The late afternoon light filtered through the blinds of Unity Health Hospital, casting thin stripes of gold across the white tile floors.
The building stood on the outskirts of Hillview City, surrounded by pine trees that whispered in the wind, a place designed to be peaceful, to be healing, to be forgotten by those who did not need its services. But inside, the air was thick with the smell of antiseptic and the low hum of fluorescent lights, and the peace that the architects had tried to create was nowhere to be found.
Fiona had not yet regained consciousness.
She lay in a private room at the end of the hallway, her body wrapped in bandages, her face pale against the white pillow.
Machines beeped softly beside her, monitoring her heartbeat, her breathing, the slow process of her body repairing itself. She had been unconscious for hours, drifting through dreams that none of her comrades could see, calling out a name that made Loid's blood boil every time he heard it.
Yuuta.
The name echoed through her sleep, soft and desperate, like a prayer offered to a god who had stopped listening.
Loid sat in the waiting room, his elbows on his knees, his hands clasped together, his eyes fixed on the floor. His lion mask was beside him on the chair, its golden surface gleaming under the harsh lights, its expression frozen in a permanent snarl.
He had not slept. He had not eaten. He had not done anything except sit in this same chair, in this same position, waiting for Fiona to wake up.
Yuki sat across from him, her fox mask pushed up to reveal her face. Her eyes were tired, her shoulders slumped, her hands wrapped around a paper cup of coffee that had long since gone cold. She had been watching him for hours, watching the guilt and frustration play across his face, watching him struggle with a decision he had already made.
The silence between them was heavy, filled with words that neither of them wanted to speak first. The clock on the wall ticked, each second a small sound in the quiet, and somewhere down the hall, a nurse laughed at something a patient had said, the sound bright and out of place in the gloom of the waiting room.
Finally, Yuki broke the silence.
"Why did you fake the testimony?" she asked, her voice quiet but steady, like a blade being drawn from its sheath. "When the Snow Wolf unit asked about the port incident, why did you lie?"
Loid did not look up. His jaw tightened, and his hands clenched together so hard that his knuckles went white. He could feel Yuki's eyes on him, could feel the weight of her question pressing down on his shoulders like a stone.
"I do not know why I did it," he said, his voice flat, empty.
Yuki's eyes narrowed. "What do you mean, you do not know? You are aware that if the truth gets out, we could lose our rank for filing a false report. You know that, right?"
Loid's voice was calm, but there was frustration boiling beneath the surface, a frustration that had been building for years and had finally found its breaking point.
"I know that too," he said.
"Then why?" Yuki pressed, leaning forward in her chair. "Why did you tell them what you told them? Why did you make Fiona the hero? Why did you bury the truth about the woman in white?"
Loid was silent for a long moment. The clock on the wall ticked. The machines in Fiona's room beeped. Somewhere down the hall, a door opened and closed, and footsteps echoed on the tile floor.
When he finally spoke, his voice was low, almost a whisper, as if he were confessing a sin that he had been carrying for too long.
"I am jealous of Yuuta."
Yuki did not interrupt. She waited.
"I am jealous of the way Fiona looks at him," Loid continued, his voice cracking. "Of the way she says his name in her sleep. Of the way she has loved him for years, even when he did not love her back. I have been watching her for so long—years, Yuki, years—and she has never once looked at me the way she looks at him. Not once."
He paused, his throat tightening.
"I wanted her to understand that Yuuta has his own life now. His own wife. His own child. I wanted her to give up on him, to move on, to finally see that there are other people in the world who care about her. People who have been there for her. People who have bled for her. People like me."
He looked up at Yuki, his eyes red with exhaustion and grief.
"I was afraid that if the agency found out about his wife—about what she is, about what she can do—they would try to kill her. And if she died, then what? Fiona would be free. She would have no one standing in her way. She would go to Yuuta, and he would be alone and grieving, and she would be there to comfort him, and they would end up together."
His voice cracked again, and he looked down at his hands.
"I could not let that happen. So I changed the testimony. I made Fiona the hero. I buried the truth. I told them that she had defeated the threat, that the woman in white had disappeared, that there was nothing left to fear."
He paused.
"I lied to protect her. And I lied to protect myself."
Yuki studied him for a long moment, her expression unreadable. The coffee in her cup had long since gone cold, but she held it anyway, her fingers wrapped around the paper as if it were the only thing keeping her grounded.
"Do you think Fiona would agree with what you did?" she asked. "The first thing she will do when she wakes up is tell the whole truth. She will not rest until the agency knows everything. What will you do then?"
Loid shook his head slowly.
"She will not," he said. "I will stop her. I have to. For her sake, and for the sake of the family she is trying to destroy. If she tells the truth, the agency will hunt Yuuta's wife. They will try to kill her. And if they fail—" He paused, his throat tightening. "If they fail, she will destroy them. All of them. And Fiona will be caught in the middle. She will die, Yuki. She will die, and it will be my fault for not stopping her."
Yuki sighed, long and heavy.
"I cannot support you in this," she said. "What you did was wrong. What you are planning to do is wrong. But one thing is certain—I will not say anything until the whole truth is revealed. And when that day comes, I will stand by your side. Remember that."
Loid nodded. "I know. And I do not mind if you leave now. This is the path I have chosen, and I will walk it alone if I must."
Yuki did not leave. She sat in her chair, her cold coffee forgotten, and waited with him in the silence.
The clock ticked. The machines beeped. Somewhere in her room, Fiona called out Yuuta's name again, and Loid closed his eyes and listened to the sound of his own heart breaking.
___________________________
Meanwhile,
Back in the Konuari apartment, the Afternoon had taken a turn that Yuuta could only describe as biblical in its cruelty.
He knelt on the hard wooden floor, his knees already screaming in protest, his posture stiff as a board, his hands resting on his thighs like a soldier awaiting execution. His face bore fresh evidence of what could only be called a thorough beating—a bruise blooming on his left cheek, another darkening his jaw, and a small cut on his lip that throbbed with every breath. His hair stuck up in wild directions, his shirt had been yanked loose from his pants, and whatever dignity he had woken up with that morning had been thoroughly, mercilessly, and irrevocably shattered.
Erza sat on the sofa like a queen holding court, her legs crossed, her arms folded, her expression carved from ice. She looked down at him the way a hawk might look at a mouse that had dared to twitch without permission.
"Now," she said, her voice sharp enough to cut glass, "tell me again. Why am I punishing you?"
Yuuta kept his eyes fixed on the floor, his voice carefully measured, though his jaw ached with every syllable.
"I will never touch Her Highness without her permission," he recited.
Erza's eyes narrowed to dangerous slits. "I did not hear you. Louder."
Yuuta took a breath, deep enough to fill his aching lungs, and raised his voice just enough to be heard without waking Elena, who was still curled on the sofa like a sleeping angel, her silver hair spread across the pillow, her small face peaceful and utterly oblivious to her father's suffering.
"I will never touch Her Majesty without her permission," he said.
Erza tilted her head, studying him the way a cat studies a mouse it has caught but is not yet hungry enough to eat. She let the silence stretch, let him sweat, let him wonder if she was going to add another hour to his punishment just for the fun of it.
"Hmm," she said finally. "Perfect. Now say it ten thousand times."
Yuuta's head snapped up so fast he nearly gave himself whiplash. His eyes went wide, wider than they had any right to go, and his mouth fell open in pure, unadulterated horror.
"Ten thousand?" His voice cracked on the last syllable. "That is not fair!"
"Not fair?" Erza's eyebrow arched so high it nearly disappeared into her hairline.
"No, it is not fair!" Yuuta gestured wildly with his hands, forgetting his place, forgetting his fear, forgetting that he was speaking to a woman who could freeze him solid with a thought. "I was only trying to ease your burden, my queen! I was trying to be supportive! Have mercy on me! Look upon this matter with compassion!"
Erza's face flushed, a faint pink creeping across her cheeks that she could not quite hide. She had not expected him to bring up the hug. She had not expected him to remind her of the moment when she had wept in his arms, when she had buried her face in his shoulder like a child seeking comfort, when she had let him stroke her hair and whisper soft words in her ear.
She had been vulnerable. She had been weak. And he had seen it all.
"You hugged me out of nowhere," she said, and her voice faltered, just slightly, just enough for him to notice, "when I clearly told you I did not need your pity. Yet you did it anyway."
"But I was just trying to—" Yuuta began.
"Silent, mortal!" Erza snapped, cutting him off before he could finish. "I clearly told you that you would be killed for such an offense. You should be grateful that I did not kill you. Otherwise, you would not be breathing here today."
Yuuta looked away, his jaw tight, his frustration simmering just beneath the surface. He muttered under his breath, just loud enough for her to hear, just quiet enough to pretend he had not said anything at all.
"This feminist queen does not know anything. She only acts like she is some queen or something." He paused, realizing what he had just said. "Oh wait. She is a queen. My bad."
He sighed, long and heavy, and forced himself to look at her.
"I am sorry, my queen," he said, and this time his voice was softer, more sincere, the sharp edges of frustration worn smooth by exhaustion. "I did not know how to react to your story. It felt so personal to me. Like it was my own."
Erza paused. Her fingers, which had been tapping on her arm, went still.
Personal, she thought. He said my story felt personal to him.
"That does not explain anything," she said, though her voice had lost some of its sharpness, like a blade that had been dulled by use. "Your actions cannot be overlooked. You dared to touch royalty—a young woman—without permission."
Yuuta looked at her from the corner of his eye, his expression caught somewhere between disbelief and exasperation.
Young woman? he thought. She is nearly two hundred years old. Twice a century. She has seen empires rise and fall. And she is calling herself a young woman?
Erza's hearing, sharp as a dragon's, caught the whisper. Her eyes narrowed.
"Human and dragon ages are different," she said, her voice cold as winter. "We may look older by human standards, but trust me—I am a twenty-year-old woman in human years."
Yuuta paused, his brain struggling to process this new information.
"Oh," he said. "That is great. I thought you were acting this way because of your old age."
The words left his mouth before he could stop them. They hung in the air between them, heavy and dangerous, like a spark floating toward a pool of gasoline.
He froze. His eyes went wide. His blood turned to ice.
Erza cracked her knuckles slowly, deliberately, one by one, the sound echoing through the quiet room like thunder before a storm. Each crack was a small death, a tiny promise of the pain to come.
"Do you believe in God?" she asked, her voice eerily calm, almost sweet.
Yuuta swallowed hard. Sweat beaded on his forehead. His hands began to shake.
"Y-yes, my queen," he stammered. "Why do you ask?"
Erza's aura rose, filling the room with a pressure that made the walls creak and the windows rattle. The temperature dropped. The shadows lengthened. The lights flickered.
"Very well," she said, and a cruel smile curved her lips. "Because today, you are going to meet him."
She stood.
Yuuta scrambled backward on his knees, his hands raised in surrender, his face pale as a ghost.
"Mercy!" he cried. "Have mercy on me, my queen!"
"Mercy?" Erza stepped closer, her eyes gleaming with something that might have been amusement or might have been murder.
"You are the youngest queen I have ever seen!" Yuuta blurted out, grasping at anything that might save him. "The most beautiful! The most compassionate! The most—"
"You lying fool," Erza said, though her cheeks had turned pink despite herself. "How dare you call me old?"
"I did not call you old! I said I thought you were acting that way because of—" He stopped. He realized he was digging himself deeper. He realized there was no bottom to this hole.
"Mercy!"
And so, the Dragon Queen beat the mortal within an inch of his life.
His screams echoed through the apartment, bouncing off the walls, rattling the windows, and somewhere on the sofa, Elena stirred, opened one eye, saw her father being tossed across the room like a ragdoll, and went back to sleep.
She had seen this before. It was, after all, a Tuesday.
To be continued...