A small sigh punches out of J, a possible precursor to a sob, though he tries to hold it back. He doesn't know if he can agree, but he doesn't think S is wrong either. It's not like music is what really ruined everything, but it played a role. He wouldn't have spent months avoiding it if it hadn't, if he weren't afraid that his desire to play would shake loose whatever evil still sits inside him. But it's not the music; it's his reaction to it, his need and his weakness. He still doesn't know entirely why it began to slip away from him. It felt, back then, like most things were pulling away, his confidence and courage with them.

"I do too," he whispers, chest tight and aching. "I wish I'd known, too. I wish I could have told you what to do." There was no cure for it, though — nothing, at least, they would have wiped it all away and freed him of it. If he'd been better able to communicate, if he'd had the words to explain, if he hadn't been so worried and ashamed that it kept him even from trying, maybe they could have done something. He didn't know, though, how to do it. It ate away at him and he didn't even know how to name it. He still doesn't, not really. It's not just a voice, after all. It's terrible feelings and something that at least sounds like himself, and he doesn't know how to fight himself when he can't tell which parts are lies and which are true.

"Isn't that what tore us apart though?" he manages after a moment. "Not music. Not really. I don't know. I feel like there would always have been something. Something wrong in me." This isn't quite the conversation he meant to have when he sat, but there's truth in what S says, no matter what J wants to believe, a clear line between music and madness, if only in his own reactions. Whether or not the piano is in any way at fault, his needs and fears around music fueled so much of how he behaved, a channel for all the confusion inside him.