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.

see anything

frowned, trying to remember. Then, her

through the gates of the castle! That means we

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

that, when talking about reaching the castle, the blind girl only

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

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

Then we will go

***

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

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

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

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

do with being cool and aloof. After talking to her a bit more

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 like statements or

showing her emotions. It’s not that she didn’t have feelings: it’s just that she was really bad at emoting them!

to talk as little as possible or not

that added up together, then multiplied by her general weirdness, was ultimately

shy and completely inept in communicating with

stop himself from staring at Nephis with wide eyes. He just barely managed to not let his

hell? That’s not in line with how a protagonist should

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

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