"O-old wit..."
The moment Hook pushed the door open, she came face-to-face with Natasha.
"Oh?" Natasha smiled faintly. "Hook, I was just looking for you. Your dad left you at the Clinic for me to watch. Where did you run off to this time?"
There was a quiet authority in Natasha's voice, even without a trace of anger.
In the Underworld, miners usually left their children with Natasha before heading down into the mines.
Partly because there were plenty of other children here to play with. And partly because, if an accident kept them from ever returning, Natasha would still take good care of their children.
Hook's face fell at once, and she said meekly:
"Miss Natasha."
"Go over there and take a nap with the others." Natasha pointed to a side room in the Clinic.
Hook could only drag her feet toward it.
She looked back at Chu Mu resentfully and said:
"Why didn't you tell me she was here? Hook asked you so many times."
Chu Mu scratched his head awkwardly.
He had simply forgotten to mention it.
The door to the side room closed, taking Hook's newly kindled ambitions with it.
Natasha looked at Chu Mu and said softly:
"Hook isn't from Boulder Town. Her mother disappeared in the Fragmentum, and her father died of an illness. Fissman, an old friend of her father's, adopted her. Fissman isn't well-off. He's a vagrant now, but he's done everything he can to give Hook the best."
Vagrants were people who had lost their homes, and there were far too many of them in the Underworld.
Chu Mu had never imagined that Hook had such a past.
Yet the little girl was always lively and cheerful, rather than weighed down by bitterness.
"Hook is quite a handful." Natasha gazed quietly