New World with Four Husbands-Chapter 589: A daughter’s and a sister’s grief

Coco sprawled out on the guild lobby’s couch, taking up the entire backrest with her weary limbs, her head lolled against the cushions, eyes glued on a spot somewhere past the ceiling.

No one dared to ask her to move.

The others in the guild tiptoed around her— literally and figuratively, giving her space, holding their breaths if they passed too close, wary like they were trying to avoid waking a sleeping bear from its hibernation.

And Coco didn’t notice any of it, or maybe she just didn’t care.

She closed her eyes, her mind replaying the morning conversation she had with Cleora like a broken record.

"I was so shocked with the news of your passing that I got off the bus without looking."

Her mother’s voice, soft, trembling, echoed in her head. A bus. That’s all it took. One hurried moment, and she was gone.

This new world.. Lala called it the youngest dimension— a world that was created by the fairies not too long ago.

But there was a cruel truth lurking beneath:

To be brought here, like she did.. You had to die.

Coco got killed by Lala— and her mother couldn’t seem to bear it when she heard the news, collapsed into hysterics.. And when she tried to rush home from work..

One blink too late, the bus took her too fast for anyone to stop it.

Now both are here.. In this strange world of magic, mediators, nobilities, hunters, and monsters.. But only after leaving everything they love back home.

Coco swallowed hard against the knot in her throat.

She wasn’t just hunting monsters.. She was chasing relief for not saying goodbye, for leaving first, for making that woman follow death just to find peace again..

A single tear slipped sideways into her hairline, but she didn’t wipe it away.

Coco closed her eyes, a tear or two slipping free as she let her thoughts consume her.

She didn’t care if anyone in the guild saw— she was too wrapped up in memories, in thoughts, in regrets, lost in them.

For a while, it was just the soft hush of the guild’s background noise, a quiet hum of conversations and footsteps that faded into a low, almost comforting sound.

A memory flickered to life behind Coco’s closed eyes— vivid, warm, agonizing.

Corinne and Cleora walked through the front door, laughing as they juggled greasy takeout bags.

"We got everything!" Corinne announced, her voice bright, causing Carina to jump up from the table to help, already chattering about which sauce she wanted.

Coco stayed seated, grinning like an idiot as her mother leaned over to ruffle her hair on the way past to her bedroom.

"No dessert for you, young lady." Cleora teased. "Unless you eat your vegetables like a good girl."

The room had been golden with lamplight and noise— full of love so thick it might as well be touched by them.

Now.. That warmth is gone, and all that remained was silence with this unbearable weight in her chest as guilt crashed over Coco, sharp and suffocating.

She would have preferred to be the only one who died.

That thought, dark and heavy, twisted in her chest because if she had just been the only one who stayed gone, her mother wouldn’t have run into the street, wouldn’t have heard that awful news and shattered like glass.

Cleora would still be at home with Corinne and Carina, a family of three laughing around a table— not scattered across worlds by grief.

Instead, Coco is here and her mother is here.

But her sisters? They were left behind, alone, at the funeral, at the empty house, at every empty, cold holiday from then on.

And what kind of selfishness was it to wish for death just to undo it all?

Tears slipped silently down into her hair, unseen.

She wasn’t mourning only what she lost. She mourned what they all lost— because of her.

Coco’s breath came with uneven, short, shaky inhales that didn’t quite fill her lungs. The image burned behind her eyes, the dinner table once alive with laughter, clinking plates, her mother’s voice scolding Corinne for stealing food off Carina’s plate.

Now it was cold, dusting, empty chairs.

She could see it.

Corinne refusing to sit there again, storming out the room the first time she tried to set extra glasses just in case and getting reminded of the reality of what happened.

Carina crying into her pillow at night because even the sight of their mugs made her flinch.

All because two seats stayed empty.

She wished she stayed dead, yet here she was.. Breathing.. Living.. While her sisters were back home learning how to survive without pieces of themselves.

A quiet sob cracked loose from deep inside, but she swallowed the rest.

Coco quickly turned over, curling toward the back of the couch like she could hide from the world, just in time for her breath to shudder against the fabric— muffled, broken. 𝕗𝗿𝕖𝐞𝐰𝗲𝕓𝐧𝕠𝕧𝗲𝐥.𝚌𝐨𝚖

She had missed her mother every day since she died, but now... With Cleora here in this strange new world.. That grief had shifted.

It wasn’t just a loss anymore, because while her mother got pulled across by shock and sorrow..

Corinne and Carina were still back there— left behind in silence, in empty rooms, at a table no one would sit at anymore, in a house that will never feel home.

And the worst of it all, Coco didn’t even get to say how much she appreciates every second of her life with them, didn’t get to say goodbye.

She missed them so much it felt like a hole beneath her ribs— Corinne’s loud laugh, Carina’s quiet hand slipping into hers when scared.

The way the three of them used to pile onto one bed during thunderstorms.

No amount of strength here, no title as strongest hunter, and no amount of money could bring back what they lost because of her death— or undo the fact that she couldn’t reach them.