In the most obvious twist of all time, the loli will actually be a century old, meaning that Shannon will have to deal with both an annoying kid and a batty old lady, which is... a pretty accurate description of the people you end up interacting with during volunteer duty for local churches. Huh. This manga's pretty realistic after all.
She's definitely sus. But IDK, this story is not afraid of cliche stuff but also not that predictable. It seems to be focusing a lot on relatively young people who are carrying huge amounts of twisted feelings/frameworks and weight, so I could see her either being the age she looks or just "young for her age" like Nui from KLK. She's deffo gonna be pretty scary though.
Fair point. At this point, it feels like the whole 'loli who's older than she looks' trope has transcended the realm of plot-twisty character archetypes and become a sort of narrative shorthand, allowing authors to explicitly package mandatory doses of moe and exposition into a certain space without having to bother with explaining why there's a prepubescent child running around battlefields. Old, veteran ladies would be wellsprings of information, but cut down on the amount of demographics an author could pander to (GILF-lovers sadly aren't enough of a market), while little kids could be cute, but have little to offer in terms of plot relevance (unless they're walking McGuffins). The ancient loli manages to be a history teacher, precocious pre-schooler, and signifier of in-universe concepts such as immortality, sealed godlike beings or ageless races all in one. From a writer's perspective, they're a veritable Swiss Army Knife of storytelling options, and I'm sure that this particular author will put the kid to some interesting uses.