[It’s clear to Liem that Hayame is just as mystified as he is by the prospect of strange shard experiments, so rather than attempt to mull things over further at the moment, when neither of them have anything concrete to provide about the matter, he instead spends the moment gnawing another few small mouthfuls from his piece of bread. His appetite probably seems pathetic to a jinba who has been struggling to satiate cravings for large quantities of flesh for the past few weeks, but to be fair, he did just wake up from being dead. He’s still working on feeling back to normal.

Hayame is the one to break the silence. He looks up from the last of his slice, and after a moment he nods slightly in agreement.]

I don’t know what would happen if it were planted here, but… I don’t think it would be wise to find out.

[No one’s ever told Liem what happens to shard-bearers who suffer too greatly from discord, so it’s not clear to him if separating Manon’s shard from its bed of lesser shards might allow him to be reborn as a person instead of as a monster, but it seems likely that even if he were to be revived as a man, he would still be suffering from whatever symptoms had driven him to Alenroux in the first place.

But Hayame must have been considering this in the time he’d been here regenerating. He assumes she has some thoughts about it already.]

What would you like to do?