"The place I'm from. My country. It's called Zanarkand, and it was big and bright and it never slept and we had machines do most of the heavy work for us and almost all of our time was spent however we wanted to spend it. No one was really poor. Fiends were rare, and a big deal when they showed up. There was no magic, no aeons, nothing like that.

"I was born and raised there. I lost my parents when I was very young, and ten years ago a man named Auron showed up and sorta-kinda adopted me for no reason. He was a dick. But he did... sort of... raise me. And then two days ago, or maybe it was three, Sin showed up out of nowhere—we had never heard of it, or I hadn't—and destroyed Zanarkand. Or at least I assume it destroyed Zanarkand, it sure was doing a great job of wrecking the port and nearby neighbourhoods. I didn't stay to watch, you see, because Auron led me towards Sin, said a bunch of cryptic shit that implied he had some weird relationship with it, and then Sin ate me."

Now Zei is just... staring. Not saying anything, not really... showing much. He doesn't interrupt Tōkan, though.

"I woke up in the ruins of a temple. —temples weren't really a thing, in Zanarkand, and neither was Yevon. I only found out it was a temple later, when a bunch of Al Bhed showed up and very conveniently rescued me. One of them was a girl named Rikku. Said they were on a self-assigned recon mission to explore some ruins. Sheer luck that they ran into me before I starved, or so I thought. I helped Rikku explore these weird underwater ruins, too, which somehow still had power to run even though they were at least several hundred years old.

"Then Sin showed up again and ate me again. And then when I woke up by the beach and Wakka found me.

"You got my story, now. That's all I know."

"That... makes no sense in so many different ways."

Snort. "You're telling me."

"Zanarkand was destroyed a thousand years ago."

"So I've been told."

"After having spent a long time in a big war with a country called Bevelle, which I notice is entirely lacking from your description."

"...right. So actually ha ha weird thing it never even occurred to me in my two decades living there that other countries might exist. I noticed a bunch of stuff that I somehow completely failed to think about until the day Sin attacked. I had never thought about—the world at large, what could exist outside my tiny island, about exploring. Even though I really really should have."

"—tiny island?"

"Really? Of everything I just said, that's the part that stands out to you?"

"Unless you meant it figuratively, Zanarkand was not on an island."

"...wait, what? No I didn't—well, it wasn't tiny, I think, I guess I don't really know how big other islands are, but. Zanarkand was very definitely on an island."

"Zanarkand is north of here. Past Mt. Gagazet, at the northern tip of the mainland. It is reachable by foot. I guess maybe a thousand years ago it may have been an island but I don't think I have ever read any historical records saying that."

"Well, points for the 'I made the whole thing up in my head' theory, I guess?"

"I think," Zei says slowly, "that what's going on here is a lot weirder than that."

"Brother I went from an airhead jock who may or may not have been mind controlled into never wondering about the world at large to a fantasy land with magic and giant monsters. Think my weird meter's broken now."

"...Sin doesn't let us explore much farther from the mainland than Besaid. Ships that try to go out farther either never return or, when they do, have inevitably been attacked by Sin."

"...are you saying my Zanarkand is—real, exists somewhere out there, or existed before Sin attacked, and it just—for some reason—no I don't know what you're saying."

"I don't know what I'm saying either! Maybe it was actually Sin's toxin, but—you were a captain. Weren't you. Of a blitzball team, back wherever you're from."

"...yeah. The Zanarkand Abes, we were called."

And here's that pang of homesickness and grief that he has to push down again because—because he should not start hyperventilating and crying right now, probably, it would—not do.

"Wakka tells me you did a shot he'd never seen before. He described it to me, I'd never heard of it before either. He knows every captain of every team that competes in Luca, and there's no way you would be—captain of a team that doesn't. Not with that level of skill."

"...so my Zanarkand's real, maybe destroyed now but it was real until a few days ago, and we were all mind controlled to never leave, and then for some reason—you said Auron was your father's guardian?"

"Yeah. Died ten years ago with my father when they killed Sin."

"—wait shit how did I not think of that, it's not that the pilgrimage is dangerous it's that killing Sin also kills you. What the fuck, dude."