[After everything he'd told her so far, everything he'd shown her via communion, or his shard, and she still didn't understand? He feels a slight flicker of panic that, for once, he has to actually explain himself, that his usual rebuffs and deflections through half-answers aren't working. But if he tells her, it might damage whatever they've built irreparably.

Maybe it doesn't matter, when all this will end soon anyway. But still, that small hope, or fear, of what if it doesn't end--

He takes a deep breath, and meets her eye.]

I... I love you, Hayame. I guess I have for a while. That's the only way I can explain it.

[He already knows her response will be to rankle against it, to call him absurd and a fool and a liar and whatever else. Maybe she'll just laugh in his face and tell him never to talk to her again. He's prepared for any and all of those things, so he heads her off before she can, far more calmly than the spooked deer he actually feels like in communion.]

You don't have to feel the same. I'm just glad I could tell you, before... whatever comes next.