Griseo's Sulk

Griseo drawing, or rather, she was simply looking at a painting she had finished without making any movement.

Blanca entered Griseo's studio, placed the pastries on the table beside her, and looked at her daughter Gretchen staring intently at the completed painting, feeling a bit of a headache. Griseo was now 8 years old and almost 9, and her artistic the Present had already shown itself at a very young age. From an adult's perspective, Blanca thought Griseo's paintings were far beyond what a child of her age could produce.

The Present, besides going to school, Griseo spends her free time drawing. She used to visit Maple, but ever since Maple brought Astaroth back and adopted her as her sister, the time they spend together has decreased significantly. Blanca also has a feeling that Griseo herself is in a contradictory state of wanting to visit Maple but not wanting to visit her.

As for Feng, he is indeed good at taking care of children, but given his pitiful emotional intelligence—he still can't sort out his own emotional relationships with those around the Present —don't expect him to see anything.

Griseo's grades at school are pretty good, but this girl... even when she was closest to Maple, she rarely said a word. Her interactions with other children at school... gave the impression that they were from completely different dimensions.

Normal communication is fine, but when it comes to whether or not someone has friends, the situation becomes complicated.

Griseo wasn't keen on making friends. Compared to the liveliness of other children her age, Jane was an oddity. It was as if she could communicate with anyone, but she wouldn't actively try to communicate with anyone, and she didn't care whether anyone talked to her or not.

This gave Blanca and Hen a real headache. Sometimes they wondered if Feng had led Griseo astray. After all, Feng didn't like to interact with others within the Fire Moth either. But in terms of friends, Feng did have quite a few. When he was with Kevin and the others, Feng would be very talkative. Hen had even witnessed Feng making sarcastic remarks about Kevin once. He just didn't like to interact with people he wasn't familiar with.

Not to mention that whenever Griseo spends time with Maple, either Kevin will kiss her, or Elysia and Lilith will kiss her.

Then there's Mobius. Mobius disdains communicating with others, and most people don't dare to communicate with Mobius. However, whenever Griseo is in Mobius's laboratory, Mobius is careful about his attitude.

This led Blanca and Hen to suspect that Griseo might have early symptoms of autism. However, Griseo did not exhibit the most significant communication disorder characteristic of autism. Griseo's thinking and language abilities remained normal throughout, although she was not particularly enthusiastic about socializing.

It's not impossible for a child to like quiet, but the problem is that Griseo is a little too quiet...

Hen felt that Griseo needed to make friends, at least friends of similar age or not too far apart in age, but Griseo's the Present situation was that she had almost no friends of similar age around her.

I don't know if Lilith's Sister Gianna counts... Gianna gets along well with everyone, just like her sister. She met Griseo through Maple's matchmaking.

As for Sakura's younger sister Rin, Griseo and she do have a good relationship, but...

Any parent would worry that their child won't make friends or will have too few friends, right?

At least Rin and Gianna are pretty reliable, right...? The Present wants to go see Maple to see if he can get Astaroth and Griseo to be friends. Parents know Griseo's mentality. Isn't it just that the friendly older brother next door that she likes to get along with was taken away by another younger sister who fell from the sky, and then she got upset?

To be honest, Blanca found it strange that Maple seemed to care too much about Astaroth, as if he had known Astaroth for a long time. Astaroth's experiences before joining the Fire Moth were indeed heartbreaking, but there were other children with similar experiences. Maple's attitude towards those children was similar to his attitude towards the other children. At that time, the children Maple cared about were basically only Rin, Gianna, and Griseo, and among them Griseo was the one he spent the most time with.

And Astaroth...

Let alone putting yourself in Griseo's shoes, even from an adult's perspective, Blanca felt that Astaroth might have cast some strange spell on Maple, a junior who was extremely hypocritical in some ways. What's even stranger is that Elysia, Kevin, and even Mobius seemed to think there was nothing wrong with it.

Blanca still remembers holding Griseo's hand and talking to Mobius about Astaroth. She jokingly said that Maple really cared too much about Astaroth, while Mobius casually replied that he treated Astaroth like a younger sister.

I have no idea why Maple treats Astaroth as her younger sister.

Blanca even did some secret investigation herself afterward, and could only conclude that it was almost impossible for Astaroth and Maple to have any interaction before. The only explanation... could be that Maple just happened to fall for her?

Banishing those random thoughts from her mind, Blanca sighed softly and turned her gaze to the unfinished painting. In the painting, Griseo had only drawn the outline of dawn on the edge, leaving a large blank space in the middle, and in the corner, shadows seemed to be spreading, and in the shadows, there seemed to be a foot that looked like a knight's armor, appearing and disappearing. No matter how many times Blanca looked at it, she felt that there was something strange about the painting.

Is it a knight carrying the dawn into the darkness? But Griseo doesn't seem to have intended to depict it that way.

This painting was started by Griseo a year ago. She would always paint some and then stop painting as if she had lost inspiration, and then start painting other paintings.

However, Griseo quite a few strange pictures before, but this one took so long that it made Blanca more satisfied. Like last year, after Griseo, she painted a picture of herself and Ugar flying in the sky together. After seeing it, Blanca's expression was incredibly complicated, because Griseo's painting of Ugar was almost as if she had been in close contact with Ugar, and some details were handled very vividly.

Could it be that on Griseo Day, when Kaede took her out to play, she ran into Ugar?

How could that be? Ugar is under the constant surveillance of the Fire Moth 24/7, and it basically roams freely between the Earth and the Moon orbits. How could it possibly come into contact with Griseo?

Therefore, in the end, the only conclusion that could be drawn was that Griseo remembered the footage of Ugar dismantling the lunar base and then putting it back together.

He probably really didn't realize that Griseo's painting was actually real, and that there was another painting in Ugar's possession as well.

As for Griseo, she was actually thinking about some issues that she hadn't really considered before.

After all... she was a repeat student, going back to school and dealing with schools she would never cross paths with again. In addition, she had spent too much time with Zhu Yufeng, and through the influence of his daily behavior, and since she wasn't the type to actively interact with people... she indirectly felt that apart from Ling and Gianna, she didn't have any close friends.

Because I will never see them again.

After being forced to undergo Fusion Warrior surgery to save her life during the Ninth Herrscher incident, Griseo almost never interacted with outsiders due to the special nature of her abilities. Those former students and even her family left no impression on her.

In terms of mental age, Griseo was almost 13 years old after the Finality battle, and nearly five years have passed since the Present.

However, his physical age is indeed 8 years old.

Although others have noticed this, and thus guide Griseo to do things that aren't too childish, perhaps in their eyes, Griseo has always been that little child.

Griseo's feelings were indeed very conflicted. She had already looked into the concept of "death" and knew where Zhu Yufeng had gone at that time, as well as the problems her parents would have to face soon.

They said that Sister Disaster became Heroes, and then she left. They said that Father and Mother became Heroes, and then they left too. Brother Yu Feng said that Sister Astaroth became Heroes, and then she left too. In the end, people said that he became Heroes and went to the place where everyone else was.

The masked brother said he was dead, that he had left everyone behind and died alone.

Previously, Kosma always seemed hesitant and indecisive, and Griseo had long understood that Kosma was afraid that Disaster would leave again. But this time, Kosma did indeed rescue Disaster together with Brother Yu Feng.

Therefore, Griseo is not confused about the future because she believes that her Brother Yu Feng can do it. This is because Brother Yu Feng once promised her the same thing. In the special space isolated from the Honkai Energy on Ugar's back, she asked Brother Yu Feng if her parents would leave again this time. Brother Yu Feng told her very firmly that he would definitely not let it happen.

"Brother Yu Feng, will you still leave?"

Only when faced with this question did she remain silent.

Only at that moment could she sense the hesitation and helplessness emanating from her Brother Yu Feng. He could confidently believe that he could save his parents, but he couldn't be confident that he could save himself.

The time called the Finality will eventually come. Although she did not participate in the Finality battle, she clearly felt all the despair before and after that battle.

Looking at her unfinished painting, she felt lost, unsure how to continue. She had painted this painting once before, and it was the only one she had painted that she clearly disliked and didn't want to give to the person who painted it.

Besides that, another big problem that has been bothering her lately comes from Astaroth.

Yes, she was indeed jealous of her sister Astaroth.

She had known this day would come for a long time, because she knew very well what Sister Astaroth meant to Brother Yu Feng, and she also knew that Brother Yu Feng truly cared about Sister Astaroth. She must have been prepared for this day to come long ago. All her concern before this was based on the premise that Sister Astaroth had not yet become Fire Moth.

After all... before, Brother Yu Feng's heart was more inclined towards Astaroth...

It's just that it's back to the previous state...

But she didn't like it.

Even though she herself felt that this room should belong to her sister Astaroth, and even though she didn't dislike Astaroth —Astaroth who had been her best friend before, with whom she would draw and read books together...

But...

She just... didn't want to give up Brother Yu Feng.

Even back in the last time, I was the one who first met Brother Yu Feng...

She still remembers her birthday last year. Her Brother Yu Feng came to pick her up early and said he would take her out to play before her parents prepared for her birthday party that night. On the way, he mysteriously told her that he was going to take her to a mysterious place.

And so, she saw Ugar.

Brother Yu Feng went to great lengths, with Sister Mostima and Sister Vill-V preparing for a long time. I heard that many other people were also helping, all to cover up Ugar's appearance this time.

All of this was to fulfill her wish to play games with Ugar.

After that, some time passed, Sister Astaroth got the Fire Moth, Brother Yu Feng spent more time on Sister Astaroth, buying her clothes and all sorts of storybooks, as if he wanted to give her everything she wanted.

Griseo saw everything very clearly. She knew very well that this was how Brother Yu Feng and Sister Astaroth got along. It had been like this since the last time. Sister Astaroth was locked in the Deepest Place and not allowed to go out, but whenever she wanted, Brother Yu Feng would find a way to take her out.

She also knew that this had little to do with how Brother Yu Feng handled the relationship between her and him. Even if Sister Astaroth went to the Fire Moth, Brother Yu Feng would still take her out to play on weekends if she wanted, as long as Sister Astaroth would always be there.

In fact, Lilith and Elysia had both reminded Zhu Yufeng of this point, and Zhu Yufeng did not show favoritism. At most, he felt that he Astaroth little because he had brought her to school too late. However, when it came to the two children, he would fulfill all their wishes. There was no case where Griseo and Astaroth both wanted the same doll, but there was only one doll, so he gave the doll to Astaroth. In such a situation, he would immediately confiscate the doll, then go to Rovoc to make two copies to ensure that they were identical before giving them to the two children.

He would confiscate the doll himself, at least he felt that this way no one would be wronged.

That time... was actually Griseo trying to throw a little tantrum. The only one who initially took a liking to that doll was Astaroth, and Griseo was just testing Zhu Yufeng's attitude.

Therefore, when Griseo finally received the doll, her feelings were quite complicated.

So Griseo then reduced the time she spent visiting Zhu Yufeng on weekends. She felt that Astaroth and Zhu Yufeng should have more time to spend together, since this was Astaroth's place. In fact, she hadn't figured out how to face Astaroth, just like Elysia hadn't figured out how to face Lilith.

On the one hand, she was hoping that Zhu Yufeng would take the initiative to take her out to play. As a result, after Zhu Yufeng asked a few times and was told that he didn't want to go out to play (because he still hadn't figured out how to get along with Astaroth)... he really didn't ask again.

So they've been arguing ever since.

"Do you need to rest for a bit, Griseo?" Blanca asked.

Griseo nodded gently. Even though her younger sister Elysia had gone to meet Lilith face to face, she couldn't continue like this forever. After all... no matter how much they argued, this was something she would eventually have to face.