Kibitoshin had to admit, as far as the Head Doctor’s evil mind-and-body-altering schemes went, last night’s hadn’t been all that bad. Admittedly, there had been Sechs’… Sechs’ episode, but that didn’t count. The thing with the languages did. And they’d both handled it pretty well, all things considered! They hadn’t understood a word the other said, of course, but they hadn’t ended up tearing their hair out in frustration. Well, not very much of it. And they’d managed to communicate, too! Obviously their friendship transcended words!

… or maybe they were both far better at miming then they had any right to be. Either one worked fine.

Anyway, between the good and the bad, he’d been too busy worrying or thinking for his mind to even start to wander back to the anxiousness and nail-biting of the day before. In fact, it might even have made him feel just that tiny bit better, even in the cold light of yet another morning in captivity. There was a way for him to make a mark; he just had to look for it a little harder and keep smiling, even when it hurt.

He was good at that.

Gathering his breakfast together, he found himself his usual seat by the door so that he could count the people who came in. This morning he needed to look out for... Sechs, Haseo, Leon, their friends, Fai and Franziska. And the less he thought about how rapidly that list was shrinking, the better.