I didn't catch the faded words on the black background at first but once I did-- man, Nagi was put in a truly horrible situation from the start. Manga doesn't often tell a stronger story through text alone but in this case.... that all those horrible things and years of abuse fit into tiny speech bubbles in a single panel somehow makes her whole experience feel even more chilling than seeing it illustrated would have been. It's as if for her, the faces, people, places didn't even register, just the words she was told. Her opinion didn't count, there are no responses, no reactions. Just years of pain and trauma, compartmentalized into a tiny box on a single page.
It comes across as an intentional artistic decision, rather than a way to quickly gloss over Nagi's backstory as the series hurtles toward resolution. This manga has never shied away from showing the characters' physical reactions - the range of emotions a face can express, bodies wasting away, tears of despair, hunched over shoulders. It's shown how each character might perceive a scene - like drowning in the river being shown both in flashbacks and in imagination. But with Nagi's story here, the reader is left to imagine what her situation might have been like, but they will never see what she saw. Whatever horror she went through is something the reader will never be able to understand.
What the reader does see, over these last few chapters, is that the earthquake shattered her entire world. She's spent the rest of her life bewildered by having been spared, feeling guilty for having survived, and, like a child, latching on to anyone who offered to guide her to shelter and safety without questioning their intentions. She's never quite gotten past the shell shock, so she may actually be satisfied with just being given a shelter, a blanket, some food and water. What remains to be seen is whether she can finally pull through.
