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

see anything

to remember. Then, her

I saw Sunny leading me through the gates of the castle!

brilliant smile appeared on her doll-like face, beaming with so much joy that Sunny

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

Nephis, trying to discern if she had picked

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

Then we will

***

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

almost made his head explode from bafflement. That

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

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

out

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 he realized that Nephis was simply an incredibly, ridiculously… painfully awkward

use the wrong words or stumble in the middle of the sentence and fall silent.

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

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

of that added up together, then multiplied by her general weirdness, was ultimately responsible for creating the false image

just shy and completely inept

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

not in line with

event. At the center stage, there were always confident, strong people like her and Caster. People like himself and Cassie, on the other

of thought 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.