[Ah, it's not wrong at all either, come to think of it, and Subete inclines his head briefly in acknowledgment: growing up in the lap of luxury has its longer-lasting effects just like its equal and opposite path, even if it's hard to say how much of that falls now under the category of habit, preference, or simply a modicum of standards to aspire to again when the actual state of your world has been literally and metaphorically subterranean for long enough to leech all the color from every layer.

It's difficult, after all, to climb higher if you've never seen the heights. They've looked, just once or twice -- at the varying qualities of color and light and their blending across the memories still trailing long shrouds behind them across years and dimensions, the miasma burning off quietly like the clear hum of sake on the tongue.

More vivid and beckoning still is this: Subete delicately holding his own sake cup up to his face and peering around it, falling behind on the drinking himself because these particular sounds and sights he hadn't expected at all even on this particular night. There are some things you do because they've been drilled into you, enough so that you can bring them to all new contexts, continents, company. No matter what.

The warmth and the laughter aren't part of it at all. For a long moment outside of himself he drinks that in instead, somehow falling back into himself and lowering his cup in time to murmur--]

... Yes. There's nowhere to go but forward, even in a world like this. [quiet and somehow uncomplicated despite the words, he closes his eyes finally and drains his cup] Or I suppose there's everywhere to go, if even my imagination can't keep up. I don't mind... a plot twist like this once in a while.

[A breath later he's going for the food, himself, beginning with the fish in a bid to distract his wayward everything in anticipation of more sake.]