"The woman was left handed," Genma said, almost a mumble. His eyes slid from Rina's cheerful smile to his right hand, and back to the girl. "It was a woman. And she was left handed. Easier for her to target my right hand when she was facing me." He blinked slowly, fighting the fogginess of the drugs Ito-sensei had given him, fighting the sense of being slowly sucked into warm sand.

The girl's smile had frozen, and something else lurked behind her eyes now. Fear, Genma thought abstractly. She looked afraid.

"Next time. Next week, whatever. When you start the... the thing you said. The major guides. You're gonna be helping Ito-sensei, right? It's gonna be you?" Suddenly that was important, although he couldn't put his finger on why. But this girl was...

She was honest. She was looking at him — starved, beaten, tortured — and she wasn't pretending it was normal. She wasn't pretending it was anything other than horrific.

That made her safe, somehow. Safe in a way the Intel agents and psych medics and even the gentle-voiced nurses weren't. Even though she'd hurt him with her treatment. She hadn't meant to. She didn't want to now. She was sick at the thought she'd done so.

"You can come back." He tried for a smile, for reassuring, and felt his dry lips crack, the bruises on his face tighten. "You should come back. When I'm less messed up."