19 The Portrait

He went to Zuna's contact, he was excited to see her again tomorrow. He was excited to see Eirik as well, but Eirik wasn't much fun.

"It's kind of early, but are you asleep?" He texted her. It was only about 8:30, but Dante had the body of a child, so of course he was already asleep.

She didn't respond for awhile. "No, why?"

"Just curious."

"Then can I ask something?" She went ahead and asked without a response. "Do you want to die?"

Arius paused in thought at that question. He was in fact only curious about the phyrraium, but he couldn't guarantee that he wouldn't kill himself with it. "Do you?"

"No." Her answer made him wonder if she was upset that he dodged the question, but that thought was replaced by another after her next text. "I'm not afraid of living."

"Are you afraid to die?" It was something he often wondered about himself.

"I could say no, but it'd still flinch in the face of death." What she said made him think about all the times he's welcomed death, only for it to be so far out of his reach.

"What I would give to be able to flinch." Is what he typed, but didn't send. He deleted it and wrote, "I've died before."

"I know, I've watched you die." She smiled on the other end, but Arius wouldn't know that.

"Right, but I never really died, my heart stops but I always wake up."

"Don't jinx it, one day you won't wake up." Oh, how great it would be to never wake up again.

"I hope not, I still have so many stories to tell you."

"Tell me one now." She made him smile.

He thought for a moment, and something that once happened came to him. "I raised a kid once, his name was Randle. I often saw this odd part of him that worried me, but I ignored it."

"Why?" She asked.

"He was a good kid, always did as he was told, and had good grades. Eventually I saw his ruthlessness, he never felt guilty. I thought that was a good quality of a CEO, but that was until he murdered an innocent man."

"What happened? How did you find out?"

Arius hadn't told many people too much of this story, but he decided to explain in more depth. "Can you believe that he asked me to help get rid of the evidence? He came into my office and asked me to hack into the security cameras on the night of the murder. His reason for committing the crime was simple, we wanted to know what it was like."

"Pierre isn't like that, is he?" She made Arius smile. Perhaps she was worried.

"No, I always pay attention to the kids I raise now. I sometimes test their sympathy too. "

"How do you do that?" Her inquisitive nature was something Arius quite liked.

"I hurt myself a few times and see how they react." Arius responded.

The two talked until Zuna stopped responding, must've fallen asleep.

Arius looked over at Dante to check if he was sleeping, seeing that he was, Arius got out of bed and left the room. He quietly went down the stairs all the way to the main floor, being far enough away he became a bit careless.

Arius walked through the hallway connecting the laundry room and bathroom, towards the basement. He unlocked it and went down into it. When he turned the lights on, it was nothing but storage. Boxes everywhere, it was mostly possessions from his past lives, and also stuff from his last house.

Now, the reason it was kept locked up, well there were a few things in there that would easily give away his immortality. He was only down there to sort some stuff out, naturally he could have done that in the morning, but there would be too many questions. What he wanted to avoid answering, was related to a portrait. He was painted in it with a woman, he simply couldn't bring himself to talk about it.

He knew that Dante wouldn't push him to talk about it, but perhaps he simply didn't want him to know about the portrait at all. It was part of his past, and although it seemed odd to hide it, he wanted to keep that part of himself locked away forever.