Devin loses his shirt out of embarrassment

"Devin, I'm not really comfortable with what we just did."

"What did we just do?" Devin looked at her in confusion.

Cecilia didn't know how to answer for a moment; did he try to crack a joke?

"I mean, the whole thing with the girl..."

"The girl who stabbed you earlier? I thought we were over it already."

"Are you fucking stupid, or do you just really try to be?! I mean, the girl—you literally ruined her life 60 seconds ago! What's fucking wrong with you?!"

"Cecilia," Devin sighed. "Don't tell me you're one of those."

"Those who care about human life? Yes, I'm very much."

Cecilia could see Devin's initially friendly expression change to an increasingly alienated and condescending expression. She quickly tried to calm down and make up for what she had just said.

"I'm not saying that what you did is necessarily wrong; I just think that..."

"Cecilia," Devin sighed when he called her name for the second time. "When I heard you were raised by Guardian Sirius, I thought you weren't that type. Sirius doesn't overestimate anyone." He looked deep into her eyes and said, "You have special blood; you're not like those rats that try to infiltrate our world; you belonged here in the first place. You have to forget about the fake morality you learn from the outside world; you don't need it. People like us don't need it."

Cecilia wanted to protest, but when she remembered Devin's disdainful look from earlier, she felt unwilling to be abandoned by her first friend and left in this foreign world alone. All she could do in response to Devin's words was smile and nod, "Yes, Devin."

"That's her highness that I know and love." He rubbed her hair. 'Now, shall we go to our rooms?"

Only now did Cecilia notice the small line of people that had formed during their discussion, all standing in silence, remembering the lesson from the expulsion the previous girl had to endure. Several stewards stood with their backs to the wall, waiting to escort them to their rooms.

Cecilia tried to remember what Devin had said about 'higher blood' and tried not to show as much embarrassment as she felt and instead said in her most majestic tone, "To the rooms, servants!"

The silence that followed that statement and Devin's stunned look taught her that it might be best to let Devin sort these things out.

"Well," Devin faked a cough. "Maybe it's best to go to the library first?"

Cecilia recognized that Devin didn't know where to bury himself in shame; she had that blushing look quite often, so she decided to follow him without asking how he knew where the library was.

15 minutes later, she found out he simply didn't.

Cecilia Devin stood in front of a dead-end corridor, with no rooms to their right or left, which made Cecilia wonder about the need for this corridor in the first place.

"Let's head back," Cecilia whispered, all her courage gone after the last incident.

"To where, Sherlock?" It turns out that one of the disadvantages of the apparently privileged life that Devin experiences is a weak constitution. He panted heavily after onlya few minutes of walking, which didn't help his mood. At this point, Cecilia suspected he would have killed her without batting an eye if it had magically returned him somewhere familiar.

"Why do you look like that? It's not like we'll be lost forever; someone will find us in the end." Her appeasement only seemed to make things worse for Devin's tamper.

"Really, her highness? Why don't you stand here and see if they find you? Better yet, why don't you try going back? That should help, genius."

Devin grabbed her chin and forced her to look back. To her astonishment, the forking corridor they had come from turned into a winding corridor she had never seen before.

Somehow, of all her consolations, it was her stunned look that seemed to calm Devin down. He took a deep breath and explained relatively gently: "We probably activated a trigger that threw us somewhere else, or it's an illusion designed to prevent us from entering a sealed place. You have to understand that it's not like anywhere else in your familiar outside world; there are certain private areas on the ship."

Her shocked look really seemed to do a good job of comforting him, to the point where he wanted to see more of it. "By the way, I find it very likely that Guardian Sirius has some such secrets at home, never noticed?"

The new information left Cecilia in utter shock. She followed the winding corridor, trying to avoid the worldview-shattering Devin, going deeper and deeper into the corridor. 

"Hey, Your Highness, you really don't want to walk into something unknown. Your highness?" Devin followed her anxiously, not noticing that the dead-end corridor behind him grew darker and darker until it disappeared as if it had never been there, leaving only a smooth wall behind.

. .        .

Somewhere else.

The emaciated boy He passed through narrow alleys and abandoned buildings that most likely only he knew, arriving only at sunrise at his abode under the bridge. Trying to avoid all prostitution and drug dealings that were there in the dark,.

Everyone who was in the little camp he had created for himself at this moment were two drugged-up homeless people. One of them snorted heavily, and the other didn't move. The boy reminded himself to check later to see if he was dead.

He looked left and right anxiously and pulled out a dirty orange backpack from under his shirt. His already emaciated body turned out to be almost a skeleton now that his belly padding was removed.

His hollow eyes would send shivers down the spine of anyone who looked directly into them. It seems that the frequent hunger he experienced had eaten into his soul and would infect anyone who stayed by his side for a long time, not that there was one.

He wore the clothes in a bag, one on top of the other, at an almost inhuman speed, ignoring only bras and underwear. When he finished, his skeleton-like figure looked like an overstuffed teddy bear.

Seeing the dead-looking homeless started moving, he decided to move after he was done with the backpack; it was rare to find so many clothes, and he didn't want to be charged with "protection fees" again by rendom hooligans.

At the bottom of the bagpack was a small photo album, a wallet that, to his disappointment, was full of fake-looking gold coins (following the standard of the other worn-out items in the dirty orange bagpack), and a simple hourglass in a closed box. The boy turned it over and saw, with childish curiosity, the falling sand. The faint red light was reflecting in his eyes.