No one had expected that, after Gyomei's long silence,
the first thing he said would be this.
"Sayo... you must have suffered."
The Great Monk had clearly been the one hurt most in that incident.
He had been betrayed by a child and lost all the children in his care.
He had even been "identified" by someone he protected and thrown into prison.
Yet after hearing Sayo's words, his first response was to ache for her suffering.
Tears kept spilling from his blind eyes.
"Namu Amida Butsu... I never imagined that was what happened back then."
So back then, it had not just been his eyes that were blind. His mind's eye had been blind too.
Yan Zi blinked, unable to process it for a moment.
Suffered?
Th-this Great Monk had been identified as the murderer by Sayo.
He had suffered, been imprisoned, and nearly lost his head...
And the first thing he said was actually, "You must have suffered"?
Was he too kind, or was something wrong with his head?
Gyomei, meanwhile, fingered his Buddhist prayer beads, chanting through his tears.
To him,
whether it was a sincere apology or an ugly attempt to justify things and evade responsibility,
none of that mattered most.
He had followed Xia Xi here not only to see that child from back then again, but also to get an answer.
Once his earlier belief that [human nature was suspect] had been shaken,
it had clung to the depths of his heart like a nightmare.
What exactly had Sayo been thinking back then?
Had everything he did truly been worth it?
Would the truth be just as Xia Xi had said?
"Amitabha... once anger rises in the heart, a million gates of obstruction open."
"So I, too, failed to withstand that instant of [doubt]