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After choosing a vendor to buy breakfast from, I bought two big thin-skinned steamed meat buns. The shopkeeper helped me pack them up in a paper bag and handed it over to me.

While using it to warm my hands, I made a detour so that I would end up behind Shiloh.

She seemed completely unaware of my presence, still staring off into space facing the street, watching the people outside the alleyway come and go in a daze.

There was simply no way the shabby clothes she was wearing could resist the current cold winds and her petite figure also wasn’t one to weather the storms outside. Even though Aleya was already wandering outside homeless at this age, she was at least able to meet me while growing up. Shiloh, on the other hand, is different since she gives off the feeling that she’s a very antisocial existence who would bury everything deep within her heart.

I moved close to her ear and whispered:

“What are you looking at?”

Shiloh stabbed behind her; I dodged to the side and held up one of the steamed meat buns in her targeted area while I was at it. Shiloh, whose attack didn’t go smoothly, retracted her dagger and grabbed the steamed meat bun off of the dagger. She held the bun, but was still looking out at the street outside.

I boasted with a laugh:

“West-Resisting City is much different from the outside, right?”

Shiloh nodded and began taking small bites out of the meat bun in her hands. One bite later, the soup broth stained her ruddy lips and her cheeks bulged. Even though the expression on her face was still as apathetic as before, I could clearly sense that her mood had become better. To use an analogy, it’s like someone with a cold face but there’s a sweet pink background and flowers blooming behind her.

After Shiloh finished the steamed bun, she lifted up her dainty hands, extended her fingers, moved them close to her mouth, and began gently licking them. Once she cleaned up all the spilled soup broth, she lowered her hands, lifted up her head, and looked at me.

I was right in the middle of eating my steamed bun. Upon seeing Shiloh look at me, I offered my half-eaten bun to her, but she shook her head.

I finished my steamed bun and licked my fingers just like Shiloh.

Shiloh suddenly asked:

“Why do you not kill me?”

Her voice was emotionless, as if she were stating something proper and to be expected as a matter of course.

I replied:

“You wish to die?”

Shiloh shook her head and quietly spoke with a trace of hesitation in her voice:

“Now, I don’t. In the past, it didn’t matter.”

Shiloh put her hands into her pockets, lowered her head, and gazed at an unremarkable pebble by her feet as she added:

“Assassinations, poisoning, acquiring information, and when necessary, using my life in exchange for another’s. My life is worthless, it’s an honor for me to be able to die for the organization……this is the way I was taught.”

Without looking at her, I questioned with both hands warming up in my sleeves:

“But you are able to distinguish between good and evil.”

Shiloh spoke in response:

“There is no ‘good’ or ‘evil’, only ‘cold’ and ‘warm’.”

I felt quite the surprise upon hearing these words coming out of her mouth. But after giving it some thought, I felt it was as things were as they should be. It’s very hard to explicitly define the difference between good and evil, especially since those people who trained her into such an emotionless assassin from a young age might not necessarily have had pure malice in their hearts when doing so. Perhaps they hoped for Shiloh to become a powerful assassin and made her go through devilish training with this in mind. This would indeed be unrelated to the concepts of ‘good’ and ‘evil’, and more related to ‘indifference’ and ‘heartlessness’.

I had nothing to say in response.

Shiloh lifted up her head and asked again:

“Why do you not kill me?”

I shot a question back in return:

“You don’t know why?”

Shiloh moved away her line of sight and said:

“I won’t say anything.”

After giving it some more thought, she added with a whisper:

“And I’m still trying my hardest to kill you. It’s useless even if you treat me well.”

Yet she appeared quite uncertain when speaking those words.

So it was kind of cute to see.

How do I say it, it’s like grabbing a hamster you’ve raised and placing it in the palm of your hand. Then the hamster holds one of your fingers and ships out the appearance of “I’m really going to bite~!” but doesn’t really use any force behind its bite. This analogy isn’t really suitable for this situation since Shiloh’s several assassination attempts were all serious. It’s just that each passing time, the attempt would become less serious.

Take today, for example, the only thing she did was carelessly stab her dagger over. The speed was slow to the point that I had enough time to place a steamed bun in its trajectory.

I replied:

“I won’t ask you about things pertaining to yourself. While I’m sure that I will know about them one day, I’m certain that the information won’t come from your mouth. As for why I haven’t killed you, just treat it as me being hypocritical. Hypocritical, Holy Mother, whatever similar words can describe such an existence……when all is done and said, I did approach you with an objective in mind; what I’ve given you isn’t some altruistic kindness.”

Shiloh whispered:

“There’s no need to insist on that. Whether you’re being purely good to me or if you’re approaching me with an objective in mine, I can see it for myself……using these two eyes of mine.”

Shiloh’s gaze floated towards the street outside and added with a level tone:

“The ‘cold’, the ‘warm’; the ‘right’, the ‘wrong’; the ‘black’, the ‘white’ of human emotions, these eyes are able to distinguish between them clearly.”

For a moment, I lost all words for any sort of response. I merely felt heartache for how mature she was.

After thinking about it, I smiled:

“Then you can just treat me as a scumbag.”

Shiloh tilted her head, looked up at me, and asked:

“What’s a scumbag?”

I explained:

“It’s like……mm, well, something like this.”

I took off my coat and draped it on Shiloh’s shoulders. Shiloh grabbed my coat and looked at me suspiciously.

With a laugh, I said:

“I have a guard called Aleya, who, well, grew up with me. Even though her figure isn’t well-developed and her appearance can only be regarded as an upper-middle tier beauty, I just inexplicably like her. The type of like where I’ll mindlessly spoil her. But with the premise of Aleya being present, I’ll still show you my gentle side. There’s no need for me to even mention how I’ll ingratiate myself with you. Currently, I’m still hiding all of this from Aleya and eating steamed buns with you early in the morning. This sort of situation is a case of being ‘fickle in love’ and someone like me is called a scumbag.”

Shiloh nodded to indicate that she had memorized the meaning of those phrase and said:

“Then from now on, I’ll call you scumbag.”

For someone like me, whose face is as thick as a city’s wall, I naturally didn’t plan to haggle about what she called me and indifferent responded:

“Whatever you like.”

Shiloh called out.

“Scum, bag.”

“Mm.”

“Scumbag.”

“Mm?”

“Scu……forget it. How would a person like you generally end up?”

I scratched my head and replied casually:

“It’s hard to say. There are those that have their heads directly chopped off with a butcher’s cleaver, there are those who have died in various strange ways, but for a first offender like me, I most likely won’t be heading towards my death so soon. But in the future, perhaps I’ll also be tied to a stake and burned to death while people shout ‘go to hell!’ at me.”

I wanted to joke around to make her not dwell on the unpleasant subject and tease her into laughing. But I didn’t expect that when my voice dropped, Shiloh suddenly shouted out loudly:

“No!”

I was taken aback by her abrupt mood swings. When I turned to look at her again, I found that she had already recovered her usual look. The only difference was that both her hands were curled up into tight fists as her petite body, wrapped up in my coat, trembled slightly.

A while later, she whispered with a hint of arrogance:

“……No one is allowed to kill you except me.”