Chapter 39 - Stories Of The Past - Part 2

Yuuya traced a slow circle on the quilt with his finger, his voice softening.

"The most remarkable thing about the two of them wasn't how much they fought over me. It was how they handled the reality of the situation. They both knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that a day would come when I could only choose one of them. Our world didn't allow for anything else."

"That sounds like a recipe for a tragic fallout." Haruhime murmured, her fingers nervously gripping the fabric of her kimono. "To love the same person so deeply... usually, in the tales, it breeds resentment."

"That's what you'd expect." Yuuya nodded, a faint smile gracing his lips. "But Haruka and Akari completely defied that logic. Instead of letting jealousy rot their friendship, they used it to up their game. Every interaction became a challenge to see who could be a better match for me. And through that constant, daily action, they ended up building a bond that was stronger than anything else. When they weren't teaming up to corner me, they treated each other exactly like sisters. They shared clothes, stayed over at each other's houses, and protected one another."

"So they were allies and rivals all at once." Alfia remarked dryly, her heterochromatic eyes narrowing as she processed the dynamic. "Quite the combination. A unified front against the target of their affection."

"Exactly." Yuuya laughed. "I was essentially dealing with a highly organized tag team. I complained once and all they told me is 'all is fair in love and war, Yuuya.' Those two I swear—"

Suddenly, the words caught in Yuuya's throat.

The casual, carefree smirk that had been plastered on his face since the beginning of his tale completely vanished.

A deep, burning crimson flush rapidly mounted from his collar, rushing up his neck and flooding his cheeks.

It wasn't the standard, mild flush of a person caught in a regular embarrassment; it was the intense, radiating heat of a man thoroughly mortified by a purely romantic memory.

The entire bedroom froze.

Hestia's jaw literally dropped. She scrambled forward on her hands and knees across the mattress, pointing a trembling finger at her captain's face.

"No way... look at him! Yuuya is blushing! The actual, invincible captain of my Familia is turning into a tomato!"

"I don't believe it." Welf whispered, his eyes wide with unadulterated glee as he leaned forward from his pillar. "I've seen this guy stare down the black Goliath without a single hair out of place, and a high school memory is what finally breaks his composure? This is historic!"

Bell just laughed softly, he knows that feeling. That feeling when you suddenly remember a very embarrassing memory. Meanwhile, Lili just stares, utterly captivated by the sight of her captain looking completely defenseless.

Beside him, Alfia's gray and green eyes locked onto his flushed profile, her posture turning incredibly rigid as a sudden, heavy silence settled over her side of the bed.

"Shut up, all of you." Yuuya muttered, covering the lower half of his face with his hand, though his ears were still bright red. "There was... this one specific afternoon during our second year. We were supposed to be studying for midterms in my room."

"They were in the middle of their usual bickering." Yuuya explained, his voice muffled behind his palm as he stared resolutely away from the crowd. "But this time, the argument wasn't about who got to sit next to me. They started arguing about... future stuffs. Specifically, who would make the better wife, who could handle the household chores better, and who could... do what... once we were older."

"Oh my." Haruhime squeaked, her ears instantly folding flat against her head as her face flushed a bright pink.

"They were completely overheating from their own words." Yuuya continued, shaking his head at the memory. "Both of them were blushing like tomatoes, thoroughly embarrassed by the shameless things coming out of their own mouths. I was just sitting at the low table, trying to ignore them and focus on a math problem, pretending I was completely invisible."

He let out a long, defeated sigh.

"Then, without any warning, the bickering stopped. Haruka suddenly marched right up to me. Her gray eyes were literally swirling with panic and determination, her face completely flushed. Before I could even ask her what was wrong, she grabbed the collar of my uniform, pulled me, and claimed my first kiss."

"WHAT?!" Hestia shrieked, her voice hitting a note so high it rattled the window panes.

Bell buried his face in his hands, completely overwhelmed by the second hand romantic tension, while Mikoto stood perfectly straight, her eyes blinking in rapid, silent shock.

"It gets worse." Yuuya groaned, rubbing his temples. "Kaito and Sora were sitting across the room on my bed. The moment Haruka pulled away, those two absolute bastards jumped to their feet. They looked like their favorite football team had just scored a logic defying comeback goal. They were cheering, throwing their textbooks into the air, and high-fiving each other like madmen."

"And Akari?" Alfia's voice cut through the noise, her tone dropping into a freezing, sharp cadence that made Welf's laughter instantly die in his throat.

Yuuya cleared his throat, his flush deepening.

"Akari... Was absolutely not about to be outdone. She froze for about one second, her green eyes flashing with pure, competitive panic. Then she yelled something entirely incoherent, lunged straight across the table, pushed Haruka out of the way, and simply followed suit right after."

The room descended into a state of chaotic uproar. Hestia looked like she was about to faint from pure shock, and Welf was howling with laughter so hard he had to hold onto the wall for support.

"And then?" Bell asked out of curiosity. "What happened after that, Captain?"

"Nothing..." Yuuya replied flatly, his hand dropping from his face as his expression returned to a state of dull, deadpan exhaustion. "My brain completely short circuited. You have to remember, I was an anomaly of physical strength, but mentally, I was still just a high school kid who struggles pathetically when the math goes outside the four basic operations. The sheer sensory and emotional overload of getting double ambushed by my childhood friends while my buddies were throwing a festival in the background completely broke my nervous system. I passed out cold right there on the floorboards. I don't remember a single thing about the rest of that day."

He leaned his head back against the headboard, the bright red flush slowly receding from his cheeks, leaving behind a look of profound, quiet nostalgia.

Beside him, Alfia remained entirely motionless. Her hand, which had been resting casually on the quilt, had tightened into a firm fist, the fabric of the sheet wrinkling under her grip. Her gray and green eyes were fixed entirely on the blank wall opposite the bed, her mind a turbulent, complicated storm of thoughts that she had absolutely no intention of sharing with the laughing crowd.

Hestia aggressively leaned over the mattress, her twin tails swaying wildly as she narrow-eyed her captain.

She was still interested on a particular topic. She knew Yuuya had quite the face and he still doesn't address that part since earlier.

In a nutshell? She wants more drama.

So she brings up the topic again.

She smacked her hands onto her knees, pointing an accusing finger right at his face.

"Oh, come on, Yuuya! Don't you dare sit there and pretend you didn't know!" Hestia puffed out her cheeks, a victorious grin plastered across her face. "You have the looks more than you ever want to admit. Even here in Orario, when you're just walking through the North Main Street to buy groceries, half the receptionists and civilian girls do a double take when watching you pass by! Back on Earth, without any gods or magic to distract people, you must have been a walking municipal hazard!"

Yuuya let out a heavy sigh as a faint, embarrassed chuckle escaped his lips.

"Goddess, you're making me sound like some sort of mythical creature. I really didn't think about it back then. I was too busy trying not to fail my homework."

"Yuuya-sama is entirely blind to his own market value." Lili remarked dryly, leaning forward on her stool with her chin resting in her hands. "Lili has managed the Familia's public image for some time now to know that a man who possesses absolute physical perfection, a carefree smile, and an air of quiet confidence is going to draw eyes. It is a simple matter of supply and demand. You were a high-tier luxury good, Captain."

Welf let out a loud snort, crossing his arms as he grinned like a rogue.

"She's right, you know. You've got that specific kind of effortless charm in you, Yuuya. The kind that makes a girl's gaze linger on your face just a few seconds longer than necessary whenever you answer a question or flash that casual smirk. It's a passive skill, man. You don't even have to trigger it actively."

(I don't mention it a lot cuz I don't want to force the idea to my readers that he's good looking.)

"And that." Yuuya groaned, running a hand through his dark hair as the nostalgic warmth returned to his eyes, "is exactly why my high school life was a permanent combat zone. Because even if I didn't notice the lingering gazes... Haruka and Akari absolutely did."

The room quieted down, the Familia members leaning in with absolute fascination as Yuuya painted the picture of the chaotic reality that followed his natural charm.

"Whenever a girl from another class tried to approach my desk during recess, the entire atmosphere in the room would instantly drop below freezing." Yuuya explained, a wry smile cutting through his features. "I'd just be sitting there, minding my own business, when someone would courageously step up to hand me a sports drink or ask for help with a textbook. I'd look up, smile, and start to talk to them like a normal human being."

"And then?" Bell asked, his ruby eyes wide with awe and anticipation.

"And then the defense matrix initiated." Yuuya chuckled. "Haruka wouldn't even say a word. She would just sit at her desk to my left, resting her chin on her hand, and lock her gray eyes onto the poor girl. She didn't shout, she didn't threaten—she just projected this terrifying, suffocating aura of silent judgment that made the air feel heavy. On my right, Akari would instantly slide her chair closer, slamming her books down onto the desk with entirely unnecessary force, her eyes flashing with a fierce, territorial snapping that practically screamed 'back away from the property.'"

"Man, that sounds intense." Welf laughed, shaking his head. "Two beautiful angels turning into absolute demons the second another girl tries to get a word in."

"It made things incredibly complicated." Yuuya admitted. "They were so violently jealous that it became an unwritten rule in our entire grade: if you value your social sanity, do not look at Yuuya for more than three seconds. Sora and Kaito actually set up a literal betting pool behind my back, using Kaito's money to wager on how many seconds a brave girl could last under the combined glares of my childhood friends before she panicked, bowed awkwardly, and fled the classroom entirely."

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

"The poor maidens... to be driven away by such fierce rivalry. But it proves how deeply they treasured you, Captain."

"They were entirely too dedicated." Yuuya murmured softly, his gaze drifting back toward the window. "But their jealousy kept our circle tightly locked. No one could get close enough to disrupt the balance we had built."

While the rest of the Familia giggled and exchanged amused glances over Yuuya's dense romantic history, the temperature on the side of the bed where Alfia was, subtly began to plummet again.

Alfia sat perfectly upright against the headboard, her silver hair cascading over her shoulders like a glacier. Her face remained a flawless mask of stoicism—the legendary facade that she's well know for decades. But beneath that silent exterior, her thoughts were a turbulent, complicated storm.

Hearing Yuuya describe his past—the casual charm, the lingering gazes of nameless mortal women, and the fierce, territorial battles fought by the raven haired and silver haired maidens of his old world—left a distinctly bitter taste in her mouth. A sharp, acute wave of irritation tightened deep within her chest, pressing against her newly healed lungs with an unfamiliar, suffocating weight. It wasn't a physical pain. It was a feeling she had never encountered in her thirty one years of life. She doesn't understand it.

For seven long years, Yuuya had belonged entirely to her world. He was the anomaly who had broken her tragic fate for her, the one who had kept her sane in her long wait, and the one whose steady heartbeat had rescued her from her deepest nightmares just the night before.

The mere realization that he had once been a communal prize—a boy chased, flanked, and coveted by a crowd of ordinary humans—provoked a deeply possessive, fierce instinct within her soul. She thoroughly despised the idea of his attention being shared. She loathed the concept of his dark eyes softening for anyone else.

It was an irrational, intensely selfish sentiment that strongly contrasted her nature as a proud, detached warrior. Yet no matter how hard she tried to rationalize it as mere concern for her savior, the irritation refused to dissolve. She tightened her hand into a silent, hidden fist beneath the blankets, her eyes narrowing as she focused entirely on the carefree profile of his face.

She chose to keep the unfamiliar emotion locked tightly behind her teeth, refusing to give Welf or Hestia another excuse to tease her, but the quiet, dangerous intensity radiating from her side of the bed made it abundantly clear that the Silence of Hera was listening to every single word with a vengeance.

It was a feeling she can't quite understand. Though, funnily enough, it's a feeling that she herself won't admit either. Even to herself.

Just then, the soft, amber glow of the morning sun seemed to dim slightly as Yuuya's gaze drifted away from the Familia, his eyes tracking a single speck of dust floating through the air.

The lingering warmth of the comedic romance talk evaporated from his face, replaced by a quiet gravity.

"I really wished those days could have lasted forever." Yuuya murmured, his fingers trailing lightly over the edge of the linen blanket. "I think, deep down, all five of us did. We had the world in the palm of our hands. We were young, we were unburdened, and we had enough money to buy whatever future we wanted. But the universe doesn't tolerate perfect scenarios for very long."

Hestia's triumphant smile slowly faded. She adjusted her posture on the edge of the mattress, her eyes softening as she recognized the shift in her captain's voice.

The rest of the room fell perfectly still, the lighthearted banter dying instantly as a heavy, anticipatory silence settled over the stone walls.

"It happened during a weekend." Yuuya continued, his voice dropping into a low tone. "A Sunday, to be exact. It was one of those heavy, relentless rainy days where the sky is just a solid sheet of iron gray. The rain was drumming so loudly against the glass of my bedroom windows that you could barely hear yourself think. We were all crammed into my room, hanging out like we always did."

"Sora was lying on his stomach on my floor, lazily tapping away at a handheld screen..." Yuuya recounted, staring into the middle distance as if the scene were unfolding right on the bedroom wall. "Kaito was sprawled across my bed, complaining about the damp weather ruining his plans to take us to a coastal resort. Haruka and Akari were sitting at my low wooden table, sharing a blanket over their knees, in the middle of a quiet, petty argument about who got to choose the next movie we watched. It was entirely mundane. Entirely safe."

"Then... The sound of the rain was cut open." Yuuya said.

"A message?" Lili asked quietly.

"A phone call." Yuuya corrected. "It didn't come to my phone, or Sora's, or Kaito's. It was the landline downstairs. My mother answered it. I remember hearing the muffled sound of her voice through the floorboards—just a normal greeting. Then... a long silence. And then, a sound I had never heard my mother make before. A sharp, choked gasp, followed by the thud of the plastic receiver hitting the hallway floor."

"We all froze..." Yuuya whispered. "Akari was laughing right before it happened, her eyes bright as she tried to steal Haruka's pen. But when my mother ran up the stairs, threw my bedroom door open, and looked at us... the laughter died. My mother didn't look at me. She looked straight at Akari. Her face was completely white, her lips trembling."

Yuuya closed his eyes, a tight, rigid line forming along his jaw.

"She didn't know how to soften the blow. There was no way to do it. She just stood in the doorway, the rain howling against the glass behind us, and told Akari that her parents' car had been crushed in a multi-vehicle collision on the highway. A rogue transport truck had lost control on the slick asphalt. Both of them were dead before the emergency carriages even arrived."

Haruhime let out a sharp, horrified sob, her hands flying to her mouth as her fox ears folded flat against her skull in sorrow. Mikoto placed a steady, comforting hand on Haruhime's shoulder, though her own eyes were fixed on Yuuya, clouded with profound sympathy.

"I know you're not supposed to just barge into a room and tell a child that her parents are... dead... there are better times to do it yes. Even so, that's just delaying the inevitable. Perhaps, my mother is just too shocked at that moment to be able to think properly." Yuuya added.

"What... what did Akari do?" Hestia asked, her heart aching for the girl she had never met.

"Nothing..." Yuuya said, his voice level. "She didn't scream. She didn't cry. She just sat there at the table, her hand still reaching out for Haruka's pen, her fingers freezing mid-air. Her brilliant green eyes went entirely blank, like the light inside her soul had been snuffed out by a sudden gust of wind. The blanket slipped off her knees, and she just stared at the wooden grain of my desk as if she were trying to understand the words my mother had spoken. Haruka didn't hesitate. She didn't say a single word; she just immediately went and threw her arms around Akari's shoulders, and buried her face in that silver hair, holding her like she was about to shatter into dust."

Beside him, Alfia's breath caught. Her heterochromatic eyes flared with a sudden intensity. She knew that exact, suffocating void. She remembered the day her sister, Meteria, had been taken by the frail, cruel hand of fate, leaving her standing alone in a world that felt entirely empty. To hear that Akari—the silver haired girl who shared her eyes and maybe some of her pride as well—had been dropped into that identical abyss made her right hand twitch beneath the blankets, her knuckles turning a stark, deathly white as she absorbed the trauma of Yuuya's past.

"My family didn't wait for the authorities to ask questions." Yuuya continued, his gaze shifting down to his own clasped hands. "Our parents had been closer than siblings. The moment the funeral rites were concluded a week later, my father walked into Akari's empty house, picked up her luggage himself, and brought it into our home. There was no discussion, no legal paperwork weighed—it was an absolute certainty. My parents decided that Akari would live in our house. The house in the middle opened its doors, and she moved into the spare bedroom right across the hall from mine."

"That was incredibly noble of your family, Yuuya." Welf said, his voice soft and solemn. "But a loss like that... a roof over your head doesn't just fix a broken heart."

"It didn't." Yuuya agreed grimly. "And what made the situation a hundred times harder was the absolute isolation that followed. You see, Akari had no other relatives. At least, none in Japan."

Lili tilted her head.

"None at all? Was her family completely isolated?"

"Her mom was an immigrant. As for her father, well, it's a complicated topic so let's not ponder about it too much." Yuuya explained, looking at Alfia's silver hair for a brief second. "That's why she had that striking silver hair and those green eyes. Her lineage was entirely international. Perhaps, just a work of genetics. Basically, all of her aunts, uncles, and grandparents lived thousands of miles away, across a vast ocean, scattered in countries that didn't share our laws or our language. And unlike Akari's parents, those distant relatives didn't possess the money, the resources, or the physical capability to simply travel across the globe to claim an orphaned teenager."

He let out a low, heavy breath that vibrated through the quiet room.

"She was entirely marooned. If my family hadn't stepped in, she would have been taken by the state, placed into a municipal institution, and separated from the only world she knew. She was a ghost trapped in an island nation, surrounded by people who looked at her hair like she was a monster, with her parents lying in a cemetery and her bloodline entirely out of reach on the other side of the earth."

Yuuya paused, his expression turning deeply reflective as he prepared to describe the long, agonizing winter that followed the rain.

"She went from being a roaring, competitive firecracker to a completely silent shadow inside my house." Yuuya murmured, his dark eyes darkening with the memory. "And for the first time in my life, my physical strength and my absolute luck meant absolutely nothing. I couldn't punch the grief out of her, and I couldn't gamble her parents back to life. I just had to watch her drown right across the hallway."

Yuuya stared down at his palms, the casual, carefree posture he had maintained all morning slowly freezing into something entirely rigid. The ambient warmth of the master bedroom felt lighter, yet the memory he was dragging to the surface seemed to pull a physical chill straight out of the floorboards.

"But perhaps the hardest part of that entire winter..." Yuuya said, his voice dropping into a flat, quiet register that made Bell's breath hitch. "It was the silence. Or rather... the lack of it."

Hestia looked up, her eyes reflecting a sudden, deep sorrow.

"What do you mean, Yuuya?"

"My physical traits didn't just give me fast legs and a perfect memory." Yuuya explained, his dark eyes focusing on a distant point on the wall. "They gave me heightened senses. The walls of our houses were thick, and the spare room she moved into was across a wide hallway from mine... but to my ears, those barriers might as well have been made of cheap paper."

The room grew completely still. Welf's jaw jaw tightening as he realized where the story was heading.

"Every single night..." Yuuya whispered, "The moment the house went dark and my parents went to sleep, the weeping would start. It wasn't loud. Akari was incredibly proud, fiercely stubborn, and she absolutely didn't want anyone to pity her. She would bury her face directly into her pillows, biting down on her own skin to stifle the noise. To my mother and father, she was sleeping peacefully. But to me... it sounded like someone was shattering glass right next to my ear. Hour after hour, night after night. Just this raw, suffocating sound of a girl tearing her own throat apart in the dark."

"One night, right around three in the morning, I just couldn't take it anymore." Yuuya continued, a long, heavy breath escaping his chest. "The sound was altering my own heart rate. I swung my legs out of bed, walked out into the freezing hallway, and stood in front of her door. I didn't even knock. I just turned the brass handle and stepped inside."

~~~~

Inside the memories of that dark suburban bedroom, the silver moonlight had cut a sharp line across the floor, illuminating a scene of pure panic.

The moment the door click resonated, the tiny shadow on the bed flinched violently. Akari scrambled backward against the wall, her silver hair tangled wildly around her face.

Her emerald green eyes were completely swollen, and shining with fresh moisture under the pale light.

"Y-Yuuya?!" Akari's voice had cracked horribly, a high, trembling stutter that she tried desperately to choke down.

She began violently rubbing her face with the sleeves of her oversized pajamas, her movements frantic, uncoordinated, and furious.

"What—what are you doing in here? You can't just walk into a girl's room uninvited! Go back to bed! I'm fine! I was just... I was just having a cough! It's entirely normal!"

"Akari..." Yuuya had said, standing perfectly still near the foot of her bed.

"I said I'm fine!" She snapped, her lower lip quivering uncontrollably as she kept wiping at her eyes, her skin turning raw and red from the friction. "I don't need anything! I'm not... I'm not crying! I'm a high schooler, Yuuya! I don't cry from a stupid nightmare! Just leave me alone!"

~~~~

In the present, Yuuya closed his eyes, his head resting heavily against the oak headboard.

"I wanted to comfort her so bad." Yuuya murmured to his listening Familia. "My chest felt like it was being compressed by a vice. But as I stood there looking at her break apart, my brain completely locked up. I couldn't find a single correct word. How could I? I was a kid who still had both of his parents sleeping safely downstairs. My world was entirely whole. I hadn't experienced a fraction of the devastating void she was sitting in."

Bell nodded silently, as he remembered the crushing weight of his grandfather's passing after already losing Zald and Alfia in the past.

"You realized that words wouldn't mean anything to her."

"Yes..." Yuuya said. "What right did I have to tell her that 'everything was going to be fine'? It would have been the most hollow, insensitive, and arrogant thing a person could possibly say. It would have been a lie. Her parents were gone, her old life was reduced to ashes, and nothing was ever going to be 'fine' again."

"So, I didn't say a single word." Yuuya said. "I walked right past the edge of the mattress, sat down on the side of her bed, and simply reached out."

~~~~

In that dark room years ago, Yuuya had completely ignored her stuttered protests, wrapping his strong, steady arms around her trembling shoulders and pulling her small frame tightly against his chest.

Akari had frozen instantly, her entire body going rigid as a board against his warmth. For two agonizing seconds, her fierce pride fought a losing battle against the sheer, suffocating weight of her grief. She tried to push him away, her weak hands swatting feebly at his chest.

"Let go..." She had whispered, her voice breaking entirely. "Yuuya, let go of me... I don't want..."

But Yuuya didn't loosen his grip. He simply held her tighter, keeping her flailing limbs close against his torso, providing a solid, unyielding wall of heat in the middle of her freezing universe.

Then, the dam broke.

A sharp, agonizing wail tore out of Akari's throat—a sound she had spent weeks choking into her pillows.

She buried her face directly into the fabric of his shirt, her small fingers curling tightly into his shoulders, gripping him with a desperate, terrifying strength as if she believed that if she let go, she would fall straight through the floor and into the abyss.

She wept until her body shook with violent tremors, her tears thoroughly soaking his clothes, completely emptying the entire reservoir of her sorrow into his chest.

Yuuya just sat there through the small hours of the morning, resting his chin on her silver hair, silently absorbing the force of her storm until her grip finally loosened, her breathing leveled out, and she completely surrendered to a deep, exhausted slumber.

~~~~

"After that night, a new routine was established." Yuuya said, a faint, incredibly tender smile touching his lips. "Akari couldn't sleep if the room went entirely dark and silent. The ghosts would come back the second she closed her eyes. So, every single night, after my parents went to bed, I'd walk back across the hallway."

"Did you stay in her bed?" Hestia asked softly, her voice entirely clear of her usual teasing energy.

"No." Yuuya shook his head. "I wouldn't do that to her pride. Plus, it doesn't look appropriate at our age. That or maybe I'm just a coward. Whatever you would like to think. Instead, I dragged a thick futon mattress and a couple of blankets out of my closet and laid them flat on the floor, right beside the edge of her bed frame. I'd lie down in the dark, stretch my right arm upward, and place my hand flat on her mattress."

He extended his right hand out over the quilt of his Orario bed, demonstrating the gesture.

"Akari would reach down over the side, wrap her small, cold fingers around my hand, and hold onto it like a lifeline. I would just lie there on the hard ground, staring at her ceiling, keeping my grip perfectly steady, radiating as much heat as my body could produce until I heard her breathing shift into a deep sleep. That became my mandatory night routine for months. Through the rest of that winter, through the spring exams, right up until the summer heat arrived and she could finally close her eyes without needing me."

A profound, beautiful silence dropped over the master bedroom. Haruhime was openly wiping her face with her sleeves, and even Welf looked incredibly moved, a soft, respectful nod directed towards Yuuya.

Alfia remained entirely motionless. She's just silently listening as always. Her heterochromatic eyes were fixed intensely on Yuuya's extended right hand. A strange, electric shockwave coursed straight through her veins, her heart fluttering with a rhythm that had absolutely nothing to do with her former illness. She looked from his hand to his relaxed profile, the deep, possessive irritation that had gripped her chest moments ago suddenly dissolving into an entirely different, overwhelming emotion.

She remembered the night before. She remembered how she had slid down the headboard, seeking his warmth in the cold morning hours, and how her own hand had blindly sought the solid, radiating rhythm of his heart to banish the nightmares of the seventieth floor. Hearing him describe how he had spent a year of his youth sleeping on a cold floor just to hold a silver haired girl's hand through the dark... it shattered the last remnants of her emotional armor.

He hadn't just become a protector in Orario; he had always been one.

He was a man whose very soul was wired to act as a sanctuary for broken, silver haired anomalies who had been cast out into the cold.

Alfia also realized that perhaps, it was something far more simpler.

Yuuya is just that kind of person.

He is just too stubbornly kind.

Alfia slowly extended her own left hand. Her fingers still trembled with the faint, lingering uncoordination of her recovery, but her movement was absolute. She placed her palm directly over Yuuya's extended right hand, her fingers curling gently around his knuckles, claiming the exact same warmth he had once given to a ghost across the sea.

Yuuya didn't pull away. He simply rotated his wrist, intertwining his fingers with hers, his dark eyes meeting her heterochromatic gaze with a quiet, understanding smile that signaled the long, dark winter of his past was finally being shared with the family he had chosen in the present.

Yuuya's intertwined fingers tightened slightly against Alfia's hand. As his gaze wanders to a dancing dust mote in the morning light, his expression grew uncharacteristically hollow, stripped of the carefree warmth that usually defined him.

"Holding her hand through those dark months... that was the exact moment a seed of resentment took root inside my own mind." Yuuya said, his voice dropping into a low, quiet register that seemed to sap the warmth right out of the bedroom. "A thought planted itself into my brain, burying its roots so deep I couldn't tear them out. I started genuinely believing that... maybe, just maybe, it was entirely my fault. The fault of my very existence."

Hestia flinched, her hands gripping the edge of the mattress as she looked up at Yuuya with a look of heartbreak.

"Your fault? Yuuya, how could a terrible accident on a highway thousands of miles away have anything to do with you?"

"Because of the sheer, absurd imbalance of my life, Goddess." Yuuya replied, a bitter, self-deprecating smile cutting across his features. "Think about it. I was born with a body that completely defied the limitations of normal human biology. I possessed an overwhelming, monstrous talent and potential in the realm of physicality. I had a frame that was structurally born and engineered for combat, a mind that never forgot a single detail. And where was I born? An era of peace. A world with no monsters, no dungeons, and no wars. Well, my past world isn't entirely peaceful but you get the idea."

He let out a long, ragged exhale, his shoulders shifting heavily against the oak headboard.

"My teenage brain started twisting the logic of the universe. I convinced myself that the world operates on a strict system of conservation. The universe doesn't just hand out a god like physical archetype to a mortal boy for free. It always demands its payment. An exchange. I began to believe that the price for my overwhelming gifts, the tax for my absolute safety and luck, was the sudden, violent erasure of the people directly adjacent to me. I thought the universe had simply collected its debt from Akari's parents."

Bell's breath caught sharply in his throat. Having carried his own heavy burdens of grief and responsibility, the young adventurer could see the terrifying, dark maze Yuuya had trapped himself in.

"That's... a horrible thing to carry all by yourself."

"It was a toxic, completely irrational loop." Yuuya admitted softly, his dark eyes flickering open as he looked down at his joined hand with Alfia. "But the Yuuya back then couldn't afford to indulge in that darkness. I put that thought away, burying it as deep as I could manage. I couldn't allow myself the luxury of grieving or resenting my own existence when the girl sitting right across the hallway from me was actively breaking into a thousand pieces. My guilt didn't matter. Keeping her sane was the only thing that did."

The room remained heavily silent, the Hestia Familia absorbing the unfiltered psychology of the man who always appeared entirely unshakeable on the surface.

"After the passing of Akari's parents, the loud, chaotic world we lived in completely shifted." Yuuya continued, his voice smoothing out as he steered the history forward. "The rivalry that had defined Haruka and Akari's dynamic for years simply vanished into thin air. There were no more petty arguments, no more turf wars over my schedule, and no more competitive bickerings during our study sessions."

Lili tilted her head, her mind parsing the transition.

"Because Akari no longer had the emotional energy to fight for your attention?"

"Partially." Yuuya nodded. "But it was mostly because of Haruka. Haruka saw everything. She watched me cross the hallway every single night. She knew I was dragging my mattress to Akari's floor, and she saw the growing, unspoken connection that was starting between the two of us in the shadow of that grief. It was an intimacy born out of shared trauma and survival, a space no one else could easily step into."

He paused, a look of profound respect entering his eyes as he recalled his raven haired childhood friend.

"And despite seeing all of it, Haruka didn't say a single word. She kept her silence. She didn't throw a tantrum, she didn't demand my time, and she didn't try to force herself between us. She stepped back into the shadows, entirely contented with the fact that even though she was actively losing the war for my affection, she still got to remain close to me. She chose to be our silent supporter, keeping Sora and Kaito in check, ensuring our circle didn't collapse from the weight of Akari's tragedy."

Welf let out a low, appreciative whistle, shaking his head slowly.

"That takes a serious amount of maturity and grace. To watch the person you love slip away toward someone else, and still choose to stand by them as a shield... that Haruka girl was a true warrior in her own right."

"She was." Yuuya murmured. "Because she, more than anyone else in our group, understood exactly how terrifying the alternative was. She knew what death felt like from a distance."

Yuuya slowly turned his head. His dark eyes locked directly onto Alfia's face, his gaze carrying an intense, unreadable depth that made the space between them feel incredibly small. Alfia didn't blink, her heterochromatic eyes meeting his head on, her gray and green irises reflecting the solemn weight of his stare.

"Haruka was, in a very literal sense, the designated scaredy cat of our entire circle." Yuuya said, his voice directed almost entirely toward the silver haired woman beside him. "If we went to a summer festival and someone suggested entering a haunted house attraction, she would instantly freeze, her face turning completely white. If Kaito started telling a generic ghost story around a campfire, she would cover her ears and lock herself in the tent. On the surface, it looked like a classic, comedic character flaw. Everyone just assumed she was afraid of monsters and phantoms."

He shifted his grip on Alfia's fingers, his thumb brushing lightly across her knuckles.

"But there was a much deeper, far more terrifying meaning behind her fear. Haruka wasn't actually afraid of the ghost stories or the fake monsters in the dark. She was terrified of the unknown. Most specifically... she was absolutely petrified of death itself. She was terrified of the concept of an absolute end, the idea of a person's consciousness being completely erased into a void where no one could reach them."

Alfia's breath hitched, a faint tremor running through the palm she had resting against his. She understood that exact terror. She had spent her entire existence counting her days, watching her sister wither away into nothingness, and ultimately facing her end seven years ago—only to welcome the cold embrace of the crystal tomb on the seventieth floor simply because her true wish is to live, and Yuuya heard that wish.

To hear Yuuya describe a mortal girl who carried that identical, existential dread without ever facing a monster or a incurable disease made her realize how universal the scar of mortality truly was.

"It was a well known fact within our circle of friends, even though Haruka herself never explicitly said it or admitted it to anyone." Yuuya concluded, his gaze finally drifting back to the ceiling beams of the master bedroom. "She hid her terror behind a calm, silent mask, pretending she was just avoiding childish things. But when Akari's parents vanished into that rainy day, Haruka's deepest, darkest nightmare became a physical reality right in front of her eyes. She saw the vacuum that death leaves behind, and it terrified her so completely that she surrendered her own romantic desires just to ensure that the living pieces left behind didn't dissolve into the same void."

Yuuya unclasped his fingers from Alfia's hand, resting his palm flat against the mattress. The nostalgic, warm color of his expression completely drained away, leaving his features looking as sharp as a polished flint.

"A full year passed after that winter." Yuuya said, his voice dropping into a flat, echoing tone. "The seasons shifted, the summer heat faded back into autumn, and eventually, the snow melted again. Slowly, meticulously, everything went back to normal. Akari started smiling again. She began bickering with Haruka over my schedule. We went back to the casinos, we took trips on the trains, and we bitched about our math homework. We thought the storm had officially emptied its clouds."

He let out a short, hollow laugh that carried absolutely no mirth.

"That was my first mistake. Believing that the universe was done with us. Believing that a status quo built on an unfair exchange could ever truly remain stable."

Hestia swallowed hard, her hand still resting near his leg, her intuition screaming that the comedic, youthful tale had officially crossed the threshold into the dark.

"It was another weekend, almost exactly a year to the day since Akari's parents had passed." Yuuya continued, staring blankly at the frosted glass of the window. "Haruka's family was hosting a massive reunion. Her aunts, uncles, and grandparents had all gathered at a traditional estate a few towns over. It was supposed to be a celebration. A completely safe, happy gathering of a bloodline."

"But the pattern didn't break." Welf muttered, his voice grim as his fist tightened.

"No, it didn't." Yuuya said flatly. "The call came to our house again. Another transport failure on a major roadway. A catastrophic pileup. Haruka's parents... they died instantly, crushed before the rescue teams could even deploy the extraction tools. But for Haruka herself? The universe decided to be infinitely more cruel."

Bell's ruby eyes widened in sudden, agonizing dread.

"She survived?"

"She was alive, yes." Yuuya whispered, a dangerous, cold tremor vibrating beneath his words. "When the paramedics pulled her from the wreckage, she was conscious. She was breathing, she could talk, and she could see. But the internal damage to her vital organs was too much. The healers in my world—the doctors—took one look at her diagnostics and told us the truth. The machinery of her body was entirely ruined. She only had a single day left to live. Less than twenty four hours before her heart would simply give up."

Haruhime let out a faint, choked gasp, her fox ears pinning tightly to her skull as she buried her face against Mikoto's shoulder. Even Mikoto looked visibly shaken, her eyes reflecting the horror of a countdown toward an inevitable grave.

"The moment the news cleared our doorway, the entire world exploded into chaos." Yuuya recounted, his dark eyes darkening with the vivid phantom memory of that panicked evening. "We didn't even put on proper shoes. We just sprinted straight out the front door and piled into the car."

"Kaito was at the wheel?" Lili asked quietly.

"Yeah. Kaito tore out of the driveway like a man possessed, completely ignoring the speed limitations of the municipal roads, his knuckles turning white as he forced the vehicle through the traffic." Yuuya said. "The atmosphere inside that metal carriage was a living nightmare. I remember how Akari, Sora, and Kaito were frantically praying. They didn't believe in active deities—our world didn't have them—but in that moment of helplessness, they were desperately begging whatever god, spirit, or cosmic entity might be listening out there in the void to just let Haruka be okay. They were bargaining with the sky."

He paused, a flicker of profound respect and sorrow passing over his face as he mentioned his parents.

"My mother, Emi, and my father, Haruto, were operating as our command center. My mother was frantically calling the hospital lines, her voice trembling but steady as she demanded updates on Haruka's stability, ensuring the surgeons didn't give up on her. My father was on his own device, desperately tracing the contact logs to find any other surviving relatives of Haruka's line who could make it to the city before the clock ran out."

Yuuya looked down at his own right hand, his fingers curling into a tight, rigid fist.

"Everyone was screaming, crying, or moving." Yuuya murmured, his voice dropping into an uncharacteristically hollow whisper. "And then... there was me. I was sitting in the very back of the car, squeezed between Akari and Sora. My senses were dialing in on every single sound. I could hear the frantic rhythm of Akari's pulse racing like a trapped bird. I could hear the desperate, ragged breathing of my mother in the front seat. I could see the sweat dripping down Kaito's neck as he forced the engine to its limits."

He lifted his head, meeting Alfia's intense, heterochromatic stare with absolute, raw vulnerability.

"And yet, mentally? I was entirely frozen." Yuuya confessed. "The seed of resentment that had planted itself in my brain a year prior suddenly erupted into a towering tree of absolute certainty. As the car sped down the highway under the dark city lights, I didn't pray. I didn't cry. I just sat there in the dark, staring out the window, completely convinced that my existence had officially claimed its second payment. The universe was simply balancing the ledger of my talent... and Haruka, along with her parents, was the one paying the price."

The amber morning light filtering through the window pane felt entirely out of place as Yuuya's voice sank into a whisper, the carefree persona he had worn earlier completely shattered.

"When we finally breached the hospital doors, the sterile white corridors felt like a tomb." Yuuya said, his dark eyes fixed onto his clenched fists resting on the quilt. "The doctors didn't offer any false hope. They simply stepped aside. When we entered her room, Haruka looked so fragile beneath the white sheets, hooked up to a dozen whirring machines that were desperately trying to keep her blood moving. She looked around at everyone—my parents, Sora, Kaito—and then she softly requested for only her, Akari, and me to remain in the room. She wanted her final moments to be held by the circle that began at the sandbox."

The Hestia Familia remained entirely breathless. Hestia reached out, gently placing her hand over Yuuya's knee, offering silent support, while Bell stared at his captain with wide, sorrowful eyes.

"Until the day I died in that world and reincarnated here, only Akari and I knew her final words." Yuuya murmured, a heavy, suffocating silence settling over the stone walls. "In that deathbed, the calm mask she had worn for years completely fractured. She started spilling her deepest insecurities. She looked at us through the oxygen mask and told us that... for the past year, she felt like a total nuisance to Akari's and my life. She honestly believed she was a pathetic hurdle blocking our love, a lingering ghost holding us back from being truly happy together because she was too cowardly to step away entirely."

"Akari didn't even let her finish the sentence." Yuuya said, a phantom spark of a smile touching his lips before instantly dying away.

~~~~

In that sterile white room years ago, Akari had violently slammed her hands onto the steel bedside rail.

Tears were streaming down her face, her silver hair sticking to her damp cheeks as her emerald eyes flared with a desperate, furious light.

"Shut up! Just shut your stupid mouth, Haruka!" Akari had sobbed, her voice cracking horribly as she reached out to grab Haruka's frail, cold hand. "How can you say something so incredibly stupid?! If anyone WAS the hurdle in this relationship, it was me! I was the one who invaded your life! I was the outsider who crashed into the perfect world you and Yuuya built before I even came to this neighborhood! You were the one who held us together! You were the one who gave me a home when I had absolutely nothing left!"

Haruka had simply offered a weak, heartbreakingly beautiful smile through her tears, her gray eyes clouding as the rhythmic beeping of the heart monitor began to slow down. She shifted her gaze slightly, looking at Akari with a profound, sisterly affection.

"Take care of him, Akari..." Haruka had whispered, her breath hitching against the plastic mask. "Please... love Yuuya for me. Take all of the love I carried for him, bring it with you, and give it to him. Don't let him be lonely."

Then, she turned her fading gray eyes toward Yuuya, her fingers twitching within Akari's grip.

"And Yuuya..." Haruka breathed, her chest laboring heavily beneath the sheets. "Promise me... love Akari without holding back. Love her with everything you have. Protect my 'sister'... please."

~~~~

Yuuya closed his eyes tightly, his head slumping back against the dark oak headboard. Beside him, Alfia remained completely rigid, her heterochromatic eyes locked onto his profile, her own traumatic memories of her sister's passing echoing violently against the walls of her mind.

"And then... the end drew near." Yuuya whispered, his voice trembling with vulnerability that none of his adventurers had ever heard from him before. "The machines started altering their tones. The numbers on the monitors began to drop. And in those final minutes, the absolute terror she had hidden her entire life became too massive for her to hold back anymore. Haruka started crying. It wasn't a loud sob—she didn't voice her fear. She didn't scream that she was afraid of death, or that she was terrified of the darkness encroaching on her mind."

He lifted his head, opening his dark eyes, which were entirely clouded with a ancient, paralyzing sorrow.

"But I could see it. With my sight, I could see it perfectly clear in her eyes. It was the raw, unadulterated fear of the unknown. Those swirling gray eyes were frantically begging the universe for just another second. Just one more breath. One more heartbeat. It was completely paralyzing. Standing there at the edge of that bed, looking at the girl I grew up with desperately drowning in a void I couldn't reach... I felt like I just wanted to entirely disappear from existence."

Bell let out a choked sob, burying his face in his hands as the weight of the tragedy struck his empathetic heart.

"If I could have." Yuuya said, his right fist tightening by the second. "I would have traded my life right then and there. I would have given the universe my absurd talent, my monstrous potential, and my entire soul if it meant she could just open her eyes and walk out of that hospital. I would have paid the debt in full."

He let out a long, ragged exhale that sounded like a death rattle.

"But the world isn't built like that. Earth didn't possess a single machine capable of trading a soul. There was no magic existing in that realm to rewrite the laws of biology. No gods were hanging around the ceiling to offer a miracle in exchange for a prayer."

Yuuya's gaze drifted slowly to the sheets, his voice dropping into a terrifyingly finality.

"The monitor flatlined. The long, continuous beep filled the room... and Haruka passed away."

A suffocating, heavy silence settled over the master bedroom, the ghost of a dead world seemingly chilling the very air. Yuuya's gaze remained fixed entirely on the sheets, his voice hollowed out into a quiet, rhythmic drone that felt completely detached from the carefree Yuuya they all knew.

"A few months passed after Haruka's funeral, and that's when the darkness officially settled into my head." Yuuya whispered, his dark eyes darkening into deep, unreadable pools. "The seed of resentment I had buried during Akari's grief didn't just grow—it completely consumed my mind. I started violently blaming myself for everything. Day in, day out, the same toxic loop played in my skull: You are the reason Akari's parents are buried under the mud. You are the reason Haruka and her family were crushed on that asphalt."

Bell's fists clenched tightly on his knees, his eyes swimming with a deep, empathetic pain as he listened to the psychological torture his big brother had endured.

"I genuinely believed that the world had simply looked at the absurd imbalance of my physical potential and decided to collect the taxes." Yuuya continued, a faint, humorless smile cutting across his pale features. "I saw my own existence as a walking curse. A anomaly that systematically brought ruin, devastation, and violent misfortune upon the exact people who dared to love me. Every time Sora, Kaito, and Akari would gather downstairs in my house to try and drag me back to reality, I couldn't even force myself to turn the handle of my door. I was absolutely terrified to meet their eyes."

"You isolated yourself..." Lili stated softly.

"Completely." Yuuya nodded. "I became utterly terrified. Scared of my own emotional immaturity, terrified of the monstrous capabilities of my own frame, and absolutely petrified that my parents, my remaining friends, or Akari would be the next casualties on the universe's ledger. I thought that if I just locked myself away in the dark, the debt collection would finally stop."

As Yuuya recounted those agonizing months of isolation, the sheer, crushing weight of that trauma and self-resentment seemed to physically manifest within the room. He didn't yell. He didn't throw a single tantrum or lash out at the stone walls.

Quite the opposite—the invincible vanguard of the Hestia Familia, the man who had cured Bell and Alfia from the impossible, looked smaller than he had ever been since the day he arrived in Orario.

The skin on his right hand, that was already tightly clenched, breaks. His fingernails dug deep into the meat of his palm, slicing through the outer layers of skin. Within seconds, blood began to well up between his fingers, dripping slowly down onto the clean white linen sheets of the bed.

"Yuuya."

The commanding voice of the Silence of Hera cut sharply through his suffocating stupor.

Yuuya flinched, his head jerking slightly to the side as he snapped out of the dark maze of his memories. He blinked, his dark eyes slowly refocusing until they locked directly onto the face of the silver haired woman sitting beside him against the headboard.

Alfia didn't say a word.

She didn't deliver a lecture, nor did she offer a hollow phrase of pity.

She simply sat perfectly upright, her features entirely steady, but her heterochromatic eyes were completely wide, filled with an intense wave of concern and quiet understanding.

Yuuya stared into those eyes—the striking gray of her left and the brilliant, emerald green of her right.

And in that exact microsecond, a powerful, hallucinatory slap of nostalgia struck his chest.

He didn't see the legendary vanguard of Hera anymore.

For a brief, flickering instant, he saw Akari.

It was the exact same fierce, unyielding, and deeply loving gaze that had dragged him out of his own despairing isolation years ago on Earth.

The exact same expression of a silver haired girl refusing to let him drown in his own guilt.

Before he could even process the realization, Alfia reached down with her left hand. Her fingers, though still recovering their perfect coordination, were entirely firm as she systematically unwrapped his bloody fist, forcing his fingers away from his lacerated palm. Once his hand was open, she slid her fingers entirely between his, interlocking them with a firm grip, making absolutely sure he couldn't close his fist to hurt himself again.

Yuuya let out a long, shaky breath, his body relaxing fractionally against the wood as he allowed her to anchor him to the present.

"Thank you, Alfia." Yuuya murmured softly, his voice regaining a fraction of its spark back. He looked back toward his Familia, though he didn't pull his hand away from her grip. "After that period of darkness, I started firmly believing a thought that I had long since buried since my early childhood. A belief that... I simply didn't belong anywhere in that world."

Hestia tilted her head, her blue eyes wide with a motherly sadness.

"Nowhere at all, Yuuya?"

"Nowhere." Yuuya confirmed casually, as if discussing the weather. "Because ever since I was a small child running around the neighborhood at a year and a half, I always carried this bizarre, quiet sensation that I was an alien dropped into the wrong civilization. And as it turns out, my parents had noticed it too. They actually admitted it one time during a midnight conversation—obviously something a parent should never say within earshot of their kid, but they didn't say it to me directly. I just happened to overhear it through the floorboards during a private husband and wife talk in the kitchen."

"What did they say, Captain?" Mikoto asked quietly.

"My mother was crying, wondering if they had done something wrong during the pregnancy to make me so... mechanical, so flawless." Yuuya recounted with a soft smile. "But my father just calmed her down. He told her that it didn't matter if I was an abnormal, or if I looked like I belonged to a completely different species. At the end of their talk, being the incredibly stubborn, loving people they were, they decided they didn't care about the details of my birth. They stated that I was still their son, and they were going to love me with everything they had, no matter what. My father even told her that if a god descended from the sky and offered them a chance to trade me for a perfectly normal, ordinary boy... they would choose Yuuya every single time."

Welf let out a soft, respectful chuckle, a fond warmth returning to his features.

"Your folks sound like they are incredible people, Yuuya. Falna or no Falna, they are the kind of parents that every child deserves."

"They were the best." Yuuya agreed warmly.

"But because of the double tragedies with Akari and Haruka, that long buried feeling of alienation came rushing back to the surface with vengeance." Yuuya concluded, his dark eyes sweeping across the faces of Hestia, Bell, Lili, Welf, Mikoto, and Haruhime. "I looked at a world that was entirely peaceful, run by normal human mechanics, and I realized my body was built for a battlefield that didn't exist there. I was a weapon of war trapped in a peaceful garden, and the garden was dying just by proximity to me."

He paused, his fingers lightly squeezing Alfia's hand as a genuine, bright, and deeply hopeful smile finally broke across his face, completely banishing the lingering shadows of his tale.

"That's why, when I finally died in that world and opened my eyes to find myself reincarnated here in Orario... I didn't feel despair or anger. To be completely honest with all of you? I felt a massive, soaring spark of excitement deep in my chest. I looked at the towering Babel structure, I looked at the monsters, the gods walking the streets, and the chaotic violence of the Labyrinth, and I thought... Maybe this time. Maybe, just maybe, this world will be different. Maybe here, with a sword in my hand and a Familia at my back, I'll finally find a place where an abnormal like me actually belongs."

Bell looked up, his eyes shining with an unshakeable, profound loyalty as he flashed a massive, bright smile at his captain.

"You did find it, Yuuya-bro. You belong right here with us."

"Damn straight." Welf grinned, crossing his arms with certainty. "We've got plenty of room for an overpowered casino king under this roof."

"I... really hope I do..." Whispered Yuuya that only Alfia was able to hear.

The crimson stain on the white sheet seemed to pulse under the morning light, a vivid reminder of the scars Yuuya still carried beneath his demeanor.

Alfia did not loosen her grip on his unwrapped fingers. She kept her palm pressed firmly against his, her heterochromatic eyes reflecting a understanding that bypassed the rest of the room entirely.

"You hated your talent." Alfia said, her voice breaking the heavy silence. "You sat in the dark and despised the very framework of your flesh because it cost too much to maintain. I know that exact brand of sickness, Yuuya."

Yuuya turned his head slightly, his dark eyes meeting hers.

"You do?"

"I do." Alfia murmured, her gaze dipping for a fraction of a second toward the blanket. "But while you blamed your existence for the cruelty of the universe, my hatred sprouted from a different kind of rot. I didn't believe the universe was collecting a debt from the people adjacent to me. I believed I was the one who had actively committed the theft. I looked at my magic, my precision, and my talent, and I convinced myself that I had stolen every single drop of it from Meteria while we were still inside the womb."

A sharp, collective intake of breath echoed from the foot of the bed. Bell looked between his mother and his captain, his hands trembling slightly at the sheer volume of self inflicted darkness the two strongest figures in his life had carried.

"It is a pathetic loop." Alfia continued, her eyes narrowing. "To look at a divine gift and see nothing but a curse. We were both born with such capabilities, yet we spent our youth wishing we could tear our own skin off just to feel normal."

Hestia slowly rose from her seat on the edge of the mattress. She looked at the two of them—Yuuya who came from a world of glass and steel, and at Alfia from the age of gods and heroes. A sad smile touched the goddess's lips as she crossed her arms, her twin tails dropping over her shoulders.

"The universe really possesses a twisted sense of humor, doesn't it?" Hestia whispered. "Look at the two of you. Yuuya, your body and your reflexes were structurally engineered for the highest tier of combat, yet you were dropped into an era of peace where your gifts had nowhere to go. And Alfia... your soul, your quiet disposition, and your desire for a quiet life with your sister were meant for a garden of peace, yet you were thrown into a world of unmitigated violence, forced to become a weapon for the Hera Familia."

Welf let out a low, breathy sigh, running a hand through his coarse red hair.

"A warrior born in a garden, and a peaceful soul born on a battlefield. It's a total mess."

Hestia stepped closer to the headboard, her eyes scanning both of their faces with immense gravity.

"Tell me the truth, you two. If a god descended from the heavens back then—or if the universe itself offered you a literal trade right now... if you could strip away every ounce of your monstrous talent, your luck, and your power in exchange for a completely mundane, peaceful life... would you do it? Yuuya, to just be a normal boy in your neighborhood. Alfia, to have a long, healthy, and quiet life beside Meteria without ever touching a sword. Would you have made the trade?"

The room fell entirely still. The whirring of the wind outside the manor felt distant, almost non existent.

Yuuya didn't say a word.

Alfia remained perfectly silent.

The two of them didn't need to vocalize the answer. Slowly, their heads bowed.

They gave a single, and firm nod.

It was the silent confession of two tired monsters who would have happily thrown away their legends just to have a home that didn't bleed.

After a long breath, Yuuya cleared his throat, the familiar, carefree glint slowly fighting its way back into his dark eyes as he steered the narrative forward.

"But like I said... the world doesn't offer trades." Yuuya continued, his voice regaining its life. "I was stuck in that dark room, drowning in my own head. But my circle? They completely refused to let me rot. It took a massive, coordinated effort from my parents, Sora, Kaito, and Akari to finally drag me out of my isolation."

"How did they manage it, Captain?" Lili asked, her eyes wide with curiosity.

"They essentially staged a home invasion." Yuuya laughed softly, the memory bringing a genuine warmth back to his face. "Kaito used his family's money to literally buy out the entire inventory of my favorite convenience store, stacking boxes of food outside my door so I couldn't ignore them. Sora wrote a script that hijacked my computer screen, flashing obnoxious, flashing text that read 'Get out of bed, you idiot' every five seconds. And my parents? They didn't coddle me. My father walked into my room, threw the curtains open to let the blinding sun in, and told me that if I wanted to blame myself for the cruelty of the world, I could do it while eating breakfast with the family."

"And Akari?" Bell asked.

"Akari was always there." Yuuya murmured, his gaze softening as he looked down at his hand, which was still loosely held by Alfia. "She didn't yell at me. She just sat at the foot of my bed every single day, quietly waiting. When I finally forced myself to leave the room, our relationship began to develop. Slowly, meticulously, we started healing together. But the trauma of losing Haruka and her parents changed something fundamental inside her. It rewrote her code."

"You have to look at it from her perspective." Yuuya explained, drawing a slow line through the air. "Within the span of two years, Akari lost her biological parents to a sudden accident. Then, she lost Haruka—the girl who had become her sister, her rival, and her emotional pillar. The world had stripped away every single person who anchored her to reality... except for me."

"She became protective." Mikoto mused, her brow furrowing in deep sympathy.

"Protective doesn't even begin to cover the psychological shift, Mikoto." Yuuya countered with a wry smile. "She became entirely consumed by a terrifying, desperate panic. After watching me isolate myself in the dark for months, refusing to eat and looking like a hollow shell, she became painfully afraid that the world was going to take me next. Or worse... she was terrified that the weight of the guilt would cause me to end my own life right there in the house."

He paused, a faint shiver running down his spine as the memory materialized.

"That terror mutated her personality." Yuuya said. "She started developing what my world calls yandere traits. She became completely, ruthlessly obsessed with my safety and my whereabouts. The sweet, chaotic firecracker from the neighborhood vanished, replaced by a hyper vigilant guardian whose entire existence revolved around ensuring I didn't slip out of her sight for even a single second."

"Obsessed?" Hestia blinked. "Like... she wouldn't let you go to the bathroom alone?"

"Almost." Yuuya chuckled. "If I was five minutes late walking home from the local library, I'd turn the corner and find her standing under the streetlamp, her eyes entirely wide, unblinking, and dark, clutching a cell phone with fifty missed calls logged on the screen. She started inspecting my clothes, tracking my schedule with Sora's data scripts, and standing outside my classroom door during breaks. Her love didn't fade—it became sharp. It became a shield designed to lock me in a cage of protection so the universe couldn't collect another debt."

Yuuya adjusted his posture against the headboard, the lingering gravity of the tragic memory suddenly lifting as a faint, deeply amused smile played across his lips.

He looked down at his open palm, then back up at the bewildered faces of his Familia.

"And yet, in a twisted sense that I still don't fully understand to this day... I didn't mind it at all." Yuuya confessed, his voice returning to its characteristically relaxed, carefree rhythm. "I didn't fight her on it. I didn't try to break the surveillance or lecture her about boundaries. I just completely let her do whatever she wanted."

Hestia blinked in complete shock.

"Wait, hold on! You're telling me you just let a silver haired guard dog stalk your every move and log your library hours?! Yuuya, that's not a relationship, that's a high security prison layout!"

"Lili agrees with the Goddess." Lili remarked, shuddering slightly. "To be constantly monitored by an individual radiating such unstable, territorial energy... it sounds entirely exhausting. Lili would have filed a municipal complaint within the first week."

"You have to look at the psychology of it." Yuuya chuckled, shaking his head fondly. "After months of sitting in that dark room listening to her cry herself to sleep—after watching her turn into a silent, hollow ghost—her sudden, aggressive obsession was actually a massive relief. Sure, she was terrifyingly intense, but those flashing green eyes meant she was alive. Her suffocating grip was tangible proof that she hadn't given up on the world, and she hadn't given up on me. If she needed to focus her entire sanity to my daily schedule just to keep from drowning, then I was perfectly content to let her hold the rope."

Welf let out a low, booming laugh, slumping back against the stone wall with a massive grin.

"Man, you really are built different, Yuuya. Most guys would run for the hills if a girl started tracking their digital footprint, but you just pulled up a chair and enjoyed the show."

"The dynamic became even more pronounced once we officially became a couple." Yuuya continued, a rascally, nostalgic glint returning to his dark eyes. "Once the title of 'boyfriend' was secured, Akari decided that any lingering boundaries were entirely obsolete. The cage didn't just tighten; it became a fortress of domestic security. And she proved exactly how far she was willing to go during our final exam season."

Bell tilted his head, his eyes filled with curiosity.

"Did she... lock you in the house to make you study, Captain?"

"Worse." Yuuya grinned. "She executed a chemical intervention. I remember it perfectly. It was a Tuesday night, right around two in the morning. We were sitting at the low table in my room, surrounded by a mountain of reference sheets, preparing for a massive calculus final the next morning."

Yuuya paused, his face twisting into a look of vivid, secondhand misery as he recalled the academic nightmare.

"I was completely losing my mind. I was glaring at this one specific math problem, aggressively banging my knuckles against my forehead, entirely refusing to go to sleep until I solved it. My stubbornness was kicking in hard. Akari was sitting right next to me, repeatedly telling me to give it up, close the textbook, and come to bed so we could sleep. But I ignored her. I told her I was going to pull an all nighter until the numbers made sense."

"And that's your first mistake." Welf chuckled. "Never ignore the silver haired firecracker when she gives an order."

"Exactly." Yuuya laughed. "Akari didn't argue. She just quietly sighed, stood up, and walked downstairs to the kitchen. A few minutes later, she walked back into the room holding a tall, clear glass of cold water. She set it down right next to my textbook, her face perfectly calm, her emerald eyes shining under the desk lamp. She told me to at least hydrate if I was going to keep working."

"I didn't even look away from the paper." Yuuya recounted, his smile widening. "I just reached out, picked up the glass, and brought it to my lips. But the moment the rim cleared my chin, my sense of smell kicked in. Even unblessed by Falna, my nose could detect the slightest chemical deviation. There was a distinct, faint, and slightly sweet aroma hiding beneath the cold water. Sedatives. High dose, fast acting sleeping medication."

"You smelled it?!" Hestia squeaked, her jaw literally dropping. "And you still had suspicions?!"

"I had massive suspicions." Yuuya admitted casually. "My brain instantly flagged the scent. I knew for a fact that my mother didn't buy water that smelled like a pharmaceutical lab. I paused for about two seconds, staring at the swirling liquid, and I actually thought to myself... 'Maybe it's just a trick of my imagination. Maybe the stress of these numbers is making my senses glitch out.' But honestly? A larger part of my brain just looked at the math, looked at the spiked water, and decided that getting poisoned was infinitely preferable to doing more math."

The entire bedroom erupted into a sudden, completely unrestrained wave of laughter. Welf slapped his knee hysterically, while Lili simply buried her face in her hands, entirely defeated by her Yuuya's absurd logic.

"You drank it anyway?!" Bell yelled, his voice cracking in absolute disbelief. "You willingly consumed a laced drink?!"

"I drained the entire glass." Yuuya grinned thoroughly. "I set the empty cup down, turned back to the textbook, and within ninety seconds, the world began to tilt. My vision blurred, the numbers on the page started dancing around like insects, and my limbs turned entirely into lead. The sedative hits me like a freight train. As I started to slip sideways off my chair, completely losing the battle against my own eyelids, a pair of small, warm arms suddenly caught my shoulders."

The room grew quiet again, the transition from comedy to the intimacy of his past world catching everyone's attention.

"With the last, fading embers of my consciousness, as my head sank into her lap, I heard her voice whispering right next to my ear." Yuuya murmured, his dark eyes softening completely. "She was running her fingers gently through my hair, her voice trembling slightly but entirely resolute. She whispered: 'I'm so sorry, Yuuya... I'm so sorry I have to do this to you. But you're wasting our precious time. You're spending our limited hours staring at something that isn't me. I won't allow it.'"

Yuuya let out a soft, amused sigh that resonated through the stone walls of the manor.

"When I woke up the next morning, it was ten o'clock." Yuuya chuckled. "The exam had already started twenty minutes ago. I was tucked perfectly beneath my blankets, the math textbook was neatly packed away in my bag, and Akari was sitting right beside my pillow, holding a fresh bowl of hot soup with this completely innocent, angelic smile on her face like nothing had happened."

"That is terrifying." Mikoto stated thoroughly, her eyes wide as she tried to process the absolute, lawless devotion of the mortal girl. "To deliberately sabotage your academic standing just to claim your attention... she was dancing on the very edge of madness."

"She absolutely was." Yuuya agreed, his gaze drifting sideways.

He looked down at his right hand. Alfia's fingers were still firmly intertwined with his knuckles, her grip remaining perfectly steady as she monitored the faint, healing cuts on his palm.

He looked up to meet her heterochromatic gaze.

Alfia didn't voice a single condemnation. She didn't call Akari a fool, nor did she criticize Yuuya for his dense, reckless compliance.

Instead, a faint, almost imperceptible shadow of a smile touched the very corner of her lips. Her emerald green right eye shone with a terrifyingly quiet, deep validation. To a woman who had spent her entire existence operating under the Hera Familia—a world where love was expressed through possessiveness—Akari's extreme actions didn't sound like madness at all.

They sounded like a normal Tuesday.

Alfia did not relax her grip on Yuuya's hand. Instead, her fingers tightened with a slow, deliberate pressure. As she listened to the chronicle of the laced water and the forced slumber, her heterochromatic eyes grew remarkably calm, reflecting a chilling sense of validation.

Deep within her thoughts, a dangerous, quiet alignment was forming. She didn't find Akari's extreme actions reprehensible in the slightest. In fact, she actually approved.

Alfia looked at Yuuya's relaxed profile, thinking to herself that if he ever dared to ignore his own physical recovery, push his limits until his body frayed, or stubbornly look away from her to focus on trivial matters, she wouldn't hesitate to employ the exact same methods. Whether it required a sleeping draft, a binding spell, or her own immense physical strength to pin him to the mattress, she would execute it without a single shred of hesitation.

To the Silence of Hera, executing control over a stubborn, precious individual wasn't a sign of madness—it was simply the highest form of discipline.

"You speak of her actions as if they were a psychological affliction." Alfia remarked, her voice cutting through the lingering giggles of the room. "But from where I stand, she merely understood how to manage an unmanageable asset. A weapon that refuses to rest must be forced onto the rack."

Yuuya let out a bright, entirely unabashed laugh, turning his head to her.

"See? I knew you two would get along. You both have that identical, terrifyingly efficient mindset."

"To be completely honest with all of you, Akari's sudden turn into a yandere became a major, defining part of my life." Yuuya continued. "And looking back at it now? It was honestly one of the best experiences I ever had."

Hestia looked completely bewildered, her hands dropping onto her lap as she stared at Yuuya.

"The best?! Yuuya, she literally poisoned your hydration! How is that a premium life experience?!"

"Because it completely eliminated the boredom." Yuuya explained, a rascally glint dancing in his dark eyes. "When you possess a photographic memory and can master any physical discipline in five minutes, the world becomes incredibly predictable. You always know how the fight ends, you always know what the instructor is going to say, and you can calculate the trajectory of every moving object in the room. But Akari? The moment her sanity fractured, she became a beautiful, walking wildcard. She left me genuinely wondering, with excitement, what insane antic she was going to pull off next. Every day was a gamble."

He paused, a sudden, deeply hilarious memory causing his shoulders to shake with quiet laughter.

"Like this one time, during the spring semester of our final year. It was a Friday, and the student council had saddled me with a mountain of athletic coordination paperwork. I was so busy sprinting between the gymnasium, the faculty room, and the tracks that my interactions with Akari were entirely limited and strictly timed. I barely had ten seconds to wave at her in the hallway before being dragged off by a coach."

"She didn't take that well, did she?" Welf grinned, rubbing his hands together in anticipation of the upcoming disaster.

"She took it like a declaration of war." Yuuya chuckled. "That night, I went to bed in my room, completely exhausted from the physical labor. I slept like a log. But when my consciousness slowly returned the next morning... the environment felt entirely wrong."

"When my eyes finally opened on Saturday morning, the first thing I realized was that I wasn't looking at my ceiling." Yuuya recounted, his smile widening at the sheer absurdity of the memory. "The air was damp, chilly, and smelled vaguely of old cardboard and washing detergent. I tried to stretch my arms, but my wrists wouldn't budge. I tried to shift my legs, but my ankles were completely locked together."

"I looked down and saw several yards of thick, heavy industrial hemp rope wrapped securely around my torso, pinning my limbs flat against a heavy wooden kitchen chair. I looked around the dim, concrete space and instantly recognized the location. I was currently sitting right in the middle of the basement of my own home."

Lili buried her face in her open palms, letting out a long, wheezing groan.

"Akari..."

"My very first thought, without a single microsecond of doubt, was: 'Yep, Akari definitely did this.'" Yuuya laughed thoroughly. "I couldn't even call out for my parents to come downstairs and untie me, because by sheer stroke of luck for her plans, my mother and father had left the city the previous morning to attend a regional conference. They were scheduled to be away for an entire week. The house was completely ours."

"So you were trapped!" Hestia shouted. "Why didn't you just use your strength to snap the ropes?! You boxed a gorilla, Yuuya! A hemp cord shouldn't have lasted a second against your forearms!"

"Oh, I could have turned those fibers into dust with a single flex." Yuuya admitted casually, waving his free hand to emphasize the point. "But honestly? I didn't mind it at all. I knew she was probably hiding behind the furnace watching me, or monitoring me through a camera script she had forced Sora to write. I knew that if I broke the ropes, it would trigger her panic, making her feel like she was losing control of her sanctuary again. So, I just sighed, relaxed my muscles, and decided to accept my punishment. I spent my entire Saturday sitting perfectly still in that basement, enduring a highly unique form of house arrest. Or should I call it chair arrest instead?"

"The morning dragged on, and I was just humming a tune to pass the time, when suddenly, the wooden basement door at the top of the stairs clicked open." Yuuya continued, his voice dropping into a look of pure betrayal. "I thought it was Akari coming down to feed me. But instead, the footsteps were far too heavy. Two figures stepped into the pale light of the basement window. It was Sora and Kaito."

"Oh, thank goodness!" Haruhime sighed, her fox ears perking up with immense relief. "Your loyal companions arrived to rescue you from the dark!"

"Rescue me?" Yuuya let out a loud, theatrical snort. "Haruhime, you clearly don't understand the brain of my friends. Those two bastards stepped off the bottom stair, locked their eyes onto my strapped form, and their expressions instantly transformed. They didn't look worried. They looked like two pirates who had just unearthed a chest filled with golden coins."

The entire bedroom fell silent, completely hooked on the upcoming betrayal.

"Kaito immediately whipped out his phone." Yuuya groaned, covering his eyes with his palm. "Sora pushed his glasses up his nose, adjusted his posture, and began calculating the perfect lighting angle. They didn't ask how long I'd been there. They didn't ask if I needed water. They just stood there for ten continuous minutes, laughing their brains out until they were literally gasping for oxygen, pointing their fingers at my face, and teasing the ever living hell out of the 'Invincible Casino King' being thoroughly defeated by a piece of furniture."

"They didn't untie you?!" Mikoto asked.

"Not a single strand." Yuuya laughed. "Kaito took about fifty photos from various artistic angles, Sora made a highly cynical comment about my failure, and then they both turned right around, walked back up the stairs, and locked the basement door behind them, leaving me right back in the dark."

"So how did you finally get out?" Welf asked, tears of laughter gathering at the corners of his eyes.

"I was only relieved from my sentence because the evening hours arrived and sleep time was rapidly approaching." Yuuya explained, his voice shifting into a deeply affectionate, warm tone. "By that point in our relationship, Akari's anxiety was still high enough that we were practically sleeping in the exact same bed and room every night. She simply couldn't close her eyes unless she was close with me. In her own words, I was her mandatory, life sized 'body pillow.' So, right around nine o'clock, she marched down the stairs with a pair of kitchen shears, silently snipped the ropes without a single word of explanation, grabbed me by the sleeve, and dragged me upstairs to the bedroom so she could go to sleep."

"The absolute authority of a maiden in love." Haruhime murmured, her face turning a soft shade of pink as she visualized the domestic scene.

"But the true disaster was waiting for me the next morning." Yuuya groaned, though his eyes were wide with merriment. "Once Akari was asleep and I finally got my phone back, I opened the digital social media networks. And right there, pinned to the very top of the regional trending page, was Kaito's high definition photo of me strapped to the kitchen chair in the damp basement."

"No way," Hestia giggled hysterically, clutching her stomach. "They actually published it?!"

"They posted it with a caption that read: 'The Apex Human, brought to his knees by a fifty-yen hardware rope. Long live the King.'" Yuuya shook his head in mock defeat. "The entire comment section was an unmitigated warzone of mockery. Thousands of students from our school and the neighboring districts were making endless fun of my state. People were commenting stuff like 'Is this your idol?' and 'Local superhuman thoroughly managed by his silver haired manager.' It took me three weeks of winning at the poker tables and buying them premium steaks just to get Kaito to delete the file from the digital grid."

He looked around the room, noting how the shadows of the tragic hospital memory had been completely, beautifully burned away by the ridiculous warmth of his high school days. Even Alfia's grip on his hand had softened, her heterochromatic eyes reflecting a quiet, lingering amusement that signaled the vanguard of Hera was finally learning to smile at the chaos of a peaceful world.