Somehow Byrne suspected that Nabooru wasn't actually going to buy a jacket. Or else if she did, she would never wear it. He could be wrong, though, but he still said nothing about it. She already looked irritated enough, even if she was trying to hold it in.

"Like I said," he reminded her, beginning to walk off, "You aren't weak."

He doubted that would do anything to reassure her, but then did it even matter? If she was going to get that idea in her head and refuse to let it budge, that was her affair, not his. He was merely discarding an article of clothing he didn't fully need that day and giving it to someone who would, so he thought, appreciate it more.

But perhaps it was his own way of demeaning her, he realized, as he headed toward the forest. He hadn't intended to, but he did it somehow. He always had to prove that he was the strong one, that he could weather anything, that because he didn't need a jacket and she did, that he was stronger.

Just because Nabooru was weaker than him, though, didn't mean she was weak in general.