He hadn't expected her to express this kind of emotion. If she was watching closely, she might have seen the way his eyes shifted up to hers, as if looking for something there. Finding nothing, his gaze rested on the table between them, without truly focusing.

"Months. I cannot say how long exactly - he was marked down as missing in action not long before the end of the siege, so it would have been four months at the least." He couldn't say how much time Hayato had spent lost and wandering. It weighed on him, felt like a failure, the fact that even a photographer would have been taken captive and put through... well. On top of that, there were too many relatives and friends of his own whose bodies had not been found. Was it really any kindness to hope they might be alive, if it would mean they were in Gigas' hands?

"How long does the... procedure take?"