Naegi stepped aside from the dryer as Asahina entered the laundry room, letting her get a look at it. She squinted in at the door, taking in the scratch marks where he'd tried to use the screwdriver and the dents where he'd kicked it. He flushed a little, realizing that he'd made kind of a mess of the machine.

"I think the button on my coat got tangled up in the door," he told her, bending down to pick up the screwdriver he'd dropped. "And I was trying to get it loose."

Asahina nodded. "I see – yeah, that looks like it, all right." She touched the door, looking a little wistful. "I used to have that problem all the time back when I ran track."

"Huh?" Naegi frowned. "There were buttons on your track suit?"

"No, it was the shoelaces for me," Asahina said. A small smile crossed her face, the first one he'd seen on her in a while. "They got all tangled up, just like your button did. When something twists around the latch inside, it can't move right. Mom used to get so mad whenever I tried to clean my shoes and she couldn't get into her machines."

"Do you know how to fix it?" Naegi asked, offering her the screwdriver.

She nodded. "Yes, but not with that. It's too clunky – it'll just make everything worse. No, you need to get that button off, first, and – oh!" She snapped her fingers. "I've got it – hang on, okay?"

And with that, she rushed out of the room again. Naegi looked after her doubtfully, wondering if she'd expected him to follow her. But she was only gone a few moments, quickly returning with her small sewing kit in hand.

"Here!" She cracked the kit open and pulled out a thin seam ripper. "This should help get it untangled. It'll probably take the button off, too, though – sorry."

"That's fine – as long as it gets it out of there," Naegi said. "I can always put it back on later."

Asahina gave him a surprised look over her shoulder as she knelt in front of the dryer door. "Don't tell me you can sew!"

"Well – not a lot or anything," Naegi said, blinking. "But I know the basic idea. My mom kept trying to teach my little sister to sew, and I always seemed to get roped into it whenever she did."

"Can you fix torn clothes?" Asahina asked, brightening. "Because my jacket got all sliced up this morning, and I really wasn't sure what I was going to do with it!"

"Uh – I guess I could try," Naegi said slowly. He wasn't entirely sure he could fix clothes – but he didn't really want to disappoint Asahina, either, not now that she was finally warming up to him again. "I mean, I was going to try to fix up my hoodie, too, if I could figure out how."

"Then do you want to use my sewing kit while I work on this?" Asahina asked, nodding over at the kit she'd left on the table. "You can use it for your clothes, too."

"All right," Naegi said. "I'll try."

"Trust me, it'll be better than anything I could do," Asahina said, shrugging off her jacket and handing it over to him. "I can't sew at all – the thread tangles up as soon as I touch it."

Naegi frowned as he went over to the table. Now that Asahina's jacket was off, he could see her bare arms for the first time that day. He hadn't realized before, since her jacket had such long sleeves, but one of her forearms was wrapped with what looked like fresh bandages. He hoped it didn't annoy her, but if she'd been hurt, he had to ask.

"Is your arm okay? Should you be resting it or something?"

"Huh?" Asahina looked down at her arm, and her expression darkened. "Oh – that. It's fine – it's not deep or anything. I just wrapped it up to keep it clean until it heals."

Naegi looked down at her jacket, and he could see that the cut along the sleeve exactly matched the place where her arm was bandaged. It didn't look like a tear, either – it looked like a very even, smooth slice, like it had been done with some kind of blade. "What happened?"

Asahina scowled. "The genocider decided she didn't like what I was saying."

"Oh." The cut definitely could have come from the scissors Jill was always waving around. "I'm glad you're all right, then."

"Me, too. I guess it could have been a lot worse." Asahina turned back to the dryer.

Naegi sighed. That hadn't gone as well as he'd hoped it might. Maybe he shouldn't have brought up the injury after all. But at least Asahina was talking to him again – that had to be progress, didn't it?

He leaned over to pick up the sewing kit, which had apparently been unopened until Asahina brought it here. It had a small pair of scissors, a thimble, four colors of thread, and a neat row of six needles. He slid one needle out of its holster, picking the red thread as the closest match to Asahina's jacket.

He'd never really tried to sew anything as complicated as fixing a tear in the middle of a sleeve, but he supposed it couldn't be much different from fixing a broken hem or reattaching a button. He turned the sleeve inside out and tried to remember everything his mom had laughingly told him and his sister.

He was just tying off the knot at the end when Asahina stepped back from the dryer, pulling the door open with a flourish. "Hah – got it! I knew I could."

Naegi smiled at her. "Thank you! I was afraid I'd never get it open."

"No problem." Asahina looked over his shoulder at her jacket. "It looks like I should be the one thanking you."

Naegi grimaced down at the jacket as he handed it back to her. Even with the stitches on the inside, the repair was glaringly obvious. "You don't have to thank me – it's pretty messy."

"But it'll hold together." Asahina put the jacket back on, smiling when the stitches stayed firmly in place as she slid the sleeve over her wrist. "That's so much better than I could do." She looked over at his hoodie. "Have you done yours?"

"Not yet." Naegi picked up his hoodie, then examined the thread colors. The tiny kit didn't have any green thread – just white, black, red, and brown. The brown thread looked like the closest match, so he went ahead with that one. The tear in his hoodie was much less tidy than the scissor cuts in Asahina's jacket, and the fluffy fabric of the hoodie resisted his attempts at stitching much more.

"You know, you're being much nicer than I would be, in your shoes."

Naegi looked up at Asahina with a start. She was tracing the stitches in her jacket with a pensive look on her face. "What do you mean?" he asked.

"You know – the sewing, the talking." Asahina gestured vaguely around the laundry room. "You could have gotten mad and yelled at me or told me to go away, but you didn't."

"I don't want you to go away," Naegi said, puzzled. "And I don't really want to yell at you, either. I never wanted any of that." He hesitated, but this was probably as good of an opening as he was ever going to get. "I want to talk to you, if you'll listen."

"I guess I haven't been doing much of that lately, have I?" Asahina heaved a sigh. "All right, then. Let's talk."