For all that Minato's cool-headedness and silence could leave the impression of distance, Ken had thought since the day he put that armband on him that there was a warmness to his presence. He can't bring himself to pull away; he wants to stay here, where it's warm, just like how he wanted to stay in the dorm. That alleyway he always ended up at was cold and silent, an empty lot where a house used to stand that was now a niche in the city for the ocean's cold wind to slip into. The station in Nonah was no better even in this season, and this is much warmer. So much about this world had been warm to him, and the emotions that well up as he thinks about that makes even more tears fall, forming small dark spots in the carpet where they land by their feet.

"You said-- you said you forgave me." Jaime had called him out on his lying, once. He was horrible at that, at lying to someone's face. It was easier to keep secrets when he stayed silent, but silence wasn't an option here. After all that trouble, Minato deserved the truth. And Ken too was tired of holding back all these secrets, and they spill from him, no longer willing to be stopped. "But I can't. I just... he's dead, Minato-san, and it's my fault. He died because I called him out there, and seeing him here, after what I did. I knew all along that he wasn't a bad person. It could've been avoided, but I.."

He shakes his head. He covers his face with his hands and wonders if Minato's hands might be all that's keeping him from bolting right then and there.

"Why? Why am I always the one that's left alive?"