She doesn't—can't—say anything. It's not the abandoned name, but what he says about her that has Ruka's attention shooting up, expression open wide with surprise, uncertain shock. Her? Her, Ruka, did something like that... on purpose?

Surprise hardens into disbelief, denial. It doesn't make any sense. No matter how bad things have gotten here, for all Ruka's big talk about wanting to stay dead, for all her evaluations of the worth of her life compared to another, for everything that says she finds no value in herself... she can't think of any suffering great enough that she'd take her own life.

Not as she is now, anyway, hollowed out by distance and loneliness from the people most important to her.

"... Why?"