Chapter 32

Let bygones be bygones.

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"Isn't that Baron?" He muttered to himself.

While he was staring without the intention of averting his gaze, Baron somehow felt someone was staring at him, thus looking at Berret's direction.

"Oh, hey! Berret, that's you, right? It's me, Baron!"

Despite seeing and knowing Baron, Berret acted like he did not see and know him.

"Hey, that old man's calling you. Do you know him?"

"An acquaintance."

"Heyyyy!"

"I don't think he knows you, Daddy. He is not looking in our direction."

Baron's voice quickly died down upon being completely ignored by Berret.

"You should have at least waved back at him. It's better to make friends, rather than enemies, you know."

Berret sarcastically waved his hand to keep Arthur's mouth shut and the latter did what was intended.

***

Miraculously, through a loose checkpoint, Mr. Ramos got in with the handgun in his bag. For some reason, the security guard did not see the weapon, which should have been visible the moment they opened his bag.

Before continuing towards his destination, Mr. Ramos had a moment of relief, breathing and heaving deeply after going in a rigorous no exhaling instance.

However, the shaking of his hands would not stop and the anxiousness corrupted his mind even more. Knowing that his daughter could get killed at any moment keeps Mr. Ramos fueled by impulse and desire.

With people passing and walking by, Mr. Ramos' phone rang inside his left pocket. He pulled out a flip phone, then answered the device, scared.

"Hello," spoke to his phone placed near his ear. "I'm inside the Mall. Keep your promise after I'm done with what you want!"

"Go to Ellen's clothing store. Go inside the locked changing room and you'll find what you have to do now."

"Huh? I thought I just needed to finish one job and that's it!"

"Hush, Mr. Ramos. You don't get to talk back. Just obey what you've been ordered to do and you'll see another light with your daughter."

Mr. Ramos defeatedly bit his lower lip, suppressing the anger and despise he was holding within.

Due to the foreboding emotions and welling anxiety and fear, Mr. Ramos' blood pressure became high, causing dizziness and aching of his nape. However, despite all of the mixed feelings he was bottling in, Mr. Ramos pushed forward with a single goal in his mind.

It took him three minutes to reach the clothing store and was now inside the supposedly locked fitting room. What he found inside was a large black bag with a note pertaining to the attack.

[We present to you, explosives! Inside, you'll see a map of the Mall, and dotted red spots will be the place where you'll set up and activate the bombs.]

"Bombs?!"

Mr. Ramos impulsively blurted the word but then quickly covered his mouth to erase any suspicion it could raise outside.

"This is ridiculous! Do they expect me to blow up this whole Mall and kill all those... people?"

Suddenly, Mr. Ramos remembered the playful children's smiles, cozy and touchy couples, family bonding, and adults who were enjoying themselves. And he was stuck in a moral dilemma. Should he choose to spare the lives of many and be a reasonable citizen or be a father who would do anything to save his daughter, even if it means sacrificing the lives of many?

"Choose the lesser evil, huh? But it is my daughter whose life is on the line here! I can't do this! Why am I being forced to do this? Because I swindled people? I only did that because my daughter and I needed to survive! This world is so cruel to poor people like us!"

The bottled emotions that Mr. Ramos was holding, keeping inside and preventing from bursting, had finally imploded. Mr. Ramos' tears were unstoppable as he silently sobs inside the fitting room.

The rule of morality— of ethics, is that when you're stuck between two conflicting options, in a dilemma, one should always opt for the lesser evil. In Mr. Ramos' case, the lesser evil between the options is choosing the lives of the many. However, can a loving father who did even the most wicked thing—swindling people, which caused deaths—to support his daughter sacrifice his only child?

Wiping off his tears upon finally arriving at an answer, Mr. Ramos picked himself up from the floor and left the fitting room... with the black bag.

***

The amount of money spent in the arcade could not measure the overwhelming happiness Aralina was feeling.

"You're smiling more this time," Wil mentioned because Aralina could not stop herself from smiling.

Slightly embarrassed, Aralina used the stuffed toy the kid gave her as a prize for helping her cover her mouth, averting her eyes.

"It's because I received a gift from a kid. I've never been good around kids."

"But you approached her pretty casually earlier."

"That's because you were around. Had I been alone, I would have failed to do so."

Wil could have interpreted her words as something but chose to stay ignorant about it.

"About earlier... I noticed when you became silent. The reason for not saying anything about the mother was because it's not really our problem to meddle. We can only teach the kid about what she can do for her mother. As for the mother, there are no words that can get to her if she's keen on doing the same treatment she gives to her child. We'll look bad if we say something to her."

Aralina's reaction earlier was on an impulse. She just could not stand parents neglecting their children.

"Still, we could have at least said something..."

"Not every matter should be meddled with, Aralina."

At the side of Wil's eyes, he caught a familiar face, but someone he was not close to or hadn't had a conversation with. A man standing behind a claw machine, peeking ever so slightly, looking directly in their direction, immediately hid once noticed.

~