The man with the strange hat's polite demeanor at least soothes the mask-seller to the extent that he's not longer preparing himself to get his ass beaten on sight. He relaxes a fraction, letting his hands rest on the counter of his little hand-made booth instead of keeping them up in the air. "Your friend's the third person to change after buying one of my masks," he says mournfully. Shen Yuan looks up at hearing himself referred to and smiles at the mask seller before returning to his prior occupation of playing with the hem of Jin-ge's sleeve.

"I've also heard about it from the other people selling masks right now," he says. "It only happens to you Sleepers, but aside from that it seems pretty much random which masks cause a change. None of us did anything to cause it, we're not crazy or stupid enough to piss you people off. It's just --" he shrugs illustratively. "One of those crazy Trench things, I guess?"

He looks scared, but not shifty. More of a man worried about being punished for something he didn't even do than one trying to evade his just desserts, perhaps?