"Ugh..."
Mahiro Shiina covered her mouth and stared wide-eyed at the smooth, beautiful tentacle.
Yes, that's right, a smooth, beautiful tentacle.
Unlike Noldrei, who preferred dark colors, Kiana preferred this jelly-like appearance, so she often used tentacles in this manner.
"This is pretty tasty, huh?"
A mouth appeared on the tentacle, giving Mahiro Shiina an unexpected shock.
The girl nervously asked, "Y-you, what are you? Are you a Kami? Or a Honkai beast?"
"I'm human! I'm a human! And I'm not some kind of god or ghost. Geez, it's just that I can't show my face directly. There are so many new inventions in Academy City, how could you still think that I'm something strange? Can't a person's Stigmata power be creating tentacles?"
Kiana was now experiencing what Noldrei felt. As soon as she mentioned Stigmata power, the other party immediately understood what was going on.
Mahiro Shiina immediately realized that the other party was indeed a person.
It seemed that the other party simply thought that the food she had made was good, and couldn't help but auto-loot it when passing by.
"Um, could you let me see you? You're using that strange thing and it makes me feel kind of uncomfortable…"
Mahiro Shiina was still a bit curious and didn't know what kind of person the other party was.
Kiana had now escaped from Mei and Tesla, and she didn't know where to go play. If she went too far, Bronya's Skynet system would probably detect her. Only Noldrei wouldn't bother to care about what she was doing. And daddy Siegfried couldn't control her now.
After thinking about it for a while, she didn't think it was a big deal, so she jumped up to the girl's dormitory.
Kiana peeked at the girl's window and then flipped inside.
Currently, there was no existence in Academy City who could hurt her, so she didn't care if there were any traps inside.
Besides, who would set up traps in their own dorm room? Are they crazy?
Mahiro Shiina then saw a handsome girl with long, white hair, and a black leather outfit flip in from the window.
Behind her, she could even see a few pink jelly tentacles waving around, dragging her body along the wall and entering her dormitory.
"Sorry, sorry… Do you want me to transfer the money for the food to you?"
Kiana laughed awkwardly and scratched her head. She felt embarrassed about her tentacle's behavior. She was used to eating like this at home and had forgotten to turn off her tentacle's auto-loot when she went out.
'She could have just taken it, but she's actually paying for it?' Mahiro Shiina finally relaxed a bit. At least Kiana was still in human form.
"You... are also a student here? Which school are you from?"
Mahiro Shiina went back to her induction cooker and continued to prepare dinner.
"Oh, so it does work…" Kiana was very happy. Now, as long as she explained the situation, no one would be surprised or act strangely because of her tentacles. This meant that Noldrei's education of the students in Academy City was very successful.
"What works?" Mahiro Shiina looked at Kiana in confusion and asked.
Kiana sat at the small table in the dorm room and said, "My name is Kiana. I'm a first-year student at St. Freya High School, and I just ran away from home. I smelled something delicious as soon as I came out, so I subconsciously wasn't able to control my power."
"You also ran away from home?!"
Mahiro Shiina was extremely happy.
Kiana was a bit speechless after hearing what she had said.
'I was just saying that casually. What do you mean 'also?''
Kiana's leaving home was only for a few hours. She still had to go home to play games at night.
She had to make an excuse, "No, I… I was getting a bit annoyed staying at home, so I came out to take a breather."
"Are your parents also ignoring you?" Mahiro Shiina looked at Kiana worriedly after putting away the bowls and chopsticks.
"I don't have any parents…" Kiana sighed and honestly explained her situation.
"You can't say that about your parents, maybe they have their own difficulties."
Mahiro Shiina could understand her own parents. They had married each other due to family ties and didn't have any love for each other. She was just an accident.
"You don't understand my situation… I didn't leave because of my parents. It's…"
Kiana shook her head, not wanting to talk about her parents anymore.
Mahiro Shiina realized that the girl had some unspeakable secrets that she didn't know about, and she might have just hit a sore spot.
"Sorry, I was being nosy. By the way, I still have some food here. Do you want to eat some more?"
Mahiro Shiina pushed her cooked food out again, staring expectantly at the white-haired girl in front of her.
"No, what are you going to eat if I finish your food?" Kiana rejected the girl's good intentions and asked, "Aren't you going to have dinner with your friends? It's so boring eating dinner alone."
"I don't have any friends," Mahiro Shiina shook her head and said, "Coming here was an accident, so I don't know anyone here. Although there are some nice classmates, I'm not very close with any of them."
'So you're even worse off than I am.'
Kiana felt that the girl's parents were like decorations. It was better not to have parents at all like her. Apart from the first two years, at least Siegfried had been very nice to her.
And then she met Noldrei, Mei, and the others.
Kiana felt that she, being a lab-grown person, had managed to turn things around by sheer luck.
"Are there many people like you in Academy City? St. Freya is a local school, so I was a student from Nagazora City. I don't know anything about the students that Academy City brought in."
She suddenly became curious about what kind of people were inside her 'country.'
"There are a lot of people like me. Most of them are either poor, or they are 'earning money' outside. Some of them don't have any background either, so everyone has their own sorrows. And there are many like me, who have had conflicts with their parents, and then ran away from home."
Mahiro Shiina spoke very seriously, as if she had always been looking for someone to open up to.
"Is that so… Is this place really that good? I can't seem to get out, there isn't anything fun to do, and it's all sealed up… Sigh…"
Kiana was dying of boredom now. She only wished that the Stigmata space could be completed sooner to bring her more human genetic information.
"It's very good here. Without Academy City, they probably wouldn't be able to find a place where they could belong. Even though there are a lot of problems here, it's still a place for everyone to temporarily live."
Kiana looked at Mahiro Shiina's expression. After confirming that she wasn't lying, she was relieved.
'I didn't expect that I would actually be useful… Huh? Is it really my doing?'
"Let's go! I'll take you out to dinner! I don't have much of anything else, but I do have plenty of money!"
Kiana's nouveau riche-like words surprised the girl.
'Didn't you say you didn't have any parents? Then where did you get so much money?'
Mahiro Shiina didn't understand at all.