"You said you were gathering information." He said clarified.
"I am." She responded with a mischievous smirk, "I'm going to Beijing to gather information."
"It's dangerous." He pointed out.
"That's why I'm preparing." She said before stating firmly, "I need to get there before the plague spreads anymore."
"It started in Hong Kong." Karma stated.
"That's what they said." She pointed out bluntly, "I'm going to see the situation with my own eyes. Besides..."
She smiled once more, "Beijing was the first place to contract an unknown plague and it's spread was supposedly halted by a volcano eruption. However, why did Hong Kong suddenly became the next place with a new plague?"
The boy shrugged, "A big coincidence."
"Is there really such a thing called coincidence?" Willow questioned with a sigh, "I bet that's what the Aztecs once thought when they started catching unknown diseases while they were facing off against the Spaniards and cutting down large amounts of their own forests."
"It'd just all be part of the natural process of nature." Karma stated.
"So, you're saying that it's the work of the gods?" She questioned casually.
"Is it not?" he sighed as well to her.
She smirked and came closer to the boy's face, "What if it was said that it wasn't a part of their unknown plans for us?"
Alarmed, the boy raised a brow and stepped back as she bit back a giggle. This boy is too much like her kid brother only they were more used to her nature. His exaggerated expression is really too funny.
"How do you know?" He questioned curiously, "Eventually, the countries will open up again and the people will suffer until there's a cure."
"By then, it'd be too late." She smiled, "I'm not waiting that long."
Hearing this, Karma sighed again, "Whatever you say."
She smiled, "Well, I'm gonna go back to work now."
Saying this, she turned around and began to leave. A hand suddenly grabbed her shoulder as she turned around in confusion, "Yes?"
"Why tell me this?" He asked with eyes staring straight at her.
"Cause why not?" she sighed, "Can't just listen to an acquaintance's rambling?"
This time, she walked away without being stopped as the man could only stare at her with bewilderment.
It was only after she had finished her interviews with a few of the refugees that she went to a nearby convenience store that was opened when she was walking by and bought a few little toy trinkets for the children and some bread for the elderly together in the cold. Then, she continued conversing with the adults a bit longer.
What she discovered from one of the elder citizens was that there was indeed a volcanic explosion and they witnessed all the reinforcement perish in the earthquakes and fire. There were a few survivors from the relief teams, but they succumbed to the plague that occurred in the area. She sighed as she gathered the amount of information in her mind.
Supposedly, after the evacuation, the majority of the people discovered that the government was about to quarantine the area off with military forces. When this was discovered, the people began to panic. Those who could have left the city as soon as they could during the night others in the trunks of transporting vehicles.
However, there were many elderly that were still left behind. These refugees cover the northern and the eastern parts of China and hid in places they hope won't gather much attention. As for the government, they weren't certain. Since the quarantine, they never showed themselves as much anymore. Willow felt that something was funny about this situation and recalled back to when Elijah tried running for a place in the government. Could it be...
She looked to her phone with a frown and contemplated to herself. She knew that, just as there are complaints about government officials such as the ones her father once talked of every night with old friends over the phones, there were those who trusted the officials and the government. She thought about leaving out the government part, but it was starting to seem useless to think so.
In the end, the people here brought out the issue of the government in a way that caught her attention. Could it be that this child of Hades be someone within the government?
However, after what had happened with Elijah, what would they want by torturing the citizens with plagues and the manipulation of the other demigods?
"With what he had done, there's no telling how the people would view others that help them." She stated quietly to herself, "They'd be warier over the person helping them. Problem is there are many who are wary of people in the government. They don't even have to be in office to be so."
One time, she made a friend with a student during college that moved to America during his fourth year in primary school. With his hobbies and later addiction to drugs during his years in college, she was shocked to discover that his father was actually a politician in China and had been featured a couple of times on the internet.
Later, Willow had assumed then that he was drawn to drugs by the pressure of being the child of a person with great influence, but she recalled of some cases where that might not even be it. However, the few people she had been vaguely friends with before had been drawn to drugs once too. One of them even been an alcoholic before having a relapse.
However, the case was that, when she talked to her father of her previous life about this and his opinion, she was stunned to hear his harsh opinion of the boy's family background without her even mentioning the part of drugs. It was the first phone call she had made to them in a long time and, being told to cut off all connections with the guy without batting an eye, almost angered her over her senses!
However, this wasn't the first that her father had angered her mercilessly. Before that time was another when she had told them of this new friend she made while in middle school who was a Korean girl. Her dad had told her the same thing then. She had asked him why before telling her than Korean people weren't good people. His words stunned Willow wordless as it was the first time she had ever witnessed his idea over another person's ethnicity.
Even when not knowing entirely about this person, that girl was kind and hardworking. Never once treating her badly in any shape or form, so his words frustrated and troubled Willow during the entire year that girl studied in that school with her.
At some point, it was around the year when she decided to ask her mother the reason for her father's unnatural behavior that she learned how her father was one to study history as a hobby and took the lessons to heart. To him, he felt that people of certain ethnicities would hardly change based on their cultural background and only a small handful have a decent personality.
The people she interviewed today was very similar to that sort of reaction to either the government or people of different ethnicity. On the other hand, they held most people of the western states in high regards with justice and technological advancements that they were seen as the goals of most people's dreams, the American Dream.
Hearing them either bemoaning the fact that America had such a vicious person as Elijah or admiring call America the police nation, Willow easily recalled that this was also one of the reasons why her father moved to America. The idea of a better life and the safety of the family he wants.
However, that ambition was also one of his flaws. Even when he, later on, became more open-minded to people of ethnicity he hadn't be too keen on and became friends with Korean parents of her younger siblings' Korean friends.
However, it was that harshness of her father that had surprised her the most and left a lasting impression of her father's harsh side. Being a person of logic and open-minded ideas to her, she was surprised to find that he would also have a narrow-minded side from someone she holds with respect. The result of people wanting to blame another for the misfortune caused by someone is certainly deep, but that was it for people similar to that of her father.
Even during her interview with the people weren't any different. They spoke as if pulling trying to pull a tooth out of their mouth and facts spewing between them about things or events they grew hateful of with a passion. If it weren't so, it was people casting sighs here and there with either a look of dismay or having given up, similar to that of her previous life's mother.
She sighed, "Or perhaps I'm still too ignorant to understand the difficulties of reality."
When she spoke of such matters with her father, he'd always put it aside once she find it confusing with a simple "You don't understand". Yet, he never tried to explain it to her.
Growing up in America's most diverse society, she hardly knew of the troubles of affairs with other foreign countries or the troubles of other countries. It wouldn't be a mistake to say that she had grown ignorant of those things or that she had a sheltered lifestyle growing up.
From her college fees to her lifestyle, she still had her parents' support. However, this girl, Li Fei, didn't have such a luxurious lifestyle.
From her studies to working part-time, she had to be independent all on her own. Remembering such a life was truly depressing compared to her life in America under a loving family. Just because of what Li Fei's mother had done, an innocent child was cast out within the walls of her birth place by everyone including her own mother.
With her attention entirely on her job and her life, she had no time to take interest in political matters. Li Fei wasn't even studying that field when she was in college. Instead, she was able to wreck up enough money and loans or scholarships to study traditional medicine. At the time, her second half-brother wanted to help and convince his father, but she quickly rejected the offer.
It wasn't because she was afraid of what that man, who is her step father, would say about the matter, but that she didn't want to further put herself in the debt of a man that will never see her as his daughter. From her studies to now, she had said that she would go to Beijing to study. Not which college she would study at, but she should've also kept her address to herself. If only their eldest hadn't forced it out of her.
The girl, Li Fei, hated it, thinking back. She knew that the family would kick her out immediately after her mother died of illness. Thus, she was barely able to discuss a time limit around the time she graduated before they could kick her out.
As she expected, not long after the woman died, the youngest often came to try and ransack her room of almost anything useful to his studies. Luckily, Li Fei had been smart then and had them hidden at her maternal grandmother's home which was inherited by the second son of the Li Family.
Though they had passed, the deed given to her mother was passed down to her second brother whom she struck a deal with and rented one of the rooms to hide her studies for better and worse. The ransacking only ended after her second brother rejected helping their third brother's new clothing business stating that he won't help a man who often goes into his half-sister's room without permission.
Willow wasn't sure if the brother was really being passively nice to her or if he had his own ulterior motive, but a strange rumor passed around after that incident. A stupid rumor that others were stupid enough to believe in.
Despite the second brother's interference, people began to believe that Li Fei, like her mother, had seduced her brother into her room, basically incest. Her bruises only gave evidence to the idea and many continue to see her as a monster who only knows where the bed is, but not the table. Thus, she can't say that her second brother was either a good or bad person, only that he was the wittiest of the three.
It was a torturous month before Li Fei finally found a place in Beijing the month before her graduation. The price was high, but she could manage as long as she ate one meal a day. Her workplace wasn't very big or earned her a lot, but she'd manage. With this much trouble, it was hardly a wonder why she doesn't pay attention to governmental matters.