“Make sure you come back home early, okay? Preferably before lunch. Around eleven o’clock, maybe a little earlier, it depends. I’m not rushing you, but uh.” Nathan stopped himself, mumbling incoherently right before hollering at their daughter who was making a ruckus in the background. She was doing something creative, that much was certain. It took a few seconds for Nathan to compose himself and jump back on the phone. “Eleven-thirty, final offer.”

When you known Nathan as long as Sera had, sometimes it was better to let him ramble and run out of words to say like draining a clogged pipe. Admittedly she zoned out halfway through, alerted when Ariella dropped something again, this time it sounded like metal.

She asked, exhausted from waking up early, “What are you two doing? If I’m coming home at eleven,” (“Eleven-thirty,”) “eleven-thirty, should I expect an arts-and-crafts project in the middle of the living room?”

“Uh…” Nathan paused, presumably taking a second to look around at whatever predicament he had going on. “I promise we won’t burn the house down, honey.”

The fire alarm beeped loud and shrill.

Ariella was heard yelling, “The bacon is burning!”

“Ah—?! Seriously?! I—oh, I gotta go, Sera! Come back at eleven-thirty! Love you, bye!” Nathan hung up.

Sera stared at her phone and the home-screen she had of her smiling husband and daughter. At eleven-thirty, she was taking the rest of the day off and return to the smoldering remains of her home and question every decision she’d made leading up to that moment. Her schedule was busy but Kosmos’s was busier; it was rare for Nathan to have a full day off.

She remembered the small argument they had last night when he pleaded her to do the same. Drop the [Wings of Seraphim] and stay cooped up inside the house, but unfortunately there were some things today that had to be completed by the Guild Master of Angels Guild. Which led to this compromise: eleven-thirty with the slight implication that she shouldn’t eat lunch until then.

Was Nathan cooking? “Then,” Sera muttered to herself, “I should probably have a light meal.”

Sera tucked her phone back into her pocket as she thought about the possible lunch options, trekking into Headquarters. She passed the front gates where the stationed guards bowed their heads in respect, coming onto the spotless slabbed path wider than most streets which led to the main doors. The morning tours had already begun, she noticed, as a class of elementary schoolers loitered on one of the branching paths, their little shining eyes completely fixated on the Angel as their guide rattled off stories and facts they weren’t listening to.

They were Ariella’s age, maybe a year or so older at most.

Sera gave them a smile and a small wave. Most of them were taken aback and had no clue on how to react, but some brave souls fought through the surprise—or maybe that was their childish obliviousness—and returned the gesture.

Whenever she took the main pedestrian road to Headquarters, she found that no matter the density, there was always room for her to walk as though the seas were parted. Like today, a fabulous and eventful Monday, in which the new week started and that meant new projects for the thousands employed here, but they made way for the No.2 Slayer in Ordo.

Halfway through her walk, she heard a quickened pace of footsteps approaching her from the right about thirty meters out: a man with a clipboard. She recognized him. He worked in shipments.

He delivered the first task for the day, explaining the situation while anxious and caffeine-fueled.

***

“Guild Master!” Votary greeted her stiffly, performing a deep bow you’d only see in Eastern countries. She was the most recent member of High Dominion, hailing from Giants’ Protection and was the personal student of the Stainthrophe sisters. White Herald had spoken highly of her.

Sera had met Votary on formal occasions, such as when she was first inducted into the team, but rarely, if ever, outside of these ceremonies.

“Votary,” she greeted lightly in hopes the young Angel loosen up.

Like the senior standing beside her, a gray-haired woman licking her lips, impatiently tapping her foot. “Morning, Guild Master.”

“Initiate.” If Sera was any more strict regarding professionalism, she’d reprimand her but she knew better than to do that. Initiate was the sort of woman who cared very little for societal influences and did her own thing. Trying to change that would only embolden her to continue her deviancy. “Run me through what happened.”

“Yes ma’am.” Initiate cocked her head towards the back of the cargo bay, leading her Guild Master and the High Dominion member there. “I was in the area because I was expecting a shipment for my team and ran into Votary here.”

Votary nodded. “I was doing the same thing but for Pilgrim who had other obligations this morning. Erm, you see, we were expecting multiple crates of various faith-rated materials purchased from the Vatican to be used for wards or rituals or anything like that.”

Sera hummed, keeping an eye on the action on the ground floor here. Everybody was working twice as hard knowing their boss was present and on the scene, internally praying the apparent issue didn’t involve them. “And the problem exactly?”

Initiate made a strange expression that couldn’t be readily deciphered. “You’ll see, GM. Votary thought she spotted her shipment but wasn’t sure, asked me for help since I knew my way around things. And, well…”

They stopped at one of the backrooms. Initially Sera thought this was a temporary holding space or anything of that nature until she saw a sign plastered against the opaque window: “JAMES CHUN”, the same man that’d approached Sera earlier. He was currently contacting the ‘right people’ and if Sera’s intuition was anything to go by, she needed to do the same soon.

Opening the door to his office, there was a stack of seven crates on a trolley pressed into the corner.

Initiate motioned to them. “The shipment in question.”

Sera approached the crates and noticed the top one had its lid unscrewed. Something was off. Faith-rated items were something she could sense normally, and given the shipment had supposedly originated from the Vatican, then these boxes should be brimming with holy energy. No such thing was felt. Not a hint of mana either. Plus, there were strict regulations regarding the containers themselves. The items in question had to be transported in such a particular manner and treated with such care that it was most likely a crime to stuff it in a corner of some office.

So what could be inside? Taking a few fingers and sliding them under the lid, she lifted it up.

“...Oh.” Sera sighed, rubbing her eyes and shutting the crate. Swords, swords, and more swords.

“Chun triple-checked, so did we,” Initiate explained, “everything but High Dominion’s order didn’t arrive. He called the Vatican and their people said they confirmed that it was delivered properly. Votary and me looked everywhere, asked everyone, couldn’t find it.”

“So somewhere in Ordo is a shipment of high-grade materials and we have no idea where they are. And we have,” Sera pointed to the crates, “too many swords than we know what to do with.”

“...We aren’t one-hundred percent sure if our stuff is in Ordo in the first place,” broke Initiate which made Sera want to go home already.

Votary had her head low, remorseful although she didn’t do a thing wrong. Her senior noticed and patted her back. Everyone could use that comfort right about now.

Sera graduated from rubbing her eyes to rubbing her face. “Right. Okay, I need you to find White Herald and bring him here, and hopefully we can fix this.”

***

“I don’t think I can make it back home before lunch, Nathan. Resolving the problem took hours and I still have things to do.” Sera glanced at the analog clock mounted on the wall. It was almost eleven. Taking care of the shipment issue had taken hours of communication and miscommunication; luckily it was resolved smoothly when a guild had reported the misplaced shipment—theirs. If it went on any longer, she would’ve needed to contact customs and agencies and report it to the relevant authorities, and it’d be a huge mess where she would inevitably be blamed for it.

Nathan sighed on the other end. The disappointment in his voice sent shame down her back.

Sera sped to say, “I’m sorry—”

“No no, don’t apologize. Stuff like this happens, we know that, it happened a hundred times before. Look, we still have the entire day left. It’s not even noon. Me and Ari can wait a couple more hours.”

She bit her lip, mentally going over what she had to do today and ranking them according to value. Which tasks were immediately urgent, which ones could she put off until tomorrow? “I’ll be home around one—”

“Don’t force yourself, and I sure as heck don’t want you to rush.” Knowing we have constant surveillance breathing down our necks. “Come home whenever you can, okay? I’ll do my best to entertain our Angel but I can’t hold out for long. She’s a monster, Sera. I feel like she’s going to snap my neck off each time I take my eyes off her.”

Sera quietly laughed to herself. “What is she doing now?”

“She’s…” Nathan assumingly glanced her way, “...finger-painting. It might be a blessing in disguise that you’re coming home a little later than expected. It gives Ari more time to finish her masterpiece.”

“Really? Do we have the next Picasso in our hands?”

“Maybe Van Gogh. Without the, uh, mental illness and the ear thing.”

“Mhm, what is she painting anyway?”

“That is a secret between me and her.” She heard a smile on the other end. “It’s a secret you’ll find out once you get your butt over here.”

“Before one,” Sera reiterated. “I’ll be home before one.”

“Don’t rush,” so did Nathan. “Love you.”

“I love you too.”

The call ended.

“Once again, Sage will make the same offer she did before.” Chie swiveled in her chair with a coffee mug in her hands. One of Aiden’s. One of his available merchandise to be exact. He had been so excited when the first line was being released; his room, in fact, was filled with his own stuff.

Chie hated it because posters of his face and full-body lined the walls from top-to-bottom.

“You have your own work to do, Chie,” Sera told as she plucked her coffee from one of the side tables, taking a sip. Still nice and warm. “I can’t funnel my chores onto your growing list of them.”

“That’s ‘cuz you’re too stubborn and selfish.” Chie huffed, crossing her legs. “Nathan complains about that all the time. So does Kashan.”

“Really, what do they say?”

Chie raised a finger, taking a hearty chug of coffee before sighing sonorously. “Well, Kashan complains. Nathan goes ‘I love Sera, but!’ or ‘Sera’s great, yet!’ or stuff like that. He doesn’t know how to say anything negative ‘bout anyone without addin’ a compliment. ‘Cept for our enemies then he has plenty to say.”

“That he does.” Sera had listened to his venting numerous times throughout their marriage. Even then, his ‘angry’ was most people’s frustration. When was the last time when he was genuinely boiling red with fury? “What does Kashan say about me?”

“Oh, y’know, the usual stuff you’d expect: ‘Sera drives me wild with her doggedness! Does she know she’s a Guild Master, a leader, where one of the responsibilities is delegation?!’” Chie did a remarkably good imitation of her Vice Guild Master.

Sera tilted her coffee mug up to pay respect. “That sounds awfully specific for an example.”

“Yeah, he said that to Sage, like, Friday.”

Now that she mentioned it, Kashan had been more aggressive last week, doing his best to wrap everything up. In fact, throughout the weekend, he insisted he could take on much of her workload. Him being helpful was not uncharacteristic but rarely was he forceful with it. Sera had, evidently proving his criticism, refused.

Strange, the same could be said for Nathan. He’d been uncharacteristic too. One time, she caught him and Ariella whispering about something. When she intruded on their conversation, they were startled and pretended to be talking about a cartoon. An obvious lie but what would warrant such secrecy?

Heck, even Chie was volunteering to do some work for her.

What was going on this morning?

Before Sera could ask, a soft tune abruptly played on Chie’s computer. On her main monitor filled with at least a dozen different tabs from schematics to charts, another one added to the disasterously cluttered pile: a direct call from Aiden.

Chie grumbled to herself and set her mug down on a stained cork coaster. “Whatcha want, Aiden?”

“Uh…” In the background of the call, Sera heard an alarmingly large number of compounding voices plus actual alarms. Chie straightened her posture and leaned forward, suddenly concerned.

“Aiden?” Sera moved beside her artisan, setting down her mug too. “What’s happening on your end?”

“Shit, Seraph—? I, uh! Nothing’s going on! I’m just callin’ Chie ‘cause I’m grabbing some lunch while I’m out and thought she’d like something! She’s a total glutton but I thought I’d be nice and treat her—”

“Okay, Burnt-For-Brains, go to hell first of all!” Chie exclaimed, rising from her chair, half-standing. “And secondly, what’s actually going on? Are you throwin’ a party without telling us first?”

“Not exactly. Uhm…” Aiden took a deep breath, “…so y’know the really super secret project we were workin’ on, Chie?”

Chie glanced at Sera before replying, “What did you do?”

“Well, I was runnin’ an errand for Rector, right? When I got done with that, I was near Site 7 and I remembered we needed that thing for that super top secret project. So I took a pit stop, searched storage, and uh…” He suddenly stopped.

Sera pressed, “Aiden—!”

“I might’ve knocked something over and now there’s a fire.”

Both women were silent longer than what Aiden’s mental health could handle. Quietly, Chie pulled up live camera feed for Site 7 and saw what Aiden was seeing: smoke coming from one of the buildings, presumably where he was at when the inferno started.

“We have extensive sprinkler systems installed in every site,” mentioned Sera. “If they were activated, which they should, the fire should be put out. As for the contents inside the site…”

“Yeah…” said Aiden, drawn-out.

“God.” Sera plucked her mug and drank the rest of the contents. “Stay there. I’ll come and assess damages.”

“Wait wait wait, you can’t—!”

But Sera was already on the move.

***

The damage wasn’t as bad as initially thought. The items destroyed in the small fire were easily replaceable and the storage facility could still be used while it underwent light repairs and maintenance. Regardless of the fire, Sera had to stay back and ensure nothing else was damaged in the aftermath.

Aiden, though, felt incredibly guilty for accidentally causing the fire in the first place. For once, as the camera footage discovered, he was not completely at fault. While he was searching for the item he needed for the ‘top secret project’ he had with Chie, he accidentally knocked a small capsule of some flammable substance out of a box. It fell, the casing cracked. As he picked it up, it spontaneously combusted in his hand.

As an SS-Rank attuned to fire, he was unhurt.

Little could be said for the inanimate victims scorched moments after.

Despite having his innocence proven, Aiden still felt guilty but Sera couldn’t deal with the remorse and sent him away to Chie.

“Everything’s squared away, Sera,” Kashan said as he entered the room. “Everyone’s in consensus that the fire was little flames and all smoke. It sounds eerily similar to countless people I had the displeasure of meeting.”

Sera rubbed her head trying to get this headache out. “Thank you, Kashan. I didn’t think this day could get any more hectic but it keeps surprising me. I haven’t done a lick of my own work. I had to sort out a shipment miscommunication then something caught on fire, it’s a mess.”

“Sometimes, I question the Lord is actually fond of us.”

“Heh. Goodness me, what time is it…?” Sera pulled out her phone, greeted by her adorable daughter as her lock screen, and audibly gasped.

It was three-twenty, hours after she had promised her husband that she’d be home. She missed a few texts and a call from him.

“I need to—!” She stopped herself, torn over what she was going to say next. She needed to complete her work, she needed to go home and spend time with her family. Her career as a Guild Master was important, but she had promises to keep as mother and wife.

“I told Nathan what happened,” Kashan answered a question she didn’t think of asking. “Get out of here. You need to go home.”

“Kashan—“

“I don’t want any excuses, you workaholic. If there’s one day where you need to pack things up, it’s today. Go home now. I’ll take over and you can make it up to me at a later date.”

Why is everyone pushing me to head straight home? I’m not against the idea, but… “Why is today so special, Kashan?”

“Oh.” His lavender eyes widened in disbelief. “Of course, I should’ve known. Only you could pull a stunt like this.”

“Don’t be cryptic now, tell me what’s—“

The System dinged, alerting her to a notification. Sera was ready to scream at this point but opened it up, finding a [Private Message] sent from the liaison team between Angels Guild and the Ordoian Army.

A single message alongside a location: Code Whiteiron, Nacht.

Code Whiteiron meant an expedition had gone horribly wrong for one of the Angel Teams and they required attention from the Guild Master herself plus any available assistants. The Army accompanied Slayers on a majority of expeditions so naturally, they had to be in jeopardy as well.

Sera stared at the message for what it felt to be an hour. “Whiteiron,” she told Kashan, “let’s go.”

Kashan could not argue otherwise.

***

One-thirty-seven in the morning.

Sera had finally returned home at one-thirty-seven in the morning, over fourteen hours the first promise she made with Nathan. That was broken because of a mishap between shipments discovered by Initiate and Votary. Then the next promise was made. One o’clock in the afternoon, broken, because of a fire in one of the sites. Before Sera could make her third promise, she had broken it already: a Code Whiteiron was called, and she must respond regardless of her current obligations.

When she entered through the front doors, tired, the light to the living room was on.

Nathan was awake.

But that was the last thing she noticed.

Someone had thrown a kid’s party here in her very home, all without the mess you’d expect. There were no toys strewn on the ground, no paint on the walls—wait, no paint except for these few specks of blue on the open door-frame to the kitchen. Inside, it was clean but cluttered: large liter-bottles of various fruit punches sitting beside open bags of plastic red cups, tupperwares filled with something Sera couldn’t make out without flipping the light-switch, and enough snacks and sweets to feed a small class of children.

She continued down the corridor in a sleepless intrigue. As she had a wider view of the living room, board-games were seen pressed against the couch: the man in the top hat, the one about a plague, the game about life. A normal family would spend their night playing these silly games, laughing the hours away until sleep took them, and they’d wake up the next morning huddled on and below and around the couch, realizing their pillow-and-blanket fortress they’d made had fallen during their slumber.

A normal family.

Above the fireplace, a hand-painted sign had caught her attention. The words were barely legible but she understood the message.

“HAPPY 38TH 39TH BRITHDAY MOM!!!”.

She was awake, now, and she stared at the sign.

“Surprise, Sera,” a gentle voice reached out to her. “It’s your birthday.”

Nathan was sitting on the couch with a hardback book in his hands about three hundred long. He’d been working on that novel for a couple months, barely having time to read more than a few pages at a time. Honestly he most likely forgot the plot but kept reading it just to give himself a brief diversion from the chaos of everything.

“Had been,” he elaborated, putting a bookmark where he’d stopped. “It’s past midnight, so happy late birthday. You’re thirty-nine but you’re as gorgeous as you were in your early twenties.”

“Nathan—“

He patted the spot beside her, and she took it without any further protest. No, don’t even think about arguing. She didn’t have the grounds to defend herself; she didn’t deserve to plead her case. An indescribable shame claimed her as she’d claimed so many of their ‘free days’ in the name of Seraph and Angels Guild, and soon shame turned into grief, mourning the memories that could’ve been enjoyed.

She pictured herself rolling dice with Ariella. She wanted to hear her read the event cards out loud, slowly, euniciating and pronouncing every syllable and doing the best she could. She wanted to do whatever Nathan had schemed of doing: trying their darndest to cook, frosting cupcakes or cakes or whatever they were baking and offering their pinky finger to the other covered in too-sweet frosting, arguing what movie to watch although it was her birthday first of all.

All she could do to soothe herself was to stare at the sign her daughter had painted.

“…Code Whiteiron was resolved smoothly,” Nathan recounted. “Kashan texted me. Good job.”

Sera did not respond.

“You had a busy day, didn’t you?”

She did not respond.

“…Hey.” Nathan nudged her with his foot, tapping it against hers. “Earth to Sera, is the birthday girl in right now—?”

“What did you have planned?” she asked so quietly that she had almost mistaken it as an unspoken thought.

Nathan paused and let his gaze sweep their home. “A lot, a lot… We had the, uh, we had the whole day planned. First was your favorite for lunch. I cooked it. Tried to, anyway. After you got delayed the first time…” First time. “...me and Ari couldn’t let hot food go to waste. It didn’t taste good but we finished it. Then, we—and by ‘we’, I mean ‘she’ because she bossed me around—had nothing but games to play. You saw the stuff here but you haven’t seen the stuff in the backyard: cornhole, mini-basketball, anything Ari wanted to do.

“And that sign,” he pointed to the sign, “wasn’t the only thing she painted either. All morning she was working on a portrait of you. That’s what she told me but it kinda looks like, uh, well it looks like nothing. But I wasn’t going to tell her otherwise. That’s why you might’ve seen some paint on the floor or on the walls, maybe on the ceiling too. A paint fight broke out between us and I was at every disadvantage.”

Another memory I missed out on. “…Is she sleeping?”

“Yeah. When Kashan told me about the Code Whiteiron, I…” Nathan rubbed his lips, conflicted, “…I knew you weren’t coming home soon. When I told Ari, she did her best to remain positive but I knew she was disappointed inside. She kinda just bottles all that up, puts on a smile for us. She understands why these things happen but I don’t think she lets herself show she’s unhappy about it.

“But she loves you, almost as much as I do. She insisted we’d stay up as long as it took to greet you when you came home. Ari asked for hot cocoa to keep her up, did some more painting, played more games, anything to stay awake.” He chuckled, shaking his head. “Couldn’t make it a few minutes past twelve. She’s in her room now with her portrait of you.”

Nathan looked in the direction of her room, in the hallway leading to her door which was decorated in sparkles and glitter and stickers. He called it a biohazard from how much glitter she’d put on. “This party was mostly her doing, Sera. She wanted to make it the ‘mostest memorable birthday in the history of all birthdays for the bestest mom in the world’. She didn’t want to order food or entertainment—we needed to do everything ourselves because that’s how much we love you. It’s how much we love you…”

Below her, she found multi-colored specks of paint on the coffee table. She brushed her finger against them and felt the dried paint scratch against her skin.

Then, suddenly all at once, Sera sobbed. At some point Nathan had brought her into his arms, letting his shirt soak with her tears. Between her choked breaths she was saying things she couldn’t understand herself. Words birthed from her shame and grief and guilt. This was the straw that broke the camel’s back, and so the rest of her unrealized promises followed as grudges and lingering self-contempt.

It’d taken some time before Sera’s sobbing whittled down to occasional tears and whimpers. She felt Nathan’s gentle hand caressing her hair. She heard his heartbeat and pressed a hand against his chest.

“Do you hate me for this?” asked Sera quietly, listening to the rhythm of his heart.

“No. It’s done.” He liked saying those two words; it was the simple phrase that kept him going tribulation after tribulation.

He was right. His philosophy was the better. There was no point in scorning her life as Seraph or putting herself down to her husband, a man arguably just as busy if not more busy as her. They were both Slayers doing their best as absurdly swamped parents. She could spend hours cursing the constant obstacles in their path, break down whenever things had gotten too much, or alternatively pruning the bush there and adapt, and work, and move forward in spite of life.

It was done, so what was she going to do?

Although she could die in this comfort, she lifted her head from her husband’s chest and turned upwards. “Do you think we should wake Ari up?”

Nathan shook his head. “No, she needs her sleep, but we can be there when she wakes up tomorrow. Or this morning if you want to be pedantic.”

“Then what are we going to do?”

“What we normally do at birthdays. Wait right here.” Nathan hopped off the couch and darted into the kitchen, returning a few seconds later with a cold plate of a slice of strawberry cake on top. Two birthday candles laid next to the dessert in the shape of two numbers: three and nine; plus, a cooking lighter was stuffed into his pocket.

“The cake doesn’t look so terrible,” she teased. There wasn’t anything substantial to say about the cake; it looked like cake, had strawberry frosting. They probably pulled up a recipe online. If Nathan knew how to do one thing, then it’d be following directions. Something even Kashan couldn’t do. Recipes or formulas or instructions, he thought himself better.

Nathan winked as he returned to his spot. “If this Slayer thing doesn’t work out, I might take up cooking as my new career.”

“Don’t worry, I think you have excellent job security.”

Sera watched him plop the candles into the thick layer of strawberry frosting. The numbers joined together into ‘39’ behind the bright slice of strawberry at the center of the slice, placed perfectly there by Nathan’s hand it seemed. She was given the plate, cold to the touch, and Nathan flicked on the lighter.

The candles were lit.

“Happy birthday to the Angels Guild Master. Do you want to know something funny? Aiden and Chie were planning on making some support equipment for you.”

Sera chuckled, amused, peering longingly into the soft candle-flames. “So that’s why Aiden took a detour.”

“Mhm. Everyone wanted to give you the time to enjoy a single day. I’m afraid that didn’t happen, but at least we have time to enjoy a single slice of cake and make a birthday wish.”

In a single huff, the two candles were extinguished.

Nathan looked on expectantly. “Would the birthday girl mind sharing her wish?”

“Time,” answered Sera. “I want more time for us.”