... No one had tried to make a friend of me before.

[It's so strange, to hear him say that it was difficult. Someone who could exude that much kindness with little effort? Who'd try to show such kindness to someone like her, so undeserving? Yet it somehow provides her with some measure of courage to speak further.]

I was in a dark place, when we met. I was incapable of understanding what it was that you... wanted. But perhaps even then I found that I did not... mind, your presence, even if I could not understand it.