Kousaka was taken aback. Now that she mentioned it, from the time they met until now, he’d hardly made eye contact with Sanagi. Their eyes had crossed paths for an instant numerous times, but maybe there was no moment that could really be called "eye contact.” Sanagi went on. “But that doesn’t mean I can just never go outside, or walk around with my eyes closed, right? I tried to see if there was anything I could do, and found out that relying on certain objects can lessen your symptoms. I tried a bunch of things, but… for some reason, the most effective thing wasn’t glasses or a face mask or a hat, but headphones.” “Ah…” Kousaka nodded with understanding. “So that’s why you always wore such big headphones?” “Yeah. Doesn’t make much sense to cover my ears because I’m scared of eye contact, huh.” Sanagi laughed self- derisively. “Nah.” Kousaka shook his head. “I think I get it.” He wasn’t lying. He knew all too well from his own experience just how illogical compulsions could be, and it wasn’t Kousaka’s first time hearing about scopophobia. In the process of reading through books about mysophobia, he acquired knowledge of other compulsive disorders whether he wanted to or not. He had read somewhere about people who couldn’t walk through crowds without headphones. And about people who were scared of people looking at them, yet