[Kadoc looks up at her at that, lowering his knife: Neither am I. Part of him wants, reflexively, to protest it. She's the hero of the story, isn't she? The protagonist. The woman who saved the world, and is working on a second round of the same. But that's stupid—he'd used the exact same revelation against her in Russia himself, exposing to her that, no, what she's doing isn't an act of pure and victimless good. The hope back then had been that it would break her. It hadn't. But now, if nothing else, there's no question that they both know exactly what they both are.

Still, hearing her put herself on a level with him is something else.]

. . . I never got any more than secondhand reports of them. Honestly? I never put a lot of thought into them. The writing's always been on the wall that Wodime will come out of this on top. So the only Lostbelts I ever bothered to imagine becoming the new reality were his and my own. Most of them aren't actually well suited to it. There're worse waiting for you, too. I've been taking it for granted for a long time now that if something insane were to happen, like Beryl's Lostbelt winning? I'll be dead for it anyway, so why bother thinking about it?

[He stares down at a poison mushroom, then clips it off at the base. Last one in this patch; he tosses it into the basket and moves to stand, brushing off his hands.]

. . . Listen up, Fujimaru. Don't even think about taking Wodime down before you take down Beryl or Daybit, if you manage by some miracle to get that far.