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

see

frowned, trying to remember. Then, her

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

doll-like face, beaming with so much joy

stuck on a certain detail of Cassie’s vision. It was that, when talking about reaching the castle, the blind girl only mentioned the two of

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

as ever. Without showing much emotion, she thought for a while,

Then we will

***

the sea was still retreating, they had their breakfast and then spent some time planning for the journey and preparing to abandon the temporary camp. In the process, Sunny had a chance

sudden realization, which almost made his head explode from bafflement. That mind-blowing realization had

when 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 than they had been planning to. The less she

impression turned out to be

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

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

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: it’s just that she was really bad

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

multiplied by her general weirdness, was ultimately responsible for

fact, she was just shy and completely inept

might but still failed to stop himself from staring at Nephis with wide eyes. He just barely managed to not

not in line with how a protagonist

the main character of any event. At the center stage, there were always confident, strong people like her and Caster. People like

social skills did not mean that she was not strong. In fact, it