[The gentle touch only succeeds in making more tears form. Utena grasps Mami's hands almost desperately (Warm, she thinks, in a moment of anxious panic. Her hands are still warm.). She's trembling - stripped of her bravery and cheer, she's little more than a child now, the little girl left behind when her parents died, who climbed into a coffin and waited to die herself.]

Mami...you don't have to do this for me. [Her voice cracks again; she wipes clumsily at her eyes with the back of her sleeve.] There has to be another way...we can find it together.

[It's said in a small voice. She fishes for the usual warmth and cheer found so often in her voice, and the feeling slips through her fingers like water.] If you just...if we had a little more time, I know we could.