Parting

"Belle, don't worry. I mean you no harm," Griseo said softly.

"I know." Belle nodded.

If Griseo had been plotting something, she would have acted sometime in the past two years, not lived with them like family.

Besides, Belle and Wise both knew something else.

Their teacher, Carole, had always been researching something. Belle and her brother were most likely the results of her research.

Even Mayor Meflor knew that the siblings had undergone implant surgery. After the HDD system upgrade, both of them had even begun showing signs that a power was awakening within them.

That was why the mayor planned to send them to Weifei Land as special envoys, where they would study under a Taoist priest named Yixuan and learn to control that power.

It was probably connected to that research aboard Helios.

Authority, Phaethon, the sun... Memories of the past came rushing back.

Belle fell silent.

Griseo's meaning was clear, too: it wasn't that she couldn't take back the power now. It was that if she did, Belle and her brother would die.

Because Griseo truly saw them as family, she was searching for another way...

"Ah! My head's going to explode!"

Belle clutched her head with both hands, trying to stop herself from thinking any further. She took a deep breath and changed the subject.

"Griseo, are you really not coming to Weifei Land with us?"

The arrangement with Yixuan included only Belle and her brother, not Griseo.

"Belle, I have other things to do. I'll go to Weifei Land a little later than you."

Griseo hopped down from the tall chair, carefully put away the paintbrush in her hand, then looked up at Belle with quiet purple eyes.

"Belle, though some things have never been said aloud, I think you know: my journey will