As her face distorts in despair, I can see a huge flash of fear go through her eyes. She shouts through the connection.

“N-no. I-I thought I could trust you!?”

Her voice resounds through the connection. Before she can draw any further conclusions, I stop her and attempt to explain what I meant.

“Uh… that’s not what I meant. By relationship, I meant how we would be portrayed as brother and sister.”

She speaks almost rapid fire, her words piling on top of one of another. Her finger continuously points defiantly in demanding answers from me.

“I-I can’t believe you. W-w-why would you say that in such a vague way?

You know, she is right on that. I really need to stop being so vague in my responses and questions. But this is still a pretty exaggerated reaction to this.

… Does she have a trauma?

One of her fingers is still pointing straight at me, while the other grips the side of the carriage tighter and tighter.

“M-maybe I was right the first time. I shouldn't be just trusting you. Wanna know. I wanna know what you did in that alleyway. When that girl disappeared, why did you look like you changed into someone else?!”

While being accused like this really pierces my heart and makes me want to correct the understanding, this really reminds me that she's still just a frightened kid. Still growing and figuring out how to handle situations.

Despite the flash of maturity I've been seeing while we were in public, it looks like that she's still ultimately a child.

I’ve noticed something in a lot of kids from this world. The circumstances that they live in force them to be exposed to things they really shouldn’t be, at their age. Causing them to be more mature than they would otherwise. However, I think this must be one situation where the stress of a situation brought her actual maturity level to light.

Not only that, but there might be some underlying issues here that are coming to the surface.

… I’m noticing a pattern in this world with these things.

Her face seems to distort even further, and she adds onto her previous words.

“Also, why is your aura telling me you’re viewing me as a kid. And family at that? Didn’t you just meet me? Who does that?! That’s just ww-weird and scary, that you’re actually considering us family.”

Ouch, that one actually would hurt a bit. I better stop her since she seems to be getting all the wrong ideas. Not only that, but this is taking quite a bit of the time on that treasure away. Time that we’ll likely need to use productively.

“Hey hey hey. I'll answer each question, but you have to trust that I actually am on your side. That I don't want to see you get taken advantage of by people like that young master.”

For some reasons she suddenly falls silent. Biting her lip.

She doesn’t say anything else, just waiting on me to speak. In the short time that I started speaking, she seemed to already get ahold of her emotions.

Letting me talk.

It makes me curious what she sees from her ability, as I try to explain things to her…

This control over her emotions is both a blessing and a curse.

That’s definitely not normal for a 12 year old.

Nonetheless, I’ll use the opportunity in front of me.

I try to speak softly, but firmly. Showing respect, but also making my stance clear.

“Now, a person of your age should be viewed as a kid, like it normally is here. However, the age that you're still considered a child goes much farther in age from where I’m from. All the way to 18. For some, 16 is that age… though, I personally disagree with that.

“So, to me you aren’t on the ‘cusp’ of adulthood. You’re a child. One that’s just starting life. It's the only way I can and want to view you.

“Not only that, but if I’m being honest with myself, you remind me of one of my cousins back home. Which might be why I subconsciously view you as family.”

She really does remind me of her.

My cousin Jessie was so smart… but fell on the wrong path pretty early in her life. It’s not until I got older that I realized what I could have done to help her. What clues there were that something was really wrong in her life. And ultimately, what the people around her should have done to save her when she was being hurt.

… it’s easy to forget. My world was shit in many ways too.

At my words, silence falls between us.

Only the rumble of the carriage, the soft chirping of insects outside fill that space. She seems to use the moment to recollect herself, to calm down a bit.

Based on what I know of her, that I learned through the scan, she and other members of the family have gone through consistent and regular training in controlling their emotions, and presenting a pleasant face for the family.

It’s not only her though, but many people in these worlds, whether formally trained or trained from the brutality of the streets. The better you can handle a situation, the more likely clear you are to survive or profit from it. It’s drilled into people at an early age.

After she finally seems to have gotten control of herself, I decide to answer her questions. At least, some of them.

“As you have correctly guessed, I am the person who originally went into the alleyway with that woman. There was an assassination attempt, so I had to change my identity, in order to come back out safely. I’m not sure what would happen, if I would have come back out as my normal self after that. Once we reach the sect and I properly become part of it, I’ll go back to my original identity. With that said, do you have any other questions?”

Her eyes widen and then squint in confusion. However, she seems to hold her tongue from here, realizing she said too much earlier.

She shakes her head as an answer.

“OK, then let’s talk about how we want to discuss our family relationship with others. I’m pretty sure that’s going to be a really flimsy excuse if we don’t come up with a back story on this…”

She softly speaks back up and returns with a pretty good suggestion.

“Y-you appear to be a foreigner, so let’s just say that when you entered the country, I had saved you from making a major mistake in front of a powerful person. Basically, saving your life. You decided to become my big brother at that point, though had to take care of other things and leave me for a period… Is that okay?”

“Hmm. That’s pretty good, actually. I think we can work with that. Let’s always keep it vague until we work out the details on it.”

Her eyes shine the slightest bit, but then looks down quickly. She raises another suggestion before I can figure out why.

“We could always just say you meant something else, if that’s inconvenient for you. When you said brother and sister.”

I shake my head quickly, not accepting that suggestion.

“No, I want to make sure that the thing that almost happened doesn’t happen again. This is the best way to do that. At this point, at least.”

With this complete, the conversation turns a little more casual. The fact that she’s truly just a kid comes out more and more. Both in how she speaks, and thinks normally.

We fill each other in on different aspects of our lives, to hash out the story more, but the principal theme that seems to come from her words is a longing to be free of the situation. That she wishes her family didn’t have to go through this. That she didn’t have to do this.

Even more so, how horrible people’s gazes on her is, which had started around a year or two back.

I considered telling her what all that meant and what people were looking for when they were looking at her that way, but it appears she knew more than enough about the reasoning.

She’s not naïve. In fact, she knows a too much about it for her age. In both an unfortunate and fortunate sense, she understands the true connotations of such things.

She’s already had some situations from existing business deals with her family’s group. Things that caused her to not trust people. Things that happened to her.

That’s what started having her sent away to this sect. She doesn’t tell me about it, but I know through the scan.

We are getting close to understanding each other.

Just a bit more, and we should be all set.

I hope.