They did not answer the letter that night.
That was Haruto’s decision, and for once Rei did not argue.
The first danger was never the paper. It was the first impulse after reading it.
Burn it.
Hide it.
Reply too quickly.
Reply too formally.
Pretend it had not mattered.
All of those were doors, and the Mikage household had become far too educated in the cost of opening doors just because someone else had knocked.
So the letter was placed inside a plain folder and left on the low table in the family room, not hidden, not displayed, not treated like a curse object or a sacred relic. Sayuri put a tea cup beside it, empty, as if the page were only another guest waiting to be dealt with in the morning. Haruto sealed the room lightly before bed, more out of habit than panic. Rei noticed the restraint.
No layered privacy cage.
No emergency wards.
No frantic family council.
Just enough protection to say this mattered, and not enough to tell the house it mattered too much.
That, Rei thought, was probably the first answer.
In the morning, the letter was still there.
Sunlight crossed the paper at an angle, catching the rough strokes of Satoru Gojo’s handwriting and making the whole thing look even less official than it had the night before.
To weird support kid,
I heard there was a room that kept knocking after it was supposed to be clear.
That is creepy.
Also your teacher is still annoying.
Tell your mother I did not stare while writing this.
Satoru Gojo
Rei read it once while standing.
Then sat down and read it again.
Sayuri watched him over the rim of her tea cup.
Haruto watched the letter instead.
That was very Haruto. People lied with faces. Paper lied with routes.
After a long moment, Haruto said “It came through a side dispatch”
Rei looked up.
“Not Gojo formal channel?”
“No”
“Did they hide it?”
Haruto’s mouth tightened slightly.
“That is the problem. They did not hide it well enough for secrecy, and they did not mark it well enough for formality”
Sayuri set her cup down.
“So either a child was allowed to be a child badly, or an adult wanted the badness to be noticed”
Haruto glanced at her.
“That is one way to put it”
“It is the useful way”
Rei looked back at the letter.
The handwriting was too large in places, too impatient in others. The final line, Satoru Gojo, looked like someone had written his own name because he was tired of adults wrapping it in silk before handing it back to him.
“He did not write Gojo-sama”
“No” Sayuri said
“He wrote Satoru Gojo”
“Yes”
Rei touched the edge of the folder, not the page itself.
“Then if I answer too formally, I am answering the adults around him”
Haruto’s gaze lifted.
“And if you answer too casually, you invite him closer”
Rei nodded.
“I know”
“Do you?”
“No”
That earned the smallest change in Haruto’s expression. Not approval. Not amusement. Recognition, maybe.
Sayuri leaned back a little.
“Good. Then we can start from there”
Rei looked at her.
“From not knowing?”
“From admitting the letter is not only a threat”
Haruto did not disagree.
That was interesting.
Sayuri continued, quieter now.
“He mentioned the room first. Not your cursed energy. Not the demonstration. Not the fact that he looked at you. The room”
Rei’s fingers curled in his lap.
“He heard the plain sentence”
“Or something close to it” Haruto said
“Someone told him”
“Yes”
“Or he asked”
“Also possible”
Rei did not like that possibility less. He only disliked it differently.
“If someone told him, the letter might be a route back to us. If he asked, then he chose the question”
Sayuri smiled faintly, but there was no humor in it.
“And if both are true, which is usually how the world avoids being simple?”
“Then the answer has to survive both”
Haruto nodded once.
“Exactly”
The room fell quiet.
Rei could feel the three of them standing around the same problem from different sides. Haruto saw the delivery, the channels, the future file. Sayuri saw the manners, the insult, the child hiding inside deliberate rudeness. Rei saw the System warning still sitting in memory.
Do not let adults answer first.
He had not told them that line yet.
He did now.
“The System said I should not let adults answer first”
Sayuri’s face changed, only a little.
Haruto’s did not.
“What do you think?” Haruto asked
Rei expected more questions. About the System. About whether it had said anything else. About whether it was guiding him or using him. Instead Haruto asked for his judgment first, and that made the answer harder.
“I think it is right”
“Why?”
“Because if you answer, the letter becomes a family matter. If I answer with your words, he will notice. If I do not answer, other people can decide what the silence means”
Sayuri tapped one finger lightly against her cup.
“And if you answer with your own words?”
“Then I make a mistake myself”
Haruto looked at him.
“That sounded almost like bitterness”
Rei looked down.
“It is not. I think I prefer my own mistake to a perfect answer that proves someone else is holding the brush”
Sayuri’s expression softened.
For a moment, she looked as if she wanted to reach for him.
She did not.
That restraint mattered too.
“Then write a bad first draft” she said
Rei blinked.
“A bad one?”
“Terrible, if possible”
Haruto looked at her.
“There is no need to encourage him”
“There is every need. A first draft that tries to be correct usually belongs to fear”
Rei looked between them.
“You want me to write it before we decide what it should be?”
“I want you to write what your hand tries to write before your head turns it into a report”
Haruto was silent for a moment.
Then, reluctantly, he said “Do it”
Rei pulled the blank page closer.
The brush felt heavier than it should have.
For several seconds, nothing came.
Then he wrote.
Gojo-san,
The room was creepy.
Moriyama-sensei is annoying because she notices things people do not want noticed.
My mother says not staring while writing is better than staring, but still suspicious.
Rei Mikage
P.S. Weird weird is not a real category.
He set the brush down.
His pulse had become embarrassingly loud in his ears.
Haruto read the draft.
Sayuri read it over his shoulder.
Neither spoke immediately.
That was not comforting.
Finally, Haruto pointed at the second line.
“Too small”
Rei frowned.
“The room was creepy?”
“Yes. It answers him, but it avoids why his line mattered”
Sayuri nodded.
“It sounds like you are trying not to touch the report”
“I am trying not to touch the report”
“Of course. That is why it shows”
Rei grimaced.
Haruto pointed to Moriyama’s line.
“This is too generous”
“To Moriyama-sensei?”
“To Gojo. You are explaining her to him as if you want him to understand her correctly”
Rei opened his mouth.
Closed it.
That was exactly what he had done.
Sayuri was watching him carefully now.
“You do not need to raise him, Rei”
The words were soft enough to hurt.
He looked down.
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“I know”
“No” she said, not unkindly “You know it as a fact. You do not know it as a habit yet”
Haruto folded his hands in his sleeves.
“The Gojo heir may be lonely. He may be watched badly. He may be more child than weapon when he writes letters like this. None of that makes him your responsibility”
Rei stared at the draft until the ink seemed too dark.
“I was not trying to make him my responsibility”
Sayuri’s voice stayed gentle.
“I know”
That was worse than being corrected.
Rei exhaled slowly.
The letter had felt simple when he first read it. Absurd, dangerous, childish, direct. Now it had become a mirror he did not like. He had seen Gojo’s cage and immediately started wondering how not to make it worse, as if understanding a cage gave him any right to stand near the lock.
“What should I do then?”
Haruto answered first.
“Answer the letter, not the loneliness behind it”
Sayuri looked at him.
“That was well said”
Haruto seemed mildly suspicious of the compliment.
“It was necessary”
Rei almost smiled.
Almost.
Then Sayuri pulled the page closer and tapped the P.S.
“This part stays”
Haruto sighed.
“Sayuri”
“It sounds like him”
“It sounds reckless”
“Those overlap more often than you like”
Rei looked at the P.S.
It was childish. A little rude. Defensive without begging to be left alone. It answered Gojo’s weird weird without treating the phrase like a diagnosis, a threat, or a reportable anomaly.
“If I remove it, the whole letter becomes cleaner”
Haruto looked at him sharply.
Rei continued.
“And that is the thing he wrote about. The room. The sentence. Adults making it cleaner”
Sayuri’s eyes warmed.
Haruto looked deeply unhappy that the argument was good.
“Then the P.S. stays” he said
Rei blinked.
“Really?”
“Do not make me repeat it”
Sayuri smiled into her tea.
“Very gracious”
Haruto ignored her.
The second draft came slower.
Not because Rei knew less.
Because he was trying to leave more room inside the words.
Gojo-san,
The room was creepy.
It became worse when adults tried to make the sentence cleaner.
Moriyama-sensei is annoying on purpose. I think she would dislike people noticing only now.
My mother says not staring while writing is basic manners, but she accepts the effort.
Rei Mikage
P.S. Weird weird is not a real category.
Sayuri hummed softly.
“Closer”
Haruto pointed at real
“Technical” Rei said before his father could speak
Haruto paused.
“What?”
“He called me weird weird. If I say it is not a real category, he can say he made it one. If I say it is not a technical category, then it sounds like a field note argument”
Sayuri’s mouth twitched.
“He will absolutely argue either way”
“Yes, but technical is funnier”
Haruto closed his eyes briefly.
“We are not choosing words by which one makes Satoru Gojo laugh”
Rei and Sayuri both said nothing.
Haruto opened his eyes.
“No”
Sayuri looked at him.
“He already laughed once. It lowered the room’s pressure”
“It also made him remember Rei”
“He already remembered Rei”
“That is not a defense”
“It is the situation”
Haruto rubbed the bridge of his nose.
Rei waited.
Sayuri waited with visible patience, which was somehow more aggressive than impatience.
Finally Haruto said “Technical stays”
Sayuri smiled.
Rei wisely did not.
They changed one more line.
Haruto disliked adults tried to make the sentence cleaner because it sounded accusatory enough to make a reader ask which adults.
Sayuri disliked removing adults because the whole point was that children had not softened the sentence.
Rei found the middle.
It was worse before adults made the sentence cleaner.
Haruto accepted it.
Sayuri accepted it.
Rei did not love it, but it held.
That was enough.
The final letter read:
Gojo-san,
The room was creepy.
It was worse before adults made the sentence cleaner.
Moriyama-sensei is annoying on purpose. I think she would be offended if people only noticed now.
My mother says not staring while writing is basic manners, but she accepts the effort.
Rei Mikage
P.S. Weird weird is not a technical category.
When the ink dried, no one moved to seal it immediately.
Rei looked at the page and felt strangely exposed by how little it said.
Haruto seemed to understand.
“A short letter is not automatically a small one”
Rei nodded.
Sayuri folded the paper herself. No formal seal. No heavy charm. Only a household fold that would show if someone opened it carelessly, and ink chosen to blur under rough cursed energy handling.
Manners as protection.
Paper as warning.
Not enough.
Something.
Before she placed it in the dispatch sleeve, she looked at Rei.
“Last chance to remove the P.S.”
Haruto muttered “Please consider it”
Rei looked at the final line.
Then shook his head.
“If he can call me weird weird, I can argue categories”
Sayuri sealed the sleeve.
“Fair”
Haruto looked toward the ceiling.
“This is how disasters become correspondence”
Rei watched the letter leave the room in Sayuri’s hands.
His stomach twisted, but not in the same way as before.
The answer was not safe.
It was not clean.
It was not fully his alone, either. Haruto’s caution shaped it. Sayuri’s manners sharpened it. Rei’s own hand made it breathe.
Maybe that was the best they could do.
Maybe that was all a family answer was supposed to be.
At preliminary instruction the next morning, Akiha noticed before he spoke.
“You sent it”
Rei nearly dropped his brush.
“How do you do that?”
“You looked like someone waiting for paper to explode”
“That is too specific”
“It is accurate”
Daigo leaned over from the next table.
“What paper?”
Akiha looked at him.
“Your posture report”
Daigo recoiled.
“My what?”
Rei said “It is very severe”
Daigo’s eyes narrowed.
“You are lying”
Akiha said “Mostly”
“Mostly?”
Tomonari, arriving with a stack of practice slips, paused.
“Is this about the Gojo letter?”
Daigo turned so fast he nearly hit the table.
“The what?”
Rei closed his eyes.
Akiha whispered “Too late”
Tomonari looked at Daigo.
“You did not know?”
“No, I did not know. Why does everyone always know things near me?”
Akiha said “Because you enter conversations loudly after they begin”
Daigo pointed at Rei.
“Gojo wrote you?”
Rei looked around the hall.
Several children were now very interested in dust.
Moriyama was at the front table and had absolutely heard.
Excellent.
Rei chose the simplest shape.
“He wrote about the school report”
Daigo’s anger changed.
Not vanished.
Changed.
“The knocking line?”
“Yes”
“He heard about that?”
“Yes”
Daigo stared.
Then looked uncomfortable.
“Why?”
Rei shook his head.
“I do not know”
Daigo’s mouth opened, probably to accuse him of lying.
Then he remembered something.
The conversation in the courtyard.
Do not carry Gojo rumors unless you know who wants me to hear them.
He shut his mouth.
Progress looked strange on him.
Tomonari set the practice slips down.
“Did you answer?”
“Yes”
Daigo stared again.
“You answered Gojo”
Akiha said “He was supposed to ignore the Gojo heir writing directly to him?”
Daigo scowled.
“No, but when you say it like that, it sounds impossible to complain properly”
“It is still possible” Tomonari said “Just inefficient”
Rei winced.
Akiha noticed.
Daigo noticed Akiha noticing.
“Why does that word bother you now?”
“It has bad associations” Rei said
“With what?”
“Everything”
Daigo considered that.
“Fair”
Moriyama’s pointer struck the front table.
“If the Gojo correspondence society has finished convening, perhaps we can begin”
Daigo muttered “You knew too?”
Moriyama looked at him.
“Zenin. My curse is employment. Of course I knew”
Akiha actually laughed.
Tomonari lowered his gaze.
Rei wanted to disappear into the floor.
The floor did not cooperate.
Moriyama’s drill that day was letter reconstruction.
Because she was cruel.
She gave each group a set of copied message fragments from fictional clan correspondence and asked them to determine what was said, what was meant, what was avoided, and what the sender hoped the reader would do.
Daigo looked personally attacked.
Rei did not know whether Moriyama designed the exercise overnight or had been waiting years for an excuse to inflict it on someone.
Akiha was excellent.
Naturally.
Tomonari was also excellent, but in a different way. He tracked formal omissions and hierarchy signaling. Akiha tracked emotional pressure and family-coded phrases. Rei tracked route intention and possible witness handling. Daigo tracked insults.
This turned out to be surprisingly useful.
“That line is not respectful” Daigo said, pointing at one fragment.
Tomonari frowned.
“It uses proper honorifics”
“That is why it is insulting”
Akiha leaned closer.
“He is right”
Daigo looked startled.
Then suspicious.
“Do not say it like that”
Rei looked at the fragment.
Daigo was right.
The line used proper respect so exactly that it became mockery. A child from a family of pride and backhanded hierarchy recognized the shape faster than all of them.
Moriyama appeared behind them.
“Why is Zenin right?”
Daigo muttered “You could sound less surprised”
Moriyama ignored him.
Rei answered “The respect is too exact for the relationship. It creates distance where closeness should be assumed”
Akiha added “It makes the recipient either accept being pushed away or complain and look unreasonable”
Tomonari nodded slowly.
“A formal insult that punishes acknowledgment”
Moriyama looked at Daigo.
“And how did you identify it?”
Daigo hesitated.
The room quieted around the question.
Rei could almost see the answer crossing Daigo’s face.
Because he had heard it at home.
Because relatives used politeness like a knife.
Because exact respect could become a wall someone else made you thank them for building.
Daigo looked down.
“It sounded familiar”
Moriyama’s face did not soften.
That would have ruined it.
She only said “Correct”
Daigo’s shoulders shifted.
Not relief.
Something close.
The drill continued.
By the end, the cohort had produced the best reconstruction in the room.
Not because Rei carried it.
Because each of them read a different kind of wound.
Moriyama collected their slate.
“Annoyingly competent”
Daigo looked pleased before he could stop himself.
Akiha looked smug without showing teeth.
Tomonari looked satisfied in the legally permitted amount.
Rei wrote formal insult that punishes acknowledgment in his mental notebook and decided Daigo was becoming inconveniently useful.
That was different from liking him.
Probably.
The reply from Tokyo arrived four days later.
This time, Haruto did not read it seven times.
He read it once.
Then handed it to Rei with the expression of a man who had decided that fate had become too undignified to negotiate with.
Sayuri leaned closer before Rei unfolded it.
“Should I prepare tea?”
Haruto said “Stronger than tea”
Rei opened the letter.
The handwriting was worse than before.
That seemed deliberate.
To category-lazy support kid,
Weird weird is a technical category if I say it is.
Your teacher is annoying on purpose because she is old. Do not tell her I said that unless it makes her more annoying.
Why did adults make the sentence cleaner?
Satoru Gojo
P.S. I stared at the letter after writing it. That probably does not count.
Rei stared.
Sayuri made a small sound.
Haruto covered his eyes with one hand.
“It got worse” he said
Rei read the second line again.
Why did adults make the sentence cleaner?
There it was.
Not the joke.
Not Moriyama.
Not the mother line.
The question.
Gojo had chosen the question.
Sayuri stopped smiling.
Haruto lowered his hand.
The room changed.
Rei felt the letter in his fingers as if the paper had gained weight.
Not because Gojo asked something impossible.
Because the answer would teach him what kind of world kept children like them useful, contained, polished, and alone.
Rei looked at his parents.
“I should answer that honestly”
Haruto’s voice was quiet.
“Yes”
Sayuri sat down beside him.
“Not completely”
“No”
“But honestly”
“Yes”
They did not answer that night.
That, too, was a choice.
Rei opened the System after returning to his room.
[Direct Correspondence Thread updated]
Satoru Gojo has identified record alteration as meaningful.
Risk:
- increased ideological contact
- increased personal curiosity
- possible adult interception relevance
- possible future trust pathway
Opportunity:
- non-administrative communication route
- shared skepticism toward adult framing
- possibility of reducing adult control over connection
Recommendation:
Answer the question, not the power.
Rei sat with the message for a long time.
Answer the question, not the power.
That was almost wise.
Annoying.
But wise.
He opened his notebook.
Gojo replied.
He asked why adults made the sentence cleaner.
This is the first real question.
Not about me.
Not about weirdness.
About records.
Need answer in a way a child can carry.
Need not make him responsible for everything he sees.
Need not lie.
He paused.
Then added:
Maybe the first honest route between us is not cursed energy.
Maybe it is annoyance at adults ruining sentences.
That sounded ridiculous.
It was also true.
He kept it.
The next day, Rei asked Moriyama what she would say if a child asked why adults made a sentence cleaner.
Moriyama looked at him for a full five seconds.
Then said “Which child?”
Rei did not answer.
She sighed.
“Of course”
They stood alone in the training hall after class. Afternoon light dragged long shadows over the floor. Outside, Daigo and Akiha were arguing about whether Daigo’s handwriting counted as a cursed phenomenon. Tomonari was pretending not to listen and failing with dignity.
Moriyama leaned against the front table.
“Adults clean sentences for many reasons. Fear. Laziness. Habit. Politics. Mercy. Cowardice. Sometimes because raw truth makes people freeze when they need to move. Sometimes because clean words let everyone pretend movement happened”
Rei listened.
“What should I tell him?”
Moriyama’s eyes narrowed.
“What do you want to tell him?”
“That they changed the sentence because plain words made it harder to ignore the children”
“Then say that”
“That is dangerous”
“Yes”
“He is Gojo”
“Yes”
“He may do something with it”
“Yes”
Rei looked down.
Moriyama’s voice became less sharp.
“Mikage. You cannot raise another child through letters because adults failed to raise him honestly”
The words hit.
He looked up.
She continued “Answer the question. Do not adopt the loneliness behind it”
Rei had no immediate defense.
None worth using.
Moriyama looked toward the courtyard.
“He is dangerous. He is also a child. Both facts are true. Keep both. If you drop either one, you will answer badly”
Rei nodded slowly.
“Yes, Moriyama-sensei”
She looked at him.
“And do not tell him I am old”
“I was not planning to”
“Plan harder”
That almost made him smile.
He managed not to.
Mostly.
At home, the second reply took less time.
Not because it mattered less.
Because the question had a center.
Rei wrote first.
Haruto and Sayuri watched.
Gojo-san,
Adults made the sentence cleaner because clean words are easier to file and harder to feel.
The plain sentence made people remember there were children in the room before the curse. The clean sentence made it sound like the wall was the problem.
Sometimes adults clean sentences because they are trying to be useful.
Sometimes they clean them because the dirty sentence points at someone.
I do not know which happened here.
Rei Mikage
P.S. Staring at the letter after writing it counts less, but my mother says it still sounds suspicious.
Haruto read it.
Sayuri read it.
No one spoke for a while.
Then Haruto said “This is dangerous”
Rei nodded.
“Yes”
Sayuri touched the line the wall was the problem
“Keep this”
Haruto looked at her.
“I agree”
That surprised Rei more than disagreement would have.
Haruto tapped the sentence about dirty words pointing at someone.
“This line may make him ask who”
“Yes”
“Do you want that?”
“No”
“Will he ask anyway?”
“Probably”
Sayuri leaned back.
“Then the line stays. Removing it would only make the answer cleaner for the same reason”
Haruto looked at her.
“You are enjoying the symmetry”
“I am respecting it”
“You are enjoying it”
“A little”
Rei looked at the letter.
“It is too serious”
Haruto said “Yes”
Sayuri said “The P.S. helps”
Haruto closed his eyes.
“I dislike that I agree”
They sent it the next morning.
Rei did not sleep well that night.
Not from fear of Gojo.
Not exactly.
From imagining a white-haired child somewhere in Tokyo reading the line clean words are easier to file and harder to feel and understanding too much, or too little, or exactly enough to become lonelier.
Moriyama was right.
He could not adopt the loneliness behind the question.
But refusing to see it would be another kind of clean sentence.
The System remained silent.
Good.
For once, Rei did not want a category.
The third letter did not arrive for twelve days.
During those twelve days, the cohort trained, argued, signed two minor reconstruction reports, survived one Oda restoration session involving water damage and a terrifying lecture on fungal arrogance, and watched Daigo slowly become the kind of person who asked who wanted him to repeat a rumor before repeating it.
This made him less convenient and much more annoying.
Akiha said improvement often had side effects.
Tomonari said this as if taking notes.
Rei privately agreed.
On the thirteenth day, no letter arrived.
Instead, a package did.
Small.
Wrapped badly.
No Gojo seal.
Inside was a cheap wooden stamp from an ordinary stationery shop.
The stamp had two characters carved unevenly into it.
Not official.
Not elegant.
Not useful for any real registry purpose.
The characters read:
Plain
Beneath it was a note.
For dirty sentences.
Do not show your teacher. She will make it homework.
Satoru
No Gojo.
No honorific.
Just Satoru.
Rei stared at the stamp.
Haruto stared at the stamp.
Sayuri stared at the stamp.
Then Sayuri laughed until she had to sit down.
Haruto looked toward the ceiling as if asking the household gods why they had abandoned him.
Rei picked up the stamp carefully.
It was badly carved.
The edges were uneven.
The wood was cheap.
The idea was dangerous.
The gesture was kind.
All of those facts existed at once.
The System opened.
[Direct Correspondence Thread updated]
Satoru Gojo has responded with symbolic object.
Classification:
Informal trust gesture
Record-integrity motif established
Risk:
high
Opportunity:
high
Warning:
Gift may become anchor, evidence, or route depending on handling.
Recommendation:
Do not discard.
Do not display.
Use intentionally.
Rei closed the interface.
He looked at the stamp in his palm.
Plain.
Not clean.
Not official.
Plain.
Sayuri wiped her eyes.
“Well” she said “at least he has taste in disasters”
Haruto said “That sentence makes no sense”
“It makes perfect sense”
“It does not”
“It will when you stop suffering”
“I have no plan to stop”
Rei turned the stamp over.
A child in Tokyo who saw too much had sent a child in Kyoto who hid too much a tool for marking sentences that refused to hide people.
It was ridiculous.
It was dangerous.
It was probably the first gift Rei had ever received from someone outside his family and cohort who had no idea what he truly was and still, somehow, had reached something real.
He placed it beside his notebook that night.
He did not use it.
Not yet.
Some tools mattered more if the first use was chosen well.
He wrote:
Satoru sent a stamp.
Plain.
Not a report.
Not a file.
Not a rumor.
A gift.
Moriyama says not to adopt his loneliness.
Need remember.
But also:
He chose a dirty sentence over a clean one.
He made it funny because otherwise it would be too heavy.
Maybe that is a kind of survival too.
He paused.
Then added one final line.
The route is no longer only useful to adults.
That does not mean it is safe.
Outside, the estate settled around him.
Doors.
Rooms.
Thresholds.
Records.
People.
Somewhere in Tokyo, Satoru Gojo was probably being told what his attention meant by people who wanted to borrow it.
Somewhere in Kyoto, Rei Mikage hid a cheap wooden stamp beneath a floorboard beside a notebook of names, rooms, questions, and sentences adults had failed to clean completely.
For now, he did not know what to call that.
Friendship was too large.
Strategy was too small.
Danger was accurate but incomplete.
So Rei left it unclassified.
Some things, he was beginning to learn, deserved to remain alive longer than the category built to contain them.