Shadow Slave

In the ensuing silence, the smile slowly disappeared from Cassie’s face, replaced by confusion. Feeling the sudden tension, she asked:

“Uh… what’s wrong?”

Sunny sighed.

“No, nothing is wrong. It’s just that that direction is the one we wanted to avoid.”

After some thought, he added:

“That’s where I came from yesterday. There’s a lot of scavengers down there.”

The blind girl’s face fell.

“Oh.”

Nephis, who was quietly listening to them, gave him an indecipherable look and finally spoke:

“Tell us more about the castle.”

A shadow of the previous excitement returned to Cassie’s eyes. With a serious nod, she began describing her vision.

“I dreamt of a vast, ruined city built of weathered stone. It was surrounded by tall, impregnable walls. Various monsters were wandering its narrow streets. In the center of the city, the was a hill, and on that hill stood a magnificent castle.”

She smiled.

“But there were no monsters in the castle! Instead, it was full of people. I think… no, I’m sure that they were Awakened. Some were guarding the walls, some were going about their lives without a care in the world. There was food, safety, and laughter!”

‘Well, that sounds great.’

really existed, then all of their problems would be solved. Sunny

you see

trying to remember. Then, her

I saw Sunny leading me through the gates of the castle! That means we will make

beaming with so much joy

talking about reaching the castle, the blind girl only mentioned the two of them. Was there some

trying to discern if she had picked up

Star, however, was as enigmatic as ever. Without showing much emotion,

we

***

and then spent some time planning for the journey and preparing to abandon

then that he came to a sudden realization, which almost made his head explode from bafflement. That mind-blowing realization

Academy’s gates, Sunny had formed a certain impression of the confident, distant girl. Later, her behavior and

interacting with her feel unnerved and rattled, often revealing more than they had been planning to. The less she talked, the more she seemed to know. That silent, indifferent confidence was arresting, and sometimes even

that impression turned out

to do with being cool and aloof. After talking to her a bit more and observing their interactions with Cassie, Sunny almost fainted when he realized that Nephis was

time she tried to convey something, she would either use the wrong words or stumble in the middle of the sentence and fall silent. Her tone never matched what she was trying to say. Often, she would forget to

was the fact that, like many introverted people, Nephis was not in a habit of openly showing her emotions. It’s not that she didn’t have feelings:

most of the time, she simply chose to talk as little

of that added up together, then multiplied by her general weirdness, was ultimately responsible for creating the false image

was just shy

tried with all his might but still failed to stop himself from staring at Nephis

hell? That’s not in line with

be the main character of any event. At the center stage, there were always confident, strong people like her and Caster. People like himself and Cassie, on the other hand, were

lacked social skills did not mean that she was not strong. In fact, it might have meant the opposite. She still achieved everything