As Ren and Ghost went off on their own, Aoba was distracted enough to watch them go. Suddenly he wondered: could Ren get homesick, too? Did he wonder what Beni was doing when Aoba was wondering about Koujaku? Was it as nice for him to have a friendly face in Ghost as it was for Aoba to be able to look to Declan? They were completely different people and robots and situations, of course, but idle thoughts didn’t have to be perfect parallels.

Imagining Declan carrying on the way Koujaku did around women was pretty impossible, too. Presenting them with gifts and compliments and—

—and something about that thought skirted in too weird a direction as Aoba looked at the satchel in his lap again, so he tried to avoid it even as he was opening the bag up and putting a hand blindly inside. It felt like a surprisingly large number of objects shifted around under his exploring fingers. Geez, how much was in here…?

“So, you wanna tell me about what you brought back this time?”