I walk into the familiar training room, my eyes immediately landing on Ivan.
He was standing at the beginning of the unchanged course, his hands at his sides as he stared straight ahead. He wasn't wearing a shirt, just loose joggers and black socks. He had the same cloth over his eyes he'd had on last time I'd seen him, and I wondered again how he was able to see with that, or if he could even see at all.
I jump a little when he suddenly pushes off the ground, flipping off the ground and flying over the giant rope wall with ease. He moves a lot faster than I thought he would, so much confidence for someone with their eyes covered. He takes off through the rest of the course once he's landed, his feet barely even touching the ground as he leapt and flipped through with ease. His fingers seemed like they were barely brushing the ground as he used them to flip over the pits.
How the hell did he move like that with that cloth over his eyes?
I clap a little when he finishes, and I see him glance over his shoulder.
"Hey, wait." I say, jogging to him when he tries to escape through the back exit. He pauses but doesn't turn around. "Ivan, right?" I ask as I stop a few feet behind him. "I was hoping we could talk?" He still doesn't say anything, but he also doesn't walk away, so I keep going. "Aster mentioned you have a habit of producing enlightened souls, and apparently so do I. I was wondering if I could learn about your reaping style, so maybe I could figure out what I'm doing right." I shrug a little.
He kind of grunts, and walks away to the back door, shoving it open with his shoulder. I feel disappointed, until he pauses and holds it open, looking over his shoulder at me.
I quickly follow him out the door, which breaks into a bathing area. It's really just a naturally made room within the underground cave systems. Aster told me they did reroute the underground springs to flow into the pools they'd carved out, and you had to use your blood to make the water warm. I'd been in here a couple of times but sitting in pools of body soup wasn't really my thing.
I watch as Ivan bites the tip of his finger to draw blood and starts drawing a pattern on the outside of one of the rock pools. I turn away as he starts kicking his sweatpants off, and don't look back until he's submerged under the water.
He sighs heavily and leans back against the rock as he sinks under the now steaming water. I hadn't interacted with him much, but something told me the way he was relaxing right now wasn't normal. He seemed like a very serious guy.
"Sit with me." I'm surprised when he speaks, his voice low and gruff. I don't really want to get in the water, but I also feel like I can't really say no. I was the one who wanted to talk to him, I kind of had to do it on his terms, I guess.
I take everything off but my boxer briefs and sit across from him in the warm water, feeling very awkward.
We sit there quietly for a moment, and I start to wonder if he's going to talk again.
"Do you know how I died?" He says eventually. I shake my head, then furrow my brow. Could he see that?
I guess he could, or he took my silence as a no, because he keeps going.
"I was born during the great depression, with five other brothers and sisters. My parents only had us to help with their farm, as lots of families did in that time. But eventually, the farm stopped producing, and similar to the rest of our neighbors, we fell into starvation, extreme poverty, and loss. I was the youngest of the group, but stronger than my three other brothers. So, when things got so desperate my parents had to actually sell three of us off, just for a few bucks and a chance at not starving to death, I was one of the two who they decided they would keep." I cringe a little at the thought of having to pick which children I wanted to keep. I didn't know his parents or what kind of people they were, but they had to have been truly desperate.
"When the men came to take my sisters and brother, I fought them." He says shrugging. My parents told me to stop, that they were doing this so me and my one remaining brother wouldn't starve to death and would have a shot at life. But I didn't care. I couldn't watch my sibling being taken away in the middle of the night by strange men who smelled like pig shit." He scowls, shakes his head and turns away. "In the end, they had to tie me up. They held me down and bound my wrists and ankles, and covered my eyes and gagged me." He flicks at the cloth around his eyes then. "One of the men taking my siblings kicked my head out of anger, and I died, tied like a hog on the ground because I was trying to defend my siblings." I swallow thickly.
"So that was your sacrifice." I say after a moment. He nods and kisses his teeth.
"It was a shitty way to die. Nonetheless, it's the reason so many of the souls I lead are enlightened." He shrugs, and I perk up a little as he finally gets to what I came here to learn about.
"How so?" I ask.
"Aster says I have too much empathy for others, I would rather hurt myself than see someone else go through it." He shrugs again. "I mean, we all sacrificed ourselves to get here. But Aster says the only reason I wasn't asked to be a Guardian, is because I cursed my parents as I died, thinking if they'd never had me in the first place, I wouldn't be dying for siblings. I inadvertently regretted saving them, I guess." I nod a little.
Aster had said there weren't gender restrictions on being a Guardian or a Reaper, but I was starting to feel like that couldn't be true. If the story Ivan was telling was completely true, he sounded like he had one hundred percent sacrificed himself for his siblings, and without a second thought. The anger it sounded like he'd had was directed at his parents. I felt cheated for him, to be honest.
"I gotta ask." I say after another moment of silence. "Why do you wear the cloth?" He chuckles a little and reaches up and pulls it off. I blink when he does, confused by his totally normal blue eyes.
"I told Aster I wanted to wear this cloth even in death, so I wouldn't have to see the sins of other people anymore. So, he saw no point in altering my eyes." He reaches back up and reties his cloth around his head.
"The sins of others…" I mutter, looking down at the water. He was kind of emo sounding, very poetic and dramatic. I guess I had kind of already assumed he would be kind of a serious guy, though.
"Really, I just take my time with jobs." He says after a while. "When my soul was reaped, it was done by Grey, who is more like you and I than anyone else I would say." I think, trying to remember Grey. I think he was the little Swedish dude, but I could be wrong. "He took two whole days to reap my soul. He let me watch my siblings that had been taken, so I could know what happened with them. I insisted I couldn't rest without knowing, and he had no problem appeasing me." I nod, thinking of the times I had given souls multiple days to work through what was happening to them. I hadn't ever even thought about it, it was just the natural reaction.
But then I think of York, who had reaped my soul, and how crass, impatient, and childish he'd been. I think of how I kept wondering how the girl I'd saved then would feel if she had been in my shoes, having to deal with dying, then with York.
I just hadn't really thought much about how you handled a soul after it departed from its body affected its next life.
Patience is a virtue, I guess.