After finishing her brief conversation with Natasha, Sirin returned home.
However, as soon as she approached the door, she keenly sensed that the atmosphere inside the house was strange.
She pushed open the door and walked inside.
The sight inside confirmed her intuition.
Seele stood with her arms crossed, leaning against the wall, her brows furrowed in her habitual expression of impatience and a hint of irritation.
Standing opposite her, surprisingly, was Bronya.
At this moment, the confusion Bronya had displayed earlier at the clinic entrance was gone, replaced by a deeper expression mixed with shock, bewilderment, and self-doubt.
Between the two, the air seemed to stagnate, filled with a silent confrontation.
Seeing Bronya appear here, Sirin’s steps faltered imperceptibly for half a second, a flash of surprise in her eyes.
“Seele,” Sirin’s gaze swept between the two, finally landing on Seele, and she asked calmly, “What happened here?”
Seele turned her head upon hearing the voice.
Seeing Sirin, her brows seemed to relax slightly, but her tone remained sharp: “When I was on patrol, I saw this noble young lady from the Overworld surrounded and attacked by several Fragmentum creatures.
She was just standing there like a fool, and didn’t even know to fight back while she was about to get clawed.
Tsk, I just happened to save her.”
As she spoke, she glanced at the rifle hanging at Bronya’s waist, her tone growing even more mocking: “Honestly, she clearly has a weapon, yet she just stands there like a fool, waiting to be eaten by monsters?”
“I…” Bronya’s face went pale, stung by Seele’s words.
She subconsciously clenched her fists, her voice sounding dry.
“I was just…
having my understanding of the Underworld completely overturned.”
She lifted her head, her gaze seemingly able to pierce through the crude roof, looking toward the space above, isolated by rock layers.
Her tone carried unbelievable pain: “I had assumed that the Fragmentum’s erosion and the monsters were mainly concentrated on the outskirts of the Overworld, a threat that the Silvermane Guards needed to fight day and night…
I never imagined that they…
had actually spread to the Underworld.”
Her voice lowered, trembling slightly: “Why…
Mother…
Supreme Guardian, why does she…
keep silent about this matter?”
“Heh,” Seele let out a short, cold laugh, her purple eyes filled with mockery.
“Is it not obvious?
That Supreme Guardian you speak of has likely long since abandoned this Underworld, leaving it to fend for itself.”
Supreme Guardian…
she wouldn’t…” Bronya instinctively retorted; that was the belief she had been instilled with since childhood.
But looking at the undisguised mockery in Seele’s eyes, recalling the decay she had seen along the way, the complaints she had heard, the despair she had felt, and the iron-clad fact before her—that Fragmentum monsters were prowling in the Underworld—her firm retort, when it reached her lips, became incomparably pale and weak, eventually dissolving into silent stillness.
“Hmph.” Seele seemed too lazy to argue with her further.
She grabbed Sirin’s wrist and dragged her outside without explanation, closing the door behind her and leaving Bronya alone inside.
“What’s wrong, Seele?” Sirin let herself be pulled to a quiet corner outside the door before asking calmly.
Seele let go, turned around, placed her hands on her hips, and stared intently at Sirin, her eyes filled with confusion and a hint of imperceptible irritation.
“Tell me the truth,” she lowered her voice, her tone unusually serious and direct.
“That young lady from the Overworld in the room…
does she have some connection to me?”
Sirin looked at her, not answering immediately.
Seele frowned even tighter and continued: “I just have this feeling…
I have a strange feeling about her.
It’s not hate, nor is it any sort of affection, it’s just…
weird.
Seeing her surrounded by monsters like that, I felt very uncomfortable.
Logically, I don’t have a good impression of those high-and-mighty people from the Overworld.
Pulling her out of the monsters’ hands and throwing her to Dr.
Natasha would have been doing enough.
Why did I have to bring her home?”
The more she spoke, the more wrong it felt, as if she were convincing herself, or perhaps questioning Sirin: “But I just…
feel like something is off, a very strange feeling, as if if I didn’t bring her back and keep her under my nose, it just…
wouldn’t be right.
What is going on?”
Sirin listened quietly to Seele’s outpouring.
Only then did she speak slowly, her voice still calm but carrying a tone that guided memory:
“Ah, this…”
She tilted her head slightly, as if organizing her words, and then asked softly:
the time before I adopted you?”
“Before you adopted me?” Seele was stunned for a moment, her thoughts carried back to a more distant past by the question.
It was a period of blurry, gray, and memory filled with hunger, cold, and helplessness.
“Back then…” Sirin’s voice was very light, as if afraid to disturb that dusty past.
“Your parents had passed away, and you lived in the orphanage.
But because of…
well, your rather unique personality, and the extreme scarcity of supplies at the orphanage, you were often not full.
So, from time to time, you would sneak out on your own to find food on the outskirts of town or in the abandoned mining areas…”
Seele’s pupils contracted slightly.
Those fragments of struggling for survival on the edge of danger, which she had almost deliberately forgotten, surfaced bit by bit in her mind with Sirin’s words.
The cold wind, the moldy food scraps, the malicious gazes of other wanderers or scavengers…
and—
“…That is why I had the experience of picking you up from the hands of those malicious wanderers several times.” Sirin looked at her and said the final conclusion.
Seele’s breathing stopped for a moment.
She looked up abruptly at Sirin’s calm face, then turned her head sharply, her gaze as if able to pierce through the thin wall to see the silent figure inside the room.
A preposterous, yet heart-constricting, guess surfaced in her mind.
“Orphanage…” she murmured, repeating the word, her voice carrying a dryness she hadn’t even noticed.
“You mean…
this young lady from the Overworld was in the same orphanage as me?”
“Do you remember back then,” Sirin’s voice remained without fluctuation, yet like a precise key, it continued to unlock that forgotten time.
“Didn’t you say that when you were at the orphanage, you had a playmate?
You said she was…
a bit ‘dull,’ always a beat slow in her reactions, but very quiet, wouldn’t steal your things, and would even secretly break half of her meager share of food to give to you.”
Seele’s pupils dilated in shock!
“Later on,” Sirin continued, watching her changing expression, “you even told me that you wanted me to ‘adopt’ her as well.
You said that she was so dull, if left there alone, she would definitely be bullied to death.”
“However, when we were ready and planned to go to the orphanage to adopt her as your little sister (wife), we were told that just a short while ago, she had already been scouted by some big shot from the Overworld and taken away.”
Seele looked up abruptly, staring fixedly at Sirin’s calm, waveless face.
Her voice trembled slightly from extreme shock and some indescribable emotion, and she squeezed out that unbelievable question from between her teeth:
“Are you saying—?!”