A Dance With Death

|| Chapter 13 - Peek-a-boo ||

{ Pronunciation of Caius: Kay-us }

                    

"What do you mean 'global scale'?" Griffith asks. "Can you be more specific as to what 'global scale' refers to?"

Althea stays quiet. She's been quiet for some time now. She does not look at Griffith nor at me. She's thinking about something and doesn't want us to know.

"Will you answer me?!"

Althea finally looks up at Griffith. Her eyes locked on his. She clenches her fist. "I don't know!" she yells back. "Ten people dead? Hundreds? I just don't know!" She lets out a groan in frustration. She falls on to a chair behind her and slumps on it. "I don't know," she whispers.

"D-did I cause all of this?" I ask. The thought of it makes my throat heavy. Innocent people are dying because of me.

"No." Althea shakes her head. "You didn't. Your killer did."

"Any idea who caused this?" Griffith asks.

"From all the facts other reapers have gathered?" Althea says. "Caius."

Caius?

Griffith seems to be confusion too, just not in the way I am. He seems to know about this Caius person. He narrows his eyes at Althea as doubt dawns upon his face. "But he's-"

"Dead. I know."

"Then?"

"There are two probabilities. One, it's one of his followers. Two, he's back from the dead."

"Impossible!"

"They say they've looked at every possibility. The same clues, the same messages. Everything. Everything points to Caius."

They seem to be so troubled by 'Caius' that they have almost forgotten about me. I try to keep up with their conversation but fail to come up with a reasonable explanation for myself.

"Who's Caius?" I ask timidly, not sure how they would respond to my question. The reapers' attention is diverted towards me, as they are suddenly reminded of my presence. They don't seem too pleased with the interruption.

"Caius," Griffith explains, "is the reaper I told you about. He's the one who has disobeyed the Natural Order and ended up being dead."

"But I thought you said that Death killed him," I say.

"Exactly." Griffith looks at Althea as he shoots her a questioning look.

Althea widens her eyes. "I can't believe that you don't trust me. It's him!"

"So what you're saying is," Griffith muses, "that Death made a mistake? Death couldn't kill a mere reaper such as Caius."

"It can be someone who just wants to follow Caius' footsteps," Althea says. "It cannot be him. He's dead."

"What if it is Caius?"

"Can't be. Death couldn't have let him live."

"But what if he did?"

"Griffith, I know you hate Death. Doesn't mean that everything bad is because of him."

Griffith winces. "Hush! Don't say it out loud," he argues.

The fact that there are people like me at the current moment worries me. They must be facing a similar situation as mine, confused and dumbfounded by their conditions with reapers around them to add to their stress. They may have a reason to live, just like me. They may have left their homes for something - maybe their jobs, or for some errands - and they never came back home, leaving behind a grieving family.