The summer wind swirled between the city's buildings. Beneath a clear, open sky that seemed both high and distant, Amber leaned against the outer edge of the Clock Tower and watched the visitor from the deep sea beside her with curious eyes. "I heard you aren't natives of this world—what did the mages call it again... 'Outsiders'? Your entire race consists of Outsiders?"
"This is no secret. At least, we sirens have never concealed it. We frankly tell every race or civilization we deal with, but civilizations on land are short-lived, and they always find it difficult to preserve matters from ages long past. Besides, we only deal with land civilizations in extremely rare eras, so scholars on land always find us overly mysterious, even somewhat dangerous."
Tir spoke unhurriedly, the tip of her tail unconsciously tracing circles in the air, looking relaxed and at ease.
"We truly are not natives of this planet, but we have been here for many, many years... To put it bluntly, we 'outsiders' have lived on this planet longer than most of the so-called 'natives' on land. But that means nothing to us sirens.
"We came from somewhere very, very far away. In fact, even we do not know exactly how far our homeland is from here—we fell into this world aboard a crashed spaceship in ancient times, and too many strange, bizarre phenomena occurred during that disastrous voyage. Some scholars who survived from that era still live among us, yet even they have not uncovered the source of those phenomena, nor can they determine where our homeland lies.
"Is this... getting a little too far removed for you?"
Tir suddenly stopped and glanced at Amber, seeming a little embarrassed.
"To be honest, it's pretty hard to follow... but not completely incomprehensible," Amber said,