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

see anything

remember. Then,

the gates of the castle! That means

her doll-like face, beaming with so much joy that

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

glanced at Nephis, trying to discern if she had

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

Then we will

***

the journey and preparing to abandon the temporary camp. In the process, Sunny had a chance to get

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

met in front of the Academy’s gates, Sunny had formed a certain impression of the confident, distant girl. Later, her behavior and the different revelations about Changing Star’s past only served to

and strange speech patterns made people 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

that impression turned out to be completely

nothing 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 convey something, she would either use the wrong words or stumble in the middle of the sentence

a habit of openly showing her emotions. It’s not that she didn’t have feelings: it’s just that she was really bad at emoting them! As a result,

to talk as little as

weirdness, was ultimately responsible for

in fact, she was just shy and completely inept in communicating with

but still failed to stop himself from staring at Nephis with wide eyes. He

in line with how a protagonist should

main character of any event. At the center stage, there were always confident, strong people

had problems with expressing herself and lacked social skills did not mean that she was not strong. In fact, it might have meant