For so long, she’d believed it was only humans who wanted to live. Who deserved to live. Exorcists had their own unique abilities, but they were still human at their core, and that had always been the dividing line to her. Humanity was exclusive to humans, and therefore they needed to be protected. Everything else was more or less a plague that needed to be defended against.

But then Landel’s Institute had had happened. Here she’d seen more non-humans exhibiting humanlike behavior--like trying to be normal, trying to help people--than she could have ever imagined. She wasn’t certain whether this Skulduggery Pleasant was entirely human, and that immediately cast him under a cloud of suspicion. Without humanity, creatures were wild and savage. Those were the rules.

Without humanity, creatures were tainted like she was.

And yet here was another being offering to help her. The idea was surreal in its own way. Monsters helping monsters… such a thing shouldn’t have been possible.

Yomi looked almost pained by his admission, because clearly he hadn’t understood her. He should, she thought. He should understand. So she wordlessly reached for the hem of her uniform and lifted it to expose the mass of bandages underneath. In the darkness it might have been difficult to see the dried blood dotting some areas of the bandages, but she expected he would start to get her point. “I meant this. The only way to really help me is to finish what the person who gave me this started. You’d have to kill me--but like I said, I don’t think you can do that. Not unless you know how to ward against the supernatural.” Can you? Can you do it? There was always hope that one day a fellow prisoner might have the power and knowledge to contain the sesshouseki, even some poor soul who’d only just found himself trapped in the Institute.

After all, he’d offered to help, hadn’t he? At the very least he would understand why she wasn't concerned over a few temporary injuries.