Somehow, he manages to look more forbidding, as if at the news of Sparrow's Ren he forgot to play nice. "That's how he seems? Self-pitying?"

It's what he'd suspected, and worse news than he'd hoped. A stupid decision would be one thing; Akechi could understand that. But if that Ren just broke under pressure? That implies many things, not all of which he wants to look too closely at.