And that was when he found Marshall’s job ad.
Looking for programmer to make a bot. Pay: $25,000.
Twenty-five thousand dollars. The number seemed ridiculously huge. Coupled with the partial scholarship, it would easily cover Adi’s education. With a trembling hand, Riki clicked on the job ad.
The truth was, Riki would absolutely do anything for Adi. And so when he met up with Marshall in person, and when Marshall told him more details about the sort of bot he needed, Riki knew it was a malicious bot. A scalping bot, designed to scam the NFT market by driving Marshall’s NFT prices up artificially while driving down the prices of other NFTs. It went against every fiber in Riki’s soul, but there was nothing he wouldn’t have done for Adi. And so he shook Marshall’s hand, feeling like he was giving a piece of himself to the devil, and he started working on building Marshall’s bot.
When the bot was done, Riki sent it to Marshall and received a payment of one thousand dollars. One thousand dollars was a lot of money, but it sure as hell wasn’t twenty-five thousand dollars. It wouldn’t even pay for Adi’s airfare to SFO. When Riki demanded the rest of the money he was owed, Marshall laughed and said, “You should count yourself lucky that I’m even paying you for such a simple job. This is the kind of thing that any shitty programmer on Fiverr would do for ten bucks. Now, stop harassing me or I’ll inform the company you work for that you just created a scalping bot. Let’s see if they’ll want to renew your work visa then.”
And that was that. Riki couldn’t believe how stupid he’d been. There was no contract agreement between him and Marshall, of course there wasn’t; neither one wanted to have such a thing on record. But why hadn’t Riki insisted on a down payment, at least? He’d just been so desperate, so ready to grasp at absolutely anything. And now he’d not only been swindled, he’d been swindled over a completely unethical program that was going to scam many people out of money. Fury and anguish took over Riki. Why were their lives so goddamn hard? He’d worked himself to the bone at school, and now at his job, and still he was somehow failing his family. Meanwhile, men like Marshall did whatever the hell they wanted without any consequences.
Well, no more. Riki looked up Marshall’s address and waited outside his house one evening. When he saw Marshall’s car leave the driveway, he followed. Marshall stopped at a swanky restaurant and tossed his car key at the valet while Riki quickly found street parking. He hurried inside the restaurant and found Marshall talking to the hostess.
“Marshall.”
Marshall turned, smiling, but his smile froze when he saw that it was Riki. Riki saw three lines of scratches down Marshall’s cheek.
“What the—” The rest of his words were interrupted by Riki’s fist crunching into Marshall’s face. The hostess screamed. Glasses stopped clinking; conversations halted in mid-sentence. And it dawned on Riki what a horribly stupid thing he’d just done. Horror flooded him and he ran outside. Someone shouted at him to stop but he ran down the block, hopped into his car, and floored the gas.
He sped all the way home, his breath coming in and out in little gasps. Back at his apartment, he hid in bed like a little kid and waited for the cops to arrive. Because there was no way in hell someone like Marshall would let this go. Riki squeezed his eyes shut and willed himself to disappear.
But the night passed, and no cops came by to arrest him. In the morning, Riki went to work and nobody looked at him funny. They all went about their business normally. Riki wondered if he’d dreamt the whole thing up. But no, his knuckles were still bruised; working the keyboard was painful. Then the next day, he read about Marshall’s death in the news. Marshall had died on the very same night that Riki had hit him. Had he damaged Marshall’s brain, leading to his death? Had he murdered a man?
And that was why he had to go to Vera’s teahouse. Because Riki thought that things had been bad before, but murder . . . he wouldn’t be able to live with himself if he found out that he’d killed another human being, no matter how accidental it was.
* * *
• • •
Vera regards Riki for a long time after he’s done talking. Riki’s insides are churning crazily, but in a strange way, he feels better after spilling everything.
When she finally speaks, she says, “Well, now we know your punch is not as strong as you think.”
Okay, Riki wasn’t sure what Vera would say, but it was definitely not this. “Huh?”
“Your punch didn’t kill him. It was pigeon, remember?”
“Oh, right.” A shrill, nervous laugh escapes him. “Yeah. You have no idea how relieved I was when I heard that. This whole time, I was wondering if I was a murderer . . .” His voice cracks and he has to stop to blink away the tears.
“Oh, if I know earlier, I would have told you, you obviously don’t have enough upper-body strength to kill a man with one punch.” Vera reaches out and pinches Riki’s bicep. “See? Too soft. You should do more muscle training.”
Riki laughs through his tears. “You’re right, Vera.”
Vera pats his shoulder. “Yes, you will learn that I often am. Hmm, okay, so you are not killer.” She seems somewhat disappointed by this. Riki wipes at his eyes as Vera takes out a notebook from her trolley bag and opens it up, licking her finger and flipping through the pages. “Ah, here is your suspect page.” She takes out a pen and crosses out his name. “Oh no, that leaves Julia and Oliver. Oh, but I like Julia very much. And Oliver is so sad, he is like sad teddy bear. I would feel very bad if I have to send him to prison.”
“But you would’ve been okay if it was me?” Riki says, finding this both horrifying and yet hilarious at the same time.
Vera snaps her notebook shut. “Aiya, asking such silly question. Of course not. I care about all four of you. It’s too bad that one of you is Marshall killer, but oh well. We won’t dwell on such inauspicious things. Now, since you are not killer, we shall have a picnic. Help me unload this.”
Riki does as he’s told, bending down to take out various Tupperwares from Vera’s trolley. There is an astounding amount of food. “So you brought all this food here, but you would’ve let it all go to waste if it turns out I did kill Marshall?”
Vera sighs as she shakes out a picnic blanket. “Aiya, of course not. I invite Sana. She and I would have eaten all this food ourselves if it turn out you are killer. You would be in a police car, I expect.”
“Sana?” Riki’s heart starts hammering at the mention of her.
“Yes, oh, there she is!” Vera waves madly at a figure in the distance. Cupping her hands around her mouth, she hollers, “Sanaaa! Over heeeere!” The figure waves back, but Vera continues shouting.