As my legs moved me away from the mall and was leading me back home, my eyes became more vigilant on my surroundings when some moments ago it didn't pay full attention to it due to my brain being occupied with the PH Supermall and nothing else but it. There were only a few people strolling by pavement, almost none actually if you would ask me the exact number of the persons I noticed. Their number could only be counted by hand. The street lights, despite their declining shine, still illuminated the surface of the street walks I was walking on with their white colour and nothing else but it. Despite the heavy traffic still present on the other side of the road and vehicles occasionally passing by on the side where I was at when I went on walking, there were barely any noise on the surroundings, and my ears could clearly hear the loud footsteps made by my feet. It only seemed to be the sound I could hear and nothing else. The dry, chilling wind blew on my back, tingling my skin and giving me a slightly icy feeling. I didn't wear any much protection for the cold, as I rushed to go to the mall and did not think much about it. Nonetheless, I didn't feel any resentment for not putting on a coat or a jacket since I expected that the low temperatures would receive me when I go out. As I continued walking, my eyes had its own stroll and observed all the things around me. With the prospect of me having fun at the PH Supermall gone, my brain kept on thinking about what kind of amusement I should do instead. I suddenly remembered all the internet cafés dotted around the condominium complex and thought to go there to spend an hour or two to play games and have fun. It has been around almost a month since I last visited an internet café, and it was not to relieve stress or be entertained, but rather for a project I had to pass a couple of weeks before Christmas break. It was good that the Christmas break my classmates and I were all anticipating started early, on the beginning of the second week of December. We were at last free, at least temporarily, from all the stress and fatigue we had to endure for eight hours or even more at the four corners of the classroom, but while most of my classmates spent the vacation travelling to their provinces with their families, I spent it mostly at home, doing nothing, making some small money out of gigs I sold online such as making documents for companies and drawing logos and other art to other clients. It wasn't as high-paying as other jobs both online and in office, but at least it was honest work. And I managed to put my talents into good news. The majority of the money I earned through my freelancing where kept in the bank, while the remaining were kept in my wallet for personal use. It's good to always have money with you wherever you go.

I was already a few metres away from the mall, and while I took notice of a subdivision while I was having my walk. On its metallic, curved arch standing beneath the modest yet small guardhouse with wooden railing serving as a blockade that had to be manually raised, the subdivision's name, Maharlika Subdivision, was engraved on the arch with some welcoming remarks under the name. I haven't fully entered the area and yet I could see some of the interiors of the subdivision. There was only one road leading inside it and there were no other alleyways or streets going to other parts of the village, signifying that the Maharlika Subdivision was only small in terms of size. Nonetheless, the road wad around 5 to 7 metres in width based on my estimation, and there were houses standing on the both sides of the road, most having their own gates. The houses were mostly small townhouses with two to three floors, and some cars owned by the residents were parked on the road itself outside the houses. The guardhouse was dark and empty, and yet its windows and doors were all opened. Blazing with curiosity, I forgot my desire to play at the internet café and decided to walk inside Maharlika Subdivision to inspect it and give the place a look. I went first to the guardhouse, which despite its lack of light hasn't been fully obscured thanks in part to the street lamps installed in the subdivision beside the road and near the guardhouse. From my observation, there were some street lamps standing on both the left and right sides of the subdivision's road, giving off its blinding yellow light coming from its bulbs and brightening Maharlika Subdivision's only passageway. As my head peeped inside the guardhouses through the door, I could see some stuff in the interiors such as four plastic monoblock chairs where I believe the subdivision's guards would sit, a medium-sized wooden table where they could place their belongings, two logbooks placed on the table whose pages were open and whose contents were mainly records of the residents and visitors entering the village, and even some uniforms of the security guards hung on the nails placed near the windows of the guardhouse. I had the thought that the security guards were on a break this holiday season and therefore could not be able to perform their duties today. I checked the time on the phone and saw that it was already 9:16 PM in the evening. The hours were adding, and the night was getting deeper. It was useless to explore the small, uninteresting interiors of the guardhouse since I could already see what was inside of it even without entering or peeping from the door, and therefore I left and walked outside of it. While standing near the guardhouse, my head moved around to see the surroundings and I made an effort to enter the subdivision by raising the railing a bit before letting it down again when I was finally inside the subdivision. Two street lights were standing beside the road near the guardhouse, and the next street lamps were installed, based on my approximation, between the first and second houses of the subdivision after the entrance point. When I was about to walk deeper into the subdivision my nose picked up an awful stench that made me stop. It was a stench, a putrid odour that was hard to repel as if there were a group of rats living on the dirty corners of the sewage were just around the corner, yet I did not hear any squeaks or any other mouse sound in my surroundings. The muscles on my throat were on a gagging reflex, and it made me belch repeatedly. I did almost vomit for a few seconds, and I would have to grab the collar of my t-shirt just to prevent the smell from getting into my nostrils. I couldn't see anyone whom I could report about the unpleasant smell. The road was empty of people, and many of the houses inside were all closed and only a few retained their lights on, with many already seemed asleep. I couldn't understand what was the smell about or where it was coming from. The winds were strong enough to circulate the odour around, making it harder to trace the source. I grabbed my smartphone and turned on its lights on the back of it beside the camera to locate the possible source of the stench. I looked first at the guardhouse then walked back to it, but I couldn't see anything that would cause such bad air. It was like the smell of rotting meat, a smell of sewage water mixed with garbage. It was difficult to make an accurate description of the smell. It just smelt very bad. That was all that matters. When I went out the guardhouse again, I pointed my smartphone's light on the side of the street lamp on the left side of the road that did not receive any of its lamp as I believed the smell was there the strongest, and I saw one horrific sight. Something that took me by surprise and raised all the hairs of my skin. I was frozen by what I saw, by what the light from my phone revealed to me. On the outside, I seemed calm, but my eyes were dilating larger than it would and breathing became difficult for me to do. The cold wind that constantly passed through only chilled down my spine and reinforced the stone-like feeling I had on my insides. I gasped upon witnessing the scene for seconds before I tried to regain my breath again. My eyes witnessed the corpse of a woman, with her skin marble-white and her eyes still dilated in a wide manner, signifying shock when she met her untimely death. I examined the body further, and saw her beige dress drenched in blood, with the surface where she was lying also had the dark-red bodily fluid in them. I walked close to the woman's body and inspected it. This was my first time to see a victim of murder, but this was not my first time to try and solve a mystery. I was and still am an amateur detective. Aside from my usual gigs of graphic design and data entry, I solved mysteries and unsolved cases on the side, usually small ones and those found on the web. I had some experiences dealing with crime, but not of this kind. I would frequently solve cases of fraud and robbery. There used to be an incident where in I helped my neighbour track the scam artist who took almost a million pesos' worth of money from it through a pyramiding scam and I posed as a potential investor to track him down with the help of the police of course. It was good work and also a fun one, and my neighbour paid me around ten grand for my services and also her trust. Until now I would talk to her when we would meet on the building and she would sometimes invite me for a dinner, which I would end up accepting. This case, however, was a different one indeed. However, I saw no one who could help me, and therefore the responsibility of informing the authorities about the crime was all up to me.

Before I made contact with the police, I approached the corpse a bit more, with my light from my smartphone still on, pointing its light on the poor woman's body, and made a thorough examination of the victim. The woman was around 20-25 years old, with a mostly fair complexion. She had brown eyes, a slightly pointed nose, thin lips, long, black hair, and also thin eyebrows and eyelids. The woman had a slim body type, and had an almost similar height as me, being 5'7" to 5'9" tall. Even if my hands were shaking due to what I had discovered, I still continued to press my two fingers on the part of her neck under her head to check her pulse, but I couldn't feel any heartbeats. She was already dead. While the dress she wore were all tainted with blood, there were around three spots were blood concentration was at its highest. I saw these spots in her chest, in her left elbow, and in her stomach. I could suggest that it was the wound on the chest that killed her. I could also see that the wounds inflicted upon her were not from a gun, but from a knife, as I could clearly see the wound and the tear it created on the dress. When my investigation was done, I left the body alone and turned off the light of my phone before going to the contacts and then calling the emergency number. I still stood near the body, with my heart palpitating and with my muscles shivering. I couldn't explain the sensations I was feeling on that night. It was not just an eerie feeling, but also a terrible and horrifying one. The phone kept on ringing, and my head was moving around to see if there was someone watching me, to see if there were witnesses of me seeing the body, or much worse, if the murderer was still at-large and could have seen me noticing the corpse.

"Hello, this is 911. How can I help you?" The phone operator said after picking up the line. I felt slightly relieved when they had answered the call, but I still kept on shaking on the inside.

"He-he-hello?" I responded in a stuttering way. "I-I-I have an emergency to report."

"Yes what is it sir?" The operator, who seemed to be a female guessing from her soft, medium-pitched voice, calmly asked.

"Th-th-there is a murder in where I am right now." I quickly said straight to the point without beating around the bush.

"A murder?" The operator asked in a raise tone, yet still in a calm manner. "What do you mean, sir?"

"I-I saw a dead body when I passed by here and when I looked at it more I saw wounds in her body. T-that's how I discovered that she was murdered." I briefly narrated to the operator, with the stutters becoming less frequent but with noticeable shrills in my speech.

"Alright. Sir, please give me your location." The operator requested.

"Okay. I'm here standing in the guardhouse of the Maharlika Subdivision here in Barangay San Idelfonso, Sta. Cruz City." I replied on the call. "Please send the authorities quick ma'am. I believe that the woman was murdered just half an hour ago. The wounds in the body were still fresh and while there was bad odour in the body, it still wasn't so..." I added demandingly.

"Sorry sir but you would have to wait for a while." The operator interrupted. "Based from the information I gathered, most of the authorities posted in your barangay are off duty at this hour as they are having a day off. I would have to communicate with other police departments around the city as well as in nearby cities. Please stand by there for a while."

"But how long would I have to wait for that?" I asked in a worried state.

"It would take around 15 to 30 minutes before the police arrives in your area." The operator said. "But don't worry sir I will try to contact the authorities quickly for them to respond fast." She added, trying to reassure so.

"I am hoping for that." I responded. "Thank you." I said before I hung up the call.

While I felt relief that the authorities would quickly respond to the crime in the subdivision, worry did not leave me at that time, and when I finished my call to the emergency hotline, I turned the light back on before returning to the dead body in order to find some more clues. When I pointed the light on to the corpse, I closed myself to it and crouched a bit more to examine the scene further. It seemed that the murder was committed by surprise, with shock apparent on the dilated eyes on the face. The crime was also intentionally done to kill and not just to injure or even send a warning, as some of the wounds were inflicted on a few vital areas such as the chest. But basing from the generous volume of flood that has flowed from her wounds, the woman could have also died by excessive bleeding. When I was inspecting the pool of blood around the body, I saw some footsteps pointing to the interior of Maharlika Subdivision. The marks were mostly made when the shoes of the possible suspect touched some blood that gushed swiftly out of the victim and made a frantic, nervous run away from the victim and into the deeper parts of the subdivision, possibly to prevent being captured by the police. The footprints were consistent in its direction, but as it went farther, the steps soon faded until became finally obscure, of not totally invisible. I wasted no time and I turned off the torch light of my smartphone before I moved my legs and ran towards the direction of the footsteps.