"Well, I could tell you that I found them all neatly boxed up and don't think he realized the significance at the time but obviously you would have every right to roll your eyes at me.

Do you want to look over my shoulder while I do a day of notes."

"Wouldn't that defeat the point, for you? The personal reflections are all redacted -"

"I could shoo you before I get to that part. Or not, if it would help, I will not keel over and turn into an infant in a hollow tree somewhere in the Pineapple Islands if somebody reads my personal reflections, Aydanci's seen some of them when there was a reason, if it will help that's a reason."

"It would help if I had Kib's permission which I do not."

"That doesn't even make sense. I'd be writing notes about today. If this is a hallucination then there do not exist any authentic Kib notes on this day we have just had here in this hallucination, let alone any personal reflection about them. And if it's not a hallucination who the fuck else would I be."

:"I'm fine with looking over your shoulder, I just don't want to read more from when we met."

"I am heroically biting my tongue on quips about how choice a couple of the installments would be."

"I wanted to get to the part where I confessed my feelings to you! But I don't think that's fair now that I suspect I'm reading these without the real Kib's permission."

"Is this actually your extrapolation about how I'd react to the idea of you having those notes given the premise that the fucking Enemy has them to pore over at his leisure, given that you'd want them -"

"Given that I am presumably going to be weaponized against you all at some point, or why take me alive at all -"

"If he needs you to know what happened when you confessed your feelings he could just let you remember it it is not like you weren't there."

"And if he needs me to be not just in love with you but wholly dependent on that for whatever semblance of sanity I'm managing, he could give me pages of notes like those."

"Okay."

"You could just tell me what happened I don't think that'd be as - addictive -"

"You didn't actually confess as such. I carelessly informed a whole ballroom that I was gay when I was trying to figure out why the dancing was gendered, you told me that was disgusting, I stormed out of the room insofar as I could storm before I had my grace ring. Findekáno had to bail you out."

",,,,if you are willing to convincingly insist that you're the real Kib and wouldn't mind, I would love to read those notes."

"I do not know how to convince you!"

"Assuming this is a hallucination and I'm supposed to somehow be used against you once the Enemy's ready and I'm being offered these notes, what do you want me to do?"

"By stipulation you're being dictionary attacked. You're not wrong that what you do to a dictionary attack is absolutely never ever produce the result no matter what, but the result is being usable to hurt me beyond by the already mission-fucking-accomplished mechanism demonstrated, the result is not having feelings. I assume. I can't think of a way for you knowing more about the story of Findekáno saving you from your conservative public image to leverage directly into usability as a weapon and I'm pretty creative."

"Then I'd like the notes.

And I'm sorry about hurting you. If there's an obvious avenue to stop I'd be delighted -"

"That's not a bit on you. That's all him. You're coping astonishingly well even perhaps especially if it's all faked."

"It is not about fault."

"I'm not even going to redact this one, I don't think it contains any economics digressions, you can come read it straight out of the book it's in if you want."

"Thank you. I -

 - I love Kib."

That gets, not quite a laugh, but an exhalation inclined in that direction. "If you want to call me Aly for a while to distinguish what you can be sure of from what you can't or something I won't mind."