Kind Cultivation - Chapter 130

As her face distorts in despair, I can see a huge flash of fear go through her eyes. She shouts through the connection.

“N-no. I thought I could trust you!?”

Her voice resounds through the connection. Before she can draw any further conclusions, I stop her and attempt to explain what I meant.

“That’s not what I meant. By relationship, I meant how we would be portrayed as brother and sister.”

She speaks almost rapid fire, her words piling on top of one of another. Her finger continuously points defiantly in demanding answers from me.

“I-I can’t believe you. W-w-why would you say that in such a vague way?”

You know, she is right on that. I really need to stop being so vague in my responses and questions…

One of her fingers is still pointing straight at me, while the other grips the side of the cart tighter and tighter.

“M-maybe I was right. I shouldn't be just trusting you. Wanna know. I wanna know what you did in that alleyway. When that girl disappeared, why did you look like you changed into someone else?!”

While being accused like this really pierces my heart and makes me want to correct the understanding, this really reminds me that she's still just a frightened kid. Still growing and figuring out how to handle situations.

Despite the flash of maturity I've been seeing while we were in public, it looks like that she's still ultimately a child.

I’ve noticed in a lot of kids in this world that the circumstances that they live in force them to be exposed to things they really shouldn’t be, at their age. Causing them to be more mature than they would otherwise. However, I think this must be one situation where the stress of a situation brings their actual maturity level to light.

Her face seems to distort even further, and she adds onto her previous words.

“Also, why is your aura telling me you’re viewing me as a kid. And family at that? Didn’t you just meet me? Who does that?! That’s just ww-weird and scary, that you’re actually considering us family.”

Ouch, that one actually would hurt a bit. I better stop her since she seems to be getting all the wrong ideas. Not only that, but this is taking quite a bit of the time on that treasure away. Time that we’ll likely need to use productively.

“Hey hey hey. I'll answer each question, but you have to trust that I actually am on your side. That I don't want to see you get taken advantage of by people like that young master.”

For some reasons she suddenly falls silent. Biting her lip.

Letting me talk.

It makes me curious what she sees as I try to explain things to her…

Nonetheless, I’ll use the opportunity in front of me.

“Now, a person of your age should be viewed as a kid, like it normally is here. However, the age that you're still considered a child goes much farther from where I’m from. So, to me you aren’t on the ‘cusp’ of adulthood. You’re a kid. It's the only way I can and want to view you.”

“Not only that, but if I’m being honest with myself, you remind me of one of my cousins back home. Which might be why I subconsciously view you as family.”

She really does. My cousin Jessie was so smart… but fell on the wrong path pretty early in her life. It’s not until I got older that I realized what I could have done to help her. What clues there were that something was really wrong in her life.

At my words, silence falls between us.

Only the rumble of the cart, the soft chirping of insects outside fill that space. She seems to use the moment to recollect herself, to calm down a bit.

Based on what I know of her, that I learned through the scan, she and other members of the family have gone through consistent and regular training in controlling their emotions, and presenting a pleasant face for the family.

It’s not only her though, but many people in these worlds, whether formally trained or trained from the brutality of the streets. The better you can handle a situation, the more likely clear you are to survive or profit from it. It’s drilled into people at an early age.

After she finally seems to have gotten control of herself, I decide to answer her questions. At least, some of them.

“As you have correctly guessed, I am the person who originally went into the alleyway with that woman. There was an assassination attempt, so I had to change my identity, in order to come back out safely. I’m not sure what would happen, if I would have come back out as my normal self after that. Once we reach the sect and I properly become part of it, I’ll go back to my original identity. With that said, do you have any other questions?”

She seems to hold her tongue from here, realizing she said too much earlier.

She shakes her head as an answer.

“OK, then let’s talk about how we want to discuss our family relationship with others. I’m pretty sure that’s going to be a really flimsy excuse if we don’t come up with a back story on this…”

She softly speaks back up, and returns with a pretty good suggestion.

“Y-you appear to be a foreigner, so let’s just say that when you entered the country, I had saved you from making a major mistake in front of a powerful person. Basically, saving your life. You decided to become my big brother at that point… Is that okay?”

“Hmm. That’s pretty good, actually. I think we can work with that. Let’s always keep it vague until we work out the details on it.”

Her eyes shine the slightest bit, but then looks down quickly. She raises another suggestion before I can figure out why.

“We could always just say you meant something else, if that’s inconvenient for you. When you said brother and sister.”

I shake my head quickly, not accepting that suggestion.

“No, I want to make sure that the thing that almost happened doesn’t happen again. This is the best way to do that. At this point, at least.”

With this complete, the conversation turns a little more casual. The fact that she’s truly just a kid comes out more and more. Both in how she speaks, and thinks normally.

We fill each other in on different aspects of our lives, to hash out the story more, but the principal theme that seems to come from her words is a longing to be free of the situation. That she doesn’t wish her family didn’t have to go through this. That she didn’t have to do this.

Even more so, how horrible people’s gazes on her is, which had started around a year or two back.

I considered telling her what all that meant and what people were looking for when they were looking at her that way, but it appears she more than knew enough about the reasoning.

She’s not naïve. In fact, she probably knows a little too much about it for her age, though not nearly as much as someone from my world would know, because of the Internet. In both an unfortunate and fortunate sense, she understands the true connotations of such things.

She’s already had some situations from existing business deals with her family’s group.

That’s what started having her sent away to this sect.

We are getting close to understanding each other.

Just a bit more, and we should be all set.

I hope.