Present company...? [ Tama can't possibly recognize what he means by that, even with it being obvious in the way Matoba looks at Minakami. Simply put, Minakami is always Minakami- anything else he might happen to be (part of Shuten, a university student or not, dead or not) are all secondary characteristics. Some are worse than others of course, but none of them could possibly be stronger than the whole of his best friend. It's for that exact reason that Tama passes the haniwa a suspicious glance, instead of prickling up. ] I guess...
[ There is a strong urge in him to mention that 'I am not smart, please be easy on me', but that paltry and weak defense feels a little bitter and ill-fitting as of late. And it wouldn't do for someone to mistake it for sincerity- certainly he does still find himself to be more simple than his two best friends who happen to be gods-damned geniuses, but if he were an inconsolable idiot then it wouldn't have been possible to escape the cycle of the hashihime. So instead, he's forced to take this all in stride, and actually think, which is perhaps the most cruelty that Matoba has unleashed upon him in their short time knowing one another. ]
...these aren't the thoughts of someone simply laboring under a faction. They're the sorts of things one might think if they were trying to solve this situation we all find ourselves in. [ He's certainly not casting aspersions with that; if anything, it's oddly comforting to know that this is something others are thinking of, even if alongside everything to do with navigating the faction nonsense. ] But, you're right. Anything here would have been left free to flourish without the needs or whims of anything else getting entangled in between. They wouldn't have humans to bond or make pacts with, but they also wouldn't have anyone but yokai to counter them. [ It's a little terrifying, realizing how...small he is, suddenly, when his trials with the hashihime had nearly broken him. But they hadn't, and there's still too much of that burning, human element in him to feel hopeless. ] ...I have to wonder if they aren't worried. Our presence is destabilizing their- [ '-ecosystem'. He doesn't know where that word came from, so he just shakes his head. ] -their power structure. In some ways, aren't we the outcasts causing trouble in their world?
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[ There is a strong urge in him to mention that 'I am not smart, please be easy on me', but that paltry and weak defense feels a little bitter and ill-fitting as of late. And it wouldn't do for someone to mistake it for sincerity- certainly he does still find himself to be more simple than his two best friends who happen to be gods-damned geniuses, but if he were an inconsolable idiot then it wouldn't have been possible to escape the cycle of the hashihime. So instead, he's forced to take this all in stride, and actually think, which is perhaps the most cruelty that Matoba has unleashed upon him in their short time knowing one another. ]
...these aren't the thoughts of someone simply laboring under a faction. They're the sorts of things one might think if they were trying to solve this situation we all find ourselves in. [ He's certainly not casting aspersions with that; if anything, it's oddly comforting to know that this is something others are thinking of, even if alongside everything to do with navigating the faction nonsense. ] But, you're right. Anything here would have been left free to flourish without the needs or whims of anything else getting entangled in between. They wouldn't have humans to bond or make pacts with, but they also wouldn't have anyone but yokai to counter them. [ It's a little terrifying, realizing how...small he is, suddenly, when his trials with the hashihime had nearly broken him. But they hadn't, and there's still too much of that burning, human element in him to feel hopeless. ] ...I have to wonder if they aren't worried. Our presence is destabilizing their- [ '-ecosystem'. He doesn't know where that word came from, so he just shakes his head. ] -their power structure. In some ways, aren't we the outcasts causing trouble in their world?