The Extra's Rise - Chapter 741

741: Peace (1) 741: Peace (1) The frame was heavier than it looked.

Aria had the level; I had the wire; the wall had opinions.

“Up a hair,” she said, biting her lower lip as the bubble drifted to the line and hesitated there like it was deciding whether to be helpful.

“No, that’s a whole eyebrow.” “Eyebrow achieved,” I said, easing the wire another fraction.

My side complained in that dull, warning way that meant I should listen as I continued to refrain from using mana.

I pretended it was the wall grumbling, not me.

The elevator chimed-polite, confident-and three breaths later, Reika stepped through the open door with punctuality so crisp it made the chime feel like a herald.

Violet hair braided, shirt sleeves rolled with geometric precision, dark trousers pressed into obedient seams.

She carried a slim black case in one hand and a paper bag in the other.

“Master,” she said, and then-because my mother was in the room and because Reika reads rooms the way other people read clocks-added, “Arthur.” A slight, contained smile.

“Permission to enforce good sense?” “Granted,” Alice said before I could.

“He’s pretending his ribs are decorative.” “I am not,” I lied, and the wall, the level, and my sister all refused to corroborate.

Reika set the case on the console table as if it had an assigned place already, put the paper bag on the counter, crossed to me without wasted steps, and stepped under the frame.

She did not look at me; she looked at the problem.

She took the level from Aria with a quick nod, pressed her thumb to the frame for the smallest adjustment, and the painting settled as if the room had been waiting for it to admit defeat.

Douglas whistled, low and impressed.

“That eye,” he said, scratching the edge of his jaw.

“Hire her, Arthur.” “I tried,” I said.

“She keeps promoting herself.” A tiny flicker at the corner of Reika’s mouth.

She slid the level back to Aria and then let her gaze skate over me once, the way a medic glances at a wound they intend to treat but will not discuss in the doorway.

“Kitchen,” she said, and made it sound like a suggestion only because my mother was listening.

“I’m fine,” I said, because habits have more stamina than people.

“Two minutes,” she said to me.

“Two minutes,” Alice echoed cheerfully, already pleased to have found an ally with badges in “practicality.” The paper bag held a soft-smelling broth that suggested ginger and patience.

The black case had compartments tuned for a small crisis: salve, stretch bands, cloth wrap, a tiny jar with a handwritten label: for stubborn pain, use sparingly.

She washed her hands without looking away from me, a small ritual of hers that felt like kindness disguised as protocol.

“Breathe in,” she said when her fingertips found the line below my ribs.

“Hold.

Breathe out.” Her voice kept time.

We did this three cycles; the ache backed down the beach the way a tide gives up sand because no one argued with it.

“How was the office?” I asked, because she’d been gone two days and the house was too quiet without the sound of her precise steps.

“Efficient,” she said, which in Reika-language meant tolerable.

“I refused three meetings that did not require you.” She poured broth into a bowl and slid it toward me.

A ceramic pitcher of water appeared at my elbow as if she had conjured it; more likely she had put it there thirty minutes ago and decided I would deserve it now.

“Warm first.

Decisions later.” Stella materialized like a spell was triggered by the word “warm.” She was nine and operated on the belief that all kitchens were stage sets for her sudden entrances.

“Reika!

Did you bring the sesame crackers?” Reika opened the bag and produced a packet with the solemnity of a diplomat presenting terms.

“You may have two,” she said.

“One if you intend to bounce.” “I’m not bouncing,” Stella promised, already bouncing.

We returned to the living room in a more sensible formation.

Aria had hung two more frames without hazard.

Douglas was pretending not to be impressed by anything and failing at it.

Alice claimed a drawer in the kitchen with the air of benevolent conquest.

Domesticity rearranged itself around Reika the way furniture shifts when someone opens a window.

We worked in trios.

Alice and Reika were a clock that had decided to show off; “Knives to the left,” my mother said, and Reika’s hand was already there.

“He likes the tea just before the boil,” Alice added, and Reika lifted the kettle at that one breath where water changes its mind.

Aria and I wrestled a coat rack whose opinions were stronger than either of ours.

“You yank, I steady,” she said, bracing her foot.

“On three.

No, on two.

Three is how furniture lies.” We set a small table under the big window.

Avalon spread itself in polite geometry outside, the afternoon light making the glass feel like a visible held breath.

Reika took the cloth from my hands and smoothed it once, removing a wrinkle I had decided to pretend didn’t exist.

“You can’t help yourself,” I told her.

“It itches,” she said without inflection.

For a beat the room was just the two of us admitting we share a sickness for straight lines and quiet competence.

Stella insisted on a photo.

“First day!” she declared, dragging a tripod from wherever she keeps items adults think we’ve hidden too well.

“Even if it’s not the first-first day.

It’s the first day that counts.” We gathered by gravity rather than arrangement.

Alice on one end, Douglas on the other, Aria behind me with a levelling hand on my shoulder.

Reika set the timer, crossed the room in eight clean steps, and took the space at my side that felt like it had been waiting for her since the penthouse was drawn on paper.

The shutter blinked three times.

Douglas made a noise like a tragic goat to produce a perfect Stella grin.

The camera clicked.

The picture caught all of us mid-laugh, which is the right kind of lie.

The little printer whirring made a sound that always feels more like magic than proper magic does.

Stella fanned the white square, then taped it under the largest frame, tongue peeking in concentration.

She wrote HOME beneath in letters careful enough to make a teacher proud.

“Crooked,” Aria noted, affectionate, adjusting her own hair in the reflection.

“Let it be crooked today,” I said, because the room had exhaled and I liked the exhale where it was.

Afternoon found its own tempo.

Reika moved through it like a metronome you didn’t know you were following.

She did not ask if I had eaten; she replaced my empty bowl with an orange sliced into fans.

When I reached for a heavy box, she nudged it closer herself and, as if to disguise the care as convenience, asked Stella about her reading list.

“Reika helped me pick,” Stella reported.

She already had the air of someone stewarding a great secret.

“We made a list.

It’s special.” “It is not secret,” Reika said.

“It is simply ours.” She said “ours” like a very good lock clicks shut.

Douglas tested the couch cushions the way he tested saddle leather, pronounced the rightmost acceptable, and fell asleep for seven minutes with a newspaper on his chest and his mouth open.

Alice and Reika organized a drawer that did not technically require organizing; Alice told a story about a jam jar that exploded during my childhood in a pitch precisely calibrated to make me glare and Stella cackle.

Aria assigned coasters to corners as if the table were a ritual circle.

When the boxes had been subdued into the status of benign landscape, I found Reika in the laundry alcove.

She’d pinned a small cork square to the wall and made a neat row of clothespins.

A little card read hand-wash in the kind of tidy, decisive script that makes people who write lists for sport feel understood.

She straightened the pins until their heads lined up like soldiers before a friendly parade.

“You don’t have to fix everything,” I said, leaning in the doorway.

“I don’t,” she agreed, eyes on the small alignment.

“Only the things I can touch.” She reached out then and touched my wrist-just a warm press, a quiet claim and check-in at once.

My pulse startled and settled under her fingers.

She held for three beats, then let go.

“You did well,” she said.

“You did enough.” “I’m learning,” I said.

“Good,” she answered, and the single word had exactly the weight of approval I wanted to earn.

Aria wandered past with a stack of folded throws and a question about where to exile a chipped mug she liked because it was chipped.

Reika decided it belonged not in exile but on my desk as the official coin-and-paperclip repository, and somehow everyone accepted that this was what the mug had been born for.

We took a break because my mother declared it, which is the only authority that competes with Reika’s in kitchens.

Tea happened in cups that warmed fingertips and encouraged conversation to sit down.

The afternoon light softened; Avalon’s glass took color like it had good reasons to be proud of itself.

“Do you ever get tired?” Aria asked Reika-curious, not challenging.

Aria’s relationship with competence is part admiration, part grief.

“Yes,” Reika said with the certainty of someone who has allowed for that contingency in the calendar.

“I plan to be tired when it is efficient.” Aria laughed, genuinely.

“I have to learn that.” “You are learning it,” Reika said.

She meant it, and Aria stood taller for half a breath.

When Stella’s energy retreated into the quiet fidget stage, Alice lured her to the kitchen with the promise of glazing carrots.

Douglas revived to challenge Aria to cards with rules he intended to “adjust,” which Reika preemptively vetoed by taking the deck, shuffling like a well-tuned pistol, and stating that in this house, we use the printed rules until Stella beats us so often we have to invent new ones.

Stella beamed.

Douglas accused us of unionization.

Evening isn’t a time so much as a permission in homes that work.

The lamps caught the frames; the photo titled HOME tilted a polite fraction further as if testing us.

No one moved to correct it.

Stella climbed onto the couch and fell asleep in that angle children invent that would send an adult to a healer.

Her book face-down on her stomach read The Moon Fox of Mount Hua, a gift from someone who writes carefully and paints in margins.

Reika took the blanket from the chair back, shook it once, and laid it over Stella with practiced precision-the kind where the weight distributes evenly and your knees feel it.

She tucked one edge beneath Stella’s bare foot.

She was not demonstrative.

She did not need to be.

I joined her by the window for the quiet kind of standing people don’t think of as an activity but that is one of the best ones.

Our reflection in the glass looked like two people who had earned the right to aim for ordinary.

“I like this place,” I said.

“It is functional,” she said.

Then, softer, “It is peaceful.” “Alice wants to teach you the stew she used to make during winter,” I said, because my mother had told me privately and because Reika should know she is included without application.

“I will learn,” she said.

“And I will make it correctly.” “Of course you will.” She considered for a heartbeat.

“If it tastes different when I make it,” she added, “we will call that acceptable variance.” I smiled.

“Acceptable variance.

Noted.” She let her shoulder rest against my arm.

It was not dramatic; it was a calibration.

The point of contact warmed through cloth and through the day’s stubborn places.

Behind us, Alice and Douglas debated the existence of a rule for throwing out a card you just picked up from the discard pile; Aria, cornered between them and the concept of fairness, giggled into her sleeve.

The kettle breathed on the stove and then seemed to change its mind about doing anything as rash as boiling.

“Tomorrow,” Reika murmured, eyes on the slightly crooked photo, “I will fix it.” “Let it be crooked tonight,” I said.

She did not argue order for the sake of order.

She nodded.

“All right.” We stood and watched the city blink.

The penthouse learned the sound a good room makes at the end of a long day: not silence, but a hush that says, You can put your shoulders down now.

Reika’s hand found the place between my ribs and my sternum, not pressing, just existing there, a small warm reason for my body to remember to move gently.

I decided, for once, not to be important.

The decision sat well.

When the lights finally went soft, the picture titled HOME was still crooked.

We let it be that way until morning on purpose.