"We say a final goodbye to our grandparents even if they hated us in life."

"And why do you think he hated you?"

"I don't. I simply used the most extreme example to illustrate that of course I would attend. Even if we disagreed on things, he had been a mentor, and I owed him at least a wreath at his gravestone."

"The last thing he wrote on espers was:

The Patriarchate responded to the urgency of new developments to state that, in extremis, the marshaling of all available force to thwart an existential threat to Creation must be granted some leniency. In the ensuing three decades, however, the science of Dungeons has advanced, and ordinary human endeavors have become sufficient in many cases to handle them. It is high time that we wean ourselves of over-reliance on the morally compromised powers of the espers, whose souls we should care for by discouraging their use of powers (which inevitably results in the temptations to all egregious sins, or in the degradation of the natural body). In the endeavor, I fear the works of the Agencies, the Guilds, and the Bureau are counterproductive, and that their dismantling the only recourse against our reliance on the methods of eternal damnation for temporal salvation.

"What do you think of that statement?"

"I reject it as naïve and excessively rigorist."

"Then help me understand, Mr. Konstantinov, why you would help one of the most valuable espers in Russia—as well as his partner, who was also the primary partner of the most valuable esper in Russia, by symbolism if not in practice—flee just before an expected Confluence."

"I did not aid them."

"It strains credulity that they escaped without you noticing. Are you sure you didn't think that Russia ought to begin to learn to fend for itself using ordinary human methods?"

"I do not think that that is practical nor desirable."

"It must be tiresome, saving us normals all the time just to get called queers and cocksuckers for your hard work."

"The Christ was called a blasphemer and a traitor, and many saints have endured worse, as well. This is nothing."

"Still a choir boy at heart after sucking all that cock, huh, Konstantinov?"

"Please stop fantasizing about me, Boris."

"Oh, don't you have a thicker skin about these insults by now, Konstantinov? I'm sure you hear them everywhere you go. From the fathers of naked young boys you're spiriting away out their bedroom windows, for instance."

[Inaudible]

"You're not tired of us, yet? Mocking you and goading you? Wouldn't it prove us wrong if we had to fend for ourselves in this confluence? Make us come crawling back to kiss your ass?"

"You would enjoy that far more than I would, I fear."

"So you still want to save us, even after all we do to you?"

"I do."

"You'd have made a passable priest after all, Kliment Ilyich. Pity."

"It was ultimately God's design, not mine, that won the day. I have no regrets."

"So you say, Konstantinov, so you say."

"Is there anything else that I can do for you, gentlemen?"

"I have one further question, for you, Kliment Ilyich: you seem to hold your duty to your countrymen in very high regard."

"Yes."