"And yet," Koumyou counters easily, as he puts out his half-smoked cigarette and tucks the rest of it back up his sleeve (he's never been a heavy smoker), "you can't let yourself face that I might be real. We're on a totally different world, in a totally different reality where trains fly through space and time, but the place we come from has made us who we are."

The older Sanzo stays on his side of the corner, folding his hands into his sleeves.

"Things that are too hard are brittle. I'm still figuring that out for myself, here in a reality where... love doesn't... always mean death," Koumyou has to pause after that line. It's still so hard for him, but he's still trying. Trying to use that word, to have a sliver of that most dangerous of four letter words: hope.

Hope, that 'love' doesn't spell 'doom'.

"And where the dead can walk, and talk, and smoke, and even guard a sutra."