AT DINNER
"Yes, it was quite fateful and indeed fortunate for me to have seen it among the old stuffs that he himself kept in the attic of the new house we parked to after we left the Garzaville mansion when I was still a little girl",
Emma replied, and glanced at the waiter approaching their table, from the inner room, with a tray holding two separate dishes of delicious Japanese sushi together with some sliced vegetables cut into bits around the sashimi fish wrapped in seaweeds beside two gigantic roasted lobsters. She watched as the waiter skillfully placed her meal in front of her and did the same in front of the professor who was deeply engrossed in reading the note and wasn't paying attention to the waiter but instead at the letter that got his entire attention arrested enough for him not to hear what the waiter told him before leaving.
Hot fumes emanating from the two delicacies accompanied by a sweet salivating aroma of something good which graced her nostrils with its refreshing taste, informed Emma who was already settling down to eat without waiting for the professor, that the ingredients used to cook the food had just been taken out of the gas cooler used in boiling the food since the soft juicy lobster claws was hot in her mouth when she tasted a chunk after slicing a tiny bit of the roasted crustacean with the cutleries she held together. Then she paused and stopped eating when she noticed that the professor wasn't touching his food and was still consumed in reading the letter.
"Is it okay if we eat first, before discussing why I wanted to see you or what do you suggest, professor?",
She asked nobly refusing to give in to her desire to eat the meal in frenzy since the savory taste was far pleasing and tempting to her palate.
"I have an appointment to catch up with in the evening, so I suggest we talk first before filling our stomachs",
He answered without even looking at her despondent face.
"Okay",
She reluctantly dropped the knife as well as the fork she was holding and dust off tiny crumbs from the side of her chin with a white napkin she took from her handbag beside her.
"Let's discuss it now, so that you can leave early",
"Yep. What do you want to know?",
He responded still keeping his face glued to the paper as though he was scanning to check if the letter was genuine personally handwritten by Emma's father.
"Everything you did with my father when he was still alive. From the start of the project in Raza even after it got canceled. I wanna know all of the details that you didn't add in the fifth edition of your already published history book here with me",
"You have read my book?",
He questioned finally raising his head to face her in a bit of surprise and dropped the note on the table beside a cutlery.
"Yes, I did. Two days ago in fact before coming here to see the Eiffel tower here in Paris",
"We both know you didn't come to Paris for sightseeing",
"Honestly, I did wanted to see a lot of beautiful places here in France a long time ago after I graduated but it seems not to be the case this time around",
"Your wish to see France has come true, ironically, you didn't come actually to see places like the Eiffel tower but to see me instead for something I believe you already know that your father wanted buried. Never to rise to harm the world as we know it",
"I choose to know about it even if things were to get worse because of it",
"And if I may ask, why do you wanna know so badly? Are you just curious or something underlying is making you waste your time?",
"I have the right to know what happened to my parents, if sheltering the remains in our old house was the cause of their deaths or the letter from him is fake—",
"The letter is legibly authentic and I sincerely urge you not to doubt its contents which is truest in every written word he scribbled on it",
"Then tell me the truth",
"Not until you tell me the true reason for digging into the past",
"I'll let you know what I intend to do after you're done telling me what I need to know. Not only that, I need to see the remains of the undead emperor of Raza",
The professor kept quiet, ruminating if it would be a good thing to tell his friend's daughter about the whole truth, let alone showing her the caged Hemelion's corpse he swore to her father never never to open or reveal to the public considering a whole lot of what happened to his friend's family despite the fact that his daughter, and only child who survived the tragedy that struck them, was sitting down opposite him in a restaurant in Paris, staring at him, anxiously demanding to know things that he himself had kept buried in his head.
"You really are good in persuading people just like your old man. Alright, I will go first though but you must tell me the truth after I'm done",
"I promise that I will tell you, professor",
"Don't be too smarter than you think. You already know the implications of what you asking for",
"Actually, I have already known some of it",
"Nevertheless, we are running out of time and our food is getting cold. Let me tell you how it all started and how it almost consumed your entire family",
"I'm listening",
Emma replied folding her arms, and fixed her gaze at the wrinkles on the professor's face including the strands of his white hair.
"As fate would have it, your father and I first knew each other in Cambridge, London to be exact just after the Nazis the lost the Second World War to allied forces of the present day united nations and Latin America. We were friends that were bonded together merely by our own complex similarities though other people didn't see it that way but we were suited for each other and like twins, we often do things together, sharing our ideas and thoughts every passing day he and I roam the campus ground always seeking new things to enlighten our brilliant minds together which the campus provided with its facilities at then. He had the personality of an open minded extrovert with others, always outspoken in his own peculiar ways and was more of an ambitious young man seeking to explore the world in any possible way he can utilize to achieve his life dreams and was doing impressively well in his studies of sociology and archeology mixed with a little bit of astrology, since he had that natural keenness to study the stars and the galaxy itself. Things were getting better for our friendship even though pretty ladies whom he including myself hardly had the time to please, wasn't part of it but before we graduated, he told me that your grandfather had sent a letter to him, calling him back from the campus briefly to get his rightful share of the inheritance at home in Switzerland and he left the institute for some time only to return back highly depressed and saddened in a sort of way that made him feel isolated from the world itself for he had received both terrible news and good ones too back at home. He later told me that your grandfather had left behind the Garzaville manor with some fancy cash to complete his education as his inheritance before passing away though it seemed as a good news to me till he mentioned the fact that his two elder brothers fighting the war in the army were supposed to be the ones in charge of his father's estate but they sadly were not amongst the lucky few that returned home alive after the Nazi War ended.