Chapter 187: You’re Smiling! You’re Actually Smiling!
Yelena pressed her palms to her temples as though she could physically stop the ache building behind her eyes.
She could fight for days, carve through monster ranks until her blade steamed—but nothing, absolutely nothing, drained her faster than five minutes trapped between Mika and Nadia.
The sharpness in her shoulders melted into exhaustion; the thought of bed, of quiet, of blessed solitude, was suddenly the sweetest dream imaginable.
Mika noticed. He always did. The little bastard had the uncanny knack for catching the smallest shifts in her tone or posture, as if her heartbeat translated into subtitles for him alone.
And before she could bark that she was fine when she caught his gaze, he was already behind her desk, dragging her chair over with easy confidence.
"Sit." He said simply, nudging her shoulders until she sank into it. She blinked up at him, surprised at how gentle his hands felt.
Then he bent close, so close that Nadia couldn’t see her face beyond the edge of the screen, and pressed a soft kiss to her forehead. The warmth of it sent a pulse through her chest.
"Sorry about all of this." Mika murmured, still close enough that his breath tickled her skin. "I got a little carried away when I saw Nadia again. As compensation..." His smile tilted gently. "I’ll handle the rest of the meeting. You just relax."
Yelena’s instinct screamed to object; it was nowhere near an apology worthy of the chaos he’d caused.
Yet the sincerity in his voice, the way he’d read her weariness without her saying a word...it melted her resolve. Her heartbeat stumbled, traitorous.
She slumped deeper into the chair, muttering something incoherent that even she couldn’t decipher.
Mika then straightened, turning back toward the display with that infuriating calm confidence.
"Nadia..." He said. "Yelena needs a little rest. She’s not feeling her best. We’ll handle the meeting together, just the two of us. Go ahead and tell me what needs to be done."
Under normal circumstances, anyone would have laughed in his face. He was still in the Academy, barely out of his teens, and this was a high-level interdimensional policy meeting.
But Nadia didn’t even hesitate.
"Very good." She said, her tone smooth and approving. "No offence to Yelena, but with you here, I expect things will go very smoothly. We might even finish ahead of schedule."
From her chair, Yelena cracked an eye open and gave a lazy smirk. "No offence taken. You’re right." She muttered, voice too soft for the mic to pick up. "If Mika’s holding the reins, we’ll be done in no time..."
And she was right.
The following hour unfolded like clockwork. Nadia threw one issue after another at him, problems that had confounded experienced officials for months, and Mika caught each one like a juggler who’d been doing it for years.
A mining site in one of the outer realms where extraction was failing due to unstable energy fields.
Mika listened, chin propped on his hand, eyes half-lidded as though idly daydreaming, and within seconds—he was rattling off a solution that bypassed every obstacle, using the realm’s own environmental flow to stabilize the process.
Nadia raised a brow. "That’s...efficient."
Next came a trade regulation problem, an exploitation loophole that had been costing the Bureau millions.
Mika dissected it instantly, flipped the logic of the policy itself, and turned the loophole into a control mechanism that forced compliance.
Then came diplomatic negotiations, then inter-realm trade tariffs, even proposals for energy treaties, all of them tumbling out of Nadia’s mouth, and all answered by Mika as if he’d rehearsed for years.
He was unstoppable. Smooth, sharp, confident.
Yelena watched through half-lidded eyes, her fatigue giving way to a slow, swelling pride.
Just a few years ago, he could barely balance a sword without tripping over it and she was helping him with math equations.
Now here he was, solving problems that left entire committees stuttering. She felt like a mentor watching her prodigy eclipse every expectation, a melody of quiet joy humming through her chest.
Even Nadia seemed impressed, though she masked it under her usual composure.
The more Mika succeeded, the more she threw questions at him, some of which she clearly invented on the spot, as if probing the extent of his capability. Her tone softened each time he answered flawlessly, her eyes glinting with a look of motherly pride and approval.
And even more, through all of it, his hands kept moving, pressing into Yelena’s shoulders to give her a massage, kneading the tension from her neck as he talked.
His voice stayed calm and low, answering each question as if it were an easy test, all while his thumbs pressed into her flesh that made her eyes flutter shut in spite of herself.
She’d always thought multitasking was a myth. But watching him work proved her wrong.
By the time Nadia finally leaned back in her chair and exhaled, the impossible had happened.
"I think that’s about it, Mika." She said. "There’s really nothing left to ask. You’ve essentially cleared up eighty percent of the Bureau’s outstanding issues."
She let out a deep sigh, rare for her.
"I had this same meeting yesterday with an entire committee of experts. None of them could give me answers. They all promised to get back to me by the end of the week. But you..." Her eyes softened slightly. "You finished everything in under an hour."
"Efficient." Nadia repeated, nodding her head. "It honestly would be nice to have someone like you in the Bureau. I’d even create a position right beside mine. You could work directly with me." Her tone dropped into a solemn way like she was making a promise. "In fact, I might even step down and let you take my place. You’d handle it better than I ever could."
"Oh no, don’t even think about it." Yelena cracked one eye open, smirking faintly. "You’re not stealing him away. If he joins your Bureau, we’ll never see him again."
"Yeah, no thanks." Mika chuckled, still rubbing along her shoulders. "I know how stressful that job is. You can keep it, Nadia."
"That’s a pity." Nadia said lightly. Then her tone shifted, curious. "Though before we end, I have to ask one more thing."
Both Mika and Yelena looked up.
"I don’t know if it’s just my eyes." Nadia continued, studying the two of them through the feed. "But you both seem...different. Closer than before. Very, very close."
Yelena’s spine stiffened. Mika froze mid-motion.
"But also..." Nadia added, her brow furrowing. "...strangely distant at the same time. It’s as though Mika keeps reaching out while you, Yelena, keep pulling back. I can’t quite explain it, but that’s what I feel."
The color drained from Yelena’s face. Her pulse quickened. That was exactly what she’d been struggling with, feelings she couldn’t name, instincts she kept denying, and Nadia, from across screens, had seen straight through it.
She opened her mouth to say something but no sound came out. Her thoughts scattered like frightened birds.
Lying was useless, Nadia could see through any deception as easily as breathing, and telling the truth would mean disaster. She was trapped, cornered, panicking.
But of course, Mika, in all his maddening ease, rescued the situation as though it were nothing at all.
"Oh, don’t worry about that, Nadia." He said, as if this entire situation wasn’t suffocatingly tense. "Nothing strange happened. Actually, it’s a good thing. I’ve actually had a change of heart."
Nadia blinked slowly, her crimson eyes narrowing a fraction.
Mika continued, his tone almost lazy but his words carefully calculated so that he could inform Nadia of the changes that are going through his life.
"I’ve decided to stop being distant. No more isolating myself. I realized I was pushing everyone away...and I don’t want that anymore. From now on, I’ll be just like before, close, honest, and no more of that cold act...Just like old times."
And hearing this, for a moment, even Nadia, the Celestial Maiden of Heaven and Earth, the woman who rarely ever reacted, looked visibly startled. Her eyes widened ever so slightly, and her lips parted in disbelief.
"Is that true, Mika?" She whispered. "You’re not lying, are you? You truly won’t distance yourself anymore?"
Mika smirked softly.
"I wouldn’t lie about something like that." He said confidently. He then turned toward Yelena, placing a hand on her shoulder. "You can even ask Yelena. She’s already noticed the difference, haven’t you?"
Yelena, realizing the chance to save face, nodded rapidly.
"Y-Yes—Yes! It’s true, Nadia. He really has changed. He’s nothing like before. He’s...um...much closer now." She hesitated, thinking privately that maybe a little too close would be more accurate, but she forced a nervous smile.
Nadia fell silent again. Her image on the screen remained perfectly still for several long seconds, so long that Yelena wondered if the connection had frozen. But then—
A curve appeared at the corner of Nadia’s lips and she was actually showing a genuine smile.
And seeing this, Yelena shot up from her chair so fast it almost toppled backward. She pointed straight at the screen, eyes wide.
"N-Nadia! You—You’re smiling! You’re actually smiling! You’re giving a proper smile right now!"
Nadia blinked, slightly taken aback by the outburst.
"What’s wrong with that?" She asked with her usual composure. "Am I not allowed to smile?"
"What do you mean, what’s wrong with that?!" Yelena cried, waving her arms wildly. "You never smile! Ever! I’ve been with you for years and I’ve never seen you even try to move your lips that way!"
"...You’ve got people out there calling you the Ice Goddess—the woman of eternal calm! And now suddenly, this?!"
Mika, meanwhile, was trying, and failing, to suppress a laugh at Yelena’s reaction.
Meanwhile, Nadia tilted her head slightly, touching her lips with two fingers as though testing the truth of Yelena’s words. Then she turned toward her own reflection in the darkened side of the screen, examining herself quietly.
"I see." She murmured. "I really am smiling." Her tone was soft, almost curious. "It is...strange to see it on my face."
Then her gaze shifted back to Yelena, and that small smile remained, calm and faint but undeniably warm.
"Perhaps it’s because I’m happy. Mika has come back to us."
"Happy...?" Yelena blinked in confusion.
"Yes." Nadia nodded slowly. "I may not have shown it, but every day after he left, I worried about him. I wondered where he was, what he was doing. Whether he was eating well, sleeping properly, whether he was safe."
Her voice softened, the usual steel melting into something delicate, human.
"I thought I had grown used to letting things go, but he was never one of them. And now that he’s here again..." She smiled a little wider. "It feels like something precious has returned and I can keep this smile forever."
Mika’s chest tightened with warmth. He hadn’t realized how deeply she’d cared, how much his absence had shadowed her thoughts. His lips curved into genuine grin that mirrored Nadia’s.
"Well, I’m back now." He said gently. "And I’m not going anywhere."
Yelena looked between them, her throat constricting with something she couldn’t quite name, half affection, half something else entirely.
And true to Nadia’s word, that faint smile didn’t vanish after the call ended.
For the rest of that week, she would catch herself smiling at the oddest times, during briefings, while signing papers, even mid-conference. The Bureau staff, long accustomed to their unshakably stoic superior, were horrified.
Whispers spread through the corridors like wildfire.
"Did you see her? She smiled."
"No way, that’s impossible. The Director doesn’t smile."
"I swear on the Realm Codex, she did! Twice!"
Meetings would halt mid-sentence when she gave even the smallest upturn of her lips. People would stare as though they were witnessing divine revelation, or impending doom.
And yet Nadia paid no mind. While others panicked and speculated, she would occasionally touch her lips, remember the conversation, and think softly to herself: Mika’s back.
A quiet warmth filled her chest every time.
For once, the woman who could never even frown even if her all of her limbs were chopped off was smiling at the thought of her beloved son...