"It was easy. It just meant never getting too close to anyone." It meant that she knew when her own grandmother's time was up, and the value of keeping a distance between herself and other people. Before it had meant nothing but pain and suffering anyway, even if she had made friends, developed crushes, they might have turned into Spectres, might have died abruptly. She needed people as much as anyone else, she just hadn't been granted the luxury of it, hadn't been allowed to fit people into her world view the way Cuthbert had.

"Can I have some more?" Wine, and she tipped her cup in hand to make her request clear. "And is it alright if I ask what it is, exactly, that Alain can do?" Of course it was a something. Nariko had felt it the moment she saw him and Kaine understood why. He wasn't Wrong or even unsettling, there was just a ... Something about him.