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.’

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

see

to remember. Then, her

gates of the castle! That

smile appeared on her doll-like face, beaming with so much joy that Sunny couldn’t help but

when talking about reaching the castle, the blind girl only mentioned the two

his head a little and secretly glanced at Nephis, trying to discern if

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

Then we

***

breakfast and then spent some time planning for the journey and preparing to abandon the temporary camp. In the process, Sunny had a chance to get to know the girls a little

to a sudden realization, which almost made his head explode from bafflement.

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

world. She was mysterious, aloof and rather cool. Her taciturn character and strange speech patterns made people interacting with her feel unnerved and

out

talking to her a bit more and observing their interactions with Cassie, Sunny almost fainted when he realized that

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 put correct intonations in her speech, making questions sound like statements or vice

that she didn’t have feelings: it’s just that she was really

simply chose to talk as little as

was ultimately responsible for

was just shy and completely inept in communicating

stop himself from staring at Nephis with wide eyes. He just barely managed to not let his

That’s not in line with how a protagonist

had definitely been the type of person to 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 relegated to exist far

was also wrong. The fact that Changing Star had problems with expressing herself and lacked social skills did not mean that she was not strong. In fact, it might have meant the opposite. She still achieved everything that she