That answer is nonsense to her -- Haruka doesn't understand it at all -- and yet it stabs pinpricks into her stomach and chest, and her whole body locks up with the strain of not caving in.

She wouldn't have been able to bear it? How is any of this about her?

"What--" The words snag on the rising wall of bile in her throat. She forces them out twice as hard. "What does that mean?"