When Boxes Rattle

Chapter 10

"Miss Tan, Miss Rowena called."  Axcel's awkward voice seeped out from the secretary's area where all the telephones were located.

"So I've heard," Kalia replied absent-mindedly. She was reading an article from the internet. "What did the client say?"

"The trial balance is...err...up and ready. We could already start our field work next week. She-she-she's sending the file now." Axcel muttered as he shuffled in his place, scratching his elbows.

Kalia gave him a thoughtful look. "Got it, Axcel. Can you roll the working papers? And check the balances please. Pharmaceutical research entities are way different from most business structures so you might have some trouble with the classifications. Tell me when you need help."

The boy nodded and curtly walked to his cubicle.

Beside her, Kalia heard Nice whisper a comment. "Sometimes, I'm not sure whether to laugh at him, be annoyed, or have pity on his poor self esteem."

"He's been here for just six months. That anxiety's just probably the side effect of his forced adjustment to being in a real workplace." Kalia leaned back and shot a look at his staff. Axcel was typing briskly at his laptop, his 21-year old balding forehead reddening despite the airconditionned office. Kalia could empathize with the young staff herself. During her first months in the audit firm, she was as scattered as him--awkward, stammering, laying low. "He's managing despite his distress, and that's more than I could say for even myself."

"Fair enough," Nice smiled then turned to Kalia's laptop. "What's that you're reading?"

"Oh, just some psychology stuff. I'm looking into something that has something to do with hallucinations and whatnot."

Nice's thick spectacles scanned her laptop as she said, "I thought I already got you to read Percy Jackson."

"Not that into gods and goddesses and demi-goddesses, thank you," Kalia inhaled sharply then spun sideways to face her friend. "Say, Nice, is there a god named Epimetheus? It sounds like it's something from your world."

"You flatter me, Kalia Rose. Epimetheus sounds rather Greek though. I am not exactly sure so why don't we ask Google, eh? I'm told its free."

Rolling her eyes, Kalia typed in Epimetheus in the search tab. Epimetheus was the name Kevin said the girl who gave him the box placed on the milktea. The name had never struck Kalia as anything important (although right from the start, she did acknowledge it to be peculiar) and so it had never been taken into account. The search engine produced Wikipedia as the top result, and that's where she and Nice gathered the details.

"I thought so," Nice spoke halfway through the text. "He was brother to Prometheus, the fire thief. The gods then gave him Pandora, the girl with the chest where all the evil in the world was kept."

Kalia's heart skipped a beat at Nice's words. She looked back into the screen and reread the texts just to be sure. True enough, the gods gave the boy Epimetheus a girl named Pandora, and then a chest was sent to Pandora by the gods. Driven by her curiousity and despite all the warnings not to open the box, Pandora had risked a peek.

She had a box. A box.

"From the time the lid was lifted," Nice retold, "all manner of wrongs and diseases and misfortune sprang forth and escaped into the world."

"I remember now," Kalia added. "I read that story in elementary. Pandora had managed to close the box before it got competely empty. She then told everyone that only Hope was left inside."

"Which doesn't make sense because shouldn't she have released Hope to quell the darkness she spread?" Nice placed a palm under her chin.

"Unless that kind of Hope is more evil than the rest of the darkness which happened to escape," a voice from behind said. Both girls turned to look and found Axcel peering down at them, his laptop cradled in his arms. "I'm sorry, Miss Tan, but uhmm...Miss Tan, well--"