The day after the verdict felt like a funeral.
Not for Max.
For her.
Justice had been served. The monsters locked away. The world outside had moved on - but inside her, everything was still burning.
Erica didn't speak that morning. She didn't eat. She didn't shower. She didn't move from her bed, except to curl further into herself like she was trying to vanish into her own skin.
Her mother knocked softly. "Beta... please eat something. Just a little?"
No reply.
Her father sat by the door for hours. Quiet. Powerless. The man who once fought the world for her - now sat outside a locked room, praying his daughter would speak again.
Her little brother left a chocolate bar on her bedside table. He didn't say anything. Just placed it there, like maybe that tiny act could bring back the sister who used to laugh with him under the covers at midnight.
But Erica felt nothing.
Just emptiness.
It wasn't sadness. It wasn't pain.
It was absence.
She stared at the ceiling for hours. The fan spun above her - round and round and round - like her thoughts. Meaningless. Numb.
Her body felt like lead. Heavy. Unmovable.
Her mind felt like a scream trapped in a glass box - banging, echoing, never escaping.
Even her tears had dried.
When she finally got up to go to the bathroom, she caught her reflection.
She didn't recognize herself.
Eyes hollow. Hair tangled. A stranger.
Who am I now?
The girl who fought. The girl who burned.
Was gone.
Now, she was just the girl who survived - and surviving didn't feel like a victory. It felt like a curse.
She didn't speak at dinner. Her mother made her favorite - dal chawal, soft and warm like love. Erica pushed it around her plate.
Her father reached out to touch her hand. "You're safe now," he whispered, voice trembling.
She didn't pull away.
But she didn't believe him either.
Because how do you feel safe when the war is over, but your body still hears gunshots?
That night, she lay awake.
Eyes open.
Hands clutched around the blanket.
The photo on her phone still burned into her memory. Max's face. Her face. The others. The darkness.
She had done everything right.
And she still felt dead inside.
The justice system had closed the case.
But the pain - the real pain - had only just begun.