... and that's when his hands fold in his lap, in their white gloves. As neatly and primly as if he really was in that TV studio. I had to claw my way out of the Metaverse on my own. That was a few months before you came along.

Had his alternate, then, met this Okumura in the Metaverse? And felt sorry for her?—as he's never been able to eradicate? You turned up, and then he went back on his promise....

Again, everyone here knows who he is, what he's done—or they will; that cockroach on the floor, with all its secrets scattered. He's starting to peek back at what he's done himself, too—and so he sighs. "You know, there's another of us here. Neither me nor you, if that makes sense." He doesn't identify the other as one of the Kurusus. "He's a lot less talkative than you. Less friendly, too."