Artemis was growing steadily more and more annoyed with the direction the conversation was taking. He knew that Haku wasn't trying to burden him, and Haku knew that something was terribly wrong with Artemis. And to make things worse, Haku also knew that Artemis was pretending that nothing was wrong, when he knew something was terribly wrong with him--and thus Haku worried.

There was no solution to this problem. It was a vicious circle, with the two of them trying so hard to fix the other and appear fine at the same time. And neither one wanted to be the one to give in and lean on the other, when they knew that the other boy was silently suffering their weight.

"Well I don't anticipate losing," Artemis said with finality. "It's not an option. So I don't have multiple paths to chose from: there is only one."