"Of course not!" Devero says immediately (and a little overloudly). He closes his eyes to recollect himself, then continues, "Buttercup, what you did... you didn't have a choice. Not really. If there's anyone to hate, it's the adults who-- made you do what you did."

(In that hesitation is a world of stronger language, of that volatile and impotent fury that he's controlling himself from expressing again.)

"I could no more hate you than I could hate Koumyou for almost killing me when he was a little boy for a day," he adds, looking sidelong at the priest beside him.

Or for the thousands of people that Koumyou has killed in all the years of his torturously hard life, he doesn't explicitly say. But it's there anyway, unspoken but present.