"But still--" Dammit, there was that frustration again, not directed at him. The Romdeau system had been effective in so many ways but not when it came to him. Not when he had practically designed them to reject him. She'd suspected it before but, looking back on it, all of the signs were there. She hated the idea that he had damned himself from the beginning.

She shook her head. "I don't mind," she said. "If you don't feel comfortable with it... Well, you can leave whenever you want. There's plenty of places to go, cheap housing. There's a boarding house I've been looking after in my spare time you could go to if it suited you. It's up to you." It would simply be easier for her to explain things when he was right there. Communicating over text would just be too much of a pain for her to rightly deal with under these sorts of circumstances.