Faced with Steve's ultimate choice—a decision that could shatter the faith of any priest—Kotomine Kirei's twisted expression, after a brief torrent of inner chaos, became oddly calm.
His facial muscles stopped twitching, the bloodshot mania faded from his eyes, replaced by the stillness of someone drowning who has ceased to struggle and simply accepts fate.
It was as if, instead of awaiting his soul's judgment, he was merely preparing to hear a long-delayed, solemn sermon.
He slowly straightened his immaculate priestly robes, took a deep breath, and looked Steve in the eye.
"I will hear your answer."
His voice was still hoarse, but steadier than ever—a decision unshaken.
This outcome surprised even Steve.
Raising an eyebrow with interest, he asked,
"Oh? I thought a devout believer like you would heed your Lord's voice without hesitation. Why this decision?"
Kotomine Kirei's lips curled into a subtle, self-mocking smile, a trace of reality blended with irony.
"You said today is the end of my fate, didn't you? If so, I'll soon meet my Lord and can ask Him directly. There's no need to rush now."
He paused, peering at Steve as if he could see into Steve's soul.
"Furthermore, if God is truly omnipotent and omniscient, then He already knows my question. If He wanted to answer, surely I'd have heard it long ago in my thirty-odd years. If He doesn't want to answer, then even if you ask as an intermediary, I'll receive only silence—or perhaps just another metaphor that would take me another thirty years to decipher."
"It's better to hear, from this enigmatic uninvited guest—you—how you see my illness, rather than wait for an official explanation I'll never get."
"In the end…," he lowered his gaze and sighed, "the Devil's whispers… are sometimes closer to the truth than an angel's hymns."
"Oh ho…"
Steve couldn't help laughing. "Father Kotomine, the devout believer, is terrifyingly realistic in his worldview."
"I'm only stating facts," said Kirei, calmly.
"My faith is my guide for action, not a means to blind my thirst for knowledge."
"If you can see through my greatest secret in a single glance, you must have wisdom to match your insight."
"So, stop testing me. Just tell me—what am I?"
"Very well."
Steve's playful expression faded, and he nodded.
Sitting down on a bench like a professor about to lecture, he crossed his legs and placed his hands on his knees.
"Since you've chosen, I'll begin my diagnosis.
"In my view, your question is rather simple."
He looked at Kotomine Kirei, and with an icy, nearly cruel objectivity, began the psychological autopsy that had been delayed by more than thirty years.
"First, let's define your symptoms…"
"You cannot feel joy in good deeds, nor empathize with beauty."
"When you see others happy, you feel nothing. When watching a tragic film and see others cry, you don't understand and have to awkwardly imitate them just to seem normal."
"On the contrary—it's only when witnessing ugliness, hearing sighs, or feeling pain, that you finally experience true pleasure in your heart… correct?"
Kirei's body trembled slightly, but he did not protest—instead, he nodded unconsciously.
Steve's analysis was more accurate than any self-reflection he had ever managed.
"The reason you've suffered so much over this," Steve continued, "lies in your upbringing."
"You were born into a family of theologians. Your father—who, unfortunately, passed away a decade ago was a flawless, conscientious priest."
"Since childhood, you learned the values of doing good deeds and loving others through theology."
"And those values came into fundamental, irreconcilable conflict with your very nature."
"It's like being born color-blind and being told you have to distinguish red from green—or else be dubbed abnormal."
"All your life's suffering traces back to this."
"Imagine… if you'd been born not into such a family, but into an ordinary, perhaps even somewhat troubled, mundane household…"
"Without the shackles of theology, you'd have surrendered to your nature more quickly, pursuing pleasure more directly."
"In that case, you might have become a street thug, a cold-blooded killer, a villain who delights in crime…"
"But at least, in some sense, you'd be happier than you are now."
At this, Kotomine's breath quickened.
Steve's words revealed to him an alternate world he'd never dared imagine but found strangely alluring—a life with no constraints, no lies, where one could unleash their true self.
"That's why nothing can satisfy you—not the rewards of good deeds, nor the peace offered by faith."
Steve's voice, seductive as a devil's whisper, brimmed with fatal appeal.
"Only human suffering, regret, conflict."
"Only when you're faced with these—when you wade through a cesspit of malice, when you shatter the illusion called happiness with your own hands, when you stand in the mire called tragedy—can your heart finally feel true joy."
"This is not twisted nature acquired during your growth through certain experiences."
Steve rose and walked slowly to stand above Kotomine, whose face now bore the look of someone struck by a sudden revelation.
"It's an inborn stigma."
"It's a special mark God engraved on your soul at the moment of your birth."
"You can only find spiritual nourishment in the suffering of others."
"The darker the world, the more fulfilled your heart becomes."
"And your existence, in turn, proves how fragile and hypocritical this world's light actually is."
Steve gently placed a hand on Kirei's chest, as if feeling the frenzied heartbeat driven by this gospel.
He leaned in close, whispering the final judgment meant for Kotomine's ears alone:
"In other words, Kotomine Kirei—
you were born to be evil in the eyes of good people."
At that instant, Kirei's whole body trembled violently.
Something deep in his empty eyes utterly shattered.
And then, from deep in his throat, a low, mixed laugh—part relief, part anguish, and a kind of unendurable joy—slowly spilled forth, finally swelling after thirty years of repression.
"Heh… hehehe… ahahahahaha—!"