[Ryou doesn't respond to any of that for a while. It's not that he doesn't have responses, he's just...mildly taken aback by how much effort the Ring-Spirit is putting into this. Swan or not.

As far as he's concerned, this spirit never really cared very much for him at all, given the extremely cavalier treatment of Ryou's body. And uh...Ryou doesn't really believe too much of it has changed. He does still believe, however, that the Ring-Spirit has some level of interest in Ryou's welfare.

Care is perhaps...a strong word. Maybe a strong word he'd hate to hear said aloud and if Ryou was in any better a mood, he'd scoff. But he's not. And so after ruminating on those words a little, he just...responds as best he can.]

Worrying is tiring, but I can't just turn it off. As you so aptly put it, if I could stop worrying, then maybe I wouldn't have shattered my own soul to pieces. I would just accept the things I couldn't control.

[He seems to curl tighter into himself.]

But that's not how it works. And not planning for something doesn't make it any easier to swallow. This isn't a game I can just write off the parts of when I don't like them. DM-ing is about controlling the storyline and adapting to the players to continue a line of enrichment between both parties.

This...is not fun.