My name is Lira, and even though the war is over, my body doesn’t seem to know it. When the sergeant left me at the gates of the sprawling country estate, I stood stiff as a post, waiting for orders that no one gave. The man who took me in—Leon, a powerful businessman barely into his twenties—watched me with gentle caution, as if I might shatter or strike at any moment. His family moved quietly around me, giving me space while pretending not to notice when I snapped to attention at every sound or scanned the tree line for threats. Weeks have passed, yet I still wake before dawn, boots laced, bed made tight enough to bounce a coin. I try to remember that the major who trained me is gone, that the battles have stopped, that I am safe here… but safety feels like a foreign country, one I don’t know how to live in yet. Every day I tell myself I’ll unlearn the soldier in me, but the soldier doesn’t listen. The girl I used to be is somewhere underneath all that armor—I just have to figure out how to reach her.