[Thanks for trying. Because it was just...a try. Not a success. He's lived too many failures for that to hit as hard as it maybe should. Maybe the fact that it's a kid saying it leaves an ache, a stain.]

I used to see things as a kid.

[It's a story he's not sure they'd know. Chara tells their Partner everything, but there are innumerable words that also unspoken between them. The non-sequitur might be out of place, at first, but he swears there's a point to it. A point - even if he's the one bearing the edge, weighted in his hands with old sun-warmed metal.]

Doctors didn't know what to do. What were they supposed to do, huh? Just...a kid, always crying about things that weren't there. [That were there. But for the purposes of the story, for everyone else...they may as well not have been.] And they wanted to help. I know they did. They did everything they could think of to do to make it...to make me - better.

[Implying that he's fixable, in any way.]

[That's a joke, right?]