[ While it's a small favor to not have to play tutor in such a state, it doesn't save him from needing to explain himself. Simply allowing words to spill out of him, lamentations and wistfulness alike, was only ever going to lead him into a storm drain of revealing too much, too soon. He doesn't really like the vulnerability, steels himself to her question even as she asks it. But then, what else could his plea have invited except curiosity, its open-endedness not so much deliberate as simply how things are here.

One, rough hand reaches up to rub his unscarred cheek. His answer, when it comes, is thoughtful, wanting to be just as understood as everything else he's been saying. His body language sort of says otherwise, one, large arm draping around a knee as if to shield himself. ]

Sort of. Plenty of people around, obviously, but you have to learn to make concessions. About the Game. About yourself.

[ A particularly humiliating encounter, from not all too long ago, digs his heels into the sand. ]

You can find people to play with wherever. Using the term loosely, obviously. But it's not easy to find people playing the same way as you might. Lots of...necessary things happen.

[ It's the most delicate way he can think to put it, particularly in trying to save a little face. He doesn't know what she might already know about this place, would prefer not to have to be the one to educate her on it, but also isn't going to lie to anyone about what kinds of expectations get set with or without one's total consent on them. ]

It'll make more sense once you get assigned a Suit. Although I think we're all just sort of grasping at straws about what those mean, too.