The morning sun was too bright. The birds were too loud. The air smelled like flowers and exhaust fumes and the particular brand of anxiety that came from knowing I was about to voluntarily walk back into a building where people talked about supply curves and expected me to understand them.
I stood in the kitchen, my bag on my shoulder, my shoes on my feet, my stomach doing something that felt disturbingly like fear. Human Sera floated beside me, her face alight with the enthusiasm of someone who was not the one who had to actually attend the classes.
Mum was at the stove, making something that smelled like rice and sesame oil. Dad was at the table, pretending to read the newspaper while actually watching me. Mina was in her usual chair, her coffee mug cradled in both hands, her eyes half-closed, her expression the particular brand of murderous that only appeared before her second cup.
"I've been thinking," I said.
Mum's hand paused on the spatula. Dad's newspaper lowered. Mina's eyes opened slightly.
"About the tuition," I continued. "The extra classes. I want to try on my own first."
The silence that followed was heavy.
Mum and Dad exchanged a look—that look. The one they had been exchanging ever since I woke up in this world. The one that clearly meant: Our daughter is behaving strangely, and we have absolutely no idea what to do about it.
Meanwhile, Tangled Menace sat there, calmly sipping her coffee.
To the untrained eye, it might have looked like she was simply enjoying her drink.
She was not.
It takes a celestial mind such as mine to recognize what was truly happening.
Each sip was deliberate.
Loud.
Aggressively loud.
The kind of sipping that could wake a hornwart pig from hibernation and send it into immediate panic.
She lowered the cup just slightly, her eyes gleaming with the anticipation of chaos, her entire posture radiating a single, unmistakable message:
I am absolutely not missing whatever nonsense this weirdo is about to do next.
"Stop sipping your coffee so loudly, Mina. Dad needs to think," Mum said without even turning around. Her voice had that edge—the one that usually preceded either a very reasonable request or the quiet sharpening of a kitchen knife. Hard to tell which.
I think this She-Devil has some powers in her, I thought to myself. She can hear and know what Tangled Menace is even trying to do. How exquisitely impressive. I, the celestial being, am very impressed.
"Wa….hat?" Mina said innocently. She blinked, those eyes wide and deceptively angelic. The coffee cup paused halfway to her lips. A lie. I could see the micro-twitch at the corner of her mouth. She knew exactly what she was doing.
"I'm not even thinking of anything," Dad said in surprise. He looked genuinely offended. His eyebrows had climbed so high they were practically seeking refuge in his hairline. "I was just… counting the tiles on the floor. For fun."
Mum's eye twitched.
It's been a while since I have seen it twitch. Hmm. Interesting.
The last time it twitched this violently was when Dad tried to "optimize" the dishwasher loading pattern by creating a color-coded spreadsheet. He said, "It's for Sera's understanding," and then cried for forty minutes when his favourite mug from that cartoon movie All Dogs Go to Heaven fell over and broke when he opened the dishwasher after praising me for doing it so well. Which, in fact, I had not done well. I just stuffed everything in, as he had explained to optimize everything—which, in fact, is about the buttons, not the space. These water cycle machines are so complicated.
And before that, I had announced at a family dinner one day—after being convinced by Tangled Menace—that being a professional mime is the same as using celestial wave link to communicate but using some sort of invisible box. Tangled Menace laughed so hard she nearly choked. Dad did that thing where he covers his face and laughs behind the newspaper. And Mum took her slipper and hit them both. That shocked my celestial core, as I thought this slipper hitting was meant only for me. I was so extremely delighted and yet curious: does Mum have special slippers for anyone, or does it just depend on the occasion? I tried to investigate but was unsuccessful.
But this—this twitch was different.
The twitch had rhythm. Purpose. It was the eye-twitch equivalent of a metronome counting down to detonation.
"Mina," Mum said slowly, her voice now eerily calm, the kind of calm that makes small creatures of the death realm run for cover, "if I hear one more slurp—"
"It was a sip, not a slurp," Mina corrected, her tone dripping with false concern. "Slurping is gauche. Sip-phoning is artistic."
Dad looked up from the floor tiles. "Did you just call my wife gauche?"
"No, I called her perceptive," Mina said sweetly. Then she took another sip.
This time, the sound was so loud I'm fairly certain the neighbours’ dog started barking in sympathetic distress. It was the kind of sip that echoed off distant mountains. A sip that could shatter glass if aimed correctly.
Mum's eye twitched again. Both of them, actually. A rare bilateral event. I made a mental note to record this in my Celestial Observation Log, right under "Unusual Atmospheric Phenomena: This Time the She-Devil's Both Eyes Twitched—How Truly Interesting—and The Calm Before a She-Devil's Wrath."
"You," Mum said, pointing a trembling finger at Mina, "are doing that on purpose."
"Evidence?" Mina asked, raising one perfect eyebrow. She tilted the cup. More coffee. Another sip. This one somehow defied physics—it lasted eight full seconds and included a gurgle at the end that sounded almost congratulatory.
Dad blinked. "Okay, that one was aggressive."
"Thank you!" Mum threw her hands up. "THANK YOU. Finally. Validation."
Mina smiled. Not a nice smile. The kind of smile that small gods give right before they invent taxes. She leaned back in her chair, cradling her mug like a scepter, and said nothing. Just sipped.
And somewhere behind her eyes, I could see it: the quiet, unshakable joy of someone who knows exactly how much chaos they are causing and intends to cause more.
I grabbed my own mug—quietly, like a coward—and watched. This was better than any celestial alignment.
"Sera," Mum said carefully, "we already looked into tutors. There's a very good one who specializes in economics. He comes highly recommended. Your father and I discussed it, and we think—"
"I know what you think," I cut her off, then immediately felt something that might have been guilt. Human Sera's ghostly hand pressed against my shoulder—I couldn't feel it, but I knew it was there. "I mean—I appreciate it. I do. But I don't want you to spend money on something I might not need."
Mum's spatula lowered. "Might not need? Sera, you told us yourself. You said you were struggling. You said—"
"I know what I said." I took a breath. This was harder than I had expected. Harder than fighting demons. Harder than falling from the heavens. "I said I would try on my own first. I am a celestial being."
Human Sera snorted beside me. Loudly. The kind of snort that usually precedes a nose-exhale of coffee.
I ignored her. "I can learn fast. I have... ways."
"Ways," Dad repeated, his voice flat. He lowered his newspaper just enough to peer at me over the top, like a confused meerkat.
"Divine Intergalactic Cosmic ways," I added.
That was the moment Human Sera and Tangled Menace both lost it.