He flinches at her tone. "Um," he says faintly. "Yeah. He. ...Yeah. He tried." And it was agonizing to turn it down, with the memory of all his friends vanishing into smoke just moments behind him. It was maybe the hardest thing he's ever done, and he doesn't think he'd have ever recovered from it even if everything hadn't gone weird afterwards.

If he hadn't had to do it then, maybe he could have let Akechi die. He wonders about that sometimes.

What he's getting from all these interactions, also, is that he should just assume everyone knows his Akechi and can figure out from there what he did.