Hakkai pushed a little more of himself behind that brittle smile, tried to prop it up into passing for normalacy, even as his mind was screaming at him to get away, that other people weren't safe around him, that he didn't deserve this pity and should be killed like the monster he was, before he could hurt anyone. He clamped down on that train of thought as hard as he could, before it could grow out of control.

"Aaah, maybe. But I think it's been starting to go away." A bald-faced lie, but it wasn't as if that was a new skill to him. He'd been lying for years, to the people he called friends, to himself. It was almost as easy as breathing.

"You don't need to worry about me, really."