[Kyle's seen you like that before. The way you were last night.]

[Yes.]

Take could not interpret the expression which crossed Okada's face at these words; it was complicated, and deeply conflicted, as if he was being offered what he wanted, but now the enormity of that offer was made apparent to him.

[It's a contradiction.]

[What?]

[That you can be like that with Kyle and still fight the way you do, that you can crash like that and still be the man who tied me up.]

[And? I can't believe you, of all people, have difficulties with accepting contradictions in one person.]

[I don't have difficulties in accepting it. I just don't like it.]

[To answer your question, yes, it's a contradiction. But without it, I wouldn't be able to be as good as I am. Those moments where I doubt myself, where I need something or someone outside of me to help me, Kyle's there. And it restores me to myself, makes me able to start again, keep going.]

For a moment, there was a look of such bitter jealousy on Okada's face that it took him aback.

[Did you not feel it after our scene? I felt it.]

[Until I kicked you out.]

[Forget about that. I felt it. It gives me so much. And all I wanted to do was give you that same feeling.]

[Like everything else, Takeshita, you've made this so much harder.]

[Good.]

Okada shifted and turned on his side, facing Takeshita. Take made no attempt to disguise that he was looking at the other man's features, enjoying be able to see details he had not noticed before, the way his hair emerged from his temples, the line dug on his brow between his eyes.

[This bratting thing,] Okada used the English word. [Do you like it?]

Take smiled faintly.

[Apparently.]

[What do you mean 'apparently'?]

[I mean, because Kyle does it and so do you. In different ways though, and to different degrees.]

[If you like it, that means you don't want me to stop doing it.]

Take considered.

[No.]

[And the aim is not to make me stop? It's not about taming it out of me?]

[Okada, please don't insult me, why would I be interested in a neutered version of you? I can't imagine you without that part of you.]

[You're saying you want me to do it, to continue.]

[Yes. Go all in on it, be as much of a brat as you want to be.]

[But it means I would be similar to Kyle.]

[Oh, that isn't possible, the way you act like a brat and the way Kyle does are two very different things.]

[I assume that was intended to be reassuring.]

There was no sting to his comment, and Take even imagined he glimpsed a warmth to his words.