This time, he said nothing, solemnly absorbing every word like a sponge. Her intensity pushed hard against him like a blast of heat from a furnace. She was fragile in her anger, tragic in her firm determination to assume the worst of anyone, fear justifying the need to strike at someone believing they would be the first to jump at her throat.

If you close your eyes to everyone, you will never see those who mean to help you... Goemon verged on saying, but bit it back, sensing the message wouldn't sink past her skin.

When Lupin and Jigen had pulled him out from under Sandayu Momochi's foot, he had been all but indescribably relieved, wearing the same expression of glassy-eyed hate he had seen on fellow students' faces whenever Sensei had summoned them in the small hours of the morning. He had been reluctant to grow attached to anyone then, let alone those men who seemed to answer his threats with derisively careless shrugs, those men whose laughs had worked his blood to a boil. He hoped to maintain an icy professionalism and keep them an arm's length away, but somewhere along the lines, his own sentiments had betrayed him. It had been an uphill battle to learn and unlearn, to stop overanalyzing every pat on the shoulder and to find sleep when the darkness in an empty room had felt intimately threatening.

But, in the end, he had finally learned to trust another human being. And perhaps, one day, she would too.