[ Fear is a niggling thing in the back of his mind. It isn't a fear of death, or the expectation that any moment now Johan might whip out a gun and aim toward him, because the man has never, would never. Johan poses no danger to his physical life. What he fears is even more terrifying than that: the possibility that they are, at heart, the same.

Tenma shakes his head. ]

I'm not worried.

[ That isn't a lie. But the kind-of question is really why. ]

These little things add up. Showing up when you say you will, not making people worry. It shows them they matter to you.

[ Ugliness is in the little acts of everyday neglect, a slow chipping away at the bonds between people until there is nothing left to lose. If so, beauty is in the minute evidence of mundane sincerity. ]