Jude does hate it: it's so much easier to take the days as they come, chopping wood, making paper. He deals with what he can, and he does his best to ignore the rest. He's starting to remember--in general, but also those long months at university. How he scrambled, how he took on too much, how he was losing hours and days, until he didn't know who he was or why he was there. If he has to be boring or obstinate to keep his head, well. No one here benefits from him locked in a room, sketching his fingers to cramps, trying to capture or contact a thing that just isn't there.

"Tell me anyway," he says, sitting in a kitchen so cold and dark, it's easier to see their breath rising from the pair of shadows than it is to see anything else. Maybe it's better that way. "About Kira, about why you're out here. I don't care if I'll hate it."