She showed no irritation at being contradicted. Instead, she took two steps forward, directly closing the distance between them, then lifted her face, a faint white mist escaping with her breath. "How could that be? I searched thoroughly using the Second Magic and my authority. That child is Sajyo Ayaka, my younger sister, Sajyo Aika. There's no question about it."
"I see." Qianyi looked at her, his tone carrying a certain understanding. "You're the same type as Makima."
At that moment, he became certain of one thing: the girl before him had never identified people by their appearance, aura, memories, or any such traits.
What she saw was their "essence."
A person's overall makeup largely depended on things like "habits acquired later in life," "marks carved by time," and "growth bestowed by experience"—the things that formed what ordinary people called "personality."
Yet to Sajyo Aika, such things were nothing more than irrelevant dust.
What she saw was that spark at one's root—the most primordial coordinate bestowed at the moment a soul came into being.
It was something even closer to one's essence than an Origin.
And getting too close to the essence meant overlooking many things that seemed unimportant, but were in fact the most vital traits of a person.
Qianyi had thought the journey through Terra would make this girl understand ordinary humans a little better. Yet she was still not much different from before—an awful imperial princess immersed solely in her own world, treating the entire world as her private garden.
Why was it that, among the blonde human women he knew, aside from Artoria Castor and Ijichi Nijika, all the others seemed barely human at a glance?
Hatsune Misumi was like that, and Sajyo Aika was too.
Sajyo Aika accurately caught his thoughts about her and the