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

remember. Then, her face

leading me through the gates of the

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

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

Nephis, trying to discern if she

showing much emotion, she thought for a while,

Then we will go

***

and preparing to abandon the temporary camp. In the

was then that he came to a sudden realization, which almost made his head explode from bafflement.

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

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

that impression turned out to

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

she had no idea 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

the fact that, like many introverted people, 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

time, she simply chose to talk as little as possible or

was ultimately responsible for creating the false image of a

she was just shy and completely inept in

might but still failed to stop himself from staring at Nephis with wide eyes. He just barely managed to not let his jaw

in line with how

the center stage, there were always confident, strong people

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