“How did you know?!”

Isabelle was so blanched at this perplexity that she couldn’t stop from instinctively concocting the question.

“You saw it didn’t you! — ”

“Oh, but miss I only observed but the obvious.” He extended his hand forward in the form of a handshake. “Your left handed I presume”

“How did you—”

“Your right hand,” he grabbed Isabelle’s hand without giving her a moment’s warning “Your nails on this hand are surprisingly clean and unblemished, and you lack the ring finger pen callus most everyday people possess on their dominant hand” he gently moved his forefinger across Isabelle’s smooth and delicate hand “It’s almost as if this hand has never really been used to write or work”

He let go and allowed the daunted girl took a few steps back. Edward continued

“The next step from there was observing your posture. When you were talking to me you took the utmost care to be turned at such an angle that would conceal your left side and it got me thinking. Why would a left-handed person go through the trouble of taking out their non-dominant hand for something as trivial as a handshake?”

Isabelle's face turned soft, while Edward’s face hardened to unfretted stone.

“Unless... the person was trying to conceal something in her left hand. And in this case it was the blemishing of your left-hand that was coursing with blood having handled the shard incorrectly and the shard itself. That and the fact that these Nigerian woven-fabric clothing are poor concealers of blood or water of any sort.” He pointed to her back pocket, which was tainted in a rubescent-red hue, the red of which had bled to the into the inner parts of the textile.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

“It was a deduction waiting to happen, all that was needed was a little common sense and the dots all seemed to align themselves impeccably.”

The women fell to her knees, ‘Impossible...’, she thought, that anyone could be capable of such powers of intuition. His deduction was spot on, and there were mistakes in her plan that had now come to bite her back. His way of thinking was way out of her league.

“Looking at the state of the people who got caught up in the rush of leaving this factory we already established that no matter what injury you concurred you would still be alive. However, seeing as though these people have not recovered we can say that although they are still alive they have become incapacitated and will probably stay in that state till the ring of the second bell. In your plan, after stabbing a person, the loss of blood would delusion the man and cause him to faint, at least for a good half day. When he does regain consciousness, the lack of blood to his lower body and brain will disengage him from moving or thinking for whatever remainder of the time. Upon the strike of the second bell his death would then be almost instant. A pragmatic plan I ensure you to ‘thin the herd’, however, very roughly executed my darling, probably because you had only just thought of it”

He knelt down and ripped part of his uniform off. It tore in a screech of cacophony.

“What are you doing? —” Before she could continue Edward clasped her lacerated hand. He wrapped it with the cloth in a temperamental attitude.

“What is this—”

“If we let the hemorrhage of blood continue, you could get an infection. We can't have you dying this early now can we?”

He fastened the last band of cloth in an expertly fashion.

“But after what I did—”

“Well I do need your help after all.”

“Help for what?...” Isabelle had no idea what Edward’s erratic nature could possibly imply.

He helped her up to her feet and replied in a monotonous and almost automatic tone.

“Well to win of course”