I don't know if I could tell if he came back... [He looked up at the sky, into the leaves of the tree] But I can feel it every day that he's gone.
[It sounded really pathetic, Smoke knew that, but it was true. There also wasn't really any way to sugar-coat it, nor any reason he felt obligated to. It was Cloud, someone who didn't judge on that sort of thing, and he was in a pretty piss-poor attitude already that day by virtue of being small. He was just very raw. The guilt over losing the toujinki didn't help that.]
Re: QL
[It sounded really pathetic, Smoke knew that, but it was true. There also wasn't really any way to sugar-coat it, nor any reason he felt obligated to. It was Cloud, someone who didn't judge on that sort of thing, and he was in a pretty piss-poor attitude already that day by virtue of being small. He was just very raw. The guilt over losing the toujinki didn't help that.]