[MOMENTS before disaster. Ori doesn't seem wasted enough to lose either consciousness or her lunch just yet, so Manuela isn't worried about the gal pal proximity. She laughs self-deprecatingly and pats Ori's cheeks.]

Oh, honey, you don't want to be anything like me. I'm a total disgrace. [She can't even get a handle on her love life in a competition designed to do exactly that.]

All right... let me tell you something. Do you know that one of our students enrolled in Garreg Mach because I was there? We knew each other from the opera. When she told me that, I was floored. I mean, what a chance to get my act together and prove she was right! But I'm just as much a mess as ever.

[Her thumbs give Ori's cheeks a gentle little stroke. She sees some of Dorothea in her, actually...or more like the woman Dorothea could be in a few years if the world had been a kinder place.]

She doesn't even know this, but she's the one who inspired me. When I first heard her sing, I realized how much I wanted her to succeed. So I made it my goal to get her as close to the top as possible before I retired. [That's...probably what she'd like to see for Ori, too - for her to come out of this game on top of it.]