Humans only have their limited lifetimes. They have the loss and love and heartbreak and joy of their accumulated years, few or many, but it never stretches beyond a dozen decades. To understand, in comparison, the lives lived by spirits, intrinsically bound to a short lived population, all too often at the mercy and whim of a species whose individual members were born as they were walking and died with the sunset of almost their first morning...

... suffice to say, he's correct. Empathy can bridge distances, alongside knowledge, but to truly know any of a life lived so long and so broken takes an understanding that Chihiro, at least, does not presently have.

Hearts break because they can heal again. That much, Chihiro knew. (That she was a forcible optimist with a willful disregard for the possibility of giving up had equal parts to do with personality and age.) "It is?" She glanced up, blinking as she noticed the sunlight striking the mist left falling overhead. Soon enough, the mist had turned into nothing more than air. He was right.

The rain had been stopping.

"Mm, this way." She moved, keeping hold of his hand for just long enough to tug him forward with a small, short lived smile. Ichigo wasn't okay. She knew that, just as she knew that the pain that lived in him wasn't one she could personally understand. Not without help, and not without his permission. It was new territory, if at least feeling, and emotion, were parts of her life since infancy. "I'll take you home."

It was the least she could do, even when "home" lay in places beyond their reach. Home had to also reside in their hearts and memories. If it didn't, it would be too cold and lonely to bear this place and its cruel eccentricities.