[Kotone one of these days you're going to be presented with a very distraught teenage boy who can no longer keep a brave meme face with all the shit he's put up with, and what then. He just chuckles again, nodding as he self-consciously rubs at the back of his neck some more. It's not that he doesn't want to confide in anyone, certainly not that he doesn't trust, that he thinks no one will care. It's that he's walked them backward into Hell so many times with a confident flick of his tailcoat that he doesn't know what it would do to them to see him less than perfect. He can't do it to them.]

[Maybe it's why Akechi and Sumire are so important to him. He can unpack that another day. Speaking of them, though--]

Goro Akechi-- grouchy old man in an eighteen year old's body, kinda..., mousy-brown hair and red eyes, and Sumire Yoshizawa, a tiny angel with red hair and red eyes who can and will beat anyone in a dance-off. They're both-- [His expression twists, and he curls his knees a little closer to himself, suddenly overwhelmed with fondness.] They're so important to me.