[He's still mostly curled in on himself, gathered in bits and pieces in the darkness hiding behind his eyelids and under the pile of pages next to them and skulking the halls between the house's spaces; he settles back into himself like a stone in the stream of today letting pushbacks flow and fade. These currents are far older, though -- like the melody, like the grinding quality of his voice before he drops it further.]

I can't help it, if cheating is how you play.

[It's absent, less mechanical and more blurry than Hikage's retort, perhaps not as pointed as the words should be. Sound washes over him, clear enough to burn without his sight to diffuse it, and perhaps that's just the way it should be right now.

He leans his head just a little into the yielding truth flowing between the cracks they've both created.]

But of course I heard it. It was the only thing... [the sentence fades to nothing after a moment, not quite a stumble but he takes a breath like he needs to pick it back up, like the rest of him] Ah. A piece of a memory for a piece.

It's been a long time since I've heard such a thing.