"I thought you were pretty silly back then." Seele looked at Bronya. "The nights were so cold, and the Orphanage barely had enough heating. Yet you sat here without worrying you'd freeze.
"Thinking about it now, you must have cared a lot about him back then, too."
Bronya fell silent at her words.
She walked up the steps, then turned back to look down.
The dim streetlamp. The corner at the intersection.
Perhaps, many years ago, she had waited so eagerly, so desperately, for a shadow to appear beneath that streetlamp, for someone familiar to round the corner with a smile on his face.
He must have been smiling.
With so little to spare, the only thing he could give his little sister was emotional comfort.
He never brought his negative feelings home.
Perhaps he had still looked exhausted before rounding the corner. But the moment he appeared before his little sister, he suddenly brimmed with energy.
Bronya could not understand what there had been about her back then that made him willing to do all that for her.
Was it simply because she waited for him every evening?
Adults could never understand the pure, simple thoughts of children, and the Bronya of today could no longer understand her younger self.
She could not recall the past.
Bronya's heart was filled with uncertainty.
Seele came up beside her, patted her on the back, and said:
"Let's keep going. We can look somewhere else. Maybe something will come back to you."
Bronya nodded gently.
Behind them, Stelle took out her phone and sent Natasha a message:
"We're heeere!"
"Come through the gate and head inside." Natasha replied quickly.
A few days earlier, the Astral Express Crew had officially established a communications network here and distributed some phones.
Of course, not everyone