: Should I use present or past tense when the narrator talks about an universal/most-often-true statement? Eri raised her eyes to the screen again. What a terrible thing it must be for

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Present tense in some different formatting (I like italics) if those are Eri's thoughts presented as interior dialogue. Past tense if that's her thought in narration.
As presented above, you have her thoughts in interior dialogue, so I'd italicize them and leave them in present tense.
For comparison:

Eri raised her eyes to the screen again. What a terrible thing it must be for an earthquake to hit right on one's birthday. She wondered how often that happened. Maybe earthquakes were completely indifferent to what was important to people. People, special days. Perhaps to them, people were no more than little ants scurrying around on the surface.
Eri raised her eyes to the screen again. What a terrible thing it must be for an earthquake to hit right on your birthday. She wondered how often that happened. Maybe earthquakes are completely indifferent to what's important to us. People, special days. Perhaps to them, we're no more than little ants scurrying around on the surface.

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