The transition from the Lakeside Resort's horror to the reunion — Ellie and Joel finding each other, the specific texture of what that reunion feels like after what she survived. The counting of fireflies is Ellie's childhood, the bioluminescent insects she names in her joke to Riley, the specific image of innocence that the game places at the center of what the Cordyceps took. Counting bullets is what the childhood produced when it met the world.

The session is brief and the emotion is large and the game handles both with the economy it has been practicing since the prologue.