[ it's not that tsurumaru doesn't care. it's far from that, actually — in this moment, more than anything else, tsurumaru wishes that the gap between his heart and his attachment would shrink, so that he can show hijikata that he does care, but it's so difficult for him to express that to a person — to a human.

so instead, he puts his hands together and hopes that hijikata will receive his sentiments, no matter how poorly delivered. with his fingers intertwined together, he watches the glass blankly, eyes subconsciously glued onto the surface of the mirror fragments — watches, as the hijikata in the mirror looks the way that tsurumaru imagines that he himself would have looked on that day, saying the things that he would have said on that day, and feeling the same kind of pain that he'd certainly felt on that day.

once it ends, he peels his gaze from the mirrors and glances at hijikata, and while his sympathy isn't the obvious sort, tsurumaru speaks in the rare way that he does whenever he's alone, whenever he doesn't have to impress anyone with his smiles and his jokes — quietly, softly, and almost monotonously, making no kind of expression at all, because whenever he doesn't have to try, he comes close to not existing at all. ]

So you are capable of making an expression like that... and saying those kinds of things, too. The things that bother you. The things that make you cry.

[ still, he thinks that he doesn't mind hijikata when he's like that — angry and tense and enraged, because it's raw emotion, and tsurumaru appreciates how honest and unbridled it is. ]

But you did understand, even just a little bit. If I told you the same thing — that it's not your fault, you'd give me a similar reaction, wouldn't you?