"So whether you like it or not, I'll stay with you as you get better, little by little. Just think of it as me being overbearing!"
"Whether you want to accept it or not, I'm getting involved, and that's final!"
Lynn's rude, brazen words came straight from his heart.
Silver Fantasy stared at him.
There was stubbornness in her eyes, a hint of redness, a trace of anger, but she kept holding it back, refusing to show her emotional side.
And Lynn met her gaze seriously, without retreating or looking away.
"What gives you the right?"
She asked.
Lynn said solemnly, "Because of what you told me back then. You said to me, 'From now on, we're family.'"
"Now I'm here to keep that promise."
A breeze swept across the deck.
It stirred up wisps of dust.
A flicker of turmoil passed through her reddened eyes.
At that moment.
She finally seemed unable to hold it in any longer.
She crouched down, wrapped her arms tightly around her knees, and buried her face hard against them. Her silver hair fell forward, and at that moment, she could no longer suppress the intense ache in her heart.
"Ugh..."
She began to cry.
Her sobs sounded like an eruption of something suppressed for countless years.
Stifled, like the mournful cries of a small animal.
Aboard the silent Giant Ship, everyone watched this Mechanical Girl.
A mechanical girl, a soul bound within steel, a soul that had endured countless years of suffering, finally shed her hard exterior completely before others for the first time.
Even as she cried, she stubbornly tried to suppress it, but at last, she could no longer hold it back.
No one spoke. No one laughed at her.
Because everyone knew.
To survive in such a cruel world, you