"That's different, though," Rosella answered. "It's different when someone else is relying on me. If I get hurt on my own account, that's careless and it's one thing, but if someone else is going to get hurt because of me...I have to think of them, and not of myself, or of anything else, either."

And how much of her willpower and her optimism came from thinking of others, really? Wasn't that how she'd kept her hope alive through all her adventures? Wasn't that how she made it through all those awful curses? She sometimes joked about how someone in the City had to be an optimist to make up for all the others who weren't...but in a way, wasn't it the truth, too?

"I think...there are a lot of people in the City that I have to keep holding on for, in one way or another."