[Those words echo in his mind, and for a moment, he can't tell if they're hers or his own. This feeling—so full and vivid, his heart beating out of tune as it competes with itself—is it his or hers? This love that resonates so viscerally between them in a shared body, does it stop or start? Or is it simply existing—warm, trembling, afraid in the same way a child fears the bumps in the night.
This naïve feeling. It's theirs, isn't it?
Lila places his hand on the tile, but Komaeda folds his stump-arm over his middle, as if it were a mockery of hugging himself—her. He likes this feeling, he's sure she knows that without him saying it. And where one might panic in the face of such vulnerability, his own emotion—acceptance, joy—radiates through her anxiety.]
I love you too, Lila.
[He's said it a thousand times in affectionate glances and soft smiles—in the way that he touches her delicately, as if she were fine china instead of leather and barbwire. This time, it's forward. This time, she can't second guess the reason why he would show up on her doorstep unannounced, time and again. There's no running when they're together like this.]
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This naïve feeling. It's theirs, isn't it?
Lila places his hand on the tile, but Komaeda folds his stump-arm over his middle, as if it were a mockery of hugging himself—her. He likes this feeling, he's sure she knows that without him saying it. And where one might panic in the face of such vulnerability, his own emotion—acceptance, joy—radiates through her anxiety.]
I love you too, Lila.
[He's said it a thousand times in affectionate glances and soft smiles—in the way that he touches her delicately, as if she were fine china instead of leather and barbwire. This time, it's forward. This time, she can't second guess the reason why he would show up on her doorstep unannounced, time and again. There's no running when they're together like this.]
I've loved you for a long time.