"I like it," he says. "Doesn't sound like anything we have where I come from."

He flips his Interface back to eye mode and hooks it on again. "This whole place isn't anything like where I come from," he continues, his voice absurdly thoughtful for such an obvious statement.

He braces his arms against his knees and looks up at those red eyes. "I said something to Koumyou once," he continues, "that I think... maybe you need to hear too? This place, this whole-- Voidtrecker thing, it's. It's an opportunity. It's an opportunity to be the man you want to be, not the one you had to be where you came from.

"Everything that held you back, every-- every choice that you had to make because all of the options were awful but at least that option was less awful than the others, every raw edge of shitty fucking reality that you-- that you had to develop a callus to protect yourself from, it--" He's running to the ends of his eloquence and his hands and arms move restlessly, flickering through meaningless gestures as he searches for the words to continue.

Then they open before him, catching his breath for an instant before they tumble out of him: "Those things don't have to bind you here."

Just like he doesn't have to be bound into the shape Valdana designed for him, here on the train.