Kirei Kotomine's mad laughter echoed through the empty church, filled with the relief of finally being freed from more than thirty years of repressed suffering—and the ultimate ecstasy of having tasted the forbidden fruit.
It was as if he meant to expel all the collected gloom in his soul through that crazed laughter, his hands resting on his knees, body shuddering violently.
Steve stood silently by his side, not interrupting; he watched like an artist quietly admiring his own masterpiece. He knew that, though the diagnosis innately evil was cruel for Kirei, in a way, it was also a relief. It freed Kirei from the burden of being a moral sinner and transformed his incomprehensible abnormality into an objective nature, something akin to a congenital defect.
After a while, Kirei's laughter faded. He slowly straightened his back, the twisted ecstasy on his face gradually replaced by a bottomless calm. Yet, this calm was nothing like the heavy, deathly stoicism he'd worn before. In that instant, he resembled a parched well that had finally found its water source—tranquil on the surface, but with living waters of joy beginning to flow within.
"I see... I see..." he murmured to himself, as if speaking aloud the truth: "I'm not sick. I was just... born this way."
"This isn't a curse... it's a stigma..."
He looked up, gazing steadily at Steve. The wariness and murderous intent in his eyes had vanished, replaced with absolute trust and longing.
Steve saw through his internal struggle and spoke, smiling softly. "It seems you've come to understand the basics of your own nature."
"But simply knowing what you are—it's not enough for you, is it?"
Suddenly, Kirei's pupils contracted. Yes—this man had seen through him again. After that fleeting moment of blissful renewal, deeper, more fundamental doubts began to coil through his heart like a venomous snake.
Steve's voice stabbed deep into Kirei's core, probing like a precision needle. "When that repressed heart was finally freed, did a question emerge, perhaps?"
"—If there truly exist lives defined as evil, what significance is there in their birth?"
"—Bless all life... Wasn't that something even the saintly lady often spoke of? Then, what does it mean to bless a life stained by evil?"
"—If a being truly exists who was born to become pure evil—when that being dies, should his acts be called good? Or should he lament his evil?"
"You really do want the answer, don't you, Kirei Kotomine?"
Every one of Steve's words fell like a heavy hammer, pounding violently against Kirei's soul. Each was the ultimate question he had hurled countless sleepless nights at the heavens, never once receiving a reply. Now, the simple fact that this man stated them so easily chilled Kirei to the bone, as if his soul had been utterly seen through, leaving nowhere to hide.
"...You're right," Kirei replied, his voice hoarse with excitement. Stepping forward, eyes brimming with anticipation he'd never shown before, he asked, "So—do you know the answer?"
"Of course," Steve replied, surprising Kirei.
"But before I can answer you, I must speak of someone else—someone you believed you'd long forgotten."
"–Your wife, Claudia Hortensia."
That name, buried for more than a decade, slashed instantly through the heart of pleasure Kirei had just found. His entire body stiffened, his hard-won composure collapsing in a split second. Pain, regret, longing, and the shame of having his deepest secret exposed all flooded him.
Images rushed uncontrollably through his mind—the gentle, resilient woman, reminiscent of a hydrangea blooming quietly in rainy season; the joy on her face after bearing their daughter Caren, and the sorrow and love in her eyes as she looked at him. And... the final moments of her life.
"...So you still remember." Steve, keenly observing his reactions, continued with an almost cruel detachment.
"A year after Caren was born, your mental state was already near collapse. You couldn't truly sense real love from your wife or daughter. Instead, their happiness only increased your suffering."
"You decided to end your life... in a way a priest never should, to end this contradictory, misguided existence."
"But your wife stopped you."
"She did it in a way you could never understand. She stabbed herself in the heart with a knife right before your eyes."
"She hoped her death would shock you, make you feel the pain of loss, and, perhaps naïvely, turn you back into an ordinary person."
"Of course, her effort failed," Steve continued evenly. "Your innate stigma was completely unaffected. As you watched her lying in that sea of blood, only one thought arose in your mind: 'Why did she do this? If death was the answer, I might as well have done it myself—I'd have felt even more pleasure that way.'"
Hearing that, Kirei trembled violently. He covered his face with his hands, a suppressed, beastlike sob leaking through his fingers—a sin uglier and yet more truthful than any he'd hidden for more than a decade.
"But it was precisely her death that made you abandon suicide," Steve went on. "Because you realized—even death brings you no salvation."
Watching Kirei's tortured expression, Steve shifted his tone, embarking on the final stitching together of this soul. "Now, let's return to your earlier question."
"The reason this question torments you is, at its root, a kind of compensatory psychology. You're confused about the blessing of evil's birth, precisely because you yourself were born as evil."
"But your saintly wife proved the worth of your existence with her life. She loved you. She loved Kirei Kotomine—the very man you despise."
"That means, deep within, you long for others like yourself—beings the world cannot accept, but who manage somehow to survive."
"You're desperate to learn the ultimate appraisal of evil because you want answers no one like you can provide."
"What you truly wish to see is a person with the spirit of your kin—a being who embodies all the world's evils, and who, after committing every conceivable sin, can, without hesitation, scream their own goodness to the heavens. By doing so, that person would prove your own existence is not a mistake."
At that moment, Steve's words took on the gravitas of a divine oracle. He strode to the kneeling, despairing Kirei, and slowly placed his hand upon Kirei's head.
"Then let me grant you the ultimate answer to all your questions."
"Kirei Kotomine—
You were born into this world to become a necessary evil.
Without the evil, good deeds cannot shine.
Were there never tragedy, what meaning would comedy have?
Your existence is the measuring stick for goodness, the shadow that throws light into relief."
"You are here to mock the necessary evil—the evil that exists within human love."
"To build even a little, fragile peace, there must be an everlasting system of deterrence."
With that final declaration, the anguished priest of thirty years seemed, at last, to have found his answer—and his purpose. As he slowly lifted his head, a sacred yet twisted light shone in his now-clear eyes.
…