There was always a moment when the subject being interrogated understood some crucial truth--Ibiki had learned to see it in their eyes. To capitalize on that moment. He saw Natsumi's epiphany reflected in a slight widening of her eyes, a momentary dilation and contraction of her pupils. He saw her muscles tense ever so slightly, as she chose how to respond to what she now knew.

She didn't bolt.

That was the first, maybe the most important thing. That, and she still consented to speak to him. He could read very little in what she said, beyond that she didn't like the idea much at all.

But then, Ibiki had yet to meet anyone, even his compatriots in the subbasement who worked under Shida-sensei's twisted gaze, who felt at ease with the nature of their work.

He didn't really breathe easily, though, until she handed him his glove back, and called him kun. It was the other kind of kun this time, the nostalgic kind. The kind that said, I've seen you scrawny, naked and stupid, and you might be some kind of scary man now, but I've known you since we were ten and you're still that Morino Ibiki, too.

"I don't rate an office of my own anyway," he told her, stuffing the glove back into the coat pocket. "But when I have enough seniority to get one, it will probably be a boring place. Offices usually are. Of course, I'll probably put at least one ship down there." He glanced at his desk, with wall-mounted shelves of completed models above it.

"But I don't think you ever cared much about my ships. At least not enough to ask to be taken to an office just to see them."