Souji's smile doesn't exactly dim at Yamato's much more prosaic answer, but it does grow a bit softer. He recognizes the sensation, because it lies at the very core of his being, and it's the impulse to protect, to aid, to nurture. This strange odd bird in this white cage, his wings cut and replaced by IVs and sterile sheets, is someone Souji wants to make happy. He doesn't know why, and he suspects he really ought to be more alarmed by what the other young man is saying, but all he can feel is a strange kind of tenderness and... is it kinship? Is that what he's feeling? As if the two of them really are the same.

In any case he nods firmly, and he edges over his bandaged hand as well, to rest on top of Yamato's in a gesture of certainty, of promise. "When I get better-" And he believes it too, will keep believing it until the day when his lungs finally cannot hold anymore, when he's imprisoned within the red letters on the oxygen meter for good. He'll keep getting up and dancing, again and again, until that day. "-I promise I'll come visit you, okay? Being alone in a hospital is..." Terrifying. Painful. Cold. "...boring."

He hesitates slightly, but he's always been the kind of person to push his slim white fingers into cracks, widening them with steady determination and gentle words, as if nothing is so solid he won't try to break through. "Why can't you leave at all?"