A beam of light traversed the dusty atmosphere. It seemed to light up a dark space, a sombre atmosphere.

A murder happened in this room, a murder of first degree, an utterly vile act, accomplished only by the most heartless members of society. A caste so wicked, they are shunned from the rest of society, an ever-present cycle that only perpetuates the act of murder within a community.

This was Adam's room.

A single size bed, right next to a window covered with dirty rickety blinds. Adjacent to the bed was a modest desk designed purely for utilitarian purposes, it's capacity for storing seemingly endless documents widely apparent. A white closet facing the window, adjacent to the door.

Little would a visitor know that the drawer second from the bottom on the desk held a score of bloody armbands, trophies of felled opponents. Or that the white closet next to the door had quite recently bathed in the blood of a mother.

Perhaps, even if they knew, they would still be shocked to know that the brown haired youth currently sleeping in the bed was the one which carried out all of these unspeakable acts.

It was still early in the morning. The blinds were within Adams home, dust was beginning to form on the surfaces of the furniture.

The peaceful atmosphere was broken by an alarm clock, the typical alarm tone rang out from Adams phone on his desk.

He slowly stumbled out of bed and turned the alarm off.

He took a cold shower on the morning, humming a moody tune to while washing his body in the cold water running down. Adam cupped his hand while in the shower, a pool of water slowly filled up within his hands.

No, it wasn't a pool of water, it was made of blood. Adam could feel it, the hot blood running down his back and matting his hair. Embracing him. The curtains of the shower were not curtains anymore, but an endless black expanse. Then, he felt a deep voice speak out from behind him, a voice he hadn't heard in years, one which he never thought to hear again.

His father.

"Are you happy with this, son?" He softly stated from behind him, it sounded exactly as he remembered.

Adam was in shock, and yet, before he knew it, the black expanse had disappeared. Plain plastic curtains surrounded him, cold water was running down his body, his hand were clasped together holding a pool of water.

His body temperature was still quite cold, no indication that he had ever made contact with the hot blood.

In fact the only difference was the fact that cold sweat was also being washed from his back at this moment.

----

He put on a dotted white shirt tucked inside black pants and black leather shoes. He combed his hair backwards and to the left. He went downstairs and prepared a simple breakfast of some honeyed gruel and a glass of orange juice. He sat down on the couch and ate in silence.

He finished his breakfast and washed the dishes, he put on his jacket and went to work.

The street outside of his house looked the same as always, except that it was a Saturday. Instead of seeing middle-aged men going to work he saw a few people walking their dogs.

The route he took this time was the same as when he headed to school since he was headed towards the train station. There weren't that many people on the streets and the sun shone overhead in the sky, thus making for quite a beautiful day.

Adam felt it to be a very nice day today, the illusion in the shower shoved to the back of his mind. He quite enjoyed the peaceful walk to the train station since it was full of trees and cast a pleasant shade over the footpath. It was summer since the grass was verdant and the trees seemed full of vitality.

It was a very nice escape from the recent events that had happened. Now that he thought about it, the few events in his life were critical as to how his life would play out in the future.

Killing his mother...

Murdering a vigilante...

Being approached by Commander Wesley...

Coming face to face with his 'collection'...

Sorry, 'their' collection.

Adam had already reached the train station and boarded a carriage by that point. The carriage was completely empty, just as that time a bit over a week ago. The walls were completely vandalised. The correct term was vandalism and not graffiti since the majority of it was just tagging.

Adam just sat by the corner of the carriage and looked outside the window, exactly like that time.

The train ride this time was quite calm, nothing strange was happening like suddenly feeling nauseous and falling unconscious.

Adam was starting to feel a bit bored until a notification sounded out from his phone. Adam dug inside the pocket in his jacket to look for his phone.

Feeling an unfamiliar object, Adam pulled it out in curiosity. It was a smooth brown envelope. The envelope that Commander Wesley gave to him last night.

The sealed border easily came undone and revealed the contents inside. A stack of hundred dollar notes.

From looking at it's thickness, there were at least a couple thousand dollars in there.

Adam picked up his phone and dialled the number of his boss, dismissing the notification that one of his webnovels had updated.

"Hey, Mark, yeah, I just wanted to call real quick to say that I'm not coming to work anymore, bye."

Ignoring the shouting voice in the speaker of his phone, Adam ended the call without the slightest hesitation. His boss wasn't an asshole. But he was his boss and Adam worked as a junior office worker on the weekends, no junior office would ever like their boss.

Before he knew it, Adam had arrived at Town Hall Station. By reflex, Adam left the station within minutes, but he realised he didn't have to go work anymore.

Adam just sort of stood there in front of the train station, wondering what to do when a group of commuters pushed him out of the way since he was standing in front of the exit.

Adam was aware that they were behind him, except that his mind didn't register that he should have probably moved out of the way. He had a mind blank.

Being shoved out of his reverie, Adam decided to look around the city if there was anything he should get.

As Adam strolled through the city, he came across a poster on the wall, it was an advertisement for a Men in Black film. The actors were stylishly dressed fully in black and white.

Then, Adam decided to go buy some clothes.

---

Inside a store, he got the closest items he could think of to the men in the poster and went to try them on. Adam didn't exactly know how to wear a suit so he just copied how the men dressed in the poster and made the same pose in front of the changing room mirror.

A black suit over a plain white shirt and black tie. Polished black leather shoes and black pants. It didn't look half-bad to Adam. He decided to keep the clothes on and take them to the checkout straight away instead of packing them away and buying them normally since he rather liked this new look.

As soon as Adam arrived in the checkout he garnered the attention of the bored salesman immediately. As soon as the salesman laid his eyes on Adam a strange expression could be seen on his face.

"Hello, I was wondering if I could buy these items please?" Adam asked with the most posh accent he could think would befit the clothes he was wearing right now.

The salesman didn't answer immediately and kept looking at Adam with the same strange expression, then, after a while, he coughed lightly and awkwardly informed something to Adam.

"Sir... Maybe you should try tucking your shirt in?" The salesman pointed to the ends of the shirt which were sticking out from under the black suit.

After a moment of helping Adam put on the suit properly, the salesman also noticed that Adam wasn't wearing a belt.

"Sir, if you come this way I can show you a selection of belts that would go very well with your suit."

Once everything was done and finished, the salesman charged Adam a sum of $1,600 dollars for all the items. Then Adam bid farewell to the salesman with a sombre expression since he had literally gotten helped into putting his clothes on.

"Yes, my condolences sir."

Adam turned around with a quizzical expression at the salesman's word choice.

"Um... Sir, aren't you going to a funeral in this attire?" The salesman asked in an awkward tone.

...

...

Adam turned around and left this shop, he made a mental note to never go nearby this store in the future.

When Adam left, the salesman sighed and sat back down at the checkout, he slowly shook his head at the strangeness of his latest client.

By this point Adam was back to wandering the city with his new look, many people looked at him with eyes that seemed to pity him. With Adams attire combined with the depressed look of his resting face, he truly looked as if he were attending the funeral of his greatest friend.

Shrugging it off, Adam continued around his tour of the city, when he saw another poster. This one was a Chinese martial arts movie, a Wuxia film. It featured a young Chinese man dressed in Daoist robes exchanging blows with another young Chinese man dressed in a Tang suit.

It seemed like a fun film, so Adam entered the theatre in which it was being featured in.

Inside the cinema were hardly any people, it would be a bit of a stretch to say a dozen people were in the audience seating watching the movie. The film started off with a street fight between a group of triad thugs and the main character, needless to say, he was beaten miserably.

Then the main character ran across an old man collecting rubbish in the street, from this old man the young main character learnt martial arts.

When the movements were demonstrated by the old man, Adam felt a familiarity with the way the old man moved, the doctrine behind the movements were the exact same as for Shadow footwork. Adam could see whenever the old man struck that he drew the force from his core and stabilised the force within the blow with his stance.

This old man wasn't an actor, he was an expert.

Throughout the rest of the movie the details of the plot all felt blurred out to Adam, all he could focus on was the movements of the martial artists. The refinement of their techniques was clearly apparent to Adam, even when conveyed through a screen rather than face to face.

Adam exited the theatre still in a daze.

All he could see was the beauty of the movements of the old man. Whenever he advanced it seemed as if his body was in perfect harmony, moving synonymously with his palm strike. Whenever he parried a blow, it seemed as if he used a tenth of his strength to redirect a blow infinitely heavier.

All Adam could think of was the martial arts of the old man.

If he knew how to move his body this way, wouldn't he be unstoppable? He would have caught the vigilantes sword within his palms and killed him effortlessly, no need for running around without an aim.

Then, Adam found himself before a hall, it was wide open and spelt three words on the top.

'Goju-Ryu Karate'