Even A Thousand Folds of Lifetime

Chapter 2

"What's your order po ma'am?" I heard the cashier asked the customer as I fetched for my ordered milktea in the service area before I returned to my seat. I am currently sitting inside a Macao milktea shop located inside SM Manila. One thing that I like most about this lifetime is the existence of this drink! My personal fave is their Matcha Cheesecake added with pearls as its sinkers. I could never get enough of it. I sipped happily in my seat with my eyes closed in delight.

"Pumunta lang ba ako rito para panoorin kang uminom ng milktea?" The All Knower asked, speaking in Filipino.

"I- try mo kasi!" I said as I offered him my drink.

I'm already at the year of 2022. It's been a quatercentenary that have passed and yet, I still haven't found him. It's been hundreds of years; I'd be lying if I said that I have never thought of quitting already. But quitting was never an option nor I should be considering in the first place. Inside those long years, I've gone through different kinds of lives and places. I've been born to a family of riches, middle- class, and low- class. I've lived as Portuguese, Taiwanese, Mexican, Irish, Spanish, New Yorker... you name it. I have even experienced all sorts of jobs in those lifetimes. I have experienced becoming a doctor, an engineer, an artist, a book writer (I even have a book that is still selling up to this day.), and becoming a nun even! All of the historical events that you could think of, I have lived every single one of them. Of course, throughout those different lives, some of them I still managed to have a family, just for the sake of having it. I had never loved a single person all throughout the lives that I lived more than I loved Cassian. Even if it's been years that have passed, the emotions, the feelings, the love that I felt is still strongly living inside me. It's been fermented for years, the more that I preserve it, the more stronger it gets. When I first started to have a family, it was hard enough for me to pretend to be happy. I looked at my children and "husband" with grief in my eyes. It should have been us. I used to whisper out of randomness, hoping it reached to Cassian. But regardless, the families that I have been with still held close to my heart. Each one of them holds dearly inside of me that I could even burst into tiny pieces because of how many they are. "They won't even remember you as soon as you die." The All Knower once said it to me. One of the rules that he also gave is that once that I die, my name will immediately be erased from existence, and no one will ever remember me. I didn't care but sometimes, it could get exhausting holding everyone, living with them and eventually, watching them continue on with their lives and forgetting that they also had once me in their lives. But as what The All Knower said to me, it's the price that I pay for my wish. Once, when I was sitting on a bench in one of the parks in Manhattan, I asked him out of the blue, "Why are you doing this?". I looked at the person besides me who was wearing a perfectly normal attire. He was wearing a striped polo tucked in a black pants and was wearing a sunglass too. His grey hair streaked as silver because of the shine coming from the sun. It suited him. He then looked at me and answered, "I just wanted to." I was confused and I think I even let out a, "Huh?" as an initial reaction. He then proceeded to answer, "You are a one-of-a-kind soul. When I was supposed to pick up your soul when you died, I was confused to why you still bear an insurmountable grief when you shouldn't even have to be able to feel anything. Then I decided to give you a chance. Maybe my curiosity got the best of me because I still find it fascinating how you humans still have the ability to love regardless of the situation." I just nodded, unable to respond to it.

"Huh? Bakit ko naman titikman yan? Ako? Really, Scar?" He pointed at himself and looked at me ridiculously. It's funny that over the lifetimes that we've met, I had become fond of him. He is not that scary as everyone (including me) deemed to be. Or maybe that's just me. Over through the course, he stopped calling me "Human" or "Mortal" thus, he chose to call me Scar from my name Scarlett. I liked it. It got a kick to it since I am still holding some scars that I refuse to let go.