I found myself in a pretty strange situation, bleeding, and surrounded by people who really didn't seem to trust me. To calm everyone down, I tried to explain, “Sorry for that, I’m stress testing my body. Being covered in glass only slightly hurts. Either that's very good or very bad. Who knows? Maybe it's just a mental thing and I only imagine the pain.”

“You call bleeding all over the ground ‘slightly’?” one of the girls said.

I recognized the person who said that; it was Aini, the geisha girl whom I had met while I was still a slave. Also, the girl whose journey Ioine had shown me in the last few chapters. (If you guys read them.)

So, she was queen, or empress, or whatever; the ruler/leader of this place. Pretty high rank for a girl her age; if she was human. She did look like one and if she really was, then she must have been around eighteen or so.

I'm nineteen and even I haven't had to fill such big shoes. I wonder what's going on inside her head now.

It was clear that Aini,