"I'm not looking for therapy," Howard says defensively. The way people extend their ears always weirds him out. It's one thing for a friend to do, but a relative stranger? It makes him want to just pretend he's a normal kid from an average background, but then he'd eventually have to explain all the survivalist quirks, and it's hard to explain his eating habits without a context.

Howard tilts his heads and squints a bit, trying to both change the subject and put Cedric on the defense. "That's the second time you've mentioned having a life here. What happened to you back home?"