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.’

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

you see anything

remember. Then,

Sunny leading me through the gates of the castle!

with so

however, he was 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 them. Was there some meaning behind

and secretly glanced at Nephis, trying to discern if she had picked up on that little

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

Then we will go

***

preparing to abandon the temporary camp. In the process, Sunny had a chance to get to know the girls a

then that he came to a sudden realization, which almost made

impression of the confident, distant girl.

interacting with her feel unnerved and rattled, often revealing more than they had been planning to. The less she talked, the

that impression turned out to

truth behind the matter had 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

how 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 she was trying to say. Often, she would forget to put correct intonations in her speech, making questions sound

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 at emoting them! As a result, her face

to talk as little as possible

general weirdness, was

she was just shy and

his might but still failed to stop himself from staring at Nephis with wide eyes. He just barely managed

That’s not in line with how a protagonist should

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

wrong. The fact that Changing Star had problems with expressing herself and lacked social skills did not mean that she was