Chapter 6: A Symbol of National Health (Second Half)

Part 3

The screen went black as Erika terminated the video feed, opting for the merciful anonymity of voice chat. Olivia’s static profile picture popped up — a low-poly Tentacle-chan wearing a cape.

Erika leaned back against her vanity, the loud, mechanical whine of her blow-dryer filling the room as she aimed the nozzle at her damp roots.

“Can you hear me?” Olivia’s voice crackled through the speakers, accompanied by the chaotic rustle of heavy fabric.

"I can hear you," Erika shouted over the roar of the dryer. "And I'm assuming you’re at least fifty-percent covered by now?"

“I’m in a towel! It’s a temporary toga!” Olivia chirped. A wardrobe door groaned open. “You know, Erika, I was just looking in the mirror. Being a girl is like having a character creator menu that never ends. Do I want to be ‘Soft Pastels Library Girl’ today? Or ‘Vengeful Gothic Underworld Queen’? The options are paralyzing. It’s too much power for one person.”

Erika flicked the dryer off. The sudden silence felt heavy, almost physical — the kind of silence that reminded her of Sera’s expression earlier.

“You’re rambling to avoid the subject again,” Erika said.

“I’m reflecting,” Olivia insisted, her voice muffled as she presumably reached for a hair tie. “I realized something. Back in the Old World, I was… kind of a jerk. I used to stand by the castle gates in full plate armor, yelling at my female party members to hurry up. I didn’t understand why they needed forty minutes to ‘apply protective wards.’ Now I realize those wards involved intricate braiding and precisely winged eyeliner. I was a toxic male party leader, Erika. I feel the weight of my past sins.”

Erika rubbed her temples. “No more Isekai metaphors. My brain is already at maximum capacity.”

There was a pause — a real one.

The sound of hangers sliding across a metal bar stopped abruptly.

"Erika," Olivia said, her voice dropping an octave, losing its manic, royal brightness. "Did she ever... you know. Mention him?"

Erika sat down on her bed, the sheets crisp and cool beneath her. She reached out and touched the perfectly fluffed pillow, grounding herself.

“No,” she said quietly. “Not once. We’ve known Sera since the first week of high school. I have her emergency contact saved — it’s always been her mother. I honestly didn’t think she had a brother.”

“He looked so… solid,” Olivia whispered. “Not like us. He looked like he actually lived in the real world. And the way he looked at her… it wasn’t a ‘Level 1’ misunderstanding, was it?”

“No,” Erika said. Her gaze drifted to her vanity mirror — her reflection staring back, hair a mess. “That was real resentment. And that word… ‘homewrecker’… you don’t throw that at your sister unless the house is already ash.”

“I want to ask her,” Olivia said, a flicker of her old impulsiveness returning. “I want to march over there and demand to know who we have to fight to fix this. My Hero Instinct is screaming.”

“No,” Erika snapped — sharper than she meant to. “Absolutely not. This isn’t a quest. This is family. We’re the people she comes to when she wants to forget that part of her life. If we start digging, we become another thing she has to hide from.”

Olivia let out a long, defeated sign. Erika heard the soft thump of her flopping onto her bed.

“Girl feelings are so complicated,” Olivia grumbled. “In my past life, if a man called you a name, you challenged him to a duel in the mud. You’d punch each other, bleed a little, cry, and be best friends by sunrise.”

Erika closed her eyes — and instantly regretted it.

A vivid image flashed: two shirtless, muscular men grappling in mud, rain pouring dramatically, the sharp scent of testosterone and earth thick in the air.

Her breathing shifted instantly.

Quick, shallow, rhythmic gulps.

Heff. Heff. Heff.

“Erika? Is that you?” Olivia’s voice was suspicious. “What is that sound? It sounds like… is someone is having a minor cardiac event.”

Erika’s eyes snapped open. Her face flushed scarlet. “Yes! Yes, it’s Sakura. She’s… excited about a tennis ball.”

"She sounds really close to the mic."

“I am petting her!” Erika hissed, then leaned toward the phone and let out the world’s most unconvincing, “Woof. Bark. Good girl, Sakura.”

She cleared her throat violently. “Anyway. Even if your primitive theory were true, the world is too domestic for mud‑fights now. The only thing we can do is wait. We have to be the ‘Normal’ she can return to.”

“Patiently waiting,” Olivia groaned. “The hardest quest of all. Fine. I’ll be Normal. In a very cute skirt. Goodnight, Erika. Goodnight, Sakura.”

"Goodnight, Olivia."

The line went dead.

Erika buried her face in her hands.

The silence of the room pressed in again — heavier this time, as if it knew what was coming next.

Part 4

The silence in Sera’s room wasn’t peaceful. It pressed against her ribs — thick, airless, heavy — the kind of silence that swallowed oxygen and left only pressure behind.

She sat on the edge of her bed, spine perfectly straight, hands folded in her lap with the unnatural stillness of a porcelain doll.

Bzzz.

Bzzz-bzzz.

The vibration was muffled by the duvet. Sera didn’t move at first. Her eyes tracked the faint pulse of light glowing through the fabric, as if the phone were breathing.

Eventually, she reached out and pulled it into the moonlight.

[1 New Message: IDIOT]

She tapped the screen.

A Tentacle‑chan sticker appeared — wearing a crooked crown, slumped over a pile of spilled juice boxes with the caption: SLAY IT MY QUEEN.

Sera stared at the glowing pixels. A ghost of a laugh rose in her throat — thin, brittle — but it never made it out.

“You’re so silly, Olivia,” she whispered. Her voice sounded like cracked glass.

The screen dimmed.

“Why couldn’t you have just stayed away?” she murmured. “Don’t you know how foolish it is to be near someone like me?”

Her gaze drifted toward the nightstand.

The silver‑plated frame sat there, propped against a stack of textbooks. She usually kept it turned toward the wall. Tonight, it faced her like a dare.

Her hand lifted, slow and disconnected, tilting the frame into the light.

“Don’t worry, Squirt,” the ghost of his voice whispered — warm, easy. “Big brothers can do anything. If you’re stuck on anything, I’ve got you.”

The photo was ten years old — oversaturated and impossibly bright. Her mother laughed. The man who called himself her father stood steady behind her. And Ken — sixteen, lanky, grinning — his arm hooked around a gap‑toothed, younger Sera.

“Homewrecker.”

This time, the word didn’t echo.

It hit her chest like a fist.

Her breath stuttered. Her fingers tightened around the frame until the metal dug into her skin.

The joyful smiles in the photograph warped — not literally, but in her mind — twisting into a cruel, elaborate lie.

She remembered the way Ken used to ruffle her hair when she cried over scraped knees.

“I only did what was right,” she told the boy in the photo, her voice rising with a jagged, defensive edge. “I followed the evidence. That’s what you taught me, wasn’t it? Truth over everything.”

But the memory shifted — colder, sharper — to the night the house went silent.

“Sera, stop.”

No warmth.

No patience.

Just teeth gritted hard enough to crack enamel.

“You should have put it away.”

Her breath hitched.

She wasn’t a hero.

She wasn’t righteous.

She was just the remainder left behind after a cold, calculated subtraction.

“I’m sorry,” she breathed. “I’m so sorry. Why couldn’t I have just turned a blind eye? I destroyed everything.”

A single, hot tear escaped.

Slowly, deliberately, Sera held the frame an inch above the nightstand.

Her fingers opened.

“You think you’re so righteous,” Ken’s voice spat in her mind. “You didn’t save anyone by uncovering the truth. You destroyed this family just to prove you were right.”

Her composure finally collapsed.

She pulled her knees to her chest and folded in on herself, sinking sideways onto the mattress. She didn’t scream. She didn’t thrash. She just wept into her pillow — quiet, shaking sobs that soaked into the fabric like evidence she wished she could erase.

“I followed the logic,” she whispered, voice cracking. “I just… I didn’t know the cost would be our family.”

Outside, the moon hung indifferent and cold.

Somewhere across the city, life went on — oblivious to the fact that Sera’s world had stopped, suspended in the dark, waiting for a sunrise she wasn’t sure she deserved.