"So... so the doctors are my family?"
Yuuta's voice was small, fragile, like a bird with a broken wing trying to sing. He looked up at the elf with his red eyes, searching her face for confirmation, for reassurance, for some sign that he had finally understood something correctly.
Her face fell.
All the light drained from her expression, every trace of warmth, every flicker of hope, every memory of kindness she had been trying to hold onto. She stared at him as if the words themselves had wounded her, as if he had reached into her chest and pulled out something bleeding.
"No," she whispered. "No, he is not your family."
Yuuta blinked up at her, confusion replacing the tentative hope in his eyes.
"But he feeds me," he said, as if explaining something obvious to a slow student. "He talks to me. He made me. He said I'm special."
