Chapter 38 - Chapter 29 - Stories Of The Past - Part 1

Author: As promised, this is the chapter where we'll dive into Yuuya's past life. Though just a heads up, it was not as detailed. Even though this chapter is very long—43k words all in all—it was still summarized. This is basically me summarizing and highlighting all of the important plot points in Yuuya's life up until his first interaction with Alfia.

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Night is approaching, casting long shadows across the master bedroom. Outside, the distant murmurs of Orario's evening bustle drifted through the glass windows, but inside, the silence remained.

Alfia had not shifted her position by a single inch. She remained sitting upright against the headboard, her legs tucked beneath the quilts, her pale hands still firmly clasped over Yuuya's right palm.

Around three in the morning, the terrifying, unnatural heat radiating from Yuuya's skin finally began to recede.

The fine wisps of steam that had been ghosting upward from his collar evaporated into the cool night air. The deep, burning crimson flush on his face faded, replaced by a pale, normal complexion. His breathing, which had been shallow, ragged, and frantic for hours, leveled out. The green light of his passive regeneration skill did not ignite—his soul was still far too exhausted to fuel it—but his body had successfully weathered the worst of the recoil. His fever had broken.

Alfia let out a breath she felt she had been holding since mid-morning. She lowered her head slightly, her silver hair cascading over her shoulders, shadowing her face.

For the first time in her entire life, her lungs expanded fully without the familiar, agonizing pain.

There was no coughing fit waiting at the end of her breath.

There was no heavy, suffocating weight pressing down on her heart, demanding her mortality in exchange for every spell she casts.

She felt light.

She felt entirely whole.

It was a sensation so entirely foreign to her that it felt almost terrifying. She was safe, not because she had conquered her enemies, but because a boy had willingly torn away a piece of his own spirit to shield her from her predetermined fate.

A soft, hesitant click echoed through the darkness as the bedroom door cracked open.

Hestia stepped quietly into the room, carrying a small lamp, moving carefully as to avoid disturbing the sleeper. Hestia looked exhausted, her usual vibrant energy drained by the diplomatic warfare she and Hermes had waged against the Guild clerks all afternoon. She closed the door softly behind her and walked over to the side of the bed, her blue eyes instantly dropping to Yuuya's face.

"His temperature is down." Alfia said, her voice a quiet, raspy murmur that didn't disturb the silence. "The internal hemorrhaging has stopped."

Hestia let out a long, shuddering sigh, her shoulders slumping in massive relief.

"Thank goodness... I swear, that boy is going to give me grey hair before the century is out. He plays with miracles the way normal kids play with wooden toys."

Hestia pulled up a small wooden stool, sliding it next to the bed and sitting down. She looked across the mattress at the adventurer of the Hera Familia.

In the soft moonlight, Alfia looked radiant—the deathly, translucent pallor that had haunted her was completely gone, replaced by the pristine, timeless beauty of a woman who had outlived her own tragedy.

"How are you feeling, Alfia?" Hestia asked softly, her tone shifting into the gentle, maternal register she reserved for her children.

"I feel... empty." Alfia replied honestly, her gray and green eyes fixing onto the glass of the window. "In my twenty four years of life, not counting the seven years I spend on the crystal, my identity was entirely forged by my illness. I was the tragic genius. The broken talent. The dying monster who had to burn her own life just to cast a magic. Every strategy I formed, every spell I cast, and every choice I made was dictated by the ticking clock inside my chest."

She tightened her grip on Yuuya's hand, her knuckles turning slightly white.

"But now? The clock has stopped. The curse is gone. I am a dead legend who has been dragged back into the land of the living, forced to stand in the shadow of a new one. The world thinks Alfia of Hera died in the Great Feud seven years ago. Orario has moved on. The gods have found new playthings. What place does a ghost have in an era belonging to him?"

Hestia sat in silence for a moment, listening to the profound, quiet vulnerability radiating from the adventurer. She reached out, placing her small hand gently over Alfia's forearm.

"Yuuya didn't change your fate just to preserve a museum piece, Alfia." Hestia said, her voice steady and full of an old, divine wisdom. "And he certainly didn't do it to cast a shadow over you. He did it because he looked at a broken family and decided that a boy like Bell deserved to have his mother, and a woman like you deserved to see what the world looked like without a death sentence hanging over your head."

Hestia smiled, looking down at her sleeping captain.

"You aren't a ghost living in his shadow. You are part of the home he is bleeding to build. In this Familia, we don't care about the legends of the past or the expectations of the Guild. If you want to sit in this room and just breathe for the next ten years, perhaps the rest of your life, then that's exactly what you'll do. You don't have to be the 'Silence of Hera' anymore, Alfia. You can just be yourself."

Alfia closed her eyes, a faint, barely perceptible shift appearing at the corner of her lips. She didn't answer, but the tension in her shoulders finally dissolved completely, accepting the quiet sanctuary Hestia was offering.

Hours passed.

Hestia had long since retired to her own quarters to draft the remaining administrative declarations, leaving the room once more to the silver moonlight.

Beside Alfia, the fingers within her grasp suddenly twitched.

A low, gravelly groan vibrated in Yuuya's chest. His head rolled slightly across the pillow, his brow furrowing as his consciousness slowly fought its way back through the thick, suffocating layers of exhaustion.

Slowly, with immense effort, his eyelids fluttered open. His dark eyes were dull and unfocused, staring blankly at the dark canopy of the bed before slowly shifting to the side.

He looked at her.

Alfia leaned forward slightly, her brilliant, heterochromatic eyes locking onto his with an intensity that seemed to calm his drifting mind.

Her face was the first thing he saw in the waking world—clear, unblemished, and entirely free of the corruption that had marred her skin just hours prior.

Yuuya tried to speak, but his throat was entirely parched, producing nothing more than a faint, dry click.

"Silence your tongue, you absolute, reckless fool." Alfia whispered.

Her voice was quiet, but it carried a raw, trembling weight of emotion that she could no longer conceal.

She did not release his hand.

Instead, she leaned in closer, her silver hair brushing against his shoulder as she looked down at his spent, broken figure.

"You threw yourself into the abyss of the recoil caused by your spell, tore your own spirit apart, and nearly turned this manor into your own funeral pyre... All for the sake of a stubborn woman who's too much of a coward to accept her own end..." Alfia murmured, her gray and green eyes reflecting the pale moonlight. "You told me my eyes looked so much more beautiful without the illness. If you ever dare to waste your life so carelessly again, I will personally ensure you never hear the end of it."

A soft, incredibly weak chuckle escaped Yuuya's lips. He couldn't lift his arm, and he couldn't form the words to respond to her scolding, but the look in his dark eyes remained entirely unchanged from the moment he had collapsed—it was a gaze filled with a quiet, profound sense of triumph.

He had won.

The disease was dead, and she was alive.

"Sleep, Yuuya." Alfia commanded gently, her tone softening into a melody he hadn't heard before. "You paid the price. The silence you gave me... is the most beautiful thing I have ever known. I will be here when you wake up."

Yuuya's eyelids grew impossibly heavy, the brief flash of consciousness completely spent. He let out a soft, relaxed sigh, his fingers relaxing within her grip as his mind drifted right back down into a deep, natural, and entirely peaceful sleep.

Time goes on after that.

Contrary to Alfia's expectations, Yuuya did not stir when the next morning arrived. Nor did he wake when the second night fell, or the third. His body completely sealing itself off from the outside world to focus every ounce of its biological energy on knitting the metaphysical tear in his soul.

But because he had already opened his eyes, the suffocating cloak of anxiety that had gripped the Hearth Manor had subtly shifted. They knew he was recovering. They knew his heart was beating with a steady, rhythmic strength.

And so, to keep the crushing silence of the sickroom from swallowing them whole, the Hestia Familia resorted to the only defense mechanism they knew: they brought their chaotic, fiercely loyal light directly into the dark.

The soft clinking of silver against porcelain echoed quietly through the afternoon air.

Alfia sat propped up against the headboard, a pale blue shawl draped over her shoulders. In front of her, Bell sat precariously on the edge of the mattress, carefully holding a steaming bowl of wild mushroom and potato broth—a recipe Hestia had insisted would help restore standard physical vitality.

"Just a little more, Mom." Bell murmured softly, his eyes filled with an enduring, patient warmth. He dipped the silver spoon into the rich broth and gently guided it toward her.

Alfia frowned, her heterochromatic eyes narrowing with a flash of her pride.

"I am perfectly capable of sustaining myself, Bell. I am no longer an invalid."

"I know, I know." Bell offered a small, sheepish smile, but he didn't pull the spoon back. "But your muscles haven't been used properly in years, and the magic took a lot out of your physical stamina. There's no shame in letting me help. Please?"

Alfia let out a soft, defeated sigh. Slowly, deliberately, she reached her right hand out from beneath the shawl. Her fingers, though healthy and completely free from her disease, vibrated with a distinct, uncontrollable tremor. Her nervous system was entirely intact, but her muscles—having suffered through seven years of stasis—were like an untuned instrument, struggling to process the commands of her mind.

She wrapped her slender fingers around the handle of the spoon, attempting to lift it on her own. The silver wobbled precariously, a few drops of the broth splashing back into the bowl as her wrist gave a sharp, uncoordinated twitch.

Bell didn't say a word. He didn't pity her, and he didn't coddle her. He simply placed his larger, steady hand gently over hers, stabilizing the tremor, and helped her guide the spoon the rest of the way.

Alfia swallowed the warm broth, the heat spreading through her chest. It tasted entirely different now. For decades, every meal had been accompanied by the metallic tang of blood and the dull ache of her lungs.

Now, she could actually taste the herbs, the salt, and the earthy richness of the mushrooms. It was a simple, mundane realization, yet it made her grip on Yuuya's left hand—which she still held firmly with her other arm beneath the blankets—tighten imperceptibly.

Click. Click. Click.

The aggressive snapping of a mechanical pen severed the quiet intimacy of the room.

At the foot of the massive oak bed, Lili sat cross legged on a velvet stool, a notebook resting firmly on her knees. Her eyes darted between the unmoving figure of Yuuya and the rest of the Familia members who had crowded into the spacious bedroom.

"Alright, listen up, everyone! Put your valis where your mouth is!" Lili announced, her voice pitching into a commanding bark that belonged to the manager of the Familia's finances. "The captain has officially been out for three days and four hours. His vitals are stable, his skin is normal, and his mind is recovering at a steady pace. So, we are officially opening the ledger! No entries exceeding a week!"

Welf leaned casually against the window, a wry, confident grin spreading across his face as he tossed a small leather pouch of coins into the air, catching it with a metallic clink.

"Put me down for five thousand valis on Thursday morning, Lili." Welf said, slinging the pouch straight onto Lili's notebook. "The captain loves a dramatic entrance right before the lunch bell rings. He's probably dreaming about a massive steak right now anyway."

"Five thousand valis for Thursday morning, noted." Lili muttered, her pen flying across the parchment with terrifying speed. She snapped her gaze toward the corner of the room. "What about you, Mikoto-sama?"

Mikoto stood perfectly straight, her arms crossed inside the wide sleeves of her eastern tunic. She stared at Yuuya's peaceful face for a moment.

"I shall bid eight thousand valis on Wednesday evening, precisely at the hour of the twilight bell." Mikoto declared, nodding her head.

"Hey! Don't you dare count your Goddess out of the action!" Hestia shouted, suddenly bursting through the doorway carrying a fresh stack of clean laundry. She kicked the door shut with her heel and marched over to Lili's stool, her twin tails bouncing aggressively. "I am putting ten thousand valis on Friday afternoon! And when I win, Yuuya is going to use every single coin of that pool to buy the premium ingredients for a massive victory dinner! He owes me a grocery run after scaring me half to death!"

"Ten thousand on Friday for the Goddess..." Lili droned. She turned her head, her eyes locking onto the two figures at the head of the bed.

"Bell-sama? Lady Alfia? Care to make a wager, or are you both going to sit out the grand opening of the Hearth Manor Lottery?"

Bell looked up from the bowl of broth, a soft, embarrassed flush creeping onto his cheeks.

"Uh, Lili... I don't think I should bet on the captain's health..."

"Nonsense! It's a verified tradition for lifting the spirits of a recovery ward!" Lili countered instantly, waving her pen dramatically. "Besides, it's a proven fact that the captain can hear us. If he hears how much money is riding on his laziness, his stingy nature might actually force him to wake up earlier just to claim a cut of the profits!"

Alfia watched the exchange in silence. Her face remained stoic—the cold demeanor of the Silence that had once terrified the entire lower world. But beneath that facade, her gray and green eyes were fiercely tracking every single breath Yuuya took.

She wasn't stupid. She had survived decades in a den of wolves under Hera's banner. She knew exactly what these children were doing.

The loud banter, the ridiculous monetary wagers, the deliberate clinking of coins right at the foot of the bed—it was entirely artificial. It was a carefully orchestrated, deeply affectionate farce. They were doing it for her. They could see the quiet guilt that had been eating away at her soul since the moment Yuuya had vomited blood onto the floor.

They knew that if this room remained silent, Alfia would drown in her own thoughts, blaming her very existence for the broken state of their captain.

And so, they brought their noise.

They brought their vibrant, chaotic life into the room, forcing her to realize that she wasn't a burden to be tolerated—she was part of the family he had nearly died to protect.

"Ten thousand valis..." Alfia's quiet voice suddenly cuts through the bickering between Welf and Hestia.

The room instantly fell dead silent.

Lili's pen froze mid-click.

Alfia didn't look at them. Her gaze remained fixed entirely on Yuuya's pale profile, her trembling fingers still holding tight over his cold hand beneath the sheets.

"Put me down for ten thousand valis on Saturday morning." Alfia murmured, her tone flat but carrying an undeniable weight. "The boy is arrogant, stubborn, and entirely unconcerned with the schedules of normal mortals. He will wake when he deems the world worthy of his attention, and not a single second sooner."

A brilliant, wide smile erupted across Bell's face, his ruby eyes crinkling with pure joy.

"Mom, do you even have ten thousand valis right now?

"Yuuya will pay for it."

Welf let out a loud, booming laugh, clapping his hand against his thigh, while Hestia proudly crossed her arms, thoroughly satisfied that the infamous, cold Alfia had finally joined their ridiculous little circle.

"Saturday morning it is!" Lili squeaked, a massive grin spreading across her face as she slammed the notebook shut. "The ledger is officially locked! Nobody touches the captain until Wednesday evening, or I will personally dock your training stipends!"

As the Familia began to filter out of the room to tend to their evening chores, the chaotic energy slowly dissolved, leaving the bedroom once more to the soft, golden light of the setting sun.

Alfia adjusted her grip on Yuuya's hand, her fingers still shaking slightly, but the knot of anxiety in her throat had finally eased just a fraction. She leaned back against the headboard, her eyes reflecting his steady breathing as she prepared to keep her silent, unbroken vigil for as many days as the anomaly required.

Eventually, night time arrives once more.

The clock in the central hallway of the manor struck two in the morning, the deep, muffled chime vibrating faintly through the floorboards.

Inside the master bedroom, the silver light of the moon cuts a diagonal path across the linen sheets, illuminating the stark contrast between the two figures. Yuuya lay completely still, his dark hair falling loose across the pillow, his face entirely relaxed in a slumber so deep it bordered on stasis.

Beside him, Alfia remained sitting upright, a dark velvet blanket pulled up to her waist to shield her uncooperative legs from the nocturnal chill.

Her heterochromatic eyes, gleaming like polished gems in the dim light, were fixed entirely on the profile of his face.

Her body was exhausted. The physiological shock of being cured, combined with the sudden reawakening of her nervous system, was a heavy physical tax.

Her eyelids trembled, the darkness of sleep pulling aggressively at the edges of her consciousness. Her head dipped forward slightly, her silver hair brushing against her collarbone as her brain demanded the rest she had denied it for days.

For a few minutes, she slipped under.

But it was not a peaceful rest.

In the shallow depths of her subconscious, the phantoms of the seventieth floor crawls out of the dark. She saw the monsters of the seventieth, she heard Meteria's hateful voice one more; she felt the terrifying, agonizing ice of the crystal prison binding her limbs, as Yuuya vanishes from the physical world.

Gasp.

Alfia's eyes snapped wide open, her chest heaving as she pulled a sharp, deep breath into her perfectly healed lungs.

No fire burned her throat.

No blood rose to her lips.

The room was perfectly still.

Instinctively, her fingers tightened convulsively around Yuuya's wrist. She held her breath, her hearing filtering out the sound of the wind, the creaking of the tree's timber, and the rustle of the sheets, isolating a single, vital sound.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

Yuuya's pulse was slow, deep, and completely steady. His body was still knitting itself, but he was entirely safe.

Alfia let out a long, slow exhale through her nose, the frantic tension in her shoulders melting away as she realized the nightmare was nothing more than a ghost. She looked down at their joined hands. The scorching heat of his fever had completely broken, leaving behind a comfortable, radiating warmth that seeped into her perpetually cool fingers.

She stared at his closed eyes in the quiet dark. At his age, he was a man who had conquered the deepest terrors of the world, yet in his sleep, he looked entirely unburdened and peaceful.

"You are an incredibly infuriating individual, Yuuya." Alfia whispered into the quiet room, her raspy voice barely a breath against the linen. "You tear my world apart, ignore my protests, and force me to watch you bleed... and yet, I cannot even find it within myself to punish your insolence."

She closed her eyes, letting herself fall asleep once more.

The hour eventually faded and the temperature continues to grow colder. Outside the windows of the master bedroom, a thin layer of frost began to trace patterns along the edges of the glass. The stone walls of the Hearth Manor kept the biting wind at bay, but the natural drop in temperature crept steadily through the room, cooling the air.

As the chill settled over the bed, Alfia's deep sleep instinctively shifted.

Her body, stripped of the fever that came from her body actively fighting off her disease that had kept her warm for decades, was now entirely susceptible to the mundane environment of the surface.

Seeking the heat that had naturally begun to dissipate from her exposed shoulders, she unconsciously began to slide lower against the headboard. Her silver hair flared outward across the pillows like a spilled web as her torso smoothly descended, until she was completely laying down on the mattress, level with the sleeping adventurer beside her.

But the physical comfort of the bed did not follow her into the depths of her mind.

As her consciousness drifted deeper, the warmth of the room faded, entirely replaced by a terrifying, pitch black void. In her dreams, Alfia was no longer resting in the master bedroom of the Hearth Manor.

She was back to the seventieth floor again.

The phantom sensation of the crystal matrix materialized around her, binding her limbs in a cold, unbreakable vice. She tried to expand her lungs, but the air felt like liquid ice, scraping against her throat.

She tried to scream, to call out for Bell, to unleash the devastating chords of her Genos Angelus to shatter the glass, but no sound left her lips. The silence of the abyss was an absolute, physical weight, pressing down on her skull, suffocating her thoughts, and drowning her in a vast ocean of sensory deprivation.

"You belong to the past." A chorus of hollow, distorted whispers echoed from the dark corners of the crystal. "The world has forgotten you. There is only the silence of the grave."

In the physical world, Alfia's breathing instantly fractured. Her chest rose and fell in shallow, rapid hitches, and a fine line of cold sweat broke out across her forehead. Her brow furrowed into a deep, pained grimace, and her fingers, still weak from years of atrophy, began to claw frantically at the linen sheets, blindly fighting against a phantom prison.

Her hand wandered blindly across the mattress, driven by a desperate, subconscious instinct to find a single point of reality in the freezing void. Her pale fingers slid across the fabric, searching, until they pressed flat against a sudden, radiating source of solid warmth.

Her palm came to rest directly over the left side of Yuuya's chest. Right exactly where his heart was.

The physical contact cut through the frozen layers of her nightmare. In the dark expanse of her dream, the suffocating silence was suddenly shattered by a deep, resonant sound.

Thump.

It wasn't the distant, echoing roar of a monster, nor was it the grating chant of a spell. It was a slow, heavy, and utterly unbreakable rhythm.

Thump. Thump.

The steady beat of Yuuya's heart vibrated directly through her palm, sending a wave of grounding heat coursing up her arm and into her chest.

The crystal matrix, shattering around her in her mind, didn't explode into shards; it simply melted away, dissolved by the sheer vitality of the life beneath her hand. The suffocating weight on her lungs vanished, replaced by the clean, quiet air of the surface.

Alfia's fractured breathing instantly leveled out. The tight, defensive lines of her face smoothed into an expression of serene, unbothered peace. Her fingers relaxed, no longer clawing at the sheets, but instead curling slightly against the fabric of his shirt, keeping herself close to the single constant that had dragged her out of the dark.

Shielded by the steady, unyielding sound of Yuuya's heart, the maiden of silence finally sank into a true, undisturbed sanctuary of sleep, completely safe from the ghosts of her past.

The next day arrived.

The morning sun broke through the frosted glass of the master bedroom windows, painting the room in soft hues of amber and gold. The crisp morning air of Orario bit gently at the exposed stone of the walls, but beneath the heavy linen quilts, a deep, radiating warmth remained locked in place.

Yuuya's eyelids fluttered.

A long, slow breath expanded his chest, the internal ache of his soul no longer resembling a burning abyss, but rather a dull, manageable fatigue.

His consciousness stitched itself back together piece by piece, anchoring him firmly back into the physical world. He rolled his neck slightly, intending to stretch his stiff muscles, but his movement was instantly stopped by an unexpected presence resting against his right side.

He blinked, his dark eyes adjusting to the bright morning light, and found himself staring at a completely bizarre scene.

Alfia was lying directly beside him. Her regal, pale face was tucked perfectly into the crook of his shoulder, her silver hair spilling across his chest like a silken web. Her breathing was deep and rhythmic, completely devoid of the ragged hitches that had plagued her for decades. Furthermore, her right hand was pressed completely flat against the left side of his chest, her fingers curled slightly into the fabric of his shirt right above his heart.

(My years of watching and reading romance anime, manga, manhwa, etc is finally being used for something other than reminding me I'm single frfr.)

Yuuya remained perfectly still, a look of profound, quiet amusement washing over his features. The infamous adventurer of the Hera Familia, a woman whose very name once caused the gods themselves to tremble, was currently using him as a personal, oversized bolster.

As if sensing the subtle shift in his breathing, Alfia's long, silver eyelashes began to quiver. A low, soft murmur escaped her throat as her consciousness slowly rose to the surface. Her heterochromatic eyes opened by a fraction, hazy and entirely unfocused with the deep fog of a heavy sleep.

Yuuya tilted his head down slightly, a faint, teasing smirk playing at the corner of his lips.

"Did you sleep well, Alfia?"

"Yuuya..." Alfia murmured, her voice a raspy, gravelly whisper that carried none of her usual icy sharpness.

For three glorious, uninterrupted seconds, the fog in her mind remained absolute. Instead of pulling away, she actually leaned into the contact, nuzzling her face deeper into the crook of his neck, instinctively seeking the comforting heat radiating from his skin. Her fingers tightened against his shirt, completely surrendered to the lingering warmth of the dreamless sanctuary she had enjoyed all night.

Then, the fourth second arrived.

The morning light struck her eyes with sudden clarity. The familiar scent of the room, the solid contour of the chest beneath her palm, and the deep, rumbling vibration of Yuuya's quiet chuckle instantly shattered the remnants of her slumber.

Alfia froze.

Her heterochromatic eyes widened to the size of saucers, staring blankly at the collar of his shirt.

A fierce, bright crimson flush exploded across her cheeks, rapidly spreading down her neck and to the tips of her ears. The stoicism of the Silence shattered into absolute, chaotic panic.

"Y-Yuuya?!" Alfia stuttered violently, her voice pitching into a completely uncharacteristic squeak. She snatched her hand back from his chest as if she had just touched a hot iron. "What—how—this is entirely—!"

"Good morning to you too." Yuuya chuckled, his smirk widening despite his own surprise.

"Silence!" She snapped, her words tripping over one another as she scrambled backward against the pillows, her limbs tangled in the blankets. "I was... the ambient temperature of the room had fallen below the standard! The frost on the glass indicated a significant nocturnal dip! As a recovered patient, your body required a consistent thermal conduit to prevent a secondary relapse! It was a purely logical, medical intervention!"

"Right. A medical intervention." Yuuya nodded solemnly, his dark eyes dancing with pure mirth. "Is that why you were nuzzling my neck?"

"I was not nuzzling!" Alfia's face burned a shade of red that rivaled the hearth downstairs. Her pride, thoroughly pushed to the absolute brink, triggered a sudden surge of adrenaline through her recovering muscles.

With a desperate, panicked gasp, she extended both hands and shoved Yuuya's shoulder with a burst of physical strength that absolutely shouldn't have been possible in her current, atrophied state.

Normally, her body wouldn't have been able to nudge a child, but fueled by the panic of a dignified woman caught cuddling, she tapped into a reservoir of Level 7 strength that defied biological logic.

THUD.

Yuuya didn't even have time to brace himself. He flew entirely off the edge of the mattress, his body tumbling through the air before colliding heavily with the floorboards in a chaotic heap of limbs and loose sheets.

The echoing bang of his fall reverberated through the quiet bedroom, followed by a sudden silence.

On the bed, Alfia's breath hitched. The adrenaline evaporated as quickly as it had arrived, replaced by a sudden, sinking wave of realization. She had just violently thrown a freshly recovered patient—a man who had literally torn his own soul apart to save her life—directly onto a hard, cold floor.

Slowly, with dread freezing her spine, Alfia crawled toward the edge of the mattress. She gripped the frame with her trembling fingers and peeked over the side, her eyes wide with frantic concern.

Yuuya was laying flat on his back, sprawled across the floorboards. His eyes were closed, his face twisted into a dramatic grimace of pain as he slowly rubbed his ribs with one hand.

"Ow..." Yuuya groaned weakly and dramatically, his voice dripping with exaggerated suffering. "Man... my ribs. My spine. I think my soul just fractured all over again."

Alfia let out a sharp breath, her eyes narrowing as she realized he was entirely intact.

"Yuuya..."

"Way to treat a patient." Yuuya continued, cracking one dark eye open to look up at her over the edge of the bed. He let out a theatrical sigh, a wry grin cutting through his totally real misery. "Is this what they did in the Hera Familia too back in the day? Push the wounded adventurers out of towers to see if they'd bounce?"

Alfia crossed her arms over the edge of the mattress, glaring down at him with her cheeks still tinged a deep pink.

"You are being utterly, shamelessly dramatic. A Level 6 adventurer does not suffer structural failure from a two feet drop onto the ground. Get off the floor before I decide to give you a reason to complain."

"Ouch. Cruel as always." Yuuya chuckled.

He didn't get up, though. He simply adjusted his position, resting the back of his head against the floorboards and crossing his arms over his chest.

The playful, teasing glint in his dark eyes slowly began to recede, dissolving into the quiet atmosphere of the room. He stared directly up at the ceiling, the shadows of the morning dancing across the wooden beams above.

His expression softened, a profound, heavy quietness settling over his features. The usual, easygoing mask he wore for the outside world was entirely gone, leaving behind the raw, exhausting weight of a man who had carried too many secrets for far too long.

Alfia watched the transition in silence. Her defensive, embarrassed posture gradually dissolved, her heterochromatic eyes tracking the sudden, solemn depth in his gaze. The playful banter of the morning vanished, replaced by an atmosphere so thick and serious it made the room feel incredibly small.

"Yuuya?" Alfia asked softly, her voice dropping into a quiet, tentative register. "What is it?"

Yuuya closed his eyes for a brief moment, letting out a long, slow exhale that sounded like the shifting of stones. When he opened them again, his gaze remained fixed on the ceiling.

"It's time, Alfia." Yuuya said, his voice quiet, yet carrying an undeniable, heavy resonance that echoed through the corners of the master bedroom. "It's finally time. I need to tell the truth. To you, to Hestia, and to the rest of the Familia. About where I actually come from... and everything that happened before I found this place."

∆∆∆∆

The master bedroom, which had felt like a tense medical sanctuary for days, was now completely filled with the quiet, murmuring warmth of the Hestia Familia.

Welf had dragged up a few extra wooden stools from the dining room, while Mikoto and Haruhime stood respectfully near the door frame. Lili sat cross legged on her usual stool at the foot of the bed. Hestia had claimed a spot right at the edge of the mattress, her fingers nervously tracing the linen sheets, while Bell sat on a chair close to his mother's side.

At the head of the bed, Yuuya and Alfia sat side by side, their backs resting comfortably against the wooden headboard. Though Yuuya was still visibly exhausted, the deathly pallor had left his face. He looked remarkably relaxed, his hands loosely clasped over the blanket.

He looked around the room, meeting the anxious, curious, and profoundly loyal gazes of his Familia. A faint, carefree smile touched his lips.

"I promised you all that I'd tell you everything once the time was right." Yuuya began, his voice smooth and entirely devoid of the heavy gravity they had expected. "Well, that time is now. I'm going to tell you exactly where I came from."

"Where you came from?" Hestia tilted her head, her eyes wide. "You mean outside of Orario? Like a different nation?"

"Not exactly, Goddess." Yuuya chuckled, leaning his head back against the wood. "Ah, where do I even start..."

He paused for a moment, gathering his thoughts as Alfia cast a quiet, piercing glance at his profile.

"To understand who I am, you have to understand how I grew so fast." Yuuya said, gesturing vaguely to his own chest. "You all know I possess an innate, active growth type skill. It operates on a principle similar to Bell's Liaris Freese. It's the sole reason I was able to break every record and level up to Level 6 in under four months of being in this city."

Bell blinked, a look of profound realization washing over his face.

"Oh, the one you said before when I got my falna right? You said it works a bit different from mine, but does it still involve some of your feelings?"

"Not quite, Bell." Yuuya corrected gently. "My skill exists because of my past life. In the world I lived in before I found myself here, I was considered what people call a 'superhuman' among normal human beings. My growth skill isn't an awakening of mortal desire; it's a structural carryover of the biological and mental abnormality I was born with in my previous existence."

The room fell completely silent.

Lili's jaw dropped slightly, her mind instantly trying to process the concept.

"A past life? Like... reincarnation? But to remember it with such clarity, and to bring a skill over from another world..."

"It sounds like a fairy tale." Welf admitted, though a grin broke through his skepticism as he crossed his arms. "But considering you've been casually shattering every record in Orario since the day you arrived, I guess a secret from another world is the only thing that actually makes sense."

Yuuya let out a soft laugh at Welf's remark.

"Fair enough. But back then, before I was a Level 6, I was just a really bizarre kid. When I was a baby, I could already walk by the eighth month. By a year and a half, I wasn't just toddling around—I was running."

"Running at a year and a half?!" Hestia squeaked, her hands flying to her cheeks. "A toddler running around at that age sounds absolutely terrifying! Your poor mother must have been driven entirely out of her mind trying to catch you!"

"She definitely had her hands full." Yuuya smiled warmly at the memory. "But at that point, the abnormality wasn't too noticeable. Plenty of kids develop fast. The real freakishness started showing when I began to talk and observe. For some reason, I was born with a photographic memory."

Beside him, Alfia's heterochromatic eyes flared with a sudden, intense curiosity. As someone who had been labeled a monstrous genius her entire life, she understood the weight of possessing a mind that never forgot.

"A photographic memory... You retain every sensory detail you look upon?"

"Every single one." Yuuya nodded, turning his head slightly to meet her gaze. "Every page of a book I turned, every face I passed on the street, every weapon stroke I witnessed. Once my eyes locked onto it, it was permanently etched into my brain. But don't get it twisted—I wasn't a genius."

"Eh? How can you have a memory like that and not be a genius, Captain?" Mikoto asked, her brow furrowing in genuine confusion.

"Because memory and comprehension are two entirely different things." Yuuya explained, his tone carefree and practical. "I consider myself completely average when it came to actual studying. If a teacher threw a complex philosophical concept or an advanced mathematical theory at me, my brain didn't automatically understand it. I still had to sit down, break it apart, and actively study the concepts just like any normal person."

He shrugged, a playful glint returning to his dark eyes.

"Though, I obviously can't deny that I excelled at passing tests. Because, well... duh, I had a photographic memory. I didn't need to understand the deeper meaning of a history book to perfectly rewrite every single sentence of it onto an exam paper."

Haruhime let out a soft, fascinated gasp, her fox ears tilting forward.

"To remember every word of a scroll without effort... it sounds like the blessing of a divine spirit."

"It felt more like a tool." Yuuya murmured softly, his gaze drifting back to the ceiling as the carefree smile on his face settled into a look of quiet nostalgia. "A tool that I had to learn to control before it consumed me. And that was just the baseline of what made me different."

Beside him, Alfia's posture tightened just a fraction, her gray and green eyes narrowing as she locked her gaze onto his profile.

She wasn't entirely blindsided by the concept of his reincarnation. Seven years ago, Alfia already asked some questions about his past life. But back then, their time was limited and Yuuya only said some pieces of his life; mainly depending on her questions.

Basically, she had never known the full details. She had never known the story of the boy before he became a member of the Hestia Familia.

Now, she listened with a quiet, fierce intensity, her hand still resting subtly near his on the quilt, entirely captivated by the history of the man who had rewritten her fate.

Yuuya caught her intense stare out of the corner of his eye and offered a soft, reassuring chuckle. He shifted his weight against the headboard, stretching his legs out beneath the blankets.

"But before I go any further into what I could do as a kid, I suppose I should probably paint a picture of the stage itself." Yuuya said, waving a casual hand through the air. "Otherwise, none of this is going to make a lick of sense to you guys. You see, I wasn't born in some medieval era or stone age world. I was born in an entirely different world. A world called Earth."

"Earth?" Hestia repeated, her brow furrowing as she leaned forward, her hands gripping her knees. "Is that... like a different realm of Heaven? A place the gods haven't discovered yet?"

"No, Goddess. It's a completely physical world, just like this one, but with one massive, fundamental difference." Yuuya explained, his expression remarkably relaxed. "It is a world entirely devoid of active Gods walking the streets. There are no blessings. No Falna. No status sheets, no levels, and no magic. And perhaps most importantly... there are no monsters, and there is no Dungeon."

A collective, stunned silence dropped over the bedroom like a heavy anvil.

Lili's who's fiddling with a pen dropped straight out of her hand. She didn't bother to pick it up. Her mind was trying to comprehend the kind of world Yuuya just described.

"A world... without monsters?" Lili whispered, her voice laced with a mixture of awe and utter disbelief. "No Dungeon to conquer? No magic stones to harvest? Then... how does society even function? How do people earn a living without the bounty of the Labyrinth?"

"We built things." Yuuya replied simply, a nostalgic glint touching his dark eyes. "Instead of magic and divine favor, humanity relied entirely on science, technology, and engineering. We built towering structures of steel and glass that dwarf the Babel tower. We forged metal carriages that move without horses, and iron birds that can fly across oceans in a matter of hours."

Welf let out a low, breathy whistle, his eyes wide as he stared at his captain.

"Iron birds that fly? Carriages without horses? Man... as a blacksmith, that sounds like a paradise of engineering. A world where human craftsmanship is the only thing that moves civilization forward."

"It had its perks." Yuuya agreed, though his smile turned slightly wistful. "But a world run entirely by humans means that human nature is the only thing that dictates peace. Without gods to keep the balance or monsters to unite humanity against a common enemy, we spent centuries fighting each other. Through trial, error, and an absurd amount of blood, we carved out our nations."

He paused, his gaze drifting over to the corner of the room where Mikoto and Haruhime were standing.

"In that world, I belonged to an island nation called Japan." Yuuya said, his voice taking on a warm, familiar cadence. "And if you want a visual representation of what my old home looked like, you don't have to look any further than the two of them. The closest thing this world has to the culture, the architecture, and the aesthetics of Japan... is the Far East."

Mikoto gasped, taking a involuntary step forward into the room. Her eyes flared with a mixture of profound shock and immediate, intense curiosity.

"The Far East? You mean... your country shared our customs? Our heritage?"

"Almost perfectly." Yuuya nodded, smiling at her reaction. "The sliding paper doors, the wooden architecture, the traditional robes you wear, the cherry blossoms in the spring... even the language and the philosophy of the blade. When I first arrived in Orario and crossed paths with people from the Far East, it felt like a bizarre, hallucinatory slap in the face. It was like staring at a distorted mirror of the home I had left behind."

Haruhime touched her flushed cheek with her fingertips, her fox ears twitching as she processed the revelation.

"A whole nation... a whole world that shares the beauty of our homeland, yet free from the shadow of the Dungeon's curses. It sounds like the setting of an ancient, beautiful fairy tale..."

"It was beautiful, and it was entirely mundane." Yuuya murmured softly.

Beside him, Alfia remained perfectly still, absorbing every syllable. Her mind focused. She looked down at his relaxed hands, then back up to his carefree face.

"A world of normal humans, devoid of falna." Alfia remarked, her raspy voice cutting through the Familia's murmurs with effortless authority. "I vividly remember you telling me how you constantly hold back. Yet, despite that, how did you truly live?"

Yuuya's carefree smile widened, a quiet spark flickering in his dark eyes as he prepared to tell them the details of his life.

He shifted his posture against the heavy headboard, a soft, self-deprecating laugh escaping his lips as he ran a hand through his dark hair.

"Let's start with my childhood. Because of those physical abnormalities, normal childhood games were... Well, they were a bit of a disaster." Yuuya chuckled, shaking his head. "Imagine playing a game of tag in a world where nobody has Falna. The other kids are moving at normal human speeds, and then there's me. Even at five years old, I could outrun the oldest kids in the neighborhood without breaking a sweat. I was entirely untaggable."

"That sounds incredibly frustrating for the other children." Lili remarked, a wry smile tugging at her lips. "If a game has an opponent who literally defies the laws of their biology, the game ceases to be a game. Lili imagines they simply stopped inviting you to play."

"Pretty much." Yuuya admitted casually. "If I was 'it,' the game ended in ten seconds because I'd catch everyone immediately. If they were 'it,' they'd chase me until they fell over gasping for air while I wasn't even breathing hard. Naturally, I ended up a bit isolated during school recess. Kids don't really want to play with a freak who ruins the fun."

Bell looked down, a soft, empathetic frown crossing his face.

"To be isolated just because you were born different... I understand how lonely that can be."

"Don't look so sad, Bell." Yuuya said, reaching over to lightly ruffle the boy's white hair. "I might have been a bit of an outcast at school, but my life at home was far from lonely. In fact, I had two childhood friends who made sure my life was completely chaotic."

Yuuya's expression softened into a look of genuine affection, a fond warmth entering his dark eyes.

"Our houses were laid out in a very specific way." Yuuya explained, drawing lines in the air with his finger. "It was a suburban neighborhood, and our families' properties were literally side by side. My house was stuck right in the middle. To my left lived a family I had known since birth, and to my right was a house that stood empty until I turned about four years old."

Hestia leaned forward, her twin tails bouncing as she rested her chin on her hands.

"Oh? So you were surrounded by your friends? That sounds like a very cozy arrangement, Yuuya!"

"Cozy is one word for it." Yuuya chuckled. "I met the girl on my left first. Her name was Haruka. She had raven black hair that reached past her shoulders and striking, deep gray eyes. A year later, a new family moved into the empty house on my right. That's when I met Akari. She was a stark contrast to Haruka—she had brilliant silver hair and vibrant, emerald green eyes."

Beside him, Alfia's heterochromatic eyes narrowed slightly. Her gray and green gaze flickered down to her own silver hair, then back up to Yuuya's face. The physical description of this 'Akari' felt entirely too close to home, striking a strange, quiet chord in the back of her mind. She remained silent, but her attention grew visibly sharper.

"Haruka and Akari..." Haruhime repeated the names softly, her fox ears tilting forward in fascination. "Raven hair and silver hair... they sound like they belonged in a picture book, Captain."

"Visually? Absolutely." Yuuya agreed, his grin turning slightly mischievous. "On the surface, both of them looked like absolute angels sent down from the heavens. They were stunningly beautiful, even as kids. But let me tell you... their personalities were another story entirely."

Welf let out a loud snort, crossing his arms with a massive grin.

"Ah, there it is! There's always a catch when a guy describes beautiful girls from his past. Come on, Captain, don't leave us hanging. What was wrong with them?"

"They both possessed some... highly questionable personality traits." Yuuya said, his voice dripping with playful exasperation. "Our parents were incredibly close friends, which meant the three of us were practically glued at the hip. Because I didn't fit in with the kids at school, Haruka and Akari claimed absolute ownership over my free time. They were fiercely protective, wildly possessive, and entirely unpredictable."

"Possessive?" Mikoto blinked, her brow furrowing as she tried to visualize the dynamic. "In what way, Captain? Did they train with you?"

"Not exactly." Yuuya laughed. "Haruka, with her calm gray eyes, had this quiet, terrifyingly intense aura when she didn't get her way. She could manipulate a conversation so perfectly that you'd end up doing exactly what she wanted without realizing you'd been tricked. And Akari? With those bright green eyes, she was a chaotic firecracker. She had a penchant for getting into trouble just to see how I would bail her out, using her angelic face to play innocent the moment our parents walked into the room."

He glanced down at the blanket, his smile widening.

"They were the ones who truly tested my photographic memory and my physical reflexes long before I ever stepped foot into the Dungeon. If I tried to hide from them to get some peace, they'd use their combined wits to track me down within minutes. Having my house stuck right in the middle of theirs meant there was literally no escape. If I slipped out the back door, Haruka would be waiting. If I scaled the fence on the right, Akari would catch me."

Alfia let out a soft, dry hum, her voice cutting through the lighthearted atmosphere with effortless precision.

"So, you were thoroughly domesticated by two mortal maidens long before you became a warrior. It seems your talent for handling troublesome women was forged in the fires of your childhood, Yuuya."

The entire room erupted into a sudden burst of laughter. Welf slapped his knee, Hestia giggled uncontrollably, and even Bell couldn't help but let out a bright, cheerful chuckle at his mother's sharp wit.

Yuuya simply rubbed the back of his neck, his carefree smile remaining perfectly intact as he looked around at his laughing Familia.

"Yeah, yeah, laugh it up. But those two were the baseline of my sanity in a world where I didn't quite belong."

Welf rubbed his chin, his gaze shifting slowly from Yuuya's relaxed expression over to the silver haired woman sitting beside him. He noted the stark contrast of Alfia's heterochromatic eyes—specifically the brilliant, emerald green hue of her right eye shining in the morning light.

The idea of it just too good to pass on. And he doesn't mind being the one to say it.

A wide, knowing grin suddenly broke across the blacksmith's face, and he pointed a dramatic finger toward the bed.

"Wait a minute, hold the phone." Welf chucked, leaning forward off his stool. "Silver hair... and a green eye? Captain, looking at Lady Alfia here, it sounds like you've got a seriously specific knack for a certain type of individual. Are you telling us your childhood neighbor and the 'Silence of Hera' look like they were cast from the exact same mold?"

Alfia stiffened slightly, her left gray eye narrowing as she shot a frosty, sharp glare at Welf. Yet, despite her defensive posture, her gaze imperceptibly flickered toward Yuuya, a quiet curiosity dancing in her emerald right eye.

Yuuya let out a bright, unrestrained laugh, entirely unbothered by Welf's teasing.

"You caught me, Welf. I can't even deny it. When I first met Alfia seven years ago, it threw me for a loop. Akari and Alfia actually felt incredibly similar to each other. It wasn't just the striking silver hair or the green eye; it was that sharp, almost terrifyingly intense presence they both naturally radiate. Standing next to either of them makes you feel like you're standing next to a lightning storm. Where one—Akari—will mercilessly scare you because she finds it funny, while the other—Alfia—strikes you with lightning every single second just because you breathed too loudly. "

Alfia turned her head away, her cheeks dusting with a faint, lingering pink, though she didn't voice a contradiction.

"But as beautifully nostalgic as those childhood days were, everything took a sharp turn when we finally reached high school." Yuuya continued, his carefree expression softening into something a bit more profound. He stared at the ceiling beams, his voice dropping into a calmer, reflective rhythm. "Our lives took a massive, chaotic detour, and a lot of genuinely unfortunate things happened down the line... but we'll get into the darker parts of that story later."

"Unfortunate things?" Bell murmured, his ruby eyes clouding with immediate concern as he leaned closer to the bed.

"Don't worry about it just yet, Bell." Yuuya reassured him with a gentle wave of his hand. "Before the shadows hit, we had some of the best years of our lives. When we entered high school, my circle of friends expanded. I ended up gaining two more companions who were just as chaotic and abnormal as I was, though in entirely different ways. Their names were Sora and Kaito."

"More superhumans?" Lili asked, her curiosity piqued.

"Not in the physical sense, but definitely in personality." Yuuya smiled. "Sora was a literal, undeniable genius when it came to intellectual concepts. You could throw a massive, interconnected web of market data or advanced trading algorithms at him, and he would understand and master it in seconds. He could predict financial trends like he was reading a children's book. Despite that terrifyingly massive brain, the guy was uncharacteristically, beautifully clumsy. If you took him away from his data sheets and put a standard teacup in his hand, he'd somehow trip over a perfectly flat carpet and drench himself. He had zero physical coordination."

"A genius who cannot walk a straight line." Mikoto mused, a small, polite smile touching her lips. "He sounds like quite the eccentric."

"He absolutely was." Yuuya nodded. "And then there was Kaito. Kaito's family was filthy, it deserved another filthy in it, unbelievably rich—they basically owned a massive portion of the city's real estate. But despite being swimming in wealth, he didn't have a single arrogant bone in his body. He wore casual clothes, ate cheap street food with us, and never looked down on anyone."

Yuuya paused, a fond, rascally glint returning to his dark eyes.

"Both Kaito and Sora possessed this incredibly easygoing, deeply cynical, yet lighthearted personality. They were the exact type of friends who, if they saw you trip down a flight of stairs, wouldn't ask if you were bleeding. They would stand at the top of the stairs, laugh their absolute lungs out until they couldn't breathe, point at you, and then come down to drag you back up. I'm entirely convinced that my relaxed, carefree attitude today is because I was thoroughly corrupted by those two for years."

Welf burst into a loud laugh, clapping his hand against his knee.

"Ha! Now those are real brothers! I like these guys already, Captain!"

"Also, when the three of us hung out, we were a walking municipal hazard." Yuuya chuckled, leaning back further against the headboard. "We had a perfect, undeniable division of labor within our trio. Sora was the brain, Kaito was the money, and I was the muscle to get us out of a situation if all else failed. And we proved that dynamic plenty of times during our highly mischievous days."

"Mischievous days?" Hestia asked, crossing her arms and puffing out her chest like a suspicious parent. "What kind of trouble were you boys getting into without any gods around to supervise you?"

"Well, using Kaito's seemingly infinite allowance, we would regularly bribe the security guards at the high end adult establishments in the entertainment districts." Yuuya confessed casually. "Specifically, the casinos. We were completely underage, which was mostly highly illegal in our world, but a fat stack of Kaito's cash made the guards look the other way. We would slip inside the grand gambling halls whenever I was available to join them."

Lili's jaw dropped in shock.

"Underage gambling?! Bribing municipal guards?! Captain, you were running a criminal enterprise before you even received a Falna!"

"We only went when I was open to play." Yuuya explained, his grin widening as he ignored Lili's frantic whispering. "Because back in my past life, I was universally recognized by my friends for three distinct things. First was my absurd physical talent. Second was my photographic memory. And lastly... gambling. Because for a reason I still cannot explain to this day, I was born with a completely broken, ungodly amount of luck when it specifically comes in gambling."

"Luck?" Alfia repeated, her gray and green eyes locking onto his face with deep skepticism. "Luck is a fickle, fleeting concept, Yuuya. It is not something a rational warrior relies upon."

"Tell that to the casino owners who lost millions to us." Yuuya countered smoothly. "It didn't matter what game we played. Roulette, blackjack, poker, dice—the moment I sat down at the table, the odds bent to my will. If I needed a specific card to shatter the dealer's hand, it appeared. If I threw dice, they landed exactly on the winning numbers. Sora would calculate the statistical probabilities, Kaito would provide the initial betting capital, and I would just sit there, smile, and completely drain the house's wealth."

"That sounds like cheating." Hestia squinted her eyes. "Are you sure you weren't using some weird, world hopping magic?"

"No magic, Goddess. Just pure, inexplicable fortune." Yuuya laughed. "We were so absurdly successful that our trio ended up on the official ban list of almost every major casino in the metropolitan area. They literally pinned our high school photos behind the security desks with a warning that read 'Do Not Admit Under Any Circumstances.' We became legends of the underground floor before we even graduated."

"To be banned by the merchants themselves..." Lili muttered, staring at Yuuya as if he were a walking gold mine. "The sheer amount of valis you could have generated..."

"But that's exactly where the majority of our spending money came from." Yuuya said, his voice softening as the nostalgic warmth settled heavily over the room. "In our complete circle—me, Haruka, Akari, Sora, and Kaito—we were entirely inseparable. On the days we had nothing to do, when the school closed for holidays, we would take that massive pool of casino winnings and just explore. We traveled everywhere. We dined at the most expensive restaurants, took trains to distant cities, explored hidden forests, and just lived completely without a single care or financial worry hanging over our heads."

He looked at the faces of his Familia, noting how deeply they were hanging onto his words. For a group of adventurers who spent every single day bleeding in the dark, monster infested corridors of the Dungeon just to pay for their daily bread, the concept of a life filled with pure, peaceful, and wealthy exploration sounded like a paradise from a myth.

"We were king and queens of our own little worldm" Yuuya whispered softly, his eyes reflecting the golden morning sun. "Just five kids with too much money, too much energy, and an endless horizon ahead of us. If only those golden days would last forever."

Yuuya leaned his head back against the dark oak headboard, staring out at the golden morning light. The carefree smile on his face dimmed just a fraction, shifting into a look of quiet, humble reflection.

"Anyways, back to gradual development of my life, look, compared to what any of you have gone through in this world—compared to the devastating illnesses, the grief of losing families, and the literal, daily fights for survival in the Dungeon—my high school struggles were laughably small." Yuuya prefaced, looking around at the quiet room. "At the time, it felt like my own bizarre brand of torture, but in the grand scheme of things, it was just the price of being an anomaly."

(Keyword: high school struggles. Not personal. Just in case some of y'all get confused.)

As he entered his mid-teens, the baseline of his physical body underwent a massive, quiet evolution. His innate potential didn't just grow; it completely unlocked. He quickly realized that if he did not actively and consciously hold himself back, he would perform physical feats that the greatest elite athletes in Earth's entire history couldn't dream of achieving.

"It didn't matter what the discipline was." Yuuya said, waving a casual hand. "If a weapon instructor showed me how to swing a blade or hold a spear exactly once, my photographic memory didn't just copy the form—my muscles instantly mastered the execution. If someone explained the mechanics of a martial art to me, I didn't just learn it. I could instinctively see the flaws in their style, break the technique down, and reconstruct it into an evolved version that far surpassed the original state."

Mikoto took a sudden, sharp breath, her hands clenching tightly. As a practitioner of the Far Eastern martial arts who had spent a good amount of her time training, Yuuya's words bordered on sacrilege.

"Instantly... mastered?" Mikoto whispered, her dark eyes wide with a mixture of awe and profound envy. "To bypass years of grueling discipline and forge a technique past its original boundaries in a single day... Captain, your flesh was a weapon long before you ever received a drop of Goddess Hestia's blood."

"It sounds like a cheat code." Welf chuckled, though his eyes were completely serious. "So you're telling me you didn't even need to break a sweat to become a master swordsman? Man, the swordmen in your world must have hated you."

"I didn't really show it off to the public." Yuuya laughed softly. "If I had actually tried, it would have ruined everything. I could literally roll out of bed half-asleep, groggy and dragging my feet, walk onto an athletic track, and shatter a world sprinting or lifting record so completely that no human on Earth would be able to touch it for the next five hundred years. Or until this talent of mine finds another person to bother. When you have that kind of absolute physical superiority, you have to spend every waking moment pretending to be normal just to keep society from locking you in a research lab."

"Though... there was one time I completely lost my mind and forgot to hold back," Yuuya admitted, a deeply amused, rascally glint returning to his dark eyes.

Hestia shifted her weight on the edge of the mattress, narrowing her eyes suspiciously.

"Oh? What did you do, Yuuya? Did you accidentally knock down a building?"

"Worse. I fought a silverback gorilla—imagine a Silverback but smaller—bare handed in an enclosed arena. And to make matters worse, I actually thoroughly enjoyed it."

A heavy, stunned silence dropped over the bedroom.

Alfia slowly turned her head, her gray and green eyes locking onto his face with an expression of deadpan, unadulterated judgment. She had fought terrifying, mountain sized monsters in her youth, but the sheer absurdity of Yuuya's statement made her wonder if the recoil of his spell had finally damaged his brain.

"A gorilla?" Alfia questioned, her raspy voice dripping with quiet disbelief. "You chose to engage in a primitive, bare knuckle brawl with a wild, territorial beast? For what possible purpose?"

"Well, back in my world, there was this massive, running joke on the 'internet'—which is basically a massive, worldwide network where millions of people share information and videos through magic like glass rectangles." Yuuya explained, trying to simplify the concept. "The joke was a massive debate: Could one hundred normal human men defeat a single gorilla in a fistfight? It was a stupid meme, but it kept popping up on my feed. So, when our circle found ourselves near a private exotic sanctuary through Kaito's connections, I decided to settle the debate myself. One on one. Completely barebhanded. And to make it more fun, I deliberately choose a silverback"

"And you won?!" Bell squeaked, his eyes practically bulging out of his head. "Against a beast that can bend iron bars?!"

"I didn't just win, Bell, I boxed it into submission." Yuuya chuckled, rubbing the back of his neck. "It was the first time in years I actually got to use a fraction of my real physical strength without worrying about breaking a human. But someone secretly recorded the entire fight on their phone, and the video got leaked to the public. For about twelve hours, I became a terrifying, viral internet sensation. Millions of people across the globe were staring at their screens, watching a high school kid in a uniform dodge a gorilla's haymakers and deliver a haymaker of my own."

Lili buried her face in her hands, letting out a long, exhausted groan.

"Even in another world, the Captain was a public relations nightmare. How did you escape being hunted down by the authorities?"

"That's where the power of our trio came in." Yuuya smiled. "Sora sat at his computer and executed a brilliant, nationwide data strike, systematically erasing the original video files and manipulating the digital footprints. Meanwhile, Kaito flooded the media outlets with an absurd amount of money, releasing official statements claiming the footage was a heavily edited, special effects promotional video for an upcoming movie. Between Sora's brains and Kaito's wallet, they completely debunked the truth, rendering me a forgotten hoax by the next news cycle."

"But outside of the physical stuff? Outside of fighting beasts and running fast?" Yuuya's smile instantly vanished, replaced by a sudden, deeply traumatic look of absolute misery. He groaned loudly, dropping his forehead directly into his open palms. "That's where the real nightmare lived. The absolute bane of my entire existence. Exams."

Hestia blinked, completely thrown off by his sudden descent into despair.

"Exams? But Yuuya, you just told us you have a perfect photographic memory! You can memorize whole books!"

"For history, literature, and geography? Yes! I could copy the pages perfectly." Yuuya whined, his voice muffled by his hands. "But a photographic memory is completely useless when it comes to advanced mathematics, physics, and subjects that require you to understand abstract, conceptual logic! You can't just memorize a formula if the exam question demands you to apply that formula to a completely unmapped, hypothetical problem! Your brain actually has to process the abstract concept, and my brain completely rejected it."

He lifted his head, a look of profound defeat in his dark eyes as he gestured to the empty space of his bedroom.

"During our group study sessions, when the five of us would crowd into my room to prepare for finals, it was absolute hell." Yuuya muttered. "Haruka would be sitting to my left, calmly pointing out my errors with a terrifying, silent glare. Akari would be on my right, aggressively tapping her pencil against my skull every time I got an equation wrong. Sora would be sighing in pure intellectual superiority, and Kaito would just be laughing his lungs out at my misery."

"I can dive into the seventy floors of the Dungeon, face down monster rex's with nothing but a spoon and a prayer, and stand before the gods without blinking." Yuuya admitted, a look of grim sincerity on his face as he stared at his hands. "But back then, sitting at that low wooden table with a math textbook in front of me... I would literally bang my head against the wood until the desk rattled, begging the universe to just let a monster attack the house so I could have an excuse to stop doing math."

The entire room erupted into an immediate, completely unrestrained wave of laughter. Welf slumped against the wall, howling with amusement, while Hestia giggled hysterically at the visual of her terrifyingly powerful captain being thoroughly defeated by numbers on a page. Lili simply shook her head with a small, fond smile, realizing that despite his god like physical gifts, Yuuya had been remarkably, beautifully human.

Beside him, Alfia let out a soft, elegant chuckle, the corners of her lips curling into a genuine smile as she looked at his miserable expression.

"To think... the adventurer who rewrites fate with his bare hands was thoroughly brought to his knees by a high school arithmetic ledger. The universe truly possesses a strange sense of balance, Yuuya."

Yuuya let out a soft chuckle. He glanced around the room, noting the subtle change in the atmosphere. The mention of high school life had naturally piqued everyone's interest, but there was an unspoken curiosity hanging in the air that he knew some of them had been waiting for since he started his story.

"Alright." Yuuya said, a playfully rogue glint returning to his dark eyes. "I can see it on your faces. Especially you, Goddess, and Lili. You're all wondering about the one thing I haven't mentioned yet. My love life back on Earth."

Hestia's ears practically perked up, her twin tails bouncing as she instantly leaned forward, her hands gripping the edge of the mattress.

"Well, duh! You were a handsome, super rich, superhuman casino king! There's no way girls were leaving you alone!"

"Lili is merely curious from a sociological standpoint, Captain." Lili sniffed, crossing her arms and turning her head away. "A man with such... absurd fortune and physical capabilities would naturally be a high commodity target in any society."

Bell's face turned a slightly red at the topic.

Beside Yuuya, Alfia didn't say a word. She simply adjusted her position against the headboard, her gray and green eyes narrowing to razor thin slits as she locked her gaze onto his profile, waiting for his next words with a quiet, terrifying intensity.

"As we got older and entered high school, the dynamic between Haruka and Akari took a very specific, very intense turn." Yuuya explained, rubbing the back of his neck with a wry smile. "I told you before that they were fiercely protective and possessive of my time. Well, in high school, that possessiveness mutated into an outright war. They became incredibly, ruthlessly competitive with each other whenever it came to me."

"Competitive?" Haruhime asked softly, her fox ears twitching in fascination. "Like... competing in sports or intellect, Captain?"

"I wish it was just those, Haruhime." Yuuya sighed dramatically. "It was a competition of affection. If Haruka woke up early to make me a traditional, perfectly balanced bento lunch box for school, Akari would somehow find out, march into my kitchen the next morning, and force feed me an entire three course gourmet meal before the first bell even rang. If Akari grabbed my right arm while we were walking down the street, Haruka would instantly lock onto my left arm, silently increasing her grip until I felt like my bones were going to crack under the pressure."

Welf burst into a loud, booming laugh, slumping against the window frame.

"Man! Stood right in the middle of a raven haired angel and a silver haired firecracker, both tearing you apart for your attention? That doesn't sound like a struggle, Captain, that sounds like a dream! Some men out there were dying of thirst while you, you beautiful bastard, is drowning instead!"

"It was a minefield, Welf." Yuuya countered smoothly, though his carefree grin betrayed his fondness for the memories. "They were brilliant, beautiful, and completely relentless. Because I was so physically advanced, they knew they couldn't physically force me to do anything. So instead, they used absolute, suffocating affection as their primary weapon. It didn't matter if we were in the classroom, the library, or walking home—I was permanently flanked by two girls who treated every interaction like a turf war."

"Naturally, my situation didn't escape the notice of Sora and Kaito." Yuuya continued, his laugh echoing off the stone walls. "Those two jerks didn't offer a single shred of sympathy. In fact, they made it their lifelong mission to completely broadcast and roast my misery every single day."

"What did they say?" Mikoto asked, a small, amused smile touching her lips as she visualized the scene.

"Sora would sit at his desk, push his glasses up his nose, and look at me like I was a highly fascinating specimen in a lab." Yuuya chuckled. "He told me that my life didn't belong in reality. He said my daily existence was a textbook definition of a 'romantic comedy genre'—which is basically a type of fictional story in my world where a dense guy gets constantly chased by beautiful girls for laughs."

Yuuya paused, his smile widening as he remembered Kaito's specific brand of teasing.

"And Kaito? He would put his arm around my shoulder, flash his rich boy smile, and tell me that the whole neighborhood was just watching a permanent game of cat and mouse. Except, I wasn't the predator. I was the completely helpless prey. He used to joke that I was being relentlessly hunted, tracked, and cornered by two very hungry, very dedicated, and terrifyingly beautiful cats. And whenever I tried to escape to hang out with them at the casino, Sora and Kaito would literally text Haruka and Akari my exact location just to watch the chaos unfold."

"Those are terrible friends!" Hestia shouted, though she was giggling uncontrollably at the visual. "They were totally selling you out to the enemy!"

"They called it entertainment." Yuuya laughed. "But despite the endless teasing and the constant tug of war between Haruka and Akari, it kept our circle entirely tight. We had the money from the gambling, we had Sora's brains to keep us out of trouble, Kaito's resources to take us anywhere we wanted, and the two girls ensuring that our daily lives were never, ever boring. On the days we had no school, the five of us would just pick a random direction on a map, pack our bags, and explore the country."

The room filled with the comfortable, warm chatter of the Familia as Welf and Hestia continued to tease their captain about his past harem lifestyle. Even Bell seemed remarkably relieved to hear that Yuuya's past was filled with such bright, comedic warmth.

But amidst the laughter, a cold, distinct pressure suddenly radiated from the head of the bed.

Alfia slowly turned her head towards Yuuya again. Her gray and green eyes were completely clear, devoid of any sleepiness now, and a small, dangerous smile played at the very edge of her lips.

"Two very hungry, very dedicated cats." Alfia repeated, her raspy voice easily cutting through the background laughter and causing Welf to instantly choke on his own breath. She leaned in just a fraction closer to Yuuya, her silver hair brushing against his shoulder. "And you stated previously that my presence reminds you heavily of this silver haired 'Akari.' Tell me, Yuuya... do you consider me a cat as well? Am I just another predator circling the prey in your new life?"

(Author: (⚆_⚆) )

Yuuya didn't flinch. He slowly turned his head to meet her intense, heterochromatic gaze, his relaxed, carefree smile never wavering for a single second.

"You're far more dangerous than a cat, Alfia." Yuuya murmured softly, his dark eyes locked onto hers with sincerity. "But luckily for me... I've had a lifetime of practice handling lightning storms."

Alfia did not offer a sharp retort to Yuuya's comment about lightning storms. Instead, she slowly withdrew her gaze, her eyes fixing back onto the soft linen of the quilt.

Deep within her chest, a strange, entirely unfamiliar knot of irritation tightened. She found herself thoroughly disliking the vivid mental images his story conjured—the idea of those two vibrant, beautiful young women permanently flanking him, claiming his time, and anchoring themselves so completely to his life.

It was a possessiveness that felt entirely alien to her own experience, yet the mere thought of it left a bitter taste in her mouth. She chose to lock the feeling away, burying it beneath her layer of stoicism, allowing the quiet rhythm of the room to return as Yuuya adjusted his posture against the headboard.

"But it wasn't all just lighthearted comedy." Yuuya said, his voice dropping a fraction into a more contemplative, grounded register. "When you're a kid, you don't think about the future. You just live in the moment. But by the time we reached our second year of high school, the reality of our situation started to weigh heavily on me. I realized I was facing a struggle that my physical talents couldn't simply conquer."

Bell tilted his head, his ruby eyes reflecting the sudden gravity in the room.

"A struggle, Captain? With Haruka and Akari?"

"Yeah." Yuuya nodded, a faint, bittersweet smile touching his lips. "I knew, eventually, that the status quo couldn't last forever. I was going to have to make a choice between the two of them. They both meant the world to me, but a crossroads was coming, and neither of them was willing to back down."

He paused, his gaze drifting toward the window, where the morning sun caught the edge of the frosted glass.

"Looking back at it now, with the benefit of hindsight, I think I finally understand why Akari always ran a little harder than Haruka." Yuuya murmured. "Why she was always a little more aggressive, a little more desperate to force her way into my space. It was because she felt like she was constantly running against a ghost. Haruka and I had a whole year of history before Akari even existed in our world."

Welf shifted his weight against the stone pillar, his brow furrowing slightly.

"A ghost? Was it really that much of a gap?"

"To a child? Absolutely." Yuuya replied. "Haruka and I were completely synchronized. We knew each other's habits before we could even write our own names. When Akari's family first moved into the house on the right, she didn't just instantly burst into our circle like the firecracker she became later. In the beginning, she was completely isolated."

Haruhime let out a soft, sympathetic murmur, her fox ears drooping slightly.

"Isolated... even though she looked like an angel?"

"Especially because of how she looked." Yuuya corrected softly. "You have to understand the culture of Japan. The dominant physical traits are dark hair and dark eyes. In a society like that, being born with brilliant silver hair and vibrant green eyes doesn't make you look like a blessed spirit—it makes you stick out like a broken thumb. The other kids at the local park didn't see her as unique. They saw her as an anomaly. A freak. Someone who didn't belong to their world."

Beside him, Alfia's breath caught imperceptibly in her throat. Her gray and green eyes flickered, staring intently at Yuuya's profile.

The description struck a chord so deafeningly loud in her soul it made her ears ring. She knew that exact isolation. While she did spend most of her life being feared and labelled as a monstrous prodigy because of her magic; she still gets plenty of experiences of being stared at. Most often than not, those stares are not of awe because of her heterochromatic eyes—they were judgemental. Stares that you can usually see at someone looking at an abnormality. Sometimes, even disgust. Especially those who have a belief that those kinds of traits are a premonition.

To hear that a girl in an entirely different world, devoid of gods and monsters, had suffered the exact same quiet cruelty simply for the color of her hair... It bridged a gap between the past and the present that she hadn't expected.

"When she first arrived, she didn't know how to approach us." Yuuya continued, entirely unaware of the storm brewing in Alfia's thoughts. "Haruka and I used to sit on the park swings after school, just observing her from a distance. For the first two weeks, Akari would just stand by the fence, clutching the straps of her backpack, watching the other children play with this intensely lonely, defensive look on her face. If anyone walked near her, she'd glare at them, putting up those walls before anyone could reject her."

"So, what did you do?" Hestia asked softly, her eyes filled with warmth as she looked at her captain.

"I got tired of watching her stand in the cold." Yuuya smiled, a soft, nostalgic light completely filling his dark eyes. "One afternoon, while the sun was setting over the sandbox, I looked at Haruka, and she just gave me this quiet, understanding nod. We got off the swings and walked straight across the dirt lot, right up to where Akari was standing by the fence."

The room fell completely silent, the Familia members hanging onto every word of the memory.

"She saw us coming and immediately braced herself." Yuuya chuckled, shaking his head. "She bared her teeth, her little emerald eyes flashing with this fierce, terrified pride, ready to yell at us if we called her a name. But before she could even open her mouth, I just stopped a couple of feet away, stretched out a hand to her, and looked her dead in the eye."

Yuuya turned his head, his gaze casually sweeping over his friends before resting briefly on Alfia's silver hair.

"I just asked her a single, simple question: 'Hey. We're about to play a game, but it's completely boring with just the two of us. Do you want to join us?' That was it. No mention of her hair, no questions about where she came from, no judgment."

A soft smile broke across Bell's face, his ruby eyes shining with immense pride for his captain.

"And she said yes?"

"She stared at my hand like I was offering her a live explosive." Yuuya laughed warmly. "She sniffled, tried to look tough for about three seconds, and then she just grabbed onto my sleeve and didn't let go for the rest of my life in that world. That was the exact moment Akari joined our world. But because she started from that place of isolation, she spent most of her life fiercely determined to prove that she belonged right there in the middle with us—even if it meant fighting Haruka for every single inch of my attention."