[She does notice when he closes his eyes. Doesn't automatically assume it's a tell, but registers that it could be. After all, he's done such a good job up until now keeping eye contact, sitting confidently in this space she's invaded. Why stop now? It could be nothing, or it could be something.]

[The question becomes irrelevant pretty soon, anyway. The story's wild, but not any wilder than anything that's happened to her, really. She's got the childish impulse to blurt them out — you think that's bad, wait until you get a load of this — but of course she doesn't. She isn't stupid.]

[Instead she watches him, head tipped to one side, and thinks.]

. . . Thanks.

[That's as close as she'll get to acknowledging that he gave up a lot, telling her this. It's more than she gives most people.]

I think it's important, I'm just trying to figure out how. I understand most of how he talks about hope, but not all of it. And the way he talked about you when he talked to me, he didn't sound mad. He just sounded . . . confused. About him and me, and you, I guess.

[Her brain provides a word: Junko. She stomps on it.]

. . . It does kind of sound like bullshit, though. The part about thinking people wouldn't believe you without proof. Everybody here's a fucking freak but Steve. Sounds like a way to avoid doing something you really don't want to do.

[Her tone is nonjudgmental. It doesn't really matter to her one way or another. It would matter to Komaeda, though — she's almost positive of that.]