Salim with a frown.
“Sure.” said Klancy.
With that command the four detectives surrounding Salim let go.
“Ugh, you could have simply stolen the gun and gave it to your religious team.” mumbled Galtomor.
“I told you. I didn’t do that. What does it take to get a little trust in here?” yelled Salim.
“Tch. You religious folk talk about trust and belief so much because you want to trick others into trusting you, so that you could manipulate them. Using fears of hell and desires of heaven, you make them your slaves. Fareed has you under control, just like he has those worshippers under control. Fareed is so certain and relaxed because he knows his followers wouldn’t rat him out even if they were killed. There is no Hinokaiser. It’s just a myth that is being used to control people.” said Fushichin with a frown.
“We…don’t know for certain do we? Why are you so sure? Why do you believe that Salim is a…killer? I can at least accept if Salim naively gave them a gun if he was asked to. But to go ahead and massacre an entire family like that. I just can’t believe he would do that.” said Juniper with sadness.
“Yeah, I can’t believe it either. Salim is…not that type of person to do that.” said Joey.
Fushichin giggled.
“Your way of seeing everyone is so full of roses huh. Everyone is capable of killing. It’s actually pretty darn easy. It takes a mother a full year to carry a baby in their womb and extreme pain to give birth. It takes ten, twenty years to actually raise a human being. But in a single moment of decisiveness, a person’s life can be taken away. Everyone is capable of that. It doesn’t take a genius to pull a fucking trigger. And certainly, I think Salim is more than capable.” said Fushichin.
“Well…there is one thing I found about the religion of Hinokaiser that may contradict the notion that Salim is capable of killing.” said Hellen.
“What?” asked Fushichin.
“The religion of Hinokaiser strictly prohibits killing. They teach their followers non lethal ways of self defense. And there are lots of sins the practitioner of the Hinokaiser religion must avoid. Such as mustn’t commit theft or murder. That’s what I learned from my research of the Hinokaiser religion.” said Hellen.
“A girl who does homework huh. Your homework on religious doctrines are there I guess, but you didn’t do your homework on human nature.” said Fushichin.
He turned around brightly and spoke “Everyone, I mean, everyone, thinks they're special. If they come to realize that they are not special, a deep desire to become special is born within them. People always bring rules, regulations and disciplines when it comes to judging other people. This person is a criminal because they broke this rule, this person is a sinner because they broke that rule. But when it comes to themselves, they always try to find an exception to the rule, a justification for breaking the very rules they use to judge others. When others commit robbery and thievery, it’s a crime. When I do it, it’s equality, fair share. When others kill people it’s called murder, but when I do it, it’s called justice, lawful punishment. Salim is no exception. It doesn’t matter what the rules say, rules can be interpreted, can be twisted depending on your point of view.
And certainly, every single ruleset and commandments are stupid because rules themselves have no meaning. It’s just words, scribbles, written down on paper. Meanings of words change by the interpreter of said words. Really there is no such thing as a word with meaning. People give meaning to words, to rules, to laws.
And I can’t blame them because if you try to be super shrewd and strictly follow what is written, you might become insane because rules contradict each other.
In the commandments, both distrusting Hinokaiser and killing are prohibited. But what happens if the sinners, the non believers, the wrong idol worshippers gain power and numbers? They would harass, mock the believers. They would bring all sorts of arguments and attempts to prove their belief to be wrong.
Those who believed will soon lose their belief in fear of being outnumbered. Some might even start to trust in the words and actions of non believers, genuinely throwing away their sun religion for good. By not fighting against these non believers, by following the way of pacifism they are willingly contradicting the first rule, the rule of trusting Hinokaiser, they are contradicting the second rule, the rule of not believing in false idols. Sure, they didn’t believe in false idols, they themselves stayed true to Hinokaiser. But by inaction, they allowed non believers to let others stray from the path of the sun god. By following one rule, they allowed more people to break rules and those rule breakers will all go to hell, a fate worse than death. Because through inaction the believer allowed it to happen therefore it’s almost like they broke the one rule they tried to protect.” said Fushichin ponderingly.
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“That’s ridiculous. If I was a religious Hinokaiser worshipper, I wouldn’t use that as an excuse to kill people. How could I?” said Hellen with frustration.
“That’s because it’s you. You’re just like that. If your parents were religious and taught you to be religious, you may follow these silly rules, but you may not change as much as you think. You would still interpret the no killing rule as most important because…you don’t want to hurt others. You care for them and love them. There are verses in the Hinokaiser scriptures saying that Love is the way to Divinity. But there are also verses that say shun the non-believers as they are worse than animals.” said Fushichin with a frown, his eyes directly stabbing into Salim.
“Salim, I don’t hate you because you’re religious. I hate you because of who you are.” said Fushichin with a frown.
“Hmph, doesn’t the religion of Shunyazen say that hatred burns the heart, so be vary?” said Salim with a smirk.
“Yes. We all read scriptures, watch movies, listen to podcasts. Fill our heads with words other people have said. But our understanding never goes deep. It always stays stuck in the head. Hmph, I wanted to be enlightened. To be free from hatred, fear, anger, desires. All that negative energy is sin, not because of some stupid rules some fancy clothed fanatics said but because it’s pain. I can feel that it is pain. But the strangest thing about desiring desirelessness is that desire of desirelessness is nothing but a desire. So, let’s talk about how things are now rather than how things should be. Salim, you piss me off!
The way you act, the way you look at others. That disgusting discriminatory demeaning attitude. Calling people sinners, ridiculing them just because they didn’t obey your shitty religious laws. But really, you are a funny guy. I always thought you were serious but it seems you loved laughing inside while I loved laughing on the outside. According to your religious rules every non believer is a sinner because they contradicted one of the rules, sometimes two maybe even more. You knew we would be mad if you talked about it, so you never did. .
But deep down, you’ve always laughed at us, mocked us because in your eyes we were all sinners. An inferior being compared to you, the loyal servant of Hinokaiser. And since you’re such a loyal follower, it’s okay to kill a few non believers. Afterall, their lives are worse than animals, right?” said Fushichin with a scolding frown towards Salim.
Salim couldn’t help but smirk.
“You always talked too much. I do have to admit, for a false idol worshipper, you have some cheeky tongue.” said Salim tauntingly.
“It doesn’t matter. I don’t care about your psychoanalysis or your eccentric speeches. Salim couldn’t have murdered Layla’s family. He has an alibi now, right? So, it’s okay to trust him?” said Juniper.
“We don’t know. I used to ridicule Fushichin’s mentality of always accusing people of working together. But this crime specifically requires the cooperation of many people. Some have already attempted to create collaborative fake alibis but failed.” said Klancy.
“Yeah. And it’s sad. I didn’t want it to be this way. But the way Salim was acting back then, not even helping, being so distant during investigations and even now… Was being a detective, helping others meant nothing to you?” said Hellen with a roar.
“Of course, it means something. It’s not in the commandments but Hinokaiser doesn’t like slackers. I work hard to get rid of sinners, stop them from creating more harm in this country” said Salim proudly.
“Stop them by killing them, right? Stop them by letting all of them burn in hell for eternity. That’s what your shitty religion believes in right?!” grunted Hellen with tears in her eyes.
“There is no need to cry. You have to wake up to reality and accept the truth that some people are not to be pitied. Sinners all should burn in hell!” said Salim.
“Yeah. You’re saying that not because you believe that your religion is real. But because you want others to burn in hell while you watch from above with a smug grin!” yelled Hellen, tears flooding from her eyes.
Hellen aggressively walked towards him and said “You said you went to the Church of Hinokaiser that evening with your black Sedan, correct? And you also left the Church in that car, riding along the Dawn road?”
Salim paused for a moment and said “Y-yeah. What of it? There is nothing strange about that, right?”
“I looked through the footage of the camera at the intersection that connects Dawn road with dragon road. Your car wasn’t visible there. Starting from 0 am, till the sun rises, your car was not seen on that road!” said Hellen with anger.
Salim’s eyes widened but he quickly shook his head and said “Oh, sorry. I was mistaken. I forgot to tell you that I actually changed roads. I changed my road to Luna road. Luna road and dawn roads meet one another after all.”
“Don’t take me for a fool you asshole! You didn’t use the Luna road. You couldn’t because there was a huge crash at the intersection at 22 pm. The cops, ambulance came and the road wasn’t cleared until 6 am.” cried Hellen.