"So...So far so good, Astrid." Mika said carefully. "From everything you’ve said right now, I don’t think I particularly need to reprimand you or anything. In fact, you seem to be handling things quite well."
Astrid imdiately pulled on his cheek, pouting.
"What do you an, ’reprimand ’?"
She protested indignantly.
"I’m the oldest sister here! I’m the one who’s supposed to reprimand you and scold you and teach you if you did sothing wrong! It’s not supposed to be the other way around!"
Mika just smiled, gently removing her hand from his cheek.
"If you say so."
Then his expression beca more serious, his tone shifting to sothing heavier.
"Now, for the final matter I want to talk about." He said quietly. "The most important one."
Astrid stiffened slightly, as if sensing where this was going.
"What about your mother?" Mika asked gently.
Imdiately, a difficult expression appeared on Astrid’s face—sothing cold and defensive all at once.
"What about her?" She said flatly.
"How are you getting along with her?" Mika pressed carefully. "Are things getting better? Or are they the sa as usual?"
Astrid bit her lip, and Mika could see this was clearly a difficult topic for her.
"I don’t want to talk about this, Mika."
She looked away, her voice becoming tight.
"Let’s just...let’s talk about sothing else."
But Mika didn’t give in this ti.
"You can’t keep saying that, Astrid." He said firmly but kindly. "This is not sothing we can just ignore or avoid forever. I really need to know how you’re doing with your mother. It’s important."
"No, Mika. No. Let’s just talk about sothing else. I seriously don’t want to discuss this at all."
She looked genuinely distressed now as she quietly added,
"You know how ssy it gets when we talk about my mother. It always ends badly. So let’s just avoid it."
"Avoiding the problem will only make it worse."
Mika countered gently.
"The longer we let this fester, the deeper the wound gets. The harder it becos to ever fix."
He reached out, cupping her face gently.
"Astrid. You know that your mother is worried about you, right?"
That got Astrid’s attention. Her eyes flickered back to him.
"I was just talking to her a little while ago."
Mika continued, his voice gentle.
"And it was so obvious, so painfully obvious how concerned she is about you. She was asking about what you’re doing, how you’re eating, whether you’re taking care of yourself."
He paused, his expression becoming even sadder.
"And what broke my heart was that even though she’s your own mother, she couldn’t ask you these questions directly."
"She had to ask . She had to rely on to check up on you, to find out if you’re okay."
Astrid’s expression flickered, sothing vulnerable passing across her face.
"Do you know how heartbreaking that is?"
Mika continued softly.
"To hear a mother so desperate for information about her own daughter that she has to go through soone else?"
He reached out and gently took her hand, holding it firmly.
"You should really make things right with her, Astrid."
He said, looking directly into her eyes with genuine emotion.
"Your mother really loves you. She really, truly cares about you. You’re the most important thing in her entire life."
His voice turned tender, almost pleading.
"She’s probably thinking about you every single mont of every day."
"So I can only imagine how much it must hurt her when her daughter is this distant, when she can’t even have a simple conversation with you."
He squeezed her hand gently.
"Please, Astrid. Just talk to her. Let go of the past, let go of whatever anger or hurt you’re holding onto, and just talk to her..."
"...Please."
And then, for the first ti, Astrid didn’t imdiately protest or fight back.
She didn’t say no.
She didn’t push him away.
Instead, a profoundly sad look crossed her face—distant, haunted, as if she was rembering sothing painful. Sothing that still cut deep.
Then she let out a hollow, wry smile.
"You say ’forget the past,’ Mika. You tell to just...let it go. Act like it never happened."
She shook her head slowly.
"But is it really sothing you can forget so easily?"
Her voice grew quieter, more intense.
"Sure, maybe you’ve forgotten it. Maybe you don’t care at all anymore. But ?"
She looked at him with eyes that burned with old pain.
"I can never forget, Mika. I can never forget what they did."
Her hands clenched into fists.
"If it had happened to , I wouldn’t have cared. I could have moved on. I’m strong enough to handle anything they throw at ."
Her voice cracked slightly.
"But they didn’t do it to . They did it to you!"
"And because you’re the one who suffered the most—because you’re the one who went through that hell—there’s no way I can forgive what they’ve done!"
Tears welled in her eyes again, but these were different.
Not sad tears. But angry tears.
"There’s no chance of forgetting the past, Mika. Not ever."
Her entire body was trembling now—shoulders shaking, hands quivering, tails twitching with barely contained emotion.
Sadness. Guilt. Anger. All of it swirling together.
Hearing this, Mika felt sothing twist in his chest.
He realized, with a sudden clarity, that he couldn’t just ask Astrid to forget and move on.
What Astrid had gone through—what she had witnessed, what she had experienced was not sothing she could easily forget, no matter how much ti passed.
The traumatic event that had happened in the past was literally what had shaped her into the person she was today.
It was what had made her hate demi-humans so intensely, what had created this deep rift between her and her mother.
And there was no way she was going to forget it so easily.
Not when it involved him.
Not when she believed he had been the one to suffer most.
—
To understand it, one would have to rewind ti.
Back to when Astrid was six years old.
And shockingly...
She was nothing like the Astrid of today.
Back then, she was bright.
Radiant.
A child who laughed loudly and spoke even louder.
She ran through hallways barefoot, tails bouncing behind her like playful clouds.
She would drag her sisters along by the hands, insisting on playing gas, insisting on tea parties, insisting that everyone call her ’big sister’ properly.
Of course, it wasn’t arrogance.
It was pride.
She loved that role.
She loved being the eldest.
She loved feeling responsible.
If one of her sisters cried, she was the first to kneel down and wipe their tears.
If Mika tripped, she was the first to puff her chest out and scold the ground as if it had committed a cri.
She was the one who initiated conversations.
The one who pulled everyone together.
This was also because she hated being alone.
If she couldn’t find soone to talk to, she would wander until she did.
If she wanted to play, she would drag Mika along.
If she wanted to relax, she would sit with her mother while she took care of so docunts.
To nap.
To braid hair.
To gossip.
To laugh.
It was always with soone else.
She was, in every sense, a social creature.
An adorable little girl.
And if soone had shown that version of her to the world now—
No one would believe it was the sa person.
But more than her personality, the thing that truly defined her childhood—
Were her tails.
From the very mont she was born, she had seven.
Not as a manifestation of a blessing later in life.
Not as a transformation.
She was born with them.
Small.
Fluffy.
Soft as clouds.
It was abnormal.
In human society, even if a parent possessed a blessing, children were usually born fully human in appearance.
Differences ca later, through awakening or manifestation.
But Astrid was not born from an ordinary blessed.
She was Nadia’s daughter.
A triple SSS-class anomaly.
A woman whose very constitution warped the rules of birth.
And because of that—
Astrid herself was born different.
Seven tails.
A phenonon.
But she never saw them as a curse.
Not once.
From the ti she could walk, people would stop and stare.
But not in fear.
In admiration. In awe. They would whisper about how beautiful they were.
How rare.
How elegant.
Children would ask if they could touch them.
Adults would smile warmly and call her a fairy.
And Astrid?
She adored it.
She would twirl just to make the tails fan out.
She would ask her mother to comb them every morning.
She would sit patiently while Nadia brushed each one carefully, fluffing them until they shone.
"Make them bigger." She would insist proudly. "I want them to look beautiful."
She would groom them herself once she learned how.
She loved the attention.
Not because she craved validation.
But because she felt special.
And that specialness made her proud.
Proud enough that she started saying sothing unusual:
That she was a demi-human.
"Auntie Fauna!"
She announced one day, bursting into the kitchen where Fauna was preparing lunch.
"Did you know that I’m actually a demi-human? Because I have tails!"
Fauna raised an eyebrow, amused. "Is that so, little one?"
"Yes! And that ans you have to treat extra special! Because I’m a guest of your world!"
Fauna laughed and scooped her up.
"Well then, little demi-human, would you like to help make so demi-human cookies?"
"YES!"
Never mind that there was no actual demi-human blood in her veins.
Never mind that she was, biologically, completely human.
In her heart, in her imagination, in the way she understood herself—she was one of them.
She had tails, didn’t she? That made her part of their world.
And because of that, she beca the number one supporter of demi-humans.
Her mother’s work—brokering peace between worlds, helping demi-humans integrate into human society—also fanned her desires.
She would listen to Nadia’s stories about diplomatic missions with wide eyes, dreaming of the day she could help too.
"Mama, when I grow up, I want to be just like you! I want to help demi-humans and make them happy and be their friend forever!"
Nadia’s heart swelled. "That’s a wonderful dream, Astrid. I hope you never lose it."
"I won’t, Mama! I promise!"
She felt connected to every demi-human she saw.
She thought they were wonderful.
She thought they were her people.
If soone had shown her two images—the bright, tail-wagging six-year-old who loved everyone, and the cold, distant commander who wanted demi-humans deported—that person would have asked, in absolute shock:
What happened?
What went so terribly wrong?
The answer begins with a celebration.
A historic one.
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