Chapter 246: Chapter 246: Broken Smile

Mika stayed quiet as Cecilia sat slumped on a patient’s bed, completely drained. Her hair was slightly messy, her glasses slipping down her nose, and her once-confident demeanor replaced by utter disbelief.

But even though he didn’t show it outwardly, Mika wasn’t mocking her her at all.

In truth, he already had a deep respect for her.

Despite her stubborn pride and competitive streak, Cecilia had something rare—a genuine heart for medicine. Even while she sat there defeated, her eyes still wandered to her patients, making sure they were fine.

She didn’t storm off or make excuses. She stayed. And more than that, while he had been bulldozing through the ward with mechanical accuracy—throwing out diagnosis after diagnosis—Cecilia had followed after him every single time, quietly doing what a real doctor should.

Every time Mika finished identifying a disease and moved on, she didn’t just rush to keep up—she stayed behind for a few moments with each patient.

She offered gentle reassurance, comforted their fears, explained their conditions in simple terms, told them what to do and what to avoid.

Her voice was calm, sincere, and human.

She never gave them false hope, never made empty promises. Instead, she gave them something far more valuable—clarity. Even if the truth hurt, she delivered it in a way that gave them strength.

The way she spoke...it wasn’t from a pedestal of superiority, but like a friend talking to another. And even though Mika had been too busy to notice at first, when he finally slowed down and glanced back, he saw that the patients actually smiled at her.

Even the nurses seemed to light up when Cecilia approached. They called her name fondly, some even joking with her as they worked.

Mika knew enough about hospitals to understand what that meant—nurses always knew the true face of a doctor. If a doctor was arrogant or incompetent, the nurses would know first. And yet, everyone here treated Cecilia with warmth and trust.

She was a good doctor—better than most he’d seen. Maybe she a little to passionate, but her heart was in the right place.

Still, Mika sighed to himself, resting his chin against Fauna’s shoulder.

No matter how skilled or passionate Cecilia was, she would never be able to reach his level. Because his own knowledge didn’t come solely from study or talent—it was born from something deeper.

Something that started with the woman sitting on his lap right now.

Fauna, giddy as always, was smiling warmly as she encouraged the four exhausted doctors.

"Come now, don’t look so defeated." She said, patting one of them on the shoulder. "You all did wonderfully. Remember, medicine isn’t just about being fast, it’s about care. And I’m proud of you all."

Mika looked at her for a moment.

’She’s the reason, he thought. She’s the reason I ever started learning medicine at all.’

His mind drifted back to the time after the Great War.

The war had finally ended. The long, brutal conflict that tore the worlds apart was finally over.

Everyone thought the Battle Angels, those who had fought for years had returned victorious and unharmed. They were hailed as heroes, their names sung in praise.

People assumed they would now live peaceful lives, basking in the happiness they had earned.

And while that was true in part, they were alive, they were smiling—it didn’t mean they had come back whole.

Each of them had lost something in that war.

Yelena, for instance, had come back changed.

Once the embodiment of hope and compassion, she now carried a quiet disappointment toward humanity itself. She had seen too much—too much betrayal, too much selfishness.

The woman who once wanted to save everyone now only wished to protect her loved ones. She gave away her titles, detached herself from society, and spent her days in quiet solitude, seeking peace rather than purpose.

Nadia, on the other hand, had taken a different path.

She had learned from the war that she could never again trust those who ruled humanity. If peace were to survive, she believed someone strong needed to oversee it. Someone unshakable.

So she took control, rising to power until she ruled the trade between both worlds, ensuring balance and peace through sheer will.

She became a neutral pillar between realms, a guardian of order through dominance.

But Fauna...

Fauna had suffered the most.

She was never meant for war. She was a woman who loved life itself. The kind of person who would cry if a flower she nurtured wilted, who would apologize to an insect before moving it off the path so no one stepped on it.

Her heart was too kind, too soft, too full of love for everything living.

So when she was thrown into a war filled with death—where people screamed and burned, where mothers wailed over their children, where mercy was buried under hatred—something inside her broke.

She saw too many horrors. Too many lifeless eyes. Too many bodies that used to be children.

By the time the war ended, she was alive—but deeply scarred.

At first, it was just the little things any soldier might experience after surviving battle.

She couldn’t sleep through the night. She’d jolt awake from nightmares so vivid that her whole body trembled, drenched in cold sweat.

Some mornings, Mika would find her staring blankly out the window, eyes distant, her hands shaking faintly even as she smiled and told him everything was fine.

He remembered one night especially well.

He must’ve been four years old. He had gotten up for a drink of water and heard faint sobbing from one of the empty rooms.

The door was slightly ajar, and when he peeked in, he saw Fauna sitting alone on the floor, clutching her robe, whispering apologies to no one.

"I’m sorry...I couldn’t save you...I tried...I really tried..."

He hadn’t understood everything back then, but he remembered how that moment burned itself into him—how the woman who always smiled, who taught him how to laugh, could cry like that when no one was watching.

It was then he learned something no one else saw: behind Fauna’s brightness lived a quiet, unending sorrow.

But her trauma didn’t stop at sleepless nights. It bled into every corner of her life.

When she returned from war, she didn’t rest like the others. She didn’t take time to recover, to breathe, to heal.

Instead, she threw herself into medicine—desperately, obsessively, as if she were trying to repay a debt that could never be cleared. She wanted to compensate for every life she couldn’t save, every child she couldn’t reach, every dying hand that had slipped from her grasp.

Day after day, she worked without pause, crafting medicines, testing compounds, pushing her body beyond its limits.

There were times Mika remembered her collapsing in her laboratory—her assistants rushing her to the hospital, trying to hide it from him so he wouldn’t worry.

But he always found out.

Every time, she’d smile from her bed and say, "It’s nothing, sweetheart. I’m just a little tired."

And yet, he saw the truth in her trembling hands.

And it didn’t just stop there.

Her blessings, divine gifts of healing came with a cruel cost after the war.

Every time she used them, every time she poured her light into another person’s body, the pain came back.

The flashbacks. The screams. The guilt.

Her mind would fracture under the weight of it. Migraines would strike so severe that she could barely stand, her vision blurring, her breath shallow—and still she would keep healing others.

Because they needed her. Because the world refused to let her rest.

People came from every corner of the world to beg for her help. Blessed, normal soldiers, children, mothers all pleading,

"Please, Lady Fauna, save us."

She wanted to. She always did. But she couldn’t save them all even with her blessing. And each time she turned someone away, it tore her apart.

To the world, she was the saint who could heal anyone.

But to Mika, she was the golden goose being forced to lay eggs until her wings broke.

The other Battle Angels saw it too. Yelena, Nadia, and the others tried to intervene, they begged her to rest, to stop overworking herself.

But Fauna wouldn’t listen. She couldn’t. She believed if she stopped, even for a day, the guilt would swallow her whole.

She said that stopping would mean betraying those she couldn’t save. She said she had no right to rest.

And that was when Mika couldn’t take it anymore.

He’d watched her destroy herself for years, watched her bleed her soul dry for others until one day he finally decided to act.

He was still young then, barely 5, but determination burned through him like wildfire.

He threw himself into medicine, devouring every textbook, every case study, every scrap of information he could find. Day and night he studied, memorized, practiced.

He didn’t care about fame, or status, or acknowledgment—he just wanted to understand, to find a way to stop her suffering.

And in time, he did.

Within a few short years, Mika had learned enough to stand beside her, not as a child, but as her equal.

Together, they revolutionized medicine. With Mika’s relentless mind, they created cures that reshaped the world.

In just three years, ninety percent of all known diseases were eradicated.

Entire hospitals closed because there were no longer patients left to treat.

More then half of that progress, though no one knew it, had come from Mika’s hands.

And when Fauna looked at the world healed, when she saw the countless lives saved, she finally began to forgive herself. Little by little.

But Mika didn’t stop there. He knew what still haunted her—the pain of her blessing.

So he did the unthinkable. He forbade her from ever using it again.

Fauna had screamed at him for it, cried, begged to be allowed to keep healing others. But he stood firm.

He told her that her blessing was no longer needed in that form—that even if it saved one life, it destroyed her in return.

So he found another way.

He developed a device that converted Fauna’s healing essence into concentrated capsules—each one imbued with the same healing light that once flowed from her hands.

Every day, she could safely channel her power into them without harming herself.

The capsules were then distributed by a global system Mika created—a lottery of compassion, where wealth and power didn’t matter.

The capsules always found their way to the person who needed them most, whether it was a dying child in a village or an elder alone in a city hospital.

And for the first time in years, Fauna could smile without guilt.

She no longer had to bear the cries of those she couldn’t reach.

She no longer had to watch her body collapse from exhaustion.

She could finally rest and focus on what she did best: guiding others.

She became a mentor instead of a martyr. A teacher rather than a healer.

She stopped treating patients directly, choosing instead to nurture the next generation—doctors like Cecilia—giving them everything she once gave to the world.

And in doing all of that, Mika had done what no one else could.

He didn’t just heal the world. He healed her.

He brought back the light that the war had stolen from her.

And though the world saw Fauna as the saint who healed billions, no one knew about the boy by her side who was silently healing her.