[You sat quietly behind the broad desk, listening to Great Sage's heavy words.]
[To be honest, the moment you pushed open that door and saw the startlingly "human" exhaustion in him, you had vaguely sensed that something had happened.]
[This was not foresight, but the deepest understanding you had of human nature, war, and that copy of your own soul.]
[You knew all too well that leaving a being with normal human emotional thresholds and fundamental logical boundaries alone in that meat grinder of a hell for years on end would inevitably cause irreversible psychological changes.]
[That was precisely why, before Great Sage departed all those years ago, you had deliberately patted his shoulder and solemnly promised him that, whatever choices he was forced to make there, you would accept them without reservation.]
[You had long been prepared for this day, prepared to sit here and hear him recount those memories steeped in blood and gunsmoke.]
[You had fully prepared yourself mentally to receive all the suffering and nightmares he was about to pour out.]
[You showed no excessive surprise or pity. Like the steadiest of anchors, you simply asked him slowly, in a calm, gentle voice.]
["What happened?"]
[Great Sage fell silent then.]
[His eyes flickered slightly, and gears whirred within his chest in something like a human drawing a deep breath. The body you had built with your own hands seemed to bear a crushing weight nearing its breaking point.]
[He did not directly answer your understated question. Instead, he raised his head and looked at you with a gaze that was lost and hollow, yet filled with unfathomable pain, and posed a question so heavy it was suffocating.]
["What... am I, really?"]
[Your breath caught slightly.]
[The air in the room seemed to still at that moment.]