[It wouldn't take a sadist to understand what you're getting, out of this. But he does. He toys with an answer that puts what you really want out of reach, for a moment - ] It feels like belonging to your brother, Ritsuka.

[And then gives you a more satisfying one.] Like knowing that the one person who made everything about me make sense, for the first time in my life ... was *this close* to never picking me up in the first place.

[He's hiding a lot, with an answer like that. Justifications, specifics, memories - and the proud creature he was before he met Seimei, who had no interest in obeying a sacrifice. But you don't need any of it. You couldn't care less. You want his pain, and he's had people attempt to manipulate him with it often enough that he's relatively unthreatened by that. The squirming, alarmed, trying-to-get-away reaction that a normal person would have ... Nisei can't feel. You can tell he hurts, but it doesn't seem like he hurts more for showing it to you. Only a person who's faced the worst in himself head-on could tell you so dispassionately what he's feeling. As for Soubi, since you brought him up ...]

What's it like to own a fighter who's neurotic from having been abandoned?