[ Ai meets his gaze readily and feels something unfamiliar when she does - a spike of irritation. She doesn't even understand why, just that she feels it, steely and sharp in her throat. For the first time in a while, she finds herself thinking about Nino. That horrible fight. She hears "Why don't you just drop dead already?!" as clearly as if she'd been screaming it in Ai's face all over again.

She doesn't know why. She just knows that, suddenly - maybe that dead, pained look Nino had walked out of the room with hadn't been quite so inexplicable after all.

She swallows and does her best to keep her voice steady. ]

Well. They didn't take any more blood out of me, at least.

[ The joke lands just as flatly as her voice does. She tries to brighten it. ]

And... it doesn't look like anybody was following us, or anything like that.