[Riko Amanai stood rooted to the spot, dazed, like an exquisite doll that had lost its soul.]
[That was not to say she had no desire whatsoever to live.]
[Quite the opposite. If her heart had truly been dead and she had no attachment to life, she would never have lost her composure and become so emotional the instant she heard you announce that the assimilation had been canceled.]
[Yet after that brief ecstasy passed, what welled up in her heart was a bottomless emptiness and confusion.]
[In this cruel world of jujutsu, she existed as the "Star Plasma Vessel," someone who would one day be sent to the altar to assimilate with Lord Tengen. Over the past decade and more, the adults around her had drilled that fact into her again and again, until it had perversely become the sole reason that sustained her, an orphan who had lost both parents at an early age, and allowed her to keep living bravely.]
[She had used the "greater good of saving the world" to numb her fear of death, wrapping that sacred sense of duty around her fragile heart like a suit of hard armor.]
[But now, in an almost offhand manner, you had suddenly and forcibly stripped away that heavy armor, the central purpose that supported her life.]
[Faced with this sudden "freedom," she was clearly bewildered and at a loss, like someone who had spent a lifetime walking through a dark tunnel, only to be shoved into blinding sunlight, not even knowing where to put her hands and feet.]
[You smoked quietly, taking in every trace of the complicated expression on her face, where relief, helplessness, and fear intertwined.]
[Although you felt that, given your current position and future plans, there was absolutely no need to interfere with