I.
The police were still piecing together the teenager’s strange confession when the evening news broke the story. Amir, aged around nineteen, slight of frame and quiet-faced, had walked into the police station, head bowed down, and admitted he had throttled and stabbed to death the man who had once shared his bed. His statement overturned every theory the investigators had built over the past week.
The crime itself was baffling in its intimacy and cruelty. The victim, Hamza, twenty-six, ran a small garage on the outskirts of the town. He was found inside his white Toyota sedan, head slumped against the steering wheel, a nylon rope still coiled beside him, chest pierced several times, shirt soaked through. The first blow had been strangulation; the finishing ones—a frenzy of knife thrusts to the chest and ribs.
Amir was arrested at his home the following dawn. The police had traced blood evidence from the scene to the cheap cotton jacket hanging behind his bedroom door. During interrogation, he remained calm, almost indifferent, answering questions as if describing a film, he had seen recently.
“Yes, I killed him,” he said softly. “He wouldn’t delete the video.”
The officers glanced at one another. That word-video—became the centre around which the whole case began to circle. Amir claimed Hamza had secretly recorded them during an act of love months before. He had begged him to erase it. When Hamza refused, teasing that it was “for memory’s sake” and giggling in what Amir called a “mocking way”, rage overtook reason. Something inside him broke then. He took the rope, then the knife, and the rest followed.
Outside, the cameras flashed through the police station’s iron gate. Within hours, the confession went viral on social media. Commentators spoke of youthful impulsiveness, sexual shame, blackmail, in whatever languages that might come to their minds. The truth, however, lay hidden somewhere behind Amir’s still, cold eyes.
Only later, in the smaller hours of the night, did the interrogating officer notice how Amir’s hands trembled not from fear, but from something else—a kind of loss that remained unnamed, yet.
II.
The small town devoured the story. Reporters found old photos of the mechanic and the boy—smiling, arms linked, oblivious to the ruin waiting ahead. The newsrooms liked the symmetry: the self-made man and the troubled teenager; desire, betrayal, and blood in a single frame. Channels repeated that the victim was the sole breadwinner of a modest family and had recently begun saving for his mother’s cataract surgery.
Hamza’s relatives were interviewed on every network. “He was gentle,” said his elder brother, voice breaking. “He could never hurt anyone.” They refused to believe Amir acted alone. “Hamza was strong,” said one of his uncles. “He could have fought back.”
The police, too, had imagined a more elaborate setup: one assailant behind the driver to strangulate, another beside him to stab, and perhaps a third one waiting on a motorbike to speed them away. It seemed too deliberate, too brutal, to be the work of a single hand.
But Amir’s admission unsettled everything. He spoke of no accomplice, no plan, only the moment of anger that surged when he realized the clip would not be deleted. He swore that no one helped him, in whatever way.
DNA results from the district hospital’s forensic unit pointed in the same direction: the blood, the fingerprints, the glove fibres—all Amir’s. Yet the police were reluctant to close the case so simply. The puzzle no longer rested on who had killed Hamza, but why he had done it that way, and what else lay behind the word video.
Outside the police station, rumours multiplied. Some said Amir had been blackmailed for months. Others held Hamza had filmed more than one rendezvous. The town’s modest outrage grew: half pitying the boy, half mourning the man he had slain.
Inside the investigation room, Amir sat almost like a statue with little motion. The officer opposite him asked again why he had gone to meet Hamza that night.
“To talk,” he said. “I thought we could fix things.”
No one in the room believed that was all.
III.
Yet, beyond the official version, the story continued to gather more than one interpretation. Individual explanations, kind of.
Months before the murder, Amir had met Hamza at a seaside repair shop where his cousin’s motorcycle had broken down. Hamza looked very happy, cheerful in an almost careless way. He called Amir “my dear” at first, then “my baby.” Their friendship grew in secret hours—late phone calls, long rides to nowhere. Hamza’s garage became their private den of petrol fumes and half-lit tenderness.
Amir had once said, “If they find out, they’ll cut us into pieces.”
Hamza replied, smiling, “Then let no one know.”
But someone did—or might have. That fear stalked Amir more than sin itself.
At the same time, there was Afsana, his cousin, who had grown up in the same neighbourhood—same school, same childhood naughtiness. Since they began to understand, they had felt a special sort of attachment for each other.
When he was with her, something in him softened. When he thought of Hamza, it burned. In his confusion, Amir moved between them like a pendulum-one love rooted in family and innocence; the other wild, forbidden, foreboding danger. Both, in different ways, demanded all of him.
The news never mentioned Afsana’s name, though the whispers in the town eventually found her. When she heard about Hamza’s death, she locked herself in her room for the first few days. Despite several attempts, neighbours could not reach her or her mother for a comment about the incident, which at the moment became the talk of the town.
IV.
The day after the confession, reporters gathered outside Hamza’s garage. The corrugated door was still locked; the white sedan sealed under a police tarpaulin; tools lay scattered on the floor. A strong odour of engine oil and iron pervaded the air.
Hamza’s apprentice, a boy of fifteen with grease under his nails, told them he had been cheerful the day before. “He said he wanted to travel next month. Maybe India or Cox’s Bazar. He looked happy,” the apprentice said. “He wanted to buy a small camera for travel videos.”
One journalist asked, “Did he have many friends?”
The boy shrugged. “Everyone liked him. Especially Amir. He was kind, a bit private. Never angry.”
The boy didn’t mention what he’d once seen—Amir sitting on the workbench one evening, head on Hamza’s shoulder, laughing softly, as they were enjoying an old Hindi love song on YouTube: Jab pyaar kiya to darna kya (When you love, then what is there to fear?). He’d looked away, pretending to sweep the floor.
Across the town, Amir’s parents stayed indoors, refusing interviews. His mother fainted when she saw his name scrolling on television; his father avoided neighbours by giving the impression to be away. The house, a two-storied building with peeling white paint, was guarded by two police constables, though there was no threat—only curiosity, too much of it.
Detective Inspector Mahfuj, who led the case, stayed up late in his office reading through the transcripts. Amir’s story didn’t fit the evidence. The knife was missing, the rope found cut at one end and the security camera Hamza had fixed inside his car was gone entirely.
If Amir had indeed acted alone, how had he managed to remove it all in such short time, flee into the nearby swamp, and return home unnoticed? Mahfuj watched the recorded reconstruction—Amir re-enacting the scene with an eerie calm, responding only when prompted, never looking at the dummy that represented Hamza. Something about that composure disturbed Mahfuj. The detective wondered what kind of love turned so quiet when it broke.
V.
That night had been unusually warm. The air shimmered above the asphalt. Streetlamps along the beach road drew long yellow trails across the water.
Amir said they had met earlier that evening at a shopping mall arcade where they used to play video racing games. Hamza had promised to give him a new shirt and a wristwatch. “We talked like before,” Amir said. “I thought everything was all right again. I thought he had forgiven me for the argument we had the week before.”
What that argument was about, he refused to explain. He hadn’t told the police what had happened the week before—the argument that had split them. That evening, Amir had gone to Hamza’s room unannounced and found him showing a clip on his phone to a friend. Just laughter—nothing explicit—but enough to tell Amir that the secret wasn’t safe anymore. Hamza had brushed it off, saying, “He didn’t see your face, relax, my dear.”
That same night, Afsana had called him. Her mother was ill; she wanted him to come help. He went, and for a few hours the world seemed ordinary again. They stood on the balcony afterward for some time. She had said quietly, “You’ve changed, Amir. Something’s not normal in you.” He’d wanted to tell her everything, but the words felt dangerous in his mouth. Instead, he’d taken her hand and held it until she slipped away.
Later, at home, Amir had opened his phone to find Hamza’s message: We need to talk.
When they met again by the shopping mall, Hamza’s smile was forced. They talked, gently at first, then louder, until Hamza said, “You think I’ll ruin you? You think I care what they say?”
Amir’s reply had been a whisper. “Delete it.”
Hamza laughed. “You’ll thank me one day.”
“Delete it, Hamza.”
The laughter turned to mockery. He reached for the phone, half-playful, half-threatening.
“Come on, you love me. Don’t pretend you don’t.”
When he refused again, Amir’s mind “went blank.” He remembered grabbing the rope, the smell of nylon, the sharpness of fear. He remembered Hamza’s startled face, the steering wheel jerking, the car plunging forward.
The next clear memory was of blood and silence.
From the parking lot’s CCTV footage, investigators saw them walking together to the car, talking easily. At 8:47 p.m., the sedan left the lot. At 9:22, a motorcyclist reported seeing a white car veering off the road into the ditch near the mangroves.
Forensics later said Hamza might still have been alive when the car hit the slope, that the stabbing came after. The multiple stab wounds were delivered while seated, suggesting panic rather than planning. Yet the missing camera, the discarded gloves, the vanished knife—all spoke of deliberation. The careful disposal did not match the story of blind rage.
It made no sense to Mahfuj. He wrote in his notebook: Was there someone else? Or did guilt itself teach him how to erase? How did he think to remove the evidence if consumed by anger?
Outside, the sea hummed beyond the mangroves. The case was growing colder, but the story was just beginning to heat inside its own shadows.
VI.
The television coverage turned feverish. One channel broadcast a special segment titled Murder of Trust, opening with slow-motion clips of the white sedan, cut against Amir’s school photograph—his shy smile already hardening into myth, with footage of Hamza’s funeral. In one clip, Hamza’s mother wept so hard she had to be carried inside from the courtyard.
Each channel invented its own truth. One claimed the suspect had “attempted strangulation but, realising his victim was still breathing, used a fruit knife taken from the glove box in the garage to finish the job.” Another spoke of “ritual shame.” The details blurred between guesswork and spectacle, between fact and speculation.
At the press briefing inside the police compound, Inspector Mahfuj avoided comment on motive. “The suspect has confessed,” he said, “but the investigation is not concluded.” He had learned that words, once given to the media, stopped belonging to him.
In the evidence room, small things among tagged items waited like clues from a vanished life—a toy dinosaur recovered from the car, a ring engraved with the letter “H”, a pair of glasses smeared with blood.
Two partial fingerprints did not match Amir’s. They could have been Hamza’s, or someone else’s. The samples were too faint to confirm.
Along with the vanished camera, the missing knife remained the case’s most glaring gap. The search through the swamp yielded nothing but leeches and plastic wrappers. Some locals believed it had been thrown into the sea. Others whispered that someone else had taken it before the police arrived.
That possibility—another presence at the scene—kept on haunting Mahfuj, which he tried to remain cautious about not to admit publicly.
Mahfuj reviewed the latest psychiatric report. It described Amir as “lucid, remorseful, emotionally ambivalent toward both victim and self.” He read the paragraph twice, unsatisfied. Ambivalence felt too inadequate a word for what he had seen in the boy’s eyes.
In the remand cell, Amir often asked for paper. He wrote brief lines, never signed them, tore them afterward. One surviving scrap, rescued from the bin, read: I thought love would heal shame. It only hid it under another skin.
VII.
Weeks passed. The story slipped off front pages and faded from television screens replaced by newer tragedies.
Amir was held in a district jail, awaiting psychiatric evaluation. Inside his narrow cell, his memories began to re-order themselves: not in sequence, but in sound. The creak of a garage door, the hum of Hamza’s voice, the murmur of Afsana studying in the next room.
He was allowed one visitor each week. His mother came first, eyes swollen yet dry. She spoke of neighbours’ gossip, of relatives avoiding them. Amir listened, nodding, saying little. When she mentioned Afsana, “She hasn’t been herself,” his throat tightened.
“She still writes to you,” his mother said. “Shall I bring her letter next time?”
He hesitated, then shook his head. “No. Let her forget.”
But that night, he imagined her letter anyway: the rounded script, the faint perfume, the single question she would never ask aloud: Was it love, Amir, or something else?
Detective Mahfuj meanwhile combed through and reread Hamza’s phone logs once more. Several calls were made within an hour of his death to an unsaved number. The phone itself was missing from the car. Tracing the number led to a prepaid SIM that had since gone inactive. The network tower covered both the beach and Amir’s neighbourhood.
“Was there anyone else waiting near the beach?” Mahfuj asked.
“I don’t know,” Amir said. “Maybe.”
The detective leaned back. “Maybe means what?”
Amir looked at his hands. “I thought I saw a motorbike light behind us. But I don’t remember clearly.”
The statement went into the file, underlined twice. The timeline wavered like a smudged photograph: confession, reconstruction, evidence—all partly true, partly guessed. Mahfuj knew the case would soon be transferred, closed, archived. When he finally turned off his desk lamp, the city had gone quiet, but the case had grown noisier inside his head.
VIII.
Months later, a TV journalist revived the tale in a special episode titled The Boy Who Killed His Lover.
By then, Amir’s face had become almost symbolic—a blank slate for public imagination. Viewers debated whether he was a monster or a victim. The journalist retraced the route of that night’s drive from the mall to the mangroves where the car had crashed, camera panning across puddles that mirrored a sky heavy with birds.
In the background, children played near the roadside, throwing pebbles into the ditch. “It happened right there,” one of them pointed. “My uncle saw the car lights and called the police.”
The programme ended with a lingering shot of the swamp, with the journalist’s voice being lowered. “The knife was never found.”
Among those watching was Hamza’s elder brother. In the dimness of their living room, he whispered to his mother that the police had stopped calling, the reports had stopped printing, and it felt like Hamza was being buried twice. “They’re forgetting him,” he muttered. He still believed Amir was not there alone. “Someone must have been waiting for him,” he told the host. “Someone who helped cover it up.”
No one could prove it, and no one could disprove it.
In another part of the town, Afsana also watched the programme. Alone. Her mother had gone to bed early. She sat before the screen until the credits faded, her reflection hovering over the swamp image. For a moment she thought she saw Amir standing beside the reporter, not the boy accused for a murder but the one who once fixed her bicycle chain and smiled at her astonishment.
She pressed her palm to the cold glass. “You could have told me,” she murmured. “You could have let me forgive you.”
IX.
Amir remained in remand, his trial postponed for psychological assessment. Now, he spoke rarely. Only sometimes to the guard he asked, “Did they find the phone?”
The guard would shake his head, and Amir would lower his gaze, a faint tremor at the corner of his mouth-relief, or regret.
Outside the prison, the world went on. Life resumed its indifference. The garage reopened under a new manager. The beach road filled with vendors selling mouthwatering street foods, with visitors and motorbikes. The swamp grew over with weeds. Children chased kites over the same stretch of sky where once a car had veered into darkness.
Inspector Mahfuj, now posted to another district, sometimes, during quiet hours, thought of the case. He would recall the boy’s voice at the first interrogation-calm, almost tender. He would still remember the way Amir had looked when he said, “He wouldn’t delete the video.” It had sounded not like justification, but confession of something larger—the failure to bear both love and its shame.
That night, Mahfuj dreamt of the sea road. In the dream, two figures walked side by side—one turning toward the waves, the other away. Between them hung a light too dim to guide, too bright to ignore. Somewhere in the dream’s tide, a girl’s voice called a name, then silence.
The case file thickened with statements, paperwork and silence. In the official record, nothing changed. The last entry was a forensic note: Further investigation pending. Camera not recovered. Knife not recovered. Motive uncertain.
But beneath the quiet spaces between those printed words, where memory, remorse, and secrecy quietly intertwined, the story went on—unfinished, breathing, like the sea beyond the mangroves.
Maleka Parveen is a bilingual writer and poet from Bangladesh. Although she writes in various literary genres, as of now the short story form is her most preferred one, which she has been experimenting with its many different structures. Her books published so far in Bangla, her mother tongue, include collections of short stories, poetry, and non-fiction.