Kairo was an awkward guy, but he genuinely wanted to help, so he held out the bag of cotton candy.
She stared at the treat for several seconds, as if pondering if it was safe to inhale. Though eventually, very, very slowly, she accepted his gift.
"Thank you," she said softly.
{System detected thankfulness.}
Okay, she liked her little gift. That was good to know. And yes, Kairo absolutely had his system on, scanning her body for details. He might look innocent, but he wasn't an idiot; he was still a ninja, and he was actively trying to make sure she wasn't a hidden spy or something.
{Host: Her heartbeat is elevated, and her pupils are dilated.}
She was scared, which was completely expected given the circumstances. Though he noticed her voice was incredibly soft, almost like she was terrified of losing it entirely.
"No problem!" Kairo replied with a beaming smile, trying his best to keep the mood up. But within two seconds, the room went right back to being quiet as a motherfucker.
The girl carefully ate her cotton candy while Kairo sat cross-legged on the floor, wondering what the hell to ask her. He needed to figure out exactly what her story was, but he wouldn't get any answers without asking questions.
"What is your name?" he asked, wanting more info to guess what her deal was.
The girl paused her eating for a second, looking up at him. "My name is Shuri," she said.
{Searching database for 'Shuri'...} {Multiple results found.}
Kairo decided to throw in some search parameters. 'Eliminate any results outside the age range of 14 to 20.' That seemed to be about how old she looked.
Though, his brow furrowed as he looked over the incoming data. Her Haki pool was quite large for someone so small. She seemed pretty damn strong. He frowned a bit, but before he could process that thought any further, she spoke again.
"Princess Shuri," she added.
Kairo nodded. "Princess?"
What the hell was a princess doing in a slave jail? He had no clue. Maybe her family failed to pay the Heavenly Tribute to the World Nobles.
The girl looked a bit confused. The boy didn't seem surprised at all that a literal princess was locked up in here. "So you're not going to ask what kingdom?"
"Sure. What kingdom?"
"Esperia."
{Looking up info...} {Analyzing data...} {Kingdom of Esperia fell 60 years ago.} {Ding: Match found.} {Subject: Princess Shuri of the Esperia Kingdom.}
Kairo paused. That collapse happened a long-ass time ago, yet she looked incredibly young.
"You mean the music kingdom?" he asked, just to be absolutely certain. While the system had successfully dug through the Lunarian database available to him to find the details, shit happened sixty-odd years ago. Excuse him if he was a bit shocked.
Shuri nodded. "The land of music and instrument craftsmanship."
Yet, the girl sitting right in front of him looked barely nineteen. Maybe twenty. Definitely not eighty.
"You don't believe me." She could see the skepticism in his eyes. It was very hard to believe she was close to eighty years old. Her voice sounded bitter and tired, like she'd had this exact same conversation before.
"Not that. Just... something is off," Kairo muttered. He was running multiple deep scans on her to make sure she was fine, checking her power levels for anything abnormal.
{Host: System located a 'Mark of the Abyss'.}
He frowned. Something definitely wasn't right. The mark was there, but it looked slightly broken, as if something had shattered it from the inside out.
Before he could think about it any further, a weak, hollow laugh escaped her lips. "I wouldn't believe me either." She looked down at the floor, staring at the heavy collar around her neck and her shaking hands. "...But it's true."
Kairo leaned back, getting comfortable. "I'm all ears," he said, genuinely wanting to know this girl's backstory.
She said nothing at first. Then, the words started coming out slowly, like a dam finally breaking.
"There was a monster."
Kairo's expression remained perfectly neutral.
"I remember my father," her voice trembled. "I remember my kingdom. I remember music. I remember being happy." Then, her demeanor completely shifted. "Then I remember him."
The temperature in the holding cell suddenly felt freezing cold.
"He appeared." The princess hugged herself tightly.
{Heart rate is increasing, pupils dilating. Subject is experiencing extreme grief and fear.}
Kairo could see it clearly in her eyes. It wasn't the fear of slavery, death, or physical pain. This was something much deeper, something primal.
"He took my body," she whispered, and Kairo's eyes narrowed. "He took my life. For sixty years... I watched. I watched everything. I could see, I could hear, but I couldn't move. I couldn't speak. I couldn't stop anything."
The tears finally started falling freely.
"I was trapped. A prisoner inside my own body." Kairo slowly sat up, listening with absolute focus now. "All I could do was worship him," the girl laughed, a completely broken sound. "He made me worship him. He made me love him. He made me obey."
Then, she whispered the final name.
"Nerona Imu."
Kairo's brow darkened instantly. He knew that name. That was the name of the fucking snake, the bastard. And probably the biggest cuck in human history, in Kairo's personal opinion. But he kept listening.
"My name stopped being Shuri," her voice shook. "He gave me another one." A heavy pause hung in the air. "Saint Manmayer Garling."
Kairo froze. The name sounded familiar. Very familiar. Wasn't that the name of one of the people involved in the God Valley incident? He was almost positive he had seen a name like that in the historical files.
A holographic notification snapped into his vision.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ {Alert} {Analyzing Statement} {Truth Verification In Progress...} ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ {Lie Detection Result: Negative} {Detected Falsehoods: 0} ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ {Additional Scan Initiated} {Scanning Soul Structure...} {Scanning Spiritual Signature...} {Scanning Foreign Influence...} ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ {Warning} {Foreign Energy Detected} ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ {Classification: Abyssal Energy} {Origin: Unknown} {Contamination Level: Low} {Energy Signature: Consistent with Possession Event} ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ {Conclusion: Subject Statement Highly Credible} ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Wait. A broken seal.
'She was a former Holy Knight?' Kairo thought, completely baffled. What the fuck was one of them doing all the way down here? Unlike his future self, he wasn't completely trigger-happy yet, so he was perfectly willing to give her the benefit of the doubt.
"I only regained control recently," she said, clenching her fists. "I don't know why, and I don't know how. But I could finally move. I could finally run." Her shoulders shook violently. "So I ran."
Kairo listened quietly, letting her speak.
"I just wanted to go home," her voice cracked again. "An empty wish... there isn't a home anymore."
That sentence seemed to hurt her more than anything else she had confessed so far.
"Then five monsters chased me."
Kairo immediately perked up, paying full attention. Monsters. Not Marines, not Cipher Pol agents—monsters.
"The Elders," her eyes trembled with terror. "They transformed. I don't know what they actually were, but they weren't human. They said I had to be erased... because I saw Mu."
Shuri buried her face back into her knees, her voice muffling. "I ran. I kept running until I couldn't anymore." She laughed weakly, completely exhausted. "Then these slave traders found me. They brought me to the auction house above us... and now I'm here."
A/N....No comment