There was a warm, orange glow behind him.

The girl shook her head at him, "No, if I let you go, what if you’re a bad person?"

This place was Brely, there were no good people here, everyone was a bad person.

Selfish desires, greed, killing.

It was in their nature, the instant it was released, humans too could become devils.

Realizing that explaining was futile, the boy simply chose silence.

It was very quiet around, with only the sound of the wind.

"Are you going to leave me here alone?"

The boy suddenly spoke, his hands tied behind his back twitched, his fingers had gone stiff from the cold.

Hannah once again saw the boy’s beautiful eyes.

She turned away, not looking at him.

Leaving him only with a view of her back.

After a while, she made up her mind.

This was something she had found, so it was hers.

She needed to take her belongings with her.

So she bent down and grabbed the burlap sack underneath the boy.

Then she dragged the sack with the boy inside forward with great effort.

The road was not smooth, multiple times the boy almost fell out.

"You can let me go, I can walk by myself."

Hannah’s face turned red with the effort, but she still didn’t let go, her cheeks puffed as she insisted, "No, if I let you go, you’d run away."

"I won’t run," the boy said, "I swear."

His gaze was firm, he wasn’t lying.

Hannah stopped, reached up, and wiped the sweat from her forehead.

The sweat cleared away the dust from her forehead and the corners of her eyes, revealing particularly fair skin.

The girl, as if unaware, shook her head again, "I don’t want to."

She was very stubborn.

That’s what the boy thought.

Hannah grabbed hold of the burlap sack again and started heaving it back towards her place.

Her thing.

Hers.

The sight of a small and delicate girl struggling to drag a sack with a boy inside was particularly amusing.

The boy hadn’t expected that the girl, who looked weak, would be so strong.

She really brought him back to her little nest.

Actually, it wasn’t so much a nest as a "secret base" that Hannah had found to the north.

A place known only to her.

But now the boy knew, too.

It must have been a corner left over from a collapsed building, with a huge wall leaning down to form a triangular-shaped space.

The entrance on the outside was small, allowing only a child’s frame to pass through. 𝒻𝘳ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝒷𝘯ℴ𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝑐ℴ𝑚

Hannah could walk straight in.

But the boy guessed he would need to bend down to get inside, or he’d bump his head.

It was deep inside.

Because there was a fire, it was warm inside.

The boy’s fingers gradually regained sensation.

Hannah dragged the sack to a corner and finally sat down with a sigh of relief.

"You’re so heavy."

She wiped her sweat again; there wasn’t much dirt left on her face now.

After a moment of silence, the boy said, "Sorry," apologizing for his weight.

The fire was dying out, so Hannah stood up, ran to one side, and grabbed some dry branches.

She had prepared these during the day.

In the north, most places were ruins, so finding dry branches suitable for a fire wasn’t easy.

Like a squirrel that likes to hoard food, Hannah had hoarded a large pile of dry branches, stacked high in the corner.

She picked a thicker branch and put it into the fire.

The flames began to burn again.

Only then did she turn around to look at the boy sitting off to the side.

The boy’s stray bangs were slightly long and covered his eyes and brow when he looked down.

As if he had fallen asleep.

"Are you tired?"

Hannah tilted her head to look at him.

The boy’s eyelashes fluttered, and he opened his eyes.

The girl had already squatted down in front of him.