The answer is written just as the last one had been and he holds it up for her. "I need them to survive."

Which is true. He needs the words of others to keep himself alive, to keep breathing. He needs them like others need breath or food or water. He needs them to keep going.

"Do you mind?" he writes beneath the other words. It's a question he rarely poses to those he feeds on, choosing to rather pick indiscriminately, but this has stopped being more than random choosing and he knows that.

She has the right to decline him if she so wishes.