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.’

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

you see

frowned, trying to remember. Then, her face

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

so

when talking about

glanced at Nephis, trying to discern if

Without showing much emotion, she

we

***

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 to get to know the girls a

a sudden realization, which almost made his head

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

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

impression turned out to be

nothing to do with being cool and aloof. After talking to her a bit more and

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

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

she simply chose to talk as little as possible or not

general weirdness, was ultimately responsible for creating the false

shy and completely inept in

stop himself from staring at Nephis with wide

hell? That’s not in line

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 hand, were

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