In the Clouds ･ b" —Blinder ･ b—

Characters

 * Kino
 * Hermes
 * Photo (First Appearance)
 * Sou (First Appearance)

Synopsis
In a mountainous region, some travelling merchants with a convoy of trucks setup camp. They mistreat a slave girl they picked up in a previous religious country as part-payment for goods. Despite this, the slave does not resent their behavior as people in her country were taught to respect others. As the merchants eat their meal, she realizes that some herbs they picked are poisonous, but is unable to warn them in time and decides to eat as well to share their fate. However a young boy throws a stone, spilling her meal on the ground. While she considers what to do, the entire group dies from poisoning. She finds one surviving merchant who was sympathetic to her and she asks him to kill her. Instead, he frees her and tricks her into killing him. A small motor scooter named Sou in one of the trucks calls out to the slave girl, consoling her over the merchants' deaths and tells her to live rather than die. Some time later, Kino and Hermes discover the dead merchants lying before them, and Kino deduces the nature of their deaths from the poisonous herbs growing nearby. Years later, Sou reveals the unnamed slave was able to let go of her past, struck it rich and became a photographer, now named Photo.

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