Koumyou reaches over to try to poke his cheek once he comes out from behind his hands, beaming. Look at you, all flustered!

"I heard a voice..." the priest says, after the poke, and turns to wrap his hands around his tea.

"It was so alone, so scared... and no one else could hear it. So I went to look, and I saw a basket in the river. It had tipped over on its side. I waded out, and I found him, barely alive in the water. He wasn't even a day old, I don't think, he was so tiny. Just him and... a set of red prayer beads, and the basket."

Those beads had apparently worked.

"I pushed the water out of his lungs, and he started crying immediately! There was no one else around, no towns upriver for weeks...! So I took him back to the temple with me, and I've had him ever since."

Until now, of course.