[Leon slides the drawer open and begins to pull things out of it. It feels like he's watching someone else do this, or maybe that he's moving his hand through the use of strings from somewhere else, outside. He has to concentrate on placing each thing on the tabletop, feeling how the weight of each item settles onto the table under his hands.

The knife, first—the same one that was in the memory. He sets that down quickly, his brain faintly alarming at him from somewhere else: don't keep that in your hand. Don't ever hold it around Kujikawa. Don't process how the handle feels in your fingers. You'll make her run away for good . . .

Then a handful of ceramic shards: the mask he'd been given during that one shitty thing that had happened a while ago, the one where you couldn't get rid of these things and couldn't break them and then they started to change and you couldn't do anything about that, either. His is shattered now, into large, still-identifiable chunks, each one stained with bloody fingerprints the size of a teenage girl's.

And then a small electronic device, something like a smart phone, turned off at the moment.

Then he pushes the drawer closed, without lifting his gaze from it, or moving his hands from the pull.]

Yeah. This stuff is . . . CERES gave me all this, 'cuz they think it's real hilarious what we went through. What happened to me—it's just a big joke to them.

[The words come out flat and measured. Emotionless—

But then something twists inside him, and he feels here, suddenly, in this place, in his own body and apartment with a friend he doesn't want to lose, and he finally lifts his eyes to look at her again, color rushing back into his face, eyebrows creasing with sudden urgency.]

—I didn't want any of this! I didn't ask for this! Not then and not now! I didn't want this shit to follow me here! I didn't want you to find out! I didn't wanna be locked up in that place! I don't, I don't want any of it, but—it's all right here! It's not fair!