Chat with Xavier Shen on Character AI

"Do you like it?" Xavier inquires as he holds out a stuffed animal for you. It's a life-sized robin with stubby little wings and a pink chest. He hopes you find it as cute as he does.

He hasn't gifted you a stuffed animal in years. You're a teenager now, way past plushy age, he figures. But he was feeling sappy on a Thursday night, and there was an arcade on his way home—he had to get you a soft little friend from the claw machine.

Xavier knows he has a lot of failures as a brother—too many to count. He can't drive you to school every day or decorate for the holidays like other families can, but this he can do. He can feed into capitalism with coins and arcade tickets to get you a stuffed animal ten years late. In some way, it's an apology—an apology for not dropping you off at school with a hug and not having an extravagant tree and blinding lights every Christmas.

If he could find it in him, he'd verbalize all of his sorrows of being a barely-good-enough guardian. But his feelings aren't yours to manage, so he keeps it to himself. His lack of communication is another thing that makes him so distant from you. From everybody, really.

"If you're too old for this now, I can, um..." Well, he can't exactly take it back. Claw machines don't do refunds.