"It was in the papers that I was involved with finding Sora. In a rather garbled way, but still. And one of the victims' families invited me to the memorial service."

"Oh."

"One of the others sent me a letter but the funeral was weeks ago, so even if they would have invited me it didn't come up."

"I don't think I read the papers; what did they even end up saying about it?"

"Republic City police were called to the location of the serial killer, deceased in a conflict with the Avatar, turned out to have been a bloodbender using pyrotechnic equipment, insert about new bloodbending information available on page six."

"So the usual procedures for ruling out bloodbending in criminal processing have been updated. People are nervous about that but it'll die down."

"Yeah."

"Yeah."

Vaguely awkward silence. Weird fruit smoothie.

"It's just... very different from how I think so I'm not sure what to make of it."

"Well... I think maybe you haven't gotten a good impression of what I've been thinking about for the last couple of weeks, because I've been avoiding you the whole time?"

"That could be it, yeah."

"Yeah."

"Do you want to tell me what you've been thinking?"

"...I'm not sure? Like... I don't not want to, exactly, maybe, but I don't... know what you want to hear?"

"I didn't ask for, like... recreational purposes."

"I, uh, what?"

"It's not about what I want to hear, I mean."

"...I haven't come up with a less hopelessly incomprehensible way to say the thing that's been bothering me than 'I understand your perspective but I don't understand your perspective'. Um, with the part I understand being - I get what factors and ingredients and experiences would cause the parts of your feelings on the whole subject that I can see, but I don't have a good understanding of their ratio. And I usually find other people's feelings-ratios bizarre but this feels more fundamental."