Meeting (2)

"Alek, you shouldn't have done that." Aether turned back to his sister and told her once he was alone with her and his cousins. His voice was how they remembered it; soft and comforting to the ears. "It wasn't the right thing to do."

"Aether." Alek broke down. She started crying uglily and called out her brother's name. She was relieved to see him once again. She didn't even know her cousins were still there watching them.

"I'm here." He told her and moved away from the light from the sky. Castor and Pollux just stood in the position they were left in since his family left them. "You shouldn't blame them. It's not their fault." Alek was still crying when she heard that.

"Umm, Aether?" Jin asked after swallowing hard.

"Castor. You are so big now." Aether turned to them once again and let his sister cry on the floor. She wouldn't hear what her brother was telling her after all. "And Pollux, you are big too. Would I have been like you guys if I was alive." He put his tiny hands to his tinier chin.

"Hi..." Pollux spoke to him. "Ho, how are you... here?"

"I am always where my family is." Aether stopped thinking about if he was alive and answered his cousin like a grown man.

"Why are you here, like here-here." Rin asked, pointing his fingers down to the floor. "How am I seeing you?" All his life, he has never met his cousin after his death. So, how was he appearing in front of them now?

"I'm not sure how you can see me. I had tried to contact you when I became like this, but you never noticed me. So, I don't have an explanation for it." Aether smiled. His smile was exactly like the sun. Radiating off warmth and comfort. "I don't even know how I am visible to you. As I said, I'm always here but, no one notices me." There was a hinge of sadness in his eyes and voice but, he hid it with a smile.

"Are you a ghost?" Jin asked and stepped forward to him.

"Yes, but I also don't know why I am. I have an idea about it, but I'm not sure." Aether walked to stand in front of his cousins. Castor and Pollux were standing close to each other. He didn't have to face one and stand away from the other. Aether appeared even smaller when standing in front of his big cousins. He needed to look up to talk to them. Otherwise, he would be talking to their stomachs.

"Hi. I wish I was taller." Aether looked unhappy with the fact that his small cousins were now big. He didn't feel intimidated but felt weird. They were smaller than him when they were kids. Maybe that was one of the reasons why he was an older brother to the older brothers. "Anyway, hi. Good to see you, even though I was with you the whole time these past weeks."

"Can we touch you?" They had bent down so that their cousin didn't put his head up to talk them. They were both facing him as if they were proposing to him, with one knee on the ground and one knee up.

"I'm afraid not." Aether told them with a sad face and lifted his palms to touch their cheeks. But as expected, his palms went through them. He immediately retracted his palms with an apologetic smile and tried to place it again. He couldn't. Instead, he kept them where he would feel their cheeks if he was really there.

The twins saw his hands on their cheek and tried to feel it, but they couldn't. They reciprocated the smile Aether had and looked at him sadly. "This is cruel." Jin spoke while his eyes were filling with tears. He said that playfully to shake off the tears but, it didn't go away. Instead, it blurred his vision more.

"It is." Aether nodded and chuckled. "Don't." He said softly and tried to wipe away the tear that rolled off his cousin's face but, his thumb couldn't caress his cheeks.

Castor wiped his tears soon and looked at his cousin. When they saw him not being able to touch their skin, he recognised again that he was dead. Realising that somehow pained his heart. He knew he had been dead for almost a decade and thought he had shut that feeling away of sadness but, it looked like it was wrong. He still felt pain when he met him this way. He was no different from Alek. She visibly showed her sadness of losing her brother and, he didn't. The hole in his heart was just hidden, not healed. It was hidden under the thick bandage he put it to protect himself from seeing it. Aether appeared very real. He looked like an ordinary boy. Maybe that made his heart ache more.

The room was silent apart from Alek, who was still crying.

"We've missed you." Rin held back his ears with his best. His voice cracked but, it didn't matter.

"I've missed you too. I never thought there would be a day when I can talk to you guys." Aether was smiling with tears in his eyes. And that was it. Rin cried a river without making a sound. Jin also lost his self-control. "You are big but, you still cry a lot." He told his cousins while he was crying too.

"You are crying too." Jin told his cousin with a shaky voice. Aether was one to talk.

"I know." Aether was smiling and crying at the same time. He still managed to look angelic. They cried in that position for a long time.

"Do you have anyone like you?" Jin asked with a voice a little weird from all the crying.

"No. I have never met another ghost. I looked but, I was alone." Aether told them.

"Now I am more curious to know how you are the only ghost and how we can see you." Rin told him. His nose was red because of the constant rubbing of mucus from his nose.

"Me too. Now, now. I think our sister is ready." Aether told them and, they all turned to look at her. There were no more tears in her eyes but, she was still crying. She was crying tearlessly.

They approached her slowly and stood in front of her. Aether kneeled so that he could see his sister's face.

"I'm sorry, Aether. I sorry." Alek apologised. She knew it wasn't the right thing to do. Her parents weren't the ones to blame for his death. It was that stupid mother*cker's fault for running over her brother. If the police ever caught him, she would visit him every day just to cut his skin and put salt in it. The last part would be most unlikely but, you get the idea.

"I know you are sorry, Alek. I know you just tried to take revenge for me, but it's not necessary. What goes around always comes around, right." Aether told her and gently tapped her head with his ghost hands. "I think you know what to do." Alek looked up at her older little brother.

"I do but, I don't want to. Not now. I want to spend some time with you before you go. We don't know when we would meet again."

"Alek? I'm always next to you. The next time You want to talk to me, talk to the mirror. Maybe it could work and, you can see my reflection." Alek nodded at her brother's words. "Now, go and apologise to mum and dad. They will understand."

Alek nodded stood up as if she was intoxicated. She then walked to the door before looking back. "Thank you. Love you." The words she couldn't say when he died.

"Love you too." Aether told his sister with a smile that could kill a man.

"There are many things I want to talk about." Rin told his cousin as soon as Alek was out.

"Me too but, I don't know how much time I have." Aether turned to them and answered. "But let's start. Time is money."

"You sound like grandpa." Rin commented. Their grandfather, Johan from Mutsuki, always said proverbs with his index finger pointing at the sky.

Aether smiled and, his eyes turned crescent. His features mostly resembled another of their grandfather, Keith from Minazuki, according to their grandmother, Mikoto. He used to smile like that before he passed away. His eyes were hazel like Aether's when they were shown the pictures of him.

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"I'm sorry!" Alek apologised with her head touching the floor. She was in the room where they escaped from her. When they saw entering the room, some of them shifted and, it hurt Alek inwardly. She was the cause of this. So she did what she had never done before; apologising from the ground. "I shouldn't blame you guys for Aether's death. I was being selfish and stupid. Can you find it your heart to forgive me?"

Everyone was stunned by the sight, but Panacea and Robin were the first to react. "Of course, we forgive you. We are sorry too. We didn't tell you about the vision. And, indeed, we couldn't protect him from the outcome and, he died just like predicted. So, we can't blame you for blaming us as we deserve it." They walked to their daughter and did the same thing, lowering their head to the ground.

They had explained about the past that Alek was talking about when they evacuated. All of them were taken back at what they heard but understood why Alek acted that way. Some of them had never lost a sibling or someone really close, but they knew they would act like that when someone knew about the death and didn't do anything about it.

"Where are my sons?" Astraea asked her niece after seeing that they were not coming.

"With Aether." Alek told her after standing up.