SPIRITBOUND |°་༘♡| dandadan

01. HEROES

✾_________ ׂׂૢ.˚______°་༘♡

✾_________"SUSPENSION!? REALLY? After everything we've done for you, this is how you repay us?" Seira was used to her father yelling—his voice rattled the walls almost daily—but this time, he was especially angry.

She stood in the middle of the living room, head bowed, her expression unreadable. There was no shame in her posture, no guilt in her silence. She had learned long ago that staying quiet was the best way to endure.

"You shameless thing! Is this how you honor your parents?" In the kitchen, her mother wept softly. To Seira, it seemed like her mother was always crying. Not for her, though. The tears never flowed out of love or concern. They were for herself.

Her mother had started crying the moment the principal called about Seira's suspension, and she hadn't stopped since.

"Do you have no sense of guilt for what you've done?" The house seemed to quake as Inoue Kenji slammed his hands on the table. The sound echoed, making Seira's mother flinch. Without a word, her mother rushed to the bathroom and locked the door behind her.

Seira didn't move. She didn't flinch. She didn't care.

It wasn't the first time. It wouldn't be the last. This was their routine. She lived her life, her parents found something wrong with it, and the cycle repeated.

All she wished for now was for him to dismiss her, so she could finally go to sleep.

'What have you actually done for me?' The thought burned on the tip of her tongue, but she bit it back. Silence was her only true friend.

"Go to your room. I can't even look at you!" Finally. Without protest, Seira turned and left, climbing the stairs slowly. As she passed the front window, something caught her eye: a small white fur ball crouched outside the house.

'So, she's back, huh?'

For a brief moment, Seira's lips twitched into something close to a smile. But sleep was more precious. Plopping down on her bed, she stared at the ceiling, letting exhaustion take over.

The Inoue household wasn't always like this. Ten years ago, when her sister died, everything changed. Her father, Kenji, buried his grief beneath layers of rage, lashing out at anything and everything. Her mother, Ami, crumbled under the weight of her sorrow and fear.

Ami was more terrified of losing her family's image than of losing her family itself. She clung to the illusion of perfection, desperately patching together their broken home. But no matter how hard she tried, the cracks were always visible.

When it became clear she couldn't fix what was broken, she changed her goal: to appear perfect. To the outside world, they would be a family that had triumphed over tragedy, stronger and closer than ever.

But Seira didn't fit that image.

The moment Seira stopped following the rules, Ami's brittle illusion began to crumble. Anything abnormal was unwelcome, and Seira, with her defiance and refusal to conform, was the epitome of abnormal.

And now, suspension. It was too much. It was the final crack in her mother's fragile facade.

Seira didn't care. Why should she? Her parents had never given her a reason to.

If they had tried—just once—to help her, she might have felt differently. When she was six, waking up every night screaming for her sister, calling out to someone who wasn't there (an imaginary friend, they said), they could have comforted her. Instead, they told her she was crazy.