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.’

of their problems would be solved. Sunny cleared

see anything

to remember. Then, her

gates

face, beaming with so much joy

vision. It was that, when talking about reaching the castle, the blind girl

Nephis, trying to discern if she had picked up on that

much emotion, she thought for a while, and then slowly

Then we will go

***

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

that he came to a sudden realization, which almost made

they first met in front of the Academy’s gates, Sunny had formed a certain impression of the confident, distant girl.

her feel unnerved and rattled, often revealing more

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 simply an incredibly, ridiculously… painfully awkward

to talk to people. Every 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

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

the time, she simply chose to talk as little as possible or not to talk

was ultimately responsible for

in fact, she was just shy and

from staring at Nephis

not in line

Nephis 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

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