Hana recognizes that while she believes whole-heartedly that her perspective is correct, she nonetheless does not have the right to force her perspective onto another—especially since, in this case, it would be unhealthy for the cat. Asterios doesn’t understand this concept, but for once he is able to move past it without causing uproar. Notably, in this sequence Hana is wearing a cyan turtleneck and Asterios is wearing a magenta sweater, symbolizing that for now, they have chosen to accept each other’s perspectives.

Directly after Ignazio tells the readers that Hana and Asterios married, however—which should be an indication of oneness—Mazzucchelli places a full-page spread of Hana trying to recount a story of her and Asterios’s travels, only for her retelling to be rejected by Asterios. He proceeds to interrupt her at every turn to correct some minor detail he believes she has missed, effectively telling it in his own voice despite the fact that he had encouraged her to tell it to start with. 


Outside of the obvious rudeness inherent in Asterios’s remarks from a conversational standpoint, in order to fully interpret this scene it is important to realize that the style in which Mazzucchelli has drawn the speech bubbles is affecting the way in which the scene is read as well. Namely, in the scene in question Asterios’s comments are shown as visually butting into and overwhelming Hana’s explanation as the speech bubbles overlap. No other medium can accomplish an effect such as this.
Because of how the incident is drawn the reader sees Asterios’s comments as a physical barrier, turning the abstract idea of Asterios’s forceful perspective into a ‘concrete’ object.

Asterios bulldozing over Hana’s opinion, unfortunately, continues to be a problem throughout their marriage. His tendency to obsess over small details and rely on his unusually good memory—Ignazio notes that he memorized practically everything he read as a child—make it difficult for him to admit, or even believe, that he might be wrong. To demonstrate the results of this fatal flaw, Mazzucchelli presents a montage of six two-panel scenes wherein, over the course of the two-page spread, Asterios dismisses Hana’s memory, culinary skills, intuition, sense of direction, and opinion as an art critic. Each time Asterios is proved to be in the wrong, though he acknowledges his fault only once. For the other four occasions, he simply plays the incident off.  

The last two panels in the set show the detrimental effects of Asterios’s thoughtless chipping away at Hana’s already-low self-esteem.
Asterios has no answer. He has forced his opinion on her repeatedly, and never given her own opinion the time of day. Hana, whose name is the Japanese word for “flower”, has been left out of the spotlight for too long, and is starting to wilt.

While Asterios insists on specific facts and correctness, he often misses key details because of his refusal to see the perspectives of others. When Hana introduces Asterios to composer Kalvin Kohoutek, instead of listening to the artist’s theory Asterios promptly begins to disparage it—despite the fact that Asterios cannot even read sheet music, let alone understand complex musical theory. This refusal to listen is particularly ironic, as Kalvin’s entire theory is based on the value of being able to pay attention to multiple things concurrently.  
