This 'talking seriously' thing was a bit foreign to him, so it took him a moment longer to form the words.

"I heard it... The Heroes are brought here, and sacrificed..." he paused a moment, thinking of the 'other' Fukutomi, "and the two-thousand year cycle has still continued so many times." He thought of the strange clock that the man had shown with the year. He still couldn't process it.

"... What... what could happen differently this time? Aren't we already caught? You said... our souls could be in two places, but I want to return..."

Return. Escape here. Get to the end of this story already. Go home. It chaffed. Being a warrior was exciting like nothing he'd experienced before, but in the end... he was just a kid for whom wars were too large but the path up a mountainside was just right.