The morning light filtered through the curtains, soft and golden, painting stripes across the bedroom floor. The room was quiet, peaceful, filled with the gentle sound of three people breathing in rhythm, their bodies tangled together on the bed in a way that spoke of exhaustion and relief and the desperate need to be close.
Elena was in the middle, her small body nestled between her parents like a bird in a nest. Her silver hair was spread across the pillow, her wings folded against her back, her tail curled around her father's arm. She was smiling in her sleep, dreaming of something happy, something that made her small face glow with warmth. She was squeezed between them, held on both sides by the warmth of her father's body and the warmth of her mother's presence, safe and loved and completely at peace.
On her left, Yuuta lay on his side, facing Elena, his body curved around hers like a shield. His right arm was stretched across Elena's small form, his hand reaching past her, his fingers resting on Erza's hip. His face was peaceful, his breathing steady, his body relaxed against the mattress. He looked younger in sleep, less burdened, less haunted by the weight of the world he carried when he was awake. His left arm was stretched out above Elena's head, palm up, fingers slightly curled—a habit he had developed years ago, sleeping alone in an empty apartment, reaching for someone who was not there.
On her right, Erza lay on her side, facing Elena, her body curled toward her daughter. Her head rested on Yuuta's outstretched arm, using it as a pillow, her silver hair spilling across his skin. Her hand lay on his chest, just above his heart, her fingers curled against the fabric of his shirt. Her face, usually cold and sharp, was soft in sleep—vulnerable in a way she never allowed herself to be when she was awake.
She had always slept alone. For centuries, she had slept alone, in cold palaces and empty rooms, in beds that were too large for one person. She had told herself that she preferred it that way, that she did not need anyone beside her, that the warmth of another body was a weakness she could not afford.
But now, she could not bring herself to sleep without her family beside her. Without his arm beneath her head. Without his heartbeat beneath her palm. Without her daughter's small body between them, squeezed between their love, holding them together.
She had not planned to fall asleep. She had meant to stay awake, to watch over them, to protect them from whatever threats might still be lurking in the shadows. But the exhaustion had been too great, the relief too overwhelming, the warmth of Yuuta's body too comforting. She had closed her eyes for just a moment, and sleep had taken her.
She dreamed of nothing. For the first time in centuries, she dreamed of nothing at all.
Yuuta looked peaceful, but he was not at peace.
His brow was furrowed. His lips were pressed together. His breathing, which had been steady, grew shallow, uneven, troubled. Sweat beaded on his forehead, trickling down his temples, soaking into the pillow beneath his head. He was having a dream—a nightmare—the kind that had haunted him for years, the kind that he had hoped would never return.
In the dream, he was a child.
He looked down at his hands. They were small, pale, trembling. His legs were short, his body thin, his clothes too large for his frame. He was the same age as Elena—four years old, maybe five, small and scared and completely alone.
He looked around. The room was not a room. It was a prison—sterile and cold, with white walls that seemed to glow, with floors that were spotless, with air that smelled of chemicals and fear. Machines beeped in the corners, their lights blinking red and green, their purpose unknown. Restraints hung from the walls, leather and metal, stained with something that might have been blood.
Where am I? he thought. How did I get here?
He tried to call out. "Erza? Elena? Sister Mary?"
His voice was small, weak, swallowed by the silence. No one answered. No one came.
A door opened at the far end of the room.
A man stepped through. He was tall, his face hidden behind a white mask, his body wrapped in a lab coat that had seen better days. He carried a clipboard in one hand, a pen in the other, and he was looking at Yuuta with eyes that held no warmth, no kindness, no humanity.
"Experiment No. 8 has awakened," the man said.
Yuuta looked down at his chest. A patch was sewn onto his shirt, small and white, with the number 8 printed in black. Experiment No. 8. That was him. That was who he was here.
The man gestured, and other figures appeared from the shadows—orderlies, nurses, people in white masks who moved like robots, like they had done this a thousand times before. They opened the cell and reached for him.
Yuuta tried to protest. He tried to run. But he was small, barely four years old, and their hands were large and strong. They grabbed his arms, his legs, his hair. They carried him to a table in the center of the room, a table with restraints, with straps, with machines that hummed and beeped and waited.
He screamed. No one listened.
They strapped him down. They pulled his nails—one by one, slow and deliberate, the pain so intense that his vision went white. They pulled his hair, clumps of it, tearing it from his scalp, leaving bald patches that bled and burned. They turned him over and inserted a tube into his back, and then they poured something hot into him—plasma, burning, searing, melting him from the inside out.
He screamed until his voice gave out. He screamed until his throat was raw. He screamed until there was nothing left inside him except the pain.
The lights in the laboratory flickered. Alarms began to blare.
"Problem," a voice announced, mechanical and cold. "Experiment No. 8 is failing. Subject No. 8 is experiencing critical system failure. Immediate report has been generated."
The man with the mask looked at his clipboard, then at Yuuta, then back at his clipboard. He sighed. He made a note.
"Terminate," he said.
The pain stopped.
Little Yuuta found himself growing weak, his vision fading, his heart slowing. He was dying. He had been made into a weapon, and he had failed, and now he was being discarded.
He died.
Yuuta jolted awake.
His body was shaking. His breath came in shallow gasps, his heart pounding so hard that he could feel it in his throat. Sweat soaked his shirt, his hair, the pillow beneath his head. He looked around the room—at the familiar walls, the familiar furniture, the familiar light filtering through the curtains.
He was home. He was safe. It was a dream. Just a dream.
His hand was shaking. He pressed it against his chest, feeling his heartbeat, reassuring himself that he was alive.
Then he felt something else.
A weight on his stomach. A warmth. A hand.
Erza's hand.
It had been resting on his chest, just above his heart, but his sudden movement had shifted it, slid it down, so that it now lay on his stomach. Her fingers were curled slightly, relaxed in sleep, completely unaware of the chaos they had caused.
Yuuta's face turned red. His heart, which had been pounding from fear, now pounded for a different reason. He looked at Erza—at her silver hair spread across the pillow, at her face soft in sleep, at her lips slightly parted, at the way she looked younger, more vulnerable, more human than she ever did when she was awake.
He gently lifted her hand and placed it beside Elena. She did not wake up. She only sighed, curled closer to Elena, and continued sleeping.
Yuuta sat up on the edge of the bed. His legs were weak, his body still trembling from the nightmare, his mind still trying to process what he had seen. He reached over to the side table and pulled out a small book—a journal, worn and battered, its pages filled with his handwriting.
It was his dream journal. He had been keeping it for years, ever since the nightmares first started. He wrote down every dream he could remember, every detail, every image, every word. He had hoped that someday, they would make sense. He had hoped that someday, he would understand why he dreamed of laboratories and experiments and numbers sewn into his shirt.
He opened it to the next empty page and began to write.
Today I dreamed that I was an experiment subject again. My number was different this time—No. 8. My age was different too—younger, maybe four or five. I was in a laboratory, a prison, a place that smelled like chemicals and fear.
They pulled my nails. They pulled my hair. They put a tube in my back and poured hot plasma into me. They said I was failing. They said I was a weapon that did not work. They terminated me.
He stopped writing. His hand was shaking too much to continue. He closed the journal and placed it back on the table.
It was not new. He had been having nightmares like this for years—dreams of laboratories and experiments and men in white masks who looked at him like he was nothing. They did not happen often—sometimes months apart, sometimes years. But whenever they came, he wrote them down, and he gave them to his personal doctor, Jenny.
She had been treating him since he was a teenager. Under her care, the nightmares had almost stopped. He had almost forgotten what it felt like to wake up screaming, to feel the phantom pain of nails being pulled, to smell the chemicals that haunted his dreams.
But now they were back.
He looked at the time. 9:30 AM. The morning light was bright, the sun warm, the world alive. He did not want to think about the dream anymore. He did not want to think about the laboratory, or the man with the mask, or the number 8 sewn into his shirt.
He wanted to cook.
He got up from the bed, careful not to wake Erza or Elena. His legs were still weak, his body still trembling, but he forced himself to stand, to walk, to move. He went to the bathroom, splashed cold water on his face, and looked at himself in the mirror.
His eyes were red. They were always red. But today, they seemed darker, deeper, more tired than usual.
He took a breath.
Let me make something for my wife and daughter, he thought.
The word slipped into his mind before he could stop it. Wife. He smiled, even though he knew he could not say it out loud. Erza would kill him if she heard it. She would freeze him solid, shatter him into pieces, scatter him across the city.
But she was his wife. In every way that mattered, she was his wife.
He went to the kitchen and began to cook
Hour later.
An hour had passed, and the small kitchen was filled with the warm, familiar smell of cooking. Yuuta moved between the stove and the counter, his body still aching from the ordeal of the previous day, his muscles protesting with every step. But he did not stop. He could not stop. Cooking was the one thing that made him feel normal, that reminded him why he had fought so hard to come back from the dead.
He was making breakfast for his family. Pancakes stacked high on a plate, their edges golden and crisp, a thin drizzle of honey catching the morning light. Eggs scrambled soft and fluffy, seasoned with salt and a touch of pepper. Fresh fruit sliced and arranged in a colorful pattern—strawberries, bananas, the last of the oranges from the fridge. It was not a fancy meal, nothing like the dishes he had prepared for the test at the college. But it was made with love, and that was what mattered.
He hummed softly as he worked, a tune he did not recognize, and smiled to himself when he thought about Erza's face when she saw the food. She would pretend not to care, of course. She would cross her arms and look away and say something cold and dismissive. But he had learned to read her over the past weeks, had learned to see the small cracks in her armor, and he knew that she would eat every bite.
In the bedroom, Erza slept.
She lay on her side, her silver hair spread across the pillow, her face relaxed in a way it never was when she was awake. One hand rested on the blanket, the other was curled near her face, and her breathing was slow and even. Beside her, Elena was curled into a small ball, her wings folded against her back, her tail wrapped around her mother's arm.
The bed was warm. The room was quiet. For a few precious hours, there was no grief, no rage, no storm.
Then Erza's eyes opened.
She lay still for a moment, watching the light shift on the ceiling, feeling the warmth of her daughter beside her. Then she turned her head, and her heart stopped.
The space beside her was empty.
Yuuta was gone.
She sat up so fast that the room spun around her. Her hand reached out to the cold sheets, pressing down as if she could feel the warmth he had left behind. But there was nothing. Just empty fabric and the lingering scent of him.
"Yuuta?" she called, her voice rough with sleep.
No answer.
She threw off the blanket and stood, her bare feet hitting the cold floor. She was out of the bedroom before she knew what she was doing, her heart pounding so hard she could feel it in her throat. The hallway was empty. The bathroom door was open, the light off. The living room was dark.
She imagined him collapsed on the floor, bleeding. She imagined him gone, taken while she slept, disappeared into a world she could not follow. She imagined waking up alone again, the way she had been alone for so many years before he came.
She burst into the living room and stopped.
He was standing in the kitchen.
The morning light fell on his face, warm and golden, and he was wearing an apron that was too big for him, the strings tied in a messy bow at his back. His sleeves were rolled up to his elbows, and his hands were busy with a spatula and a pan. The table behind him was set—plates, forks, glasses of water, a small vase with a single flower she did not recognize.
He was alive. He was cooking. He was here.
Her panic faded, replaced by a warmth that spread through her chest and made her legs feel weak. She leaned against the doorframe, breathing heavily, and watched him for a moment without speaking. She watched the way his brow furrowed in concentration, the way his tongue poked out slightly when he flipped a pancake, the way he licked a drop of honey from his thumb without thinking.
He looked up and saw her.
"Good morning, Erza," he said, and his voice was soft, almost gentle.
She did not answer. She was still catching her breath, still calming her heart, still trying to look like she had not been terrified.
Yuuta set down the spatula and walked toward her, stopping a few feet away. His eyes searched her face, and his brow furrowed with concern.
"Are you okay?" he asked. "You look like you had a nightmare."
She looked away, her cheeks flushing, because she could not tell him that her nightmare was waking up without him. She could not tell him that she had dreamed of his cold body, his still heart, his empty eyes. She could not tell him that she was afraid to close her eyes because she might see it again.
"I am fine," she said, her voice flat.
But her voice cracked on the last word, and Yuuta heard it.
He studied her for a moment, and then a slow smile spread across his face. Not a mocking smile, not a teasing smile—something softer, something warmer.
"Wait," he said, his tone light. "Did you search for me?"
Erza's face turned red. She crossed her arms and looked away, her words tumbling out too fast, stumbling over each other like a child caught in a lie.
"Search for you? Bullshit. I was just checking to see if you were making breakfast. That is all."
Yuuta's eyes widened. He had been joking—he had not actually believed that she would search for him. But her flushed cheeks and her stumbling words told him otherwise. She had been worried. She had been scared. She had been looking for him.
He chuckled, unable to help himself.
"Oh come on, Your Highness," he said, grinning now. "Just admit it. I can see the eagerness in your eyes."
"I am not eager," she said, her voice sharp, but her cheeks grew even redder.
"Admit it, my queen," he said, crossing his arms and leaning against the counter. "Honesty is the best policy."
Erza's fists clenched at her sides. Her jaw tightened. Her eyes flashed with something that was not quite anger and not quite embarrassment.
"You damn mortal," she said, her voice low and dangerous.
Yuuta, emboldened by his narrow escape and the fact that she had not frozen him solid yet, pushed further.
"I cannot believe it," he said, shaking his head in mock disbelief. "The almighty queen cannot accept the truth. The kingdom will surely fall now."
The temperature in the room dropped. Not the temperature of the air—the sun was still warm, the pancakes still steaming, the morning still bright. The temperature of something else. Something that lived in Erza's eyes.
"Do not you think you are getting too comfortable with me?" she said, her voice cold, her eyes dangerous.
Yuuta felt the chill crawl up his spine and knew he had made a terrible mistake. He had pushed too far, teased too much, forgotten for a moment that he was standing in front of the most powerful being in the universe. His life flashed before his eyes—not the first time, and probably not the last.
He clasped his hands together, bowed his head, and spoke in a trembling voice, laying it on thick.
"Oh, my beautiful queen, the most powerful being under heaven and earth, please let this humble fool have mercy on him."
Erza's eyes widened. Her face turned bright red—not the pale pink of embarrassment, but a deep, burning crimson that spread from her cheeks to her ears to the base of her neck. Her mind raced, stuck on the words he had spoken. Beautiful queen. He had called her beautiful.
Her heart pounded in her chest. Her hands trembled at her sides. She opened her mouth to speak, but no words came out.
"You idiot," she finally managed, and punched him in the head.
The impact was not hard—nothing like the blows she had landed on him in the past—but it was enough to send him stumbling backward, his hands flying to the sore spot on his skull.
"Ouch! Erza, that hurts!" he yelped, wincing.
"If it hurts, you should stop messing with me, idiot mortal," she said, her voice cold, and walked toward the bathroom to freshen up.
The door closed behind her with a soft click. Yuuta stood in the kitchen, rubbing his head, a small smile tugging at his lips despite the pain.
"This heartless lizard has no mercy at all," he muttered under his breath. "How dare she treat me like a punching bag?"
He shook his head and walked toward the bedroom to wake Elena.
Behind the bathroom door, Erza stood in front of the mirror, her face still red, her heart still pounding. She stared at her reflection—at her flushed cheeks, her wide eyes, the small smile she could not quite hide.
"Do I really look beautiful to him?" she whispered to her reflection. "Or was he just teasing me?"
She splashed cold water on her face, once, twice, three times, trying to cool the heat that would not fade. But the thoughts would not go away. His voice echoed in her mind. My beautiful queen.
She leaned against the sink, her hands gripping the edge, and took a deep breath.
She was in trouble.
In the bedroom, Yuuta knelt beside the bed and gently shook Elena's shoulder.
"Wake up, little princess," he said softly. "Breakfast is ready."
Elena's eyes fluttered open, red and bright, and the moment she saw her father's face, she smiled. It was a small smile, still heavy with sleep, but it reached her eyes in a way that made Yuuta's heart ache.
"Papa," she murmured, and wrapped her arms around his neck.
Yuuta hugged her back, holding her tight, breathing in the smell of her hair.
"Come on," he said, lifting her onto his hip. "Let's go eat."
He carried her into the kitchen, where the food was waiting and the morning light was warm, and for a little while, everything was exactly as it should be.
To be continued...