"You are one smart girl, aren't you, Max? You knew it was me sending the messages, most probably from the very first one, right?"
The voice is warm, carrying a smile. Still, despite that, I feel a chill, something that is inconsistent with the sun still hanging above, and the wind softly carrying the heat around.
From the middle of the rooftop, I look at Tyne, then at the phone he is holding up in his hand. That is Emmie's phone, but without the owner herself.
I take a deep breath, and focus on Tyne, on the layer beyond the surface, and I touch his mind.
'Little bitch, thinking yourself smart, huh? Just you wait, I will make you pay. You will fall into my hands and I will mold you into my personal little bitch.'
Anger? While that is what Tyne is feeling, his thoughts can't stir that in me. His thoughts actually stir nothing in me. I'm too focused to let anything superfluous distract me.
Still, I take half a step back. I have to show my uneasiness, the fear I'm hiding. Only then will the predator be happy, and when he is happy, he will lose his alertness to complacency, and he will give me more space to wiggle my way toward survival.
I take another breath, and make it seem like it hitches. And indeed, my behavior makes Tyne's grin grow. He looks around.
"You asked me here because of the cameras around, right?"
I gulp my saliva, much to Tyne's joy as he continues with a pretentious headshake.
"You are still too green, and you used to be too much of a good student. That is why you don't know that not all the cameras in the school are in working condition, and unfortunately among them are the cameras on the rooftop. So it is just you and I here, with no one else to notice whatever may happen here."
I show fear on my face, and I step back. Tyne smiles like a cat, and predatorily walks toward me. With each step of his, I back off. My voice trembles but I manage to articulate the most important question in my head:
"Where is Emmie!?"
Tyne raises his eyebrows, relaxed, smug to the point of being casual about letting out his inner beast out here in the open.
"Oh? Emmie?"
"What did you do to her? Where is she?"
He gives me a meaningful smile, but I don't need his answers, because I got them myself. I show the anxiety he is waiting for me to feel from his wordless oppression, but in his mind, I see Emmie, unconscious, but safe and sound, at the back of the lab where the message has been calling me.
I look back at the approaching edge of the rooftop before looking at Tyne once again.
"Prof– Professor, please, tell me what you did to Emmie. She admires you so much, you didn't hurt her, right?"
My stutter, my stuffy chest, my warp face like I'm about to start tearing up. I show everything that can let the chemistry teacher feel superior, smug.
His smile deepens, but he still doesn't answer me.
"How did you know, Max? Tell the teacher how you knew."
My heart squeezes in my chest, then relaxes. I have to make more effort than before not to show how relieved I am. I saw in Tyne's mind that he only concocted a drug under the guise of showing Emmie an interesting experiment, and he used the fumes to knock her out.
That's good! That's great!
My legs almost give out below me. It takes Tyne repeating his question for me to process it. Fortunately, he is too happy thinking that the fear of him and the situation is getting rooted too deep in me, thus making me lose my strength.
"Max~ Tell me how you knew."
"Knew what, professor Tyne?"
His smile deepened with a feeling of complicity.
"You know what I'm talking about, honey. My computer was moved in my office while I was talking to Emmie just earlier, and you didn't wipe off your traces well enough."
"I don't know what you are talking about, professor Tyne."
I continue to back off, but the distance between us is not growing. If anything, it is shortening little by little, like a process that is supposed to be torturous. My heart pounds inside my chest.
"You know, Max, even your friend got suspicious of your behavior around me. I didn't quite notice that soon enough, but your friend seems to think that you have been feeling uncomfortable around me, as if I am some sort of monster. So tell me, when did you notice anything?"
Finally I know, and I see the memory in his mind, from right before he ended the conversation with Emmie earlier. Emmie unfortunately wondered why I have been feeling uncomfortable around our dear chemistry teacher who is so well liked by everyone, and she wondered why I said nothing to her.
That got Tyne alert and curious. That combined with the laptop I didn't adjust the screen of well enough into the angle from before I used it tipped him off, and he called Emmie back after a simple check of his hidden server and the activities there.
Indeed, I failed to wipe off everything in my haste, and that derailed my plan, and put Emmie in danger. But I have no time to beat myself for that or even feel sorry.
"Max~"
I look back at the edge of the rooftop close at hand, and suppress the shudder from the way he is calling me. I take a deep breath, and show the face of someone who gathered her courage to confront her fear.
"Professor Tyne, what were you afraid people would notice? That a student of your tutoring class committed suicide before? That some girl who you tutored before dropped out, or even moved out of the city? Or even that you mostly tutor girls, and take the most attractive ones as your confidants, like simple friends, but who you are too close to? Is that what you are asking, professor?"
Tyne gives me a deep look, then nods.
"So that is it. You investigated me."
"Yes, I did. When Emmie was happy for your invitation to the tutoring class, I asked her about it, and the innocuous details spooked me, so I looked into them."