The position Sephiroth takes as Serph passes is just enough room to put Masamune to work if necessary without risk of hitting the other silver-haired man. It also gives him opportunity to observe, and wonder what happened to the changes he'd seen at a distance, now entirely absent.

Nothing lurks immediately below, but that didn't mean something wouldn't be out there; he remains listening and watching for signs of something hiding in the dark. "It is a story passed on to instruct against unchecked curiosity, disobedience to orders and its lethal consequences. The short version is a woman was given a box that somehow contained all the harm in the world, and told never to open it. She, being curious, opened it anyway and unleashed death, war, pestilence and so on. The very last thing to escape the box was hope. ... As the box is described as holding all evil, not all evil and one good thing, one must infer from the tale that hope too, is an evil."

Although Sephiroth's voice stays quiet, in both stairwell and storage beyond he's not hard to hear, echoes working in his favor. "Pandora and her box are fictional, but the symbolism slips in regardless."

If he takes a minute to investigate the furniture it might be forgiven. It all looked modern enough.